Thursday, July 31, 2014

Backpacking Gear Inventory

Back in 2004, after a very sad and painful, but ultimately good, parting with my first husband, and after I had been diagnosed with dermatomyositis, an "incurable" autoimmune disease that causes a severe skin rash and debilitating muscle weakness, I decided that I was going to rebuild my life on the outskirts of DC's chaos.  I bought a sweet log home on the side of High Knob in Warren County, Virginia.  If you're an Appalachian Trail geek, you know that the trail crosses High Knob, and when I discovered AT access within a short walk from my front door, I decided it was time to get some new backpacking gear.

Old house in Warren County
House steps from the AT
     
Yes, I was sick, weak, and covered in a rash.  Yes, I was on high doses of prednisone and low doses of a chemo drug methotrexate, and suffering from all of the wonderful side effects, but there was something about the diagnoses that made me crazy mad to LIVE!  Everything that the doctors said I couldn't or shouldn't do was exactly what I decided to do.  So, I drove down the mountain into the town of Front Royal (the northern terminus of Shenandoah National Park's Skyline Drive), and found Weasel Creek Outfitters.

I met with Brandon, who owned the Great Weasel with his wife Wendy.  They would both become good friends of mine, but alas, would eventually sell Weasel Creek and move away from "Fr-oyal," as the locals called it.

I told Brandon of my desire to eventually thru-hike, and of my easy trail access.  I told him I needed to get all of the stuff.  Now.  I spent the rest of the afternoon trekking around the shopping center with various packs full of weight, assessing a multitude of sleeping bag and tent options, even heading out to the grassy area behind the shop to set up some tents.

I left with a Granite Gear Nimbus Access FZ3800 pack, a Moonstone Minimus 22 degree bag, and a Sierra Designs Gamma 2 person tent (not because there were two people, but because there were two black labs and me).  These items have served me very well over the last 10 years, and I'm one of those people who takes meticulous care of my stuff, so when our friend, CW, came by last night to help us inventory gear for our upcoming test hike, most of it looked almost new.

Dexter

Sam

Morning in Shenandoah National Park


2010 Backpacking Trip

2010 Backpacking Trip
Muskrat made a spreadsheet (because he rocks at spreadsheets!), and CW and I buried the room in all manner of backpacking and car camping gear.  I had planned to take photos, but there was just no space, and frankly, the mess we made was embarrassing!  I read off makes and models, CW looked up weight data, and Jeff tallied and sorted everything on the computer.

I thought we were pretty well equipped, especially since all of my old stuff is in such great condition.  As it turns out, it's all pretty heavy compared to what they make now.  My pack is 4 pounds, 9 ounces!  Our tent is 5 pounds, 10 ounces!  I know we will be sharing the weight of some gear, but we are both thinking that we may need to upgrade some stuff.


Car camping in the Backpacking tent after a bike ride on Skyline Drive 2012

That said, we do have some newer gear. . .

Muskrat picked up a nice new Osprey Atmos 50 pack a month or so ago when we went on an REI shopping spree with all of the gift cards that people had given us for our wedding in April.  (We have the best friends EVER!)

We both need new sleeping pads, because Muskrat ripped his on a rock, and it just seems like a bad idea to start the trail with a duct taped piece of gear, and I have a super minimalist one, because what's a few nights of discomfort, right?  Not something I want to endure for six-months!  Besides, they make AMAZING stuff now!  CW brought over his Big Agnes Air Core SL for us to try, and MAN that thing is probably more comfortable than our actual bed!  He also let us demo his Cocoon Hyperlite AirCore pillow, which is a mere 2.4 ounces and smaller than a yogurt container!

Muskrat has a really nice two year old Sierra Designs Wild Bill 35 degree bag, but we are thinking that he will want something with a little more warmth for the colder parts of the trail.  The other sleeping bag factor is that we both bought our sleeping bags when we were single people, and now we are getting ready to spend six-months living outside as newlyweds.  In fact, our first wedding anniversary will be about a month after we start the trail.  I think we might want to find some bags that zip together.  It just wouldn't seem right to spend six months sleeping in separate cocoons!  We are looking at getting the Big Agnes Coupler straps for our sleeping pads, and are researching some double wide sleeping bags!  I am particularly intrigued by the Big Agnes Cabin Creek 15.  At 6 pounds 5 ounces, it's a little weighty, but it may work, since we are sharing the load between our two packs.

For a sweet resting space, we are bringing our Eno Doublenest hammock too.  I don't know if we will use it to sleep in at any point, but it sets up quickly and makes a nice spot to take breaks!

One other consideration we are still grappling with is food storage.  I have always backpacked with a bear canister, since I had a bad food bag experience at Girl Scout camp.  I like the was of closing up the lid and stashing that bad boy in the woods until morning.  It's also a nice seat for eating.  We will see if we decide to go back to bagging or if we bring my trusty Bear Vault BV500.

SO MANY DECISIONS TO MAKE!!

After all the gear was stashed in the storage space again, I began to feel a little under prepared (I know, we have 7.5 months before we start!) and overwhelmed.  Muskrat, who is so very good at keeping me grounded, maintained his composure and said exactly what I needed to hear. . . "REI date this weekend?"

Stay tuned!

©2014 Jennifer Magnuson, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Required Reading: Appalachian Trials by Zach Davis

Over the years since I discovered the dream of a thru-hike (1989), I have read a good bit about the AT.  There have been books, blogs and journals, and countless articles.  I've met thru-hikers when I have been out on day hikes or on some weekend backpacking trips, and I have dreamed wistfully of the day when I could be the one telling the story of MY thru-hike!

Now, as Muskrat and I have decided to thru-hike, set a projected start date of March 15, 2015 and are delving into the actual preparation for the actual hike, we have been seeking out things to read that are more than a gear list or a step by step account of someone else's thru-hike.  Don't get me wrong, we LOVE Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods.  It's inspiring, entertaining, and full of history and ecology lessons that gave me even more respect and reverence for the trail than I already had.  David "AWOL" Miller's AWOL on the Appalachian Trail, as I mentioned in a previous post, was short on introspection and emotion, but still an incredible account of his 5 million step journey from Springer to Katahdin, and we are eagerly awaiting the release of his The AT Guide NOBO 2015.

On one of our many Google searches for AT planning resources, we stumbled upon thru-hiker REQUIRED READING!!  Zach Davis aka "The Good Badger" is a 2011 NOBO thru-hiker who penned the book Appalachian Trials about mental preparation for a 2,181 mile journey on foot.

I can tell you that if this book isn't on your pre-hike reading list, it needs to be.  Muskrat and I have each undertaken our fair share of mentally and physically challenging feats in our lives.  I've successfully completed four Ironman triathlons, and Muskrat has participated in countless randonneuring (self-supported bicycle rides) of distances ranging from 125 to 400 miles, and he was a member of the 2011 four man team that won the non-stop, 860 mile Race Across the West from Oceanside, California to Durango, Colorado.  We both know from experience that even if your body is trained and your gear is perfect, that the mental game can make or break your event.

Davis' book addresses the mental challenges that you'll undoubtedly encounter on the trail, from the low points where you'll wonder why this seemed like a good idea at all, to the end of the honeymoon phase, to the social pressures on and off the trail, the unexpected and potentially catastrophic events (illness, injury, off-trail drama) to the best advice I have heard about pacing, gear choices, nutrition, and reintegration into life after the trail.  In less than 100 pages, Davis manages to spill more universal truth out of his pen than you could learn at a 30 day yoga retreat.

He touches on the benefits of making lists about why you're embarking on your journey, the consequences of quitting and the rewards of staying the course.  He delves into the ways meditation can help you overcome challenges, and offers up some techniques for those unfamiliar with it.  As someone who made a stunning comeback from an incurable and debilitating disease, I can tell you that Davis is SPOT ON when he writes of the strength of character and confidence you gain by persevering through the tough times, and the methods he recommends for doing it.

At the risk of going on and on, and telling you so much that you'll make the mistake of not actually buying and reading this book, I will leave you with this.  It's the best resource I have read so far on preparing for a thru-hike.  There were several times I actually cheered out loud in agreement with something Davis totally nailed.  This book facilitated several discussions between Muskrat and myself about our individual expectations, ideas and goals for this shared trip.  Some of this was stuff we may have neglected to talk about without the benefit of the book, so Appalachian Trials may have saved us some marital trials along the trail, since it's always easier to get on the same page and discuss things when you're sitting on your comfy couch than it is to do so when you're sweaty, hungry, smelly and tired!

Seriously, whether you're NOBO, SOBO, flip-flopping or even facing some non-backpacking related challenge, this is a fantastic resource and the best $11.69 ($8.99 for kindle) you could spend!

Also check out his website, which is also chock full of resources for all things AT!

©2014 Jennifer Magnuson, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Test Hike in the Making

This is arguably the most gorgeous summer weather I have ever seen in my 37 years in the DC area.  If you're not familiar with DC summers, they normally consist of temperatures in the mid-90s with humidity to match.  Dew points are regularly in the mid-70s, making the whole place a swampy, disgusting, mosquito-breeding, sweat-fest.  You can maybe tell that I am not so fond of summer here, and that is true.

Maybe I was conditioned by a childhood where summer vacation meant escaping to the mountains of western North Carolina to see my grandfather.  That was always the sweetest reprieve from DC's suffocating mugginess.  It's not surprising that when the worst of DC summer hits, I feel a desperate pull to escape to higher elevations, where the early mornings and evenings require a fleece and jeans, and the days are made for a hike, bike, or run in breezy comfortable air that allows sweat to actually cool the body, rather than trying to drown it!

Right now, I'm sitting in my garden.  I'm wearing a jacket.  It's 12:30pm, and it's 67 degrees with a nice cool breeze!  Unheard of on July 29.  Though I would have thought that this would make me less likely to want to flee to the mountains, apparently, I am just hard wired to want to be in the mountains no matter what the weather is doing.

So, we have been working on planning a test-hike for sometime next month! (Hopefully the weather will stay awesome, but even if it doesn't, mountains are always awesome!)

We want to keep things logistically simple, and we don't want to preview any more of the actual Appalachian Trail than we already have.  (Our second date was an out and back day hike into West Virginia on the AT!)  So, we have picked a sweet 70ish mile circuit hike in the southern district of Shenandoah National Park!  From our research, we will encounter some tiny pieces of the AT, and we will be rewarded with panoramic views, waterfalls, and even some swimming holes!

We are planning to do cover a modest 10-12 miles per day and really enjoy our time in the woods.  The distance and time out with our gear should give us a pretty good idea of adjustments we need to make in pack weight.  We also hope to make a fair assessment of our current trail clothes and footwear, our stove, tent, sleeping bags and pads, and our food storage.

We will post a full inventory of what we take before we go, and we will post a review on how each piece rated when we return.

Now, I think I may need to go for a run and warm up!

©2014 Jennifer Magnuson, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Nailing Down the Budget Part 1

With eight short months until we leave on the trail, we are getting down to planning in earnest! We made our budget spreadsheet about month ago, since the responsible thing to do before committing to the hike was to figure out if it was financially feasible.

This week is about nailing down some more precise numbers in terms of our off-trail expenses, doing a current gear inventory, and coming up with a shopping list for some things we need to replace or add to our gear stash.  (OH BOY!!  Another trip to REI!)

For our purposes, we are defining the "off-trail expenses" as those expenses that are related to your life back home, and not those directly related to life on the trail.  So, storage rental is an off-trail expense, but a hotel stay in a trail town is not!  If you're planning a thru-hike, here are the off-trail expenses that you might need to consider!  Thankfully not all of these will apply to all thru-hikers!

  • Mortgage
  • Health Insurance
  • Car Insurance
  • Student Loans
  • Credit card debt
  • Other loans/debts
  • Storage
  • Pet boarding
  • Cell phone
  • Utilities
  • Lost Income
Muskrat is pretty handy with spreadsheets, so he's already created a nice budgeting spreadsheet for us.  Now, we just need to gather and enter the refined data!

If you have off-trail expenses to add that we didn't cover in our list, please add your ideas in the comments!

Stick around for discussion of on-trail expense planning, our gear inventory, coverage of a test hike we are planning, mental and physical preparations, and some book reviews!

©2014 Jennifer Magnuson, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.





Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Pre-Trail Reading and Reflection

This morning, as Muskrat recovers from some surgery he had yesterday, we finished David "AWOL" Miller's AWOL on the Appalachian Trail, his account of his 2003 thru-hike. I had always heard really great things about the book, and I loved it, though I was surprised at how clinical of an account it is. Maybe it was my projection of my own storytelling style that had me expecting to hear a more introspective and emotional story. Despite the book not meeting that expectation, I found myself drawn into the story of footsteps through the green tunnel. It was almost meditative, as I anticipate some of the hike will be. Two of the passages in the book that stuck out most for me were these:

"The payoff, though difficult to quantify, is much greater than I expected. I have no regrets about having gone; it was the right thing to do. I think about it every day. Sometimes I can hardly believe that it happened. I just quit, and I was on a monumental trip. I didn't suffer financial ruin, my wife didn't leave me, the world didn't stop spinning. I do think of how regrettable it would have been had I ignored the pull that I felt to hike the trail. A wealth of memories could have been lost before they had even occurred if I had dismissed, as a whim, my inkling to hike. It is disturbing how tenuous our potential is due to our fervent defense of the comfortable norm." -David "AWOL" Miller, AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

"Hiking the AT is 'pointless.' What life is not 'pointless?' Is it not pointless to work paycheck to paycheck just to conform? Hiking the AT before joining the workforce was an opportunity not taken. Doing it in retirement would be sensible; doing it at this time in my life is abnormal, and therein lay the appeal. I want to make my life less ordinary." - David Miller AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

"I want to make my life less ordinary." I have a feeling that this is one of the things people have judged me for the most in my life, yet it is one of the things that I am most proud of, and also one of the things that I wish I had done better when I was younger.

There was a time in my life, that due to the influences of parents, teachers, peers, religion, etcetera, that I thought that there was a checklist to happiness, a roadmap to fulfillment that I saw modeled all around me. My heart had always been drawn towards the outdoors, adventure, mountains, unconventional living, but the evidence of my actions clearly demonstrated that I felt far safer with "the conventional norm."

I mentioned how I felt shamed by my classmate's reaction to the one and only time I voiced my desire to go to the woods in lieu of going to college. Somehow that moment of honesty, and the shame that I felt from it, spurred me to a gorgeous engraved piece of paper that hangs of a wall matted and framed in walnut. It has an embossed seal, some foil lettering, a bunch of signatures, and at one time it gave me a sense of worth and value, and it made me feel as though I had done what I was supposed to do on the way to being happy and fulfilled. After suffering a less than exciting year in an office, an incurable and debilitating bout of illness, an ill-advised marriage and the subsequent divorce, I see it as a symbol of dreams deferred, and as a learning experience far more valuable than anything I ever did in the classrooms where I earned that degree.

I don't regret it, and it certainly didn't ruin my life, as life is pretty grand! I just wish that I could tell my younger self to quit looking at the people around me, many of whom I later learned weren't as happy and satisfied as they led me to believe, as examples of how to succeed. I'd tell myself to take the time to get to know who I am and what I really want, and to always follow that deliciously tense tugging that I feel in my chest when something ignites my passion. I lived by the checklist, and I almost died by the checklist in my mid-20s. Experience has taught me that there is much more risk in living "the comfortable norm" than there is in living a life "less ordinary." My 30s have been about living from my heart, and they haven't disappointed me yet.

My heart says it's never too late to hike.


©2014 Jennifer Magnuson, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.


Monday, July 7, 2014

Ironjen's Inspiration for a Thru-hike

When I was twelve years old, the son of one of my dad’s high school friends thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.  My mom mentioned it to me, and though the conversation couldn’t have lasted more than 5 minutes, it has stayed in my mind for 25 years.

Long before that list of life goals and dreams was called a “bucket list,” such a list was forming in my mind.  What an adventure it would be to hike over 2000 miles of mountains!

I’m someone who has always felt a deep desire to live unconventionally.  I used to tell my high school boyfriend that I wanted to live somewhere that “smelled far away.”  My favorite days were the ones where a spontaneous road trip took me to a meadow, a mountain, a place where there was space, and I could breathe.  My favorite vacations were in the mountains, and they involved communing with trees and rocks and dirt and icy streams.

As a senior in high school, a classmate asked me what I would be studying in college the following year, and I really didn’t know.  I answered that I really didn’t even want to go to college.  I wanted to go to the woods.  She looked at me like I was crazy, and some part of me felt wrong for what I wanted.

So, I went to college.  I finished a semester early with a solid GPA and a degree tailor made for my Washington, DC upbringing, Government and Politics.  That was 1999; 10 years after the idea of a thru-hike had entered my mind.

I rushed into a job, a marriage, and homeownership, and I woke up one day in the midst of my life wondering how I would ever do my thru-hike with all of these responsibilities.  I felt like I made a series of huge mistakes.


I'm not one to dwell on things I "should have" done, so I just aimed to live life a little differently a little bit at a time, and over the last 15 years, have managed to get my life much closer to how I want it to look and feel.  It took a divorce, an eight-year career in law enforcement, a five-year battle with debilitating and "incurable" dermatomyositis, a forced retirement, four Ironman triathlon finishes, and marrying Jeff/Muskrat to get me here, but I am FINALLY ready to take on the adventure that has been on my mind for 25 years!

To the trail!

©2014 Jennifer Magnuson, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Welcome to Our Journey. . .

Thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail.  It's one of those things.  You know the things.  You read about them and think how cool it would be to do it.  You see blogs about it or know someone who did it, and you wish that it was possible for you to do it.

Well, that's kind of how it is with us.  We are Jen (trail name: Ironjen) and Jeff (trail name: Muskrat).  We are newlyweds from Washington, DC, and we are both ready for big changes!

When we met, I was working as an endurance coach and part time photographer and using my background in law enforcement as an instructor for a private security company.  I was racing Ironman triathlons (hence the name "Ironjen") and feeling out what the next big thing would be.

Jeff was a federal government manager with a love of ultra-endurance cycling, and a plan to make a big life change, starting with a 2014 ride across Asia along the Silk Road. (Muskrat was a nickname from his Team Love days on the AIDS Ride, where he was known as "Muskrat Love.")

We met, and all of the plans changed.  I went full-time with the photography business, leaving the dirty security stuff to people better suited to such things, and we decided to postpone the ride across Asia for awhile to allow us to concentrate on getting married and saving for the trip!

We love our little Capitol Hill neighborhood, but we still feel most at home in the mountains.  Our first vacation together was in the Rockies, and, as usual, neither of us wanted to come home.  Plans began to form for a move west.

We were aiming for July 2014, so now. . . but. . . then I read him Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods while we were on a road trip to North Carolina.  Then we read David "AWOL" Miller's AWOL on the Appalachian Trail, and I shared my 2014 thru-hiker friend, Heidi's blog about her current AT adventures, and the idea just wouldn't shake loose from my mind.

I know from experience, which I'll share in more detail later, that the best time to drop everything and go is at a transition point in life.  The times between locking oneself into large responsibilities are great wide open doorways to adventure.

I proposed that we work out a budget for the trip and see if it was feasible for us to do it next spring, as a huge and exciting 4-6 month punctuation between our life here in Washington and our life in Colorado.

A little research and a spreadsheet told us all we needed to know about whether this was possible or not.  It's not just possible; it's perfect.

So, join us on our journey from Washington, DC to Springer Mountain to Katahdin to Colorado.  Maybe along the way, you'll find your way to your own great adventure.

©2014 Jennifer Magnuson, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.