morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2011-08-27
From: Stealth Camp at north end of Rainbow Lake

To: Abol Bridge then Home
Miles today: 7.8
Weather: broken clouds

Today I completed my second end-to-end AT hike. I woke up in the middle of last night to the howling of coyotes from across the lake. It was an eerie sound, but it didn¢t keep me from quickly going back to sleep. I was up at 6:00 to a beautiful morning, featuring a blue sky with puffy white clouds, in the woods on the Shore of Rainbow Lake. I packed up, ate my Pop Tart breakfast (I don¢t want to see another Pop Tart for a long while), and was hiking at 6:50 in shorts and T-shirt in 57F temperature. I hopped rocks over the stream just before the Hurd Lean-to reaching the Lean-to at 9:15 where I left my last register entry of this hike. The Trail then really mellowed out and was smooth going the last 3.5 miles to Abol Bridge which I reached at 11:00. Today I hiked 7.8 miles, 1320 ft of ascent, 1940 ft of descent, and 2 laps in 4 hr and 10 min. This is the completion of my AT hike which I started on March 22nd 2010 at Springer Mountain in Georgia. As I was crossing the bridge I met CJ the Baxter State Park Ridge runner. He said that the entire park was being closed for the rest of Saturday and then for all of Sunday because of the hurricane. That means that all the people in the park had to leave and nobody could enter. I am sure glad that I did Katahdin and the rest of the Baxter State Park last year. It took me less than a minute to get a hitch at the bridge and into Millinocket. When I reached Millinocket I stopped at the Appalachian Trail Caf© where I had a haddock dinner and signed the 2011 ceiling panel to add my name to all the others who completed the AT this year. I picked up the keys to my car at the Appalachian Trail Lodge and drove home to Massachusetts, thus reaching there at 7:00 before (the now tropical storm) Irene hit the area. I am glad this journey is complete. The Trail is a great place to be, at least most of the time. Once again I want to thank all those who supported me with their mentoring, journal transcription, mail drops, and in general lots of encouragement. I will forever be grateful for all their support. I will also remember all the great people that I met on the Trail. The world is blessed to have folks like that.
Date: 2005-07-30
To: Starting my journal early
Miles today: 0.0

I just started this journal today. I figured it was as good of time as any to start it. I think I am all set gear wise. The only things I need to swap out for my trip that I can see now is the sleeping bag. I would like to get one under 2 lbs. I have one right now that is 3 lb 14 oz¢s. That is too much for me. I have slowly been going lightweight, but not to the extent of going overboard. But when I start my thru-hike in 2010 I will be 50 years old. So I figured the lighter my load on the back the better off I will be.   Right now the only preparation I have been doing it reading a lot of posts on WhiteBlaze.net and getting out and backpacking on weekends when I can get the chance.
Date: 2005-08-01
To: Workign on gear list
Miles today: 0.0

I started adding some of the gear I will be hiking with to my hiking gear listing. I have only added what I know I will be hiking with at this time. I did not include some things that will change like my sleeping bag, rain coat, camera. This will be a work in process thing. There is not hurry I have almost 5 years to get ready. Unless I decide to do it earlier. If I do it earlier then the earliest would be 2009.
Date: 2009-01-17
To: Thoughts and worries
Miles today: 0.0

I was just sitting around the house today after going for a short snowmobile ride. The temps are now above zero. It is 9 degrees out. That is a lot warmer than it has been.I started reflecting on what lays ahead and what needs to be done prior to my thru hike in 2010. It is only 13 and one half month away. That is not very much time when you really sit down to think about it. I have so many things I need to get in order prior to my departure from Maine to drive to Georgia. The number one thing that needs to be all lined up is my finances. I actually have enough to leave for my thru hike this year if I want to but the time is not right this year. I really need to put at least $2,000 more aside for my thru hike before I can leave. I need to have some extra money put aside for emergencies that may arise for my wife while I am gone for 6 or 7 months. I also have tow loans I am trying to pay off this year. These loans have to be paid off for me to leave in 2010. The one thing that scares me the most that could throw out my 2010 thru hike is the economy. That is my number one worry. I gave not worked a full week for over a month now. Before the economy slump we are in now I was being asked to work overtime constantly. I am worried that this slump will continue and that I will have to dig into my thru hiking money I have set aside. If for some reason that happens then it would put a dent in my thru hiking money and cause me to postpone it longer.I have no other income other then my military retirement. I cannot depend on that because that money will be paying my mortgage and my electric bill during my retirement, any other bills after that come up my wife will have to handle. Her money is not a dependable income either. She does not have a full time job because she is disabled and cannot work full time. She will barely be skimping by for the seven months I will be hiking. I really need to stay away from my hiking fund and have some extra money for her for any issues that may arise.The book that David Awol Miller and I have published for the last two years is not a profit making book. We do not make a lot of profit off this book. I know people probably think that we do but when you add in all the expenses it really is not anything that profitable. I also run the web site [url]www.whiteblaze[/url] .net and that brings not profit whatsoever my way. All the donation and any monies that come to me for the web site go into a separate account and only get used for server and web hosting expenses.Well enough typing for now. I just wanted to put some of my thoughts and worries on paper right now to share what has been going through my head for a while now. I am sure many other past thru hikers had these same thoughts and worries.
Date: 2009-02-11
To: Cold weather hammock experiments Part #2 
Miles today: 0.0

Cold weather hammock experiments Part #2. Sunday night the temperature dropped down to 11 degrees at night which was perfect for a good testing for my hammock testing. I did something different this time. I left the silk sock on but added a rip stop sock over it. I kept the same under quilt I used for the 32 degree night. I repositioned the pad I used in between the layers of the BB so that my feet were not over the edge this time. I think that was why my feet were so cold the night before.I slept like a baby again. I was not cold at all. My feet felt a little cold but not as bad as the night before. I was really surprised because I sleep cold and at 11 degrees I was really worried that I was wake up in about an hour or less and be so cold I would have to come into the house. I am pretty impressed so far.I am not looking forward to trying the Speer Snug fit that I have sitting here now. It is a goose down 900 down fill quilt. I am thinking that will be really warm or at least I am hoping it will be.I was going to try and sleep with the snug fit tonight but the temps jumped back up again and right now it is 44 degrees. I hope it drops back down. If it does I will give it a whirl and try it. Heck I may just do it anyways because it is always comfortable sleeping in my hammock.
Date: 2009-02-20
To: Brief introduction on me
Miles today: 0.0

Here is a real quick rundown about me. If you want to know more you can read some of my other pre hike journal entries.   I am currently 49 years old. I retired from the military in 1999. I currently work for International Paper in the manufacturing end of things.   I am the person behind the scenes of WhiteBlaze.net. SGT Rock and I are both administrators of the web site along with Skidsteer and Alligator. I also own the web site HammockForums.net, AppalachianPages.com and a few others. I started out doing this as a hobby and at times it seems to have almost turned into a full time job.   I am also the co-author of the Appalachian Trail guidebook titled ¢Appalachian Pages¢.   After my retirement from the military1999 I started section hiking Maine. I have wanted to thru hike the Appalachian Trail since the mid 1980¢s but did not seriously start considering it until 2003. At that time money was a factor and I still had one child in school. However I knew if I did not set a date to do a thru hike than chances are it would keep getting postponed. Seeing I was also one of the administrators on WhiteBlaze, I did not want to be a person who was all talk and no action. The pressure of this was pretty heavy on my shoulders, which might also be a good thing as it kept me moving forward with this. I had to sit down and ponder what the soonest most reasonable date would be. I decided the year 2010 would be my year. I came up with this date because it would be 1 12 years after the last child would be out of the house. I did not want to leave immediately after my son was out of the house because it would be too much on my wife having my son and me gone all in the same year. Even though I had set a date in 2003 the reality that it would someday happen did not actually set in until sometime in 2005. The only reason it started to set in at that time was because I just sitting around thinking/dreaming about it and I thought to myself ¢How am I going to afford this¢. That was when I knew all the talk I had been doing needed to be put in some type of action plan. Within the next couple of weeks I calculated what I thought I needed for a good thru hike and figured out how long I have left until 2010 and created the direct deposit to go to a newly created savings account. The money was directly taken from my paycheck before I saw it. After a while I have forgotten about the money and became accustomed to my new paycheck. I have never looked at that savings account or touch it since I created it. It will be all set when I am ready in 2010. This was the only way that I knew of to assure myself that I could make it financially.   I will be quitting my job at International Paper in 2010 and will not have a job to come back to at age 50. That is probably the scarcest part of all.   That is enough on me for now.
Date: 2009-02-21
To: Thinking of resupply options
Miles today: 0.0

I spent the afternoon today looking through a copy of the guidebook Appalachian Pages planning my resupply area and maildrops for my 2010 thru hike. It is the 2009 copy but chances are the mileages and towns will not change that much next year.   This was fun and just a little challenging. I have planned all the way to Harpers Ferry, VA so far. My longest am going without a resupply is 6 days. I know that doing this can change at any given moment during you hike but I did to just to give me a rough idea as to where the best places to resupply are for me and also to pass the time. It was pretty fill as well. I am not too keen on long trips into towns so I tried to keep the resupplies within 5 miles of the AT whenever I could. There are some places that are impossible to do that unless you carry more than seven days work of supplies. This is not impossible but the more food you carry the more weight you carry on to back as well.   The biggest challenge was trying to estimate what my mileages would be for each day. I gave myself the first 24 days of my hike under ten mile days. I really want to do my best to stick to this. I fell it will keep the possibilities of blisters at the start to a minimum and break my feet in slowly. It will also give my body time to get into the routine of hiking with a pack on before I start picking up more miles per day. I know in reality that I will not keep my miles to under 10 miles per day for the first 20 days but I am going to at least try to do it for 10 days.   My plan is to start picking up my mileage to 15 mile days after Fontana Dam. I have a couple of things I am also trying to work into my schedule to go to during my hike. They include the Aprils Fools Bash in Franklin and one for sure thing is Trail Days in Damascus, Va. These things I currently have all planned into the schedule that I have made up but the problem is that like all hiking schedules after the first couple of days you might as well throw it away. Like I said I did it to just get a good idea of my resupply options.
Date: 2009-03-01
To: Cooking gear all assembled
Miles today: 0.0

Alrighty, I have completed my stove experiments. I have tried just about every home made stove on the market. I also went to see Tinny of Mini Bull Designs today. He showed me a setup that included everything that you need for 8 ounces. I was thrilled and very impressed with it. The minute I got home I started playing around with it and timing how long it took to boil one cup of water. I was able to boil one cup of water in 3 minutes with about 12 ounce of fuel. The kit came with a a Fosters beer can that was converted into a cooking pot. This pot worked real well but I have never been to keen on cooking with aluminum pots. Yes I know people have told me that the can is aluminum but it is coated. I realize this but I just do not like it still. I tried the Snow Peaks titanium 700 cooking pot that I just received the a couple days ago on this setup. I was very surprised to find out that the cooking time was about the same. With that discovery I decided to replace the Foster pot with the Snow Peaks pot. This make my total weight of cooking post, titanium sport, stove, pot stand, wind screen, two fuel bottles(empty), and a Tupperware type container at 10 ounces.   Now that I have decided on the stove and cooking setup I can move on to something else. I need to research the cold weather gear options for starting my hike. I was contemplating a light down jackets, gloves and a hat. A friend and two time thru hiker I know named Fig told me to dump the idea about the down coat and just layer and carry two fleece jackets instead. After considering his suggestion I am wondering if two fleece jackets will weigh more one down jacket. I can see where it makes some sense as I could add and remove a lay as needed in case the down was to warm. The other down side is if down gets wet is does dry easily or quickly. So this looks like my next project for gear.
Date: 2009-03-09
To: Winter shelter for thru hike
Miles today: 0.0

This is not my first night in a hammock but it was my first real winter hang. I have done two experimental hangs in my garage with the temps at 11 degrees. Those hangs went well but it was just not the real thing being in my garage.   For the past three years our Maine Geocaching group has had a winter campout. I have never had the courage or time to spend the night. Last year the temps were in the teens and that scared me off and kept me from attending. I had to go forward with this years¢ campout and stop avoiding it because next year I will be thru hiking the Appalachian Trail and I need to get my gear for the thru hike all worked out. This year I had the outfit to hang without worrying about being cold.   I have included a few pictures that show my hang and my setup. You will see the snow but what you cannot see is how deep the snow is. I have to snowshoe in and set this up with snowshoes on. The snow under my hammock is will over three feet deep. The temps the first night were in the mid 30¢s. The second night went to the 20¢s. Each night I was so hot I was sweating profusely. I had to continually keep opening my sleeping bag both nights to cool myself down and let the sweat evaporate off my body and my sleeping bag. My next experiment will be to try the Yeti under quilt.   My setup for this trip included the following:Warbonnet Black Bird double lay hammockMacCat deluxe tarpZero degree down sleeping bagCCF padSpeer Snug Fit under quilt
Date: 2009-03-11
To: Digital recorder
Miles today: 0.0

I picked up and Olympus VN-5200PC digital recorder the other day. The reason I got one of these is because I am very concerned about keeping a journal on my thru hike.   The problems I have had in the past with keeping a journal is that while I am hiking throughout the day I think of things I want to write in my journal at the end of each day. The problem is that at the end of the day when I am writing my journal entries I forget some of the things that I wanted to write. My reasons for trying it is that I can keep this in my side pocket with my camera and when I think of something I want to put in my journal I can pull it out and speak into it and this way I will not forget.   I am undecided on how I am going to use it or even if I am going to use it on my thru hike. I will have to try it out on some short hikes first and see how it works out. However my train of thought on this is that it can be used in one of two ways. I can either send the recordings home to have my journal transcriber listen to it and write my journal from listening to my recordings. Or I could listen to them at the end of each day to remind me what I wanted to write in my journal. I am concerned that after a period of time I will get tired of hand writing a journal. I have seen so many people start a journal on the Trail Journals web site and not continue them. I am afraid that in the later part of my hike that I will get bored or just get tired or writing to my journal. I don¢t want this to happen so my train of thought is if I can get the recorder to work then it might be easier for me to deal with and I would talked more into it. In theory that sounds good but in reality I don¢t know how it will work. The other issue is my transcriber. I don¢t know if I can find a transcriber that is willing to listen to my ramblings and put them into writings. After a while of listening to me ramble on a recording I am afraid my journalist will get very tired of listening to me.   This is my latest toy I am playing with right now.
Date: 2009-03-16
To: Comon questions I get asked
Miles today: 0.0

People always seem to ask me the same question. What do you want to hike the Appalachian Trail and why now. I usually always answer then by saying something like, I have wanted to do this for a long time and I want to do it before I am too old and won¢t be able to do it or I don¢t want it to me one of the things that I wished I had done. I just recently found this saying that one lady wrote in you pre hike journal for her reason for doing things. This one really hit what I have been trying to say to people.   "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did¢. -- Debbie Mille's 2009 --   You would think that at my age my patents would understand that I have dealt with t lot of things in life and that I would not jump into something without doing my homework or research on the subject. Well that is not the case and I find myself doing the same thing with my kids. Here are the questions I keep getting asked and my reply to them.Q. What do you want to do this?A. I love the outdoors and nature and I feel so relaxed away from congestion of everyday life. This is how life should be, hiking among good people and friends and not have a care in the world. And of course my new reply of, Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did so.Q. Are you going to hike with anyone?A. NoQ. You better watch on for the murders that go after people on the trail.A. That is not true. There are not murders that stock people on the Appalachian Trail. Something happens every ten years or so and everyone gets the impression that is happens all the time.Q. Are you going to carry a gun?A. No there is no reason to and it would it would just be something more I would have to carry, besides it would be unwanted weight.Q. How long is it going to take you?A. It depends on how many miles I do each day but the average is six to seven months.Q. Can you afford it and what are you going to do for money while you gone for bills.A. I have a military retirement check that will make my mortgage payments. The wife works and will be able to afford all the other bills. I have also been putting money aside for the last couple of years for this hike.Q. How much does a hike like this cost?A. One person may only spend $1,000 or less for this hike. Another person could spend $4,000 or more. It all depends on how often you go into towns, stay at motels and hotels, how often you go out to eat, if you get hurt and have to heal up in town for a couple weeks, whether you like to party on the trail or in towns. There are a lot of reasons why people spend a lot of money during their hike. I have about $2,000 saved up for my hike. That should be more than enough.   That is usually the basic questions I get asked.
Date: 2009-03-17
To: When it is cold out eat befor you sleep
Miles today: 0.0

I had a weird experience yesterday morning in my hammock. I am still playing around with under quilts for my thru hike while the temps are still cold here in Maine. I have been using a SnugFit under quilt by Speer Hammocks. I have slept down to 11 degrees comfortably with the SnugFit and my zero degree back about three weeks ago. Yesterday morning it was about 26 degrees out and I was relatively warm but my feet were cold. I could not seem to get my feet warm. This had me baffled. I had the same setup that I had when I slept in 11 degree temps. I was chatting with a friend from the HammockForums web site and he asked me if I had anything to eat before I went to bed. It dawned on me that I did not have anything to eat in over 12 hours.    This morning I gave it another try. The temps were only about three degrees higher so it was pretty much the same. I ate some food before I headed off to the hammock. I found that my feet were chilly after getting into the hammock for about the first 15 minutes or so. When my body started warming up then my feet got warm.   The moral of this story is when it is cold out don¢t go to bed without eating something. I don¢t know the physics of how it works by my assumption is this. It gives you body something to do and builds up body heat.
Date: 2009-03-27
To: Pack weight
Miles today: 0.0

I am so excited. I have been working at getting my pack weight down for years now and with next years thru hike it gave me all the more reason. I have my pack weight under 24 pounds right now. That is fully loaded with water and a few days worth of food supplies. I never thought I would be able to get it that low. It has all the essential s I need. The only thing that it does not include at this time is my cold weather gear and my camera. I did it and I am sorry happy. I still cannot believe it. I need to go back over everything again to make sure I am not forgetting something. It just sounds too good to be true.