Hiking the CDT: Day 4

Day 4
Slack pack of 6 miles from N of Deming back to Deming

Today we welcome a guest entry by General Lee. I asked Lee, Train, and Louis to submit their own entries for occasional posting here. Lee was the first to come through. If you are in touch with any if these guys, encourage them to write and tell them what you want to hear about so that you can appreciate their own points of view !

From General Lee:
A parched, bleak barren plain is what we behold as we take our initial steps north-bound on this most challenging of endeavors. We are in the wasteland of scrub brush, cactus, and dirt.
The wind gusts upward to 60 MPH and it is unrelenting. Grit is blown into every crevice imaginable- nose, ears, mouth, are all encrusted with sand. The squall is blinding; mountains that are 4,000 feet higher directly a ice the horizon are completely blanketed in a haze of dust.
We’ e seen more wildlife dead than alive. Nothing seems to survive this unforgiving, foreboding environment at all. And all the while we are under the watchful eye of big brother- Border Patrol strictly surveys the scene for miscreants misbehaving. Still we feel fortunate for the opportunity to even be here in the first place.
We are in the elite echelon of our unpopular sporting event and openly embrace the brutality of this environment and the uncountable, interminable challenges the lie ahead.
MeGaTex is perpetually prepared to ” get ‘er done and still have fun”.

Back to UncleTom:
We slacked 6 miles today, thanks to Keith.

He had dropped the Czech Express, AKA Lester Burnham, off at the Mexico border earlier this morning.

We needed this easier day to heal up from the past three days of heat, thorns, unrelenting sun, and sand storms. Extra sunscreen, aloe vera gel, ice, and ibuprofen need to be put into active duty right now.

Hiking the Highland

Did six tiring miles with full packs with My pal Doug today. The going was slippery and slower, as we were careful not to fall in the ice, mud, and stream beds.

We started at the Mt. Pleasant parking area, which was almost a swimming pool. I took a side trail over to show Doug the summit of Mt. Pleasant, with absolutely no view at all. It was humid and the air thick with moisture. On the way there, I had images of riding the same track, and was blown away at how wet and muddy the ground was right now. As we made our way over the ups and downs we encountered ice and snow.

I forgot my map, but used Guthook’s Camden Hills Hiking Guide to track our location on the trail. Not many people know that the Highland Path is a bonus on the App.

When we were just .6 mile from Route 17 where we spotted Doug’s car the fog cleared and there was a bit of a view.

Doug is leaving next week to try and thru-hike the PCT. He’s already completed the AT. I have just three more days of “practice hiking” before I set foot on the CDT.

We hope to reunite in October, hopefully with 6,000 miles racked up in total. Sheesh!

CDT hike featured on National Geographic Adventure blog

Photograph by asafantman, Flickr

Hiking the Spine of the United States- the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail

Two minute preview of CDT

Check out this brief, super cool trailer for Jester’s new hiking feature film.

Embrace the Brutality is a feature length documentary that follows a group of hikers as they attempt to thru-hike the entire Continental Divide Trail, which runs from Mexico to Canada through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, a bit of Idaho, and Montana.

The website for the film, EmbraceTheBrutality.com, is not yet live. Until it goes up you can find updates on the release date, screenings, and other good stuff by liking the ETB Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Embrace-the-Brutality-A-Continental-Divide-Trail-Adventure/522214734486256

Guthook writes me up

Hey, ma, I’m in the news!

Uncle Tom’s Triple Crown attempt.<—check it out!

I had no idea that Guthook had saved these pics of me when we hiked together in Washington state in 2010.
The first pic hardly looks like me, because I weigh about as much as I did when I was 14 years old. I had lost 33 pounds, hovering at about 180. At this point I was crumbling up Pringles from two big tubes and pouring the them into one tube. I adding them to my lunches and dinners in an effort to stop losing so much weight.

Thru-hiking is the world's most unique weight loss program. You get to have fun, most every day, see the USA, and eat whatever you want, all day, every day. Can't wait!

Learning to walk again

“A million miles away
Your signal in the distance
To whom it may concern
I think I lost my way
Getting good at starting over
Every time that I return

I’m learning to walk again
I believe I’ve waited long enough
Where do I begin?
I’m learning to talk again
Can’t you see I’ve waited long enough?
Where do I begin?”
-Walk, Foo Fighters

I celebrated the first sunny day in over a week by walking 8 miles around town today. I’m still healing up from hernia surgery three weeks ago and am restricted from carrying a backpack, but plan for fewer miles and to begin carrying light weight on my back this week.

I’ve been nervous about being able to keep up with MeGaTex when I start walking the Continental Divide Trail in New Mexico in 33 days. After today, I am more confident that I can hit the trail with a full pack and start putting in those 15 to 20 mile days.

I’ll start backpacking on flat terrain in the Chichuahan Desert. We’ll be caching water for the first five days, and there will be a motel stop in Deming, NM after the first 68 miles. That means 3 nights out, camping in the desert. I’ll be in my Moment tent. No sharing my sleeping bag with rattlesnakes, scorpions, or tarantulas, thank you!

With food and cached water, I’ll be shouldering a relatively light 25 pound pack.

I have charted out 16 actual conditioning days, alternating each training hike with a rest day, gradually increasing miles, ruggedness of terrain, and the weight on my back. My goal is to walk 12 miles with 35 pounds on my back two days before my flight to El Paso on 4/16. I follow Ray Jardine’s conditioning program, which he details in Trail Life

My surgeon advised me to wait 6 weeks before I can resume unrestricted loads, a plan that just leaves me just 8 training days with my base pack weight of 18 pounds. Base weight is my gear without food and water.

Today was a glorious experience. The first picture above is the long downhill into Lincolnville Center. While most of the walk was along paved roads, I hike on the gravel shoulder. I do this to reduce the pounding from walking on pavement. I also aim foot placement on irregularities and sideways slopes off the road in order to strengthen my ankles.

Part of the hike was along the unplowed Martin Corner Road, which gave me more opportunities to strengthen my ankles as I postholed over snow for a mile and a quarter.

I averaged 3.8 mph over the up and downs of 676 feet of elevation gain. I’m freakin’ elated with feeling good again. Listening to music helped today, especially Dave Grohl’s roaring voice encouraging me to learn to walk again.

Following the Otter

Surprised my self on the third week anniversary of my surgery. I walked with Frank again today to the summit of Battie and back.

I thought I was plodding, and panicked a bit, thinking I’d lost all my training base. Thanks to Strava, I see that I kept up a 2.9 MPH pace, over a steep steady grade.

Our spirits were lifted by the blue sky and the ocean views on our descent.

Our conversation was absorbing. I shared with Frank some if the stories that moved me recently. Like the story of the Ojibuay, and their migration from the Eastern North American seaside to the Great Lakes via the St. Laurence River. Lake Superior is significant to the tribe because the Ojibway believe their ancestors migrated there from the east coast of No. America and it was their final stopping place after 500 years of migration following the dream of the prophet of a shaman to move or be destroyed.
Teachings about Ojibway history are passed down orally. Birch bark scrolls were used to write down things using pictographic writing (a mneumonic or memory device using pictures and symbols rather than a phonetic writing system). They were initially guided by an otter.

Why I am pleased to spend $500 on maps

To thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, you don’t even need maps, or resupply boxes. There are 165,000 2” by 6” painted white blazes along the length of the Trail, with the vast majority of them within sight every moment you are on the trail. If I were walking again, I’d buy a set of 4 “Mapdanas” to assist in planning my way.

On the PCT, you’d better have maps. I walked for a few hundred miles in California’s High Sierra on snow pack that was so deep that the trail and any of the blazes were buried below. While I would have preferred a GPS on my thru-hike, I was able to sharpen my navigation skills, but I did often get off course, even in the company of capable others.

People have walked the length of the Continental Divide Trail without a GPS or detailed maps. It’s possible- you just keep heading north, making adjustments as you go. Better navigators than I have strongly recommended carrying, and knowing how to use, a GPS on this hike. I have read that there are trail sections that go as long as 200 miles without a CDT sign, and that the real issue is unmarked intersections that leave no clue as to where the actual trail goes.

I bought a new GPS for this trip- a Garmin eTrex30. It’s small, light, and allows the use of removable SD cards. If I encounter other eTrex30’s out there, we can engage in wireless data transfers of waypoints, tracks, and routes. The unit also utilizes a barometric altimeter, which can pinpoint elevation readings. When I travel trail, my practice of keeping an estimate of miles hiked, along with elevation readings, really helps locate me on the map.

In practice, my GPS will be turned off while hiking, and will be activated if and when the going gets questionable. Otherwise, I’l go broke replacing AA batteries.

I will also be carrying a complete set of Jerry Brown’s CDTNST Map books, along with his 2013 upgrades. These maps reflect the 2013 “official route”. The CDT is 70% complete (with Montana less complete than that figure) allowing for as many as 5 alternate route sections along the way. There is always the possibility that an alternate route may be needed, due to the nature of the ever-present summer wild fires that close sections of the official trail, and storms and deep snows that might affect a choice in places like Northern New Mexico and Colorado. In 2011, the Gila River alternate was closed to a huge fire.

Because of this, I’ll also be carrying alternate maps, most specifically Jonathan Ley’s map sets . I have just received word from Jonathan that his 2013 set is fully updated and that he will be sending me a compete set on a CD. I will download the sections I plan to use as back up, load them onto a zip drive, and take it to Staples where they will be printed on color double -sided 11 x 17” paper. For all of his work, Ley receives donations from his appreciative map users.

I am also using selected pages from Maine’s own Delorme Atlas and Gazetter series of the states that make up the CDT. While these maps are not detailed anough to navigate by, they do allow one to view the features and alternate route that support the main route. I have transcribed the Ley maps onto the Delorme’s so that I can pull them out and refer to them as needed. Here’s an example of how I’ve worked up page 53, from Deming, NM to Doc Campbell’s :

Delorme/ Ley details

That’s not all. I took advice from Yogi’s CDT Handbook and also purchased selected Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service maps.

How much does all these maps and GPS cost? Over $500. Yikes!

Dreaming of the Trail

campfire cologneVimeo clip.
Less than two minutes long, but definitely hooked me up to the world I love and hope to be experiencing on April 17.

Talk About Ice and Trees

No snow when we arrived here, but what a conflagration of ice on the Ducktrap River this weekend in Lincolnville.

Ice Jammin’

My men’s group took a 3.5 mile walk along Tanglewood’s Ducktrap River today where we saw ice like you wouldn’t believe.

Not very far below the newly replaced snowmobile bridge, there are ice floes stacked upon ice, with one ice sinkhole that is actually draining the river.
We walked down the river as far as Turner Falls, a couple of ledge drops. Here’s a picture standing above the Falls, spilling a force of water downward toward the sea:

Panorama of Turner Falls

On the way back, we talked about volunteering to rebuild a former dilapidated lean-to near the River Trail.
Then we found a single Red Pine. Closely viewing, and talking about trees took up much of Hank’s and my conversation. We were noting wilderness landscaping details that we have been studying in Reading the Forested Landscape. Here’s an excellent example of three trees growing on a hummock, perched above the high water table:
After supper, Dave, Pat, and I walked back to the river to sway on the bridge, and stare at the visually alluring ice patterns swirling below distorted headlamp lights.
Very enjoyable day, with great food and real stories from men that have seriously entertaining tales to tell.

My Personal Board of Advisors