How We'll Eat

Hello Friends,

A lot of people have asked what and how we'll be eating while we're in the woods. << A very fine question indeed! Well, to start off, weight is an extremely important factor in nearly ALL of our decisions, including food. Water is a lot heavier than many people realize. It's about 8lbs per gallon. And it's in EVERYTHING you eat; unless of course it's been dehydrated... Which is why we have a Dehydrator, but not just any dehydrator. We have the mothership of dehydrators, the Excalibur Dehydrator. This purchase was dual-purpose in the fact that Abbey started a mostly Raw Food Diet this year, and the dehydrator makes her eating much more simple and gourmet-capable. Fun fact about water: When Campbell's Soup started selling condensed (think: partially dehydrated) they saved over 50% on shipping, because water was the heaviest ingredient in their soups (plus it was 1899 and it took a lot of horses to get the soup from one place to the next...) Enough history, onto our food. We'll be dehydrating a very large percentage of our food, and then simply re-hydrating by adding water, and heating. Which brings us to our next topic, the Stove. We're 'Comfort Ultra-Light Hikers' meaning we are trying to carry as little weight as possible, but not at the sacrifice of our own bodily comfort (unlike the crazy hikers wrapping themselves in Tyvek housewrap and sleeping on the ground at night in lieu of a tent and sleeping bag).

But one area where we can be Super Ultra Light is our Stove system. We're using what's called a Soda Can Stove. Which as the name suggests, is a stove made from a soda can (or beer can). Here's a pretty comprehensive wiki link: Can Stove that does a good job of explaining.

Preston has been having fun designing and making these. They weigh about 0.4 of an ounce and we'll be using denatured alcohol as our fuel (which we can get at outfitters, gas stations, hardware stores...) and 1 stove can be made out of pieces of just two cans. We did the first test boil tonight with one of Preston's first designs. He's fairly happy with the result of a full rolling boil in just under 9 minutes but thinks with some tweaks to the design, and a windscreen, he'll eventually be able to get that time down to 5 minutes. Altogether not bad considering no windscreen, moderate wind outside, and a unfinished/unsealed first try stove. As far as our Cook-Pot, we're using a 1.3L Titanium Pot from REI. Here are some pictures!

Thanks to my buddy Richie for the PBR cans as I usually only have empty bottles hanging around :)

We will be trying different designs as Preston makes them, and then start nailing down our meals plans in the coming months. It will literally take us months to prepare, dehydrate, and package 6 months of food and drink. But for now we'll be taking a couple of these to test out in Mt. Rainier and Olympic National Parks this next week on our Annual National Park road trip.

Thanks for reading! As always we love questions and comments :)

Love and Hugs,

Preston and Abbey

1 year!!!

Today is exactly 1 Year from our planned start date, June 1st, 2012. There are a couple factors that may change that by a week or two. One of those, the most prominent one, is if the trail is 'open' in Baxter State Park, ME. I just called this morning to find out if the *Hunt Trail* was open, and it is! The Hunt Trail is the Appalachian Trail inside of Baxter State Park. It's the 1st mile for southbounders and the last mile for northbounders. It's also home to the famous mountain, Katahdin. (see below)

The trails are closely monitored for snow melt, and depending on the year, the park officials have kept the trail closed to as late as June 15th, due to extensive snow pack on the trail. However June 1st is an Average opening date. We're hoping to start on June 1st, but if not we'll just hang out in Maine for a little bit :)

Now the real planning gets underway. We'll be scrupulous with our meal drop planning and are continuing to get all of our equipment together.

Thanks for reading.

We love you guys,

A&P

Some New Gear!!!

Hey Everybody!

We thought we'd give you a little update on our progress and our preparation. First off, we've made a few purchases since the first post!(REI is having a HUGE SALE right now!) Second we're getting closer to 1 Year from when we plan to start, meaning we can start working on some things that we practically couldn't before. (It's kinda like a wedding, you can plan and plan and plan, but there are some things you have to wait to do).

Onto the Gear!
We now both have our packs that we'll use for the duration of the hike. Coincidentally, we both chose the same bag, because it seemed to be the best fit for our trip and we both were simply pleased the most with the fit of these bags.

The Deuter Act Lite 60+10 & the 65+10 (guys have to carry more stuff).

They are essentially the same pack, the Woman's is more shaped for a woman's body, and the men's compensates for the fact that Preston has no hips (like most men) which is important because the hips support the majority of the weight. An awesome pack, by a really old company, they've been making trekking packs since the late 1800's.

Next: Our Tent! We're really super excited about this baby. The tent is usually one of the heaviest items in the pack. Ours however, is not :) We purchased a Big Agnes, Copper Spur UL2 (The UL stands for UltraLight). This is a super light tent, super spacious (we can both sit upright on opposite sides and still have about 20" between us without our heads hitting the tent, the tent has two Vestibules (covered area outside of the tent provided by the rainfly for storing gear and cooking in inclement weather) and folds up in a tiny little package all weighing less than 3 1/2lbs. One of the benefits of hiking with a partner, is you cut weight by sharing equipment such as the tent, so that's about 1lb 10oz per person for what will be our home for 6 months.

So that's our shelter from the storm, our home away from home.

Bags:
Sleeping bags have come a long way even from when we were little kids. (which was soooo long ago...) Backpacking Sleeping Bags have to be a combination of lightweight, warm, ultra-compressible, and in our case, interconnectable. We once again picked the same bag, just the male and female versions. Abbey's is more curvy and has significantly more insulation, and because women sleep colder than men, the temperature rating is the same as Preston's but his has less stuffing. We opted for the 'Long' versions, because there is nothing spacious about these babies. Given their constrictive shape, the feel a little bit cramped and if you were claustrophobic, these probably wouldn't work for you. The extra 6 inches from the long versions allow us to put our clothes at the bottom so they're nice and warm when we put them on in the morning. Also there is room for things like a metal water bottle full of hot water (think *heated blanked*).
There are two choices to make when it comes to backpacking sleeping bags, down or synthetic. We chose the synthetic version because of two things, 1. our lifestyle 2. because synthetic insulation still provides warmth even if it's wet, where down becomes completely useless with exposure to a few drops of water. We'll be encountering over 28" of precipitation throughout the duration of our hike, so this was a no-brainer.
The bags weigh about 2 1/2lbs each, but provide a 20 degree warmth factor and compress to the size of a small watermelon.

Also the Men's and Women's zip together to create one giant Mummy Bag, Abbey's zipper is on the right, and Preston's zipper is on the left, allowing us to share heat and cuddle, awwwwwww. We were very excited when we discovered this little gold mine.

We're in the process of finalizing what clothing we'll be taking, and are trying out a few items that we already have. We'll keep you posted on what we find. We're focused on having the most minimal amount of stuff, that provides multitudes of functions and can withstand the rigors of tough day to day use for 6 months.

We'll also be able to test out our new tent and sleeping bags while beach camping @ Olympic National Park this summer!

Thanks for reading. We love you all.

Abbey and Preston Take a Hike.

Dear Friends and Family,

We write to you today to let you know about an upcoming journey we are planning that is very important to us in our lives.  This entry is the first of many that will allow us to share our experiences and adventures with you.

In June of 2012, we will embark on one of the biggest adventures of our life (so far!).  We will be Thru-Hiking the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia.

The Appalachian Trail spans nearly 2,200 miles, crosses through 14 states, 2 National Parks, and explores the peaks and valleys of the Appalachian Range.

This trip will take approximately 6 months to complete.  We'll carry all of our gear on our backs and live in the fresh air of the wilderness.

There are many reasons why we want to do this (which we could share with you if you ask us), but above all else, we just know that we need to do this.  We have been and in the upcoming months will be, in the process of preparing ourselves physically, mentally and emotionally for this trip by gathering gear, endurance and strength training, and learning everything we can about living in the wilderness.

We would so appreciate any and all support from you, our friends and family.  During our hike we hope to do the best we can to update this blog regularly to keep you informed on where we're at.  There will be many posts before our trip with more information regarding our planning process: What we'll be eating, the gear we'll carry, and how you can support us.

For now, we've started a list of things we will need and are definitely open to any help we could receive :) Here's the List!

If you have any questions about our trip, please talk to us as we're really excited and would love to share.

Feel free to follow this blog and share it with anyone who knows us :)

Peace and Love,

Abbey and Preston

Here are some links with more information about the Appalachian Trail:

Appalachian Trail Conservancy --The Official Organization of the Appalachian Trail

The National Park System--Appalachian National Scenic Trail