5 Months to Go: Plans

It’s getting closer! My countdown app reads “152 days”. Five months until we hit the trail.

I’m into spreadsheets and planning, and I want to be able to look back on what I *planned* would happen to compare with what actually happened. So, I wanted to share some numbers/thoughts about what my expectations are, and when it’s all over I’ll revisit this and see if I was even remotely close to reality.

 
Planned base weight (this includes everything but food & water) –
Me: 10 lbs
Dan: 15 lbs
Ollie: 0 lbs

-I’ll do a more comprehensive gear post after Christmas when I’ve accumulated all of the possible things that could get added to this, but based on what we already have and are planning to acquire, it should stay at about this amount.

Max total weight:

Me: 21 lbs
Dan: 26 lbs
Ollie: 4.5 lbs

-This includes a full 3-liter water bladder for each human, and a 2-liter water bladder for the pup, as well as a week’s worth of food for everyone. I’m hoping I can make some sort of DIY water carrier that isn’t too annoying for Ollie to wear, but if not we’ll be carrying his water too. We’ve tried him in a backpack before and it’s pretty annoying for everyone, so we plan to carry everything else he needs.

Start Date: Monday April 3, 2017
Springer: Thursday June 22, 2017
Katahdin: Sunday August 27, 2017

Total Days: 144

Zero days: 11 -Including 6 days off in between finishing southbound & restarting north

Nearo days: 10 -Counting this as less than 5 miles hiked in a day

20+ mile days: 42

Slackpack days: 7 -We plan to hike from Delaware Water Gap north to Pawling, NY while staying at my house in NJ each night- so daypacks only for roughly the first 150 miles of our northbound flip

Additional nights ‘off trail’: 25 -campgrounds/hostels/etc

Nights in shelters: 0

Nights in tent: 106

Average miles per day: 16.5 -factoring in nearos but not zeros

Mail Drops: 8

$ Spent on trail: $3,050. -total, not per person- includes $550 for off trail lodging and kenneling Ollie while we’re in the Smokies. The rest is food. This is based on resupply and/or in-town eating every 4 days @ $75. This does not include gear replacements or potential transportation costs, or the cost of gear prior to leaving which I’ll discuss in the post at a later date. It might seem low, but we’re pretty limited on where we can stay and how many actual restaurants we can eat in with the dog in tow. Also, we won’t run out money if it is more than this.

Mosquito Bites: 6,003,001

That’s the main thoughts I’ve got so far- check back in ~10 months to see if my numbers were anywhere near right!