Date: 2009-02-26
To: Duncannon Prep Hikes
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

The first step is always the hardest, right? In an attempt to make getting into my journals less difficult for readers, I have decided to group my prep period and multiple training hikes into just three entries.Although my desire to hike the AT has been strong for about ten years now, the story really begins in the Spring of 08. I was returning to Delaware from a winter living in Southern Florida and stopped to visit my friends in Hagerstown MD. After years of reading tons of trailjournals, I was quick to suggest we take a hike on the AT out of Boonsboro when we were searching for something to do. It was a gorgeous Spring day, the kind of day where you can smell the dirt and the trees waking up from winter when I saw my first white blaze hiking northbound away from the Washington Monument on South Mountain. On that hike to the Annapolis Rocks, I became infected with the journey sort of like Icarus infected with flight. Hiking faster and faster, jumping on rocks and stumps, it may have been like a scene out of Lord of the Flies. I felt like I could just keep going and walk all the way to Maine. This was the day that it became necessary for me to one day attempt a thru hike.Upon our return from this adventure, life returned pretty much to normal (noting that my knee hurt for a good three weeks after this adventure). After spending a summer in Rehoboth Beach, DE, I made the decision to not return to FL for the winter but to move to Harrisburg PA as the tourist industry was crashing and I thought I could take advantage of being close to the AT. I decided that this was a good time to put some serious effort into hiking and see if a thru hike was a possibility for me. Since I had been following Trailjournals for such a long time, I had been compiling a gear list mentally that worked for several 2000 milers that I had been following. (I would like to take this opportunity to shout out to some of the guys I followed and learned a lot from--Flowcefus AT 03 / PCT 06, Dynamite AT 08, Hurricane AT 08--thanks for doing such great journals!) SO, in September I did a ton of price hunting and it was like Christmas when my gear started arriving. The majority of my gear is listed in the GEAR section of the journal.While my gear was arriving, I had launched a pretty weighty campaign of dayhiking around the area. For most of October and November, I was taking advantage of the great weather by hiking about five days a week. My sections were 6-14 milers in and out of a few locations. Routinely, I was hiking Duncannon South to Cove Mountain Shelter (about 8m), Duncannon North to Clark's Ferry Shelter (about 9m), Maryville (rt944) South into Cumberland Valley, Halifax (rt 225) North to Peter's Mountain Shelter (about 7m)and beyond if I was feeling it. I had wanted to do a full-gear shakedown from Hagerstown MD to Duncannon PA but the beginning of my new job wouldn't allow me to be away for the week to ten days that would have required. I did, however, do a couple overnights to test my sleeping gear.These hikes were both enjoyable and informative. I got proficient at packing my gear in the same place each hike, using the trekking poles, collecting and purifying water, clothing selection for various situations, etc. I began to get a good idea of what my body needed foodwise to operate under this new level of workout. At this point I was quite confident that I could hike the entire trail in the spring and all I had to do was the actual trip planning.