Date: 2005-01-23
To: Progress toward Springer
Miles today: 0.0

I was supposed to spend this weekend at a conference at the Blackburn Trail Center, located on the AT about 13 miles south of Harpers Ferry. At the moment, I am the Medical Officer for SMRG (the Shenandoah Mountain Rescue Group), one of nine groups that make up the ASRC (Appalachian Search and Rescue Conference). The ASRC carries out search and rescue operations in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. (I'm sort of hoping they don't have to be called out to save my butt while I'm in the area, but you never know...) We were supposed to have the ASRC annual planning conference at the Trail Center, but it was cancelled due to predicted heavy snow. We could have gotten in ok Friday night, but getting out again on Sunday looked kind of dicey. Bummer.It would have been interesting and I think we could have gotten some good things done on the medical side. We need to agree on and update some wilderness protocols for patient care, decide on medical certification issues for ASRC members, and figure out how we're going to make wilderness first aid training more readily available to our members, among other things. With my hike coming up, I'll be stepping down shortly as Medical Officer, but I'm assuming I will come back from my hike with a good deal more experience of the outdoors than I have now, and that will be worth something. I'll also be in much better shape to go on searches, which will definitely be a good thing. I really like SMRG. It's a fantastic group of people -- bright, dedicated, adventurous, and professional, willing to learn, and to share their knowledge with others. There is great comraderie amongst the members, who have been known to hoist a malted beverage or two, after our meetings, at the Vienna Inn -- a local pub with a highly congenial ambience, the greatest chile cheese dogs in the world, and really cheap beer. (Burrrp.) I'll be thinking of them while I hike. (The hot dogs and beer, mostly, but also my fellow SMRGies.) With a weekend off, I got some things done for my hike. I had already booked my room at the Lodge in Amicalola Falls State Park where I'll stay for my last pre-hike sleep on Saturday, March 12, and today I booked my flight to Atlanta. I thought about booking an early flight, as I am very much a morning person, but since "She-who-knows-me-best", and most of our kids, are all night owls, I resigned myself to a flight leaving around 12:30. It gets in around 2:30 which will be even better for my oldest son who lives in Atlanta and will be picking me up at the airport. Given his ususal proclivities on a Friday night, that should be safe. He and his girl friend will be driving me up to the Lodge, and we'll all have dinner there before they return to Atlanta.I also organized my food for the first part of the hike. I'm now leaning toward relatively few drop boxes, and will instead plan to live off the land, so to speak. From all I've read, it's gotten pretty easy to resupply every few days in towns along the way, and then I don't have to worry about meeting up with a package sent from home. I gather that can be a bit of a pain, since you either have to push too hard to get to town while the post office is still open (limited hours on Saturday and closed sunday), or delay your hike (take a "zero miles" day) waiting for it to open again on Monday.Just to "test the system," since I will want some things (like maps and guide book sections for the next part of the trail) sent from home, I'm planning to have two or three drop boxes in the first month. After that, I suspect I will abandon them. My schedule will be more flexible that way, and I definitely want that. This is supposed to be my sabatical from the world of alarm clocks and daily calendars!I also had a go at putting that huge pile of stuff in the corner into my backpack. ANOTHER MIRACLE -- IT FITS!!! Well, except for the water. That I still have to add. I use a 100 oz. Camelback hydration pack that fits into a sleeve inside the pack itself, plus another 32 oz. water bottle in a side pocket of the pack. I drink a lot of water, and I'd rather not have to worry about running out. I did that once. It wasn't my idea of a good time.I tried the pack on and it felt pretty good, except for the shoulder straps which dug into my chest a bit. Especially when I wore it with just a tee shirt. It was ok when I wore my fleece vest. It was just as tight, but the padding felt better. With a mid-March start date, I don't think I have to worry too much about hiking in just a tee shirt for the first few weeks, but after that I may have to jury-rig some additional padding. Of course, at some point I'll be able to send home my winter gear which will take some of bulk out of the pack and make it more comfortable. And now, the REALLY good news: When I weighed it, it came out at 26 pounds, including food for about five days. When I add the water, it will still be under 35 pounds which was the target weight for my backpack. I haven't weighed the fanny pack I'll be using, but it was the backpack I was most concered about. If things didn't fit, or if the pack couldn't take the weight, I'd have had to upgrade to a bigger -- read HEAVIER -- pack and, frankly, I'm getting a litte tired of both shopping and spending my hard-earned money on gear. So that was good. I also did some shopping and spending of my hard-earned money on gear, but that was for a good cause.I've been troubled recently by my sleeping bag. It a good bag -- an REI Sub-Kilo, down-filled bag rated at 20 degrees. I like its weight (2.3 pounds), and it's been warm enough in sub-freezing temperatures, but its a mummy bag and the fit is kinda tight. In fact, too tight for comfort. I'm not small. I will be when I'm done with the hike (more on that later) but I'm not starting out that way. I'm six feet, two inches tall, and I'm big boned... Ok, I'm a bit overweight. ALRIGHT, ALREADY, I'M A HUGE BLOB FROM OUTTER SPACE.So anyway, I have trouble getting my bag zipped up with both arms in. That's not a problem when it's not too cold out, since I just don't put my arms in the bag, but when it's cold that's a problem. And when I do put them in, I get sort of claustrophibic. I can't help thinking about how hard it's going to be if I have to get out of the darn thing in a hurry -- like when some critter, large or small, needs to be dealt with, and "playing dead" is not the preferred option. Fortunately, my Backpacker Magazine arrived yesterday and happened to include their annual gear review. What caught my attention was the description of a bag from Big Agnes that weighed an ounce less than my REI bag, but had 11 inches more shoulder room! The reviewer said he had been able to change clothes in the bag! I can't even change positions in mine, and I normally tend to toss and turn a lot when I sleep. To save weight, despite the extra width, it has essentially no insulation on the bottom of the bag. Instead, it has a sleeve where you insert your sleeping pad. This has the added advantage of keeping you from sliding off the pad during the night, which is another common experience with my other bag, given all the struggling I have to do to change positions. You can imagine how happy I am when I have to unzip the bag to get my arms out, play wiggle worm to get the pad back under my bag, and then get the bag zipped back up again with my arms in, only to repeat the process a couple of hours later. The other selling feature is that I've been VERY impressed with Big Agnes gear, and their support service. My tent is a Big Agnes, and they replaced my rain fly and tent body at a very reasonable price when they got trashed by a rabid skunk at a Boy Scout campout recently. (I'll tell you more about that later, if you're interested, but this entry is already WAAAY too long.) One web site and one credit card swipe later, and the bag is on its way. Hopefully that's the last of it...Stay tuned,