Date: 2015-02-26
To: T-2 and Counting
Miles today: 0.0

The picture with this entry is Jon on the left, with Alan and Princess. Alan did such a tremendous job as trail boss last year, that we've re-enlisted him this year. We hope that he can join us several times on the trail. Jon lives in Richmond, VA and may hike with us a bit while we pass through Virginia. We¢re getting pretty close to the starting gate. Today is Thursday and we hope to start on Saturday. Currently we¢re visiting Princess¢ family in Alabama and we plan to leave for GA tomorrow. We had a serious snow yesterday, but the weather was warm this afternoon and the roads are reasonably clear. We think we will be able to get to Blue Ridge, GA tomorrow and then on to Springer early Saturday morning. Princess has been working feverishly for several weeks to generate a full length, detailed plan for our hike. We learned last year that flexibility is essential, so the timeline isn¢t sacrosanct. In fact, it will change, but a baseline plan is a good idea. The plan includes phone numbers for overnights at B&Bs and hostels as well as shuttle driver names and contacts. We found places we like last year so we plan to revisit those. Also, we heard about good places to stay so we plan to try those out too. And we¢ve made note of good microbreweries and brewpubs. Maps are important too. The best maps from our perspective are published by DeLorme, a separate ¢atlas¢ (book) for each state. These maps are up-to-date and show the AT across all 14 states. They include local roads, forest service roads, gates, etc. And they also have good information on the type of road surface. The bad news is that they¢re large and heavy. So they¢re great for planning your hike, but not attractive for adding to your pack. Of course, you can tear out the pages of interest and that lightens the load a lot.The maps published by the AT Conservancy focus on the area around the AT and they¢re much lighter and more attractive for packing. And they also include other side trails that may be useful in some situations if we need to get off the trail quickly. Princess is using both (DeLorme & ATC) for planning purposes, but we¢re not going to carry all the maps. Instead we¢re packing sets of maps for sections along the trail and Alan, our trail boss will mail them to us at specific points along the AT. All of these maps are in addition to the AT Guide, published each year by Dave (AWOL) Miller. Most thru-hikers we encountered last year carried AWOL¢s book. It¢s packed with info and data that are essential to thru-hikers. Some hikers carried the whole book all the way and kept their daily journal in the book. Others tore out the pages as they progressed along the trail to minimize weight. We even saw one hiker who bought a loose-leaf version and laminated all the pages so he could carry them with him and they wouldn¢t get wet. Last year we included the appropriate pages in each of our 22 mail drops. But we haven¢t decided how we will do it this year, we may carry the whole book.Another change for us this year is that I bought a DeLorme InReach Explorer tracker that has GPS and 2-way communications. I can send out preset messages to our trail bosses each day when we start and later when we finish. It also sends out a locator pin every 4 hours along the route so folks can follow us. Our friends can get an app that posts each pin along the route in a Google-type map to show our progress. If anyone is interested, send me a note with your email and I¢ll send the address and the password.