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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50727283076176223132014-11-27T05:16:33.144-08:00Darkroom and DearlyBrittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-68795334906203936122014-06-06T11:12:00.000-07:002014-06-06T11:12:04.749-07:00{a day at the zoo}Tanner and I were bored one sunny weekend and decided to spend the day at the zoo. Having not been in almost three years (wow! Have we been here that long already?) it was fun revisiting. We also tend to get stuck in ruts on weekends sometimes, filling our days with chores and errands (booooring) so it was good to get out of the house and enjoy a nice activity together.

The zoo is undergoing renovation at the moment to expand the elephant habitat, so there were a few sites we didn't get to see. But it will be fun coming back in the future to see all the changes that are occurring.

While we walked, we snacked on ice cream and had fun talking wedding plans and giggling over our upcoming honeymoon (we're going to Disney World and Harry Potter World!!) And despite the millions of kids and families who also happened to be visiting the zoo that weekend, all in all, it was a nice day out.

Mountain goat! He reminds me of my hike in Goat Rocks on the PCT. :)

Black bear!

There are two bald eagles in this photo. Can you spot them both?

Cool artwork near the vulture exhibit.

Sleepy polar bear. I would be sleepy too if it were 85 degrees out when it is supposed to be arctic. :(

Lions reportedly nap for 18-22 hours a day. Sounds like a good life to me.

Cheetah. Also napping.

Impala? Gazelles? Something like that.

My favorite!! Love me some giraffes. Tanner got to watch me giggle like a little kid when we got to this exhibit.

Aren't they awesome??

Flamingos. Being all pink and stuff.

AHHH! What is this creature?!

Just kidding. Isn't he a cutie? :)

In other news, I'm going to be starting my new job next week, so I'll be out for a week of training. The blog is taking a break, and my shop will unfortunately be closed starting tomorrow. (Booooo. So if you still need a Father's Day card, buy it now!)
See you soon!Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-51580408084426724102014-06-04T10:21:00.001-07:002014-06-04T10:21:43.639-07:00{catching up! father's day + illustration class}Sorry about my unintentional hiatus. It has been a crazy two weeks for me! Here's the down and dirty version:

1. I quit my job. I have an outdoor education job lined up starting next week and I'm pumped! I traded in my headset, tiny cubicle and steady paycheck for the great outdoors and minimum wage.... and I'm not even a little sorry about it. (This decision was also part of the Happiness 30 in 31 list of mine)

So this week I'm on a break between jobs and I'm loving that I have time to get stuff checked off my to-do list and get my own work done (read: Etsy). Which brings me to my next point...

2. My shop is in full swing with Father's Day quickly approaching! And a little publicity via Buzzfeed didn't hurt, either! The only trouble? Trying to package a million orders all by my lonesome. Tanner was out of town last week and thus his assistant duties were magically unavailable. (This same thing happened during Valentine's Day...) Coincidence? I think not.

3. I had my last illustration class on Thursday. I'm bummed it's over, but I had a really good time! Our teacher even brought in an agent last week to talk to us about the "biz" and what a book agent really does for a writer/ illustrator. I feel like I came away with some in-depth information and some really great stuff to take forward in the future. Yay for unknown destinies! Wherever my path takes me, I'm excited about really pumping up my portfolio so that I can make a decent website and start writing some books. It's like a kindergarten dream come true. Seriously.

Here are the latest sketches of mine from a short story I wrote about a dinosaur:

And this one is a prompt from a website called Illustration Friday. Every week they come out with a new topic and you have to draw something to fit the bill and link your drawings to the site. (It's a good way to keep the juices flowing!) This week the topic is "Temptation."

And because this particular Father's Day card below is doing so well, I had some fun this week redrawing it in a new style to do a potential 5x7 print of it. What do you think? Do you like the old one or the new one better? Either way, it feels so great to be drawing consistently again. :)

Brittanyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-14890474808299741132014-05-23T10:00:00.000-07:002014-05-23T10:00:02.862-07:00{the craft room}Tanner and I moved into a new place in January, and since then I've been slowly decorating the apartment to make it feel more "homey."

One of my favorite rooms to decorate is my craft room/ guest bedroom, since that's where I spend a lot of my time: doing Etsy orders, drawing new designs, working on my homework for my children's book illustration class, etc. So I wanted to have a space that was both functional and inspirational.

Our last apartment had quite a small guest room, which meant that my crafting space was crammed into a small corner. At the time, this was fine, since my shop was just beginning and I didn't need much room. But since then, my shop has blossomed and I have more supplies and materials than I had space for. So this new apartment was really a blessing, as the rooms here are huge!

So here is a look at my new crafting space/desk:

The artwork above the desk was created by me. I basically took a couple Doctor Who quotes that I liked and made a series of three prints. Yes, totally geeky. But I love them. And now you can buy them for yourself here!!

My newest addition is, of course, my lovely Epson printer below. It's huge, but I loooove it. It makes such pretty prints. Of course, I needed somewhere to put such a monstrosity, so I was on the hunt for a skinny table that I could use as both a table and a nightstand for the guest bed. After unsuccessfully being able to find a cheap one, Tanner suggested we go by Goodwill, just to check. I was skeptical about finding one, but lo and behold.... a skinny table with just the right dimensions for $15. Score!

I re-purposed one of our old bookshelves into a supply closet, holding all my paper, envelopes, shipping supplies, etc.

It's still a work in progress, of course, but the room seems to be coming together nicely! Now if only it weren't so damn hot up here on the top floor.... my next investment will be an air conditioning unit. ;)Brittanyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-35368903357238958322014-05-21T10:00:00.000-07:002014-05-21T10:00:00.451-07:00{new products in the shop!}I have some fun news! I added a new category of product to my shop.... 5x7 art prints!

I know it sounds like a pretty linear jump to go from greeting cards to art prints, but believe it or not, this addition was a LONG time in the making. I thought that shipping out prints would be nearly the same as greeting cards, when in fact it took quite a bit of planning.

For one thing, I needed to get a new printer. My old HP is perfectly fine for greeting cards, and it does a lovely job printing onto cardstock, but greeting cards are - more or less - disposable, while art prints hang on your wall or in a frame for years. As such, I knew I needed to get a nicer quality printer with nicer quality inks.

I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to an Epson. Practically giddy with excitement, I got it configured in my craft room, printed out my very first artwork and.... it looked awful. Like, AWFUL. I was heartbroken and quite a bit upset that this top-of-the-line printer was giving me less than exceptional results.

So I did a little research and realized what my problem was. For quality prints, you need quality paper. The cardstock I was currently using wasn't "Epson approved," as it were. But the more I researched papers, the more I realized it was hard to come by a nice, thick cardstock that also wasn't ridiculously expensive.
After weeks of research, and at the end of my rope, I suddenly stumbled upon some better priced art papers from Red River Press. And lo and behold, they even had a 100% recycled cardstock! This is unheard of in art papers, since they tend to coat them with some kind of special chemical that makes the printer ink more saturated and true to color. Delighted with the find, I ordered some right away, and when it arrived on my doorstep I did a test print and....
It looked AMAZING. HOORAY!

Now back in the game, I had to go about ordering new shipping supplies. Everything I currently use is greeting card size, and I now needed 5x7 plastic sleeves and stay-flat mailers so the prints wouldn't get crushed in the mail.

At long last, I had everything I needed to get the prints up and running... I put together some product photos, made up some listings, and posted them into my Etsy shop yesterday! This is just the start of what I hope will be a large line of prints, but I'm excited about it! I hope you like them, too.

Here's the sneak peak! Check out my shop for more.

You might recognize that bread print from this post (so long ago!)

Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-56387795121573614552014-05-19T10:00:00.000-07:002014-05-19T10:00:02.645-07:00{silver falls state park}When my mom and sister came into town, we made a day trip to Silver Falls State Park, a place I haven't visited since June 2012. Last time I visited, it was raining, so it was lovely to be there on a day where the sun was shining and the crowds were sparse.

The trail of ten waterfalls was magnificent, and it made for a beautiful day on the trail. The drive into Silverton was rolling with pastures and farms, and the sun shining over them made it feel like a magical fairy land.

We spent all afternoon wandering the ten miles. I hadn't done a ten mile hike in quite some time, and at one point I mentioned aloud that my feet hurt.
My sister Courtney was shocked by this. "What?!" she said, "but you hiked 2,000 miles last summer!!"
"Yeah," I replied, "and my feet hurt then, too!!"

Here are some shots of my favorite falls along the trail.

South Falls:

Lower South Falls:

Upper North Falls:

Double Falls:

If you live near Portland or Silverton, Silver Falls State Park isn't to be missed!Brittanyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-91548599137449517982014-05-16T10:00:00.000-07:002014-05-16T10:00:00.372-07:00{finding a workout routine}I am the worst about workouts. I hate them. I hate making time for them, I hate feeling slow and sluggish during them, and I hate feeling guilty when I don't do them. The only thing I really love about workouts is finishing them and feeling GREAT. But sometimes even that isn't enough motivation to make me want to stick with a routine.

The thing I loved about the PCT was the effortless ease in which I got to workout every day. Wait. Let me rephrase that. The PCT was not "effortless" nor "easy." It was, however, routine. And routines are the hardest part of workouts. On the PCT I never had to think about it. I never had that battle in my head - "am I too tired to workout today? Should I skip it?" Because I didn't have a choice - we walked 15-25 miles every day, without fail. There was no such thing as skipping it. But even that was a magical thing - the key to any successful workout is making it part of your daily routine, so you don't have to fight that inner battle with yourself. You just DO it.
In that respect, the PCT was the best workout ever. I just walked. Easy (or hard) as that. I could eat whatever I liked (in fact, as MUCH as I liked) and still felt amazing. I spent five months in the best shape of my life and never once had to think about working out or counting calories.

The problem was, it did a number on my body. Though I was incredibly fortunate not to suffer any true injuries on trail, I began to suffer intense knee pain once I was off trail. For the first few months back in the real world, I could barely walk without limping. Going up and down stairs was particularly difficult. I'm sure I looked like an old woman clutching Tanner's arm in pain every time I went down a flight. Even attempting a workout routine at that time seemed unfathomable.

One year later, my knees are better, but I can still feel the lingering ache every time I work them too hard. I have grown lapse in my workouts and have had to start the process all over again. I miss feeling strong and fit almost as much as I hate going for a run.

I have tried a few different routines, trying to find one that works for me. I'm terrible at making up my own system, so I tend to gravitate towards DVDs or phone apps to help me along. In the past, the only one I found to be effective was P90X, which I loved and hated all at once. Damn you, Tony Horton. Your workouts hurt. But they also made me feel like I was actually accomplishing something, even on day one.

I have also utilized the app 7 minute workout (which I tend to do three times in a row so it's more like a 21 minute workout) and the app Yoga Studio, which has some great options (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and lengths of classes (15 min, 30 min, 60 min) to let you enjoy yoga in your own home.

At the end of April I finally sucked it up and made myself stick to a routine. As soon as I get home I change into workout clothes so I don't have time to sit down or pour myself a bowl of cereal. I change up my routines, varying between: one of the P90X workouts, running on the trail behind my apartment, going for a swim, doing the 7 (21) minute workout, a bike ride, or a yoga workout.
I'm in week three now and happy to say that I've been managing five workouts a week (I get really lazy on the weekends.) I'm not sure if it's doing any good, but I certainly feel sore each day, so I guess that's a good sign.

At any rate, I'm always on the lookout for new routines to keep me from getting bored.
What kinds of workouts do you enjoy? Do you utilize DVD routines, gyms, or phone apps? Do you have any favorites you'd love to recommend?Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-73998961804853355052014-05-14T10:00:00.000-07:002014-05-14T10:00:05.418-07:00{etsy finds: rustic wedding}Believe it or not, Tanner and my wedding is less than six months away! (Eep!) All the big things - venue, photographer, catering, etc - are taken care of, but all the smaller things still remain, and sometimes those things can drive you mad, too. What do we want the officiant to say in the ceremony? What music should be playing when the guests are being seated? Should we have a photo slide show? What should the guest book look like?

As these choices are made bit by bit, it's still fun to browse Pinterest and Etsy for inspiration. (Though both of these can be overwhelming with choices, so sometimes simpler is better!) I had fun this week putting together an Etsy treasury of outdoor-wedding-inspired items for you. I stuck with my own color scheme - olive and brown - though the choices here aren't necessarily ones that I'm using in my own wedding. But don't they make a lovely mood board??

I particularly love the shoes and the his and hers rings. It's kind of a throw-back to those heart-shaped friendship-necklaces of your childhood, isn't it? Tanner would never go for it. ;)

Brittanyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-4512928374952163352014-05-12T10:00:00.000-07:002014-05-12T10:00:03.101-07:00{the ice cream escapade}Today I'm going to tell you a little story.

This is the story of how I shipped my sister ice cream for her birthday.

First, a little backstory:
If you've ever been to Portland and had a craving for ice cream, you've probably found yourself at a little place called Salt and Straw. It's a local shop full of amazing and unique flavors, densely packed with butterfat and so delicious that once you eat there, Ben & Jerry's just doesn't cut it anymore. You find yourself choosing between flavors such as Strawberry Balsamic and Cracked Black Pepper. Or Coffee and Bourbon. Or Arbequina Olive Oil, which (yes) tastes like olive oil... strange and strangely delicious. Or my personal favorite, Pear and Blue Cheese.
Then, each month they come out with new, limited-edition flavors such as Lumberjack Stack, full of blueberry pancakes and maple syrup. Or Cheesy Apple Pie during Thanksgiving. Or Spicy Monkey Banana Walnut, which tastes like a spicy banana bread.

Whenever I have guests in town, Salt and Straw is inevitably one of the places we frequent. When my mom and sister were in town in April, we went no less than four times in a week. It may have been five. Either way, it was worth it. And when they left, I had the spark of an idea of how to send a little bit of Portland back to North Carolina...

And so, once upon a time, last Wednesday, I had the brilliant idea to surprise my sister with Salt and Straw ice cream for her birthday. I discovered that Salt and Straw 2-day ships ice cream anywhere in the country, so I picked out five heavenly flavors for her to enjoy and submitted the order, grinning with glee.

Two days later, it's Friday and my tracking information shows everything moving along without a hitch. The ice cream is set to be delivered by the end of the day, and Courtney had all Friday off work. Perfect. I made sure she would be home to receive it, but I didn't tell her the real reason why this was important. ("Someone might steal it!" *cough* Oh... and it will melt. *cough*)

Meanwhile, I get off work and head home. It's 5:00pm on my coast and 8:00pm on hers. Apparently the package still hasn't arrived, so I check on the tracking information again. And this is what I see:

Tracking showed that this had been updated at 7:44pm EST, when they tried to deliver it and the apartment number on the address was either "missing or incorrect."

Naturally, I freaked a little. I called Courtney, who confirmed the address I had used was correct, and then I called UPS. I had to navigate through a series of automated prompts, including reading off a string of 18 digits in my tracking number three times before the system stopped telling me, "I'M SORRY I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND YOU."
Finally the telephone-bot seemed to be as disgruntled with me and I was with it, because it finally offered, "say agent to get live help."
"AGENT!"
To my surprise, I was quickly speaking with a live human who was incredibly polite and helpful. As I spend most of my day on the phones with callers and companies, I know how incredibly life changing it is to speak to a friendly, helpful person on the phone. (And I quickly kicked into my own happy-friendly caller mode, too. I know I hate it when I get angry callers on the phone, so I've learned to be incredibly patient in frustrating situations.)

"I need to update the shipping address on a package," I said.
In seconds he had my order pulled up and verified the correct apartment information with me. Apparently when it was originally shipped, the apartment number had been mistakenly omitted, despite that my receipt showed the correct address.
"Let me speak with the dispatcher and get this information updated for you," he said.
I bit my knuckles, pacing the room. A few minutes on hold, and he was back.
"Okay, the address has been updated. The package will be redelivered first thing Monday, estimated delivery time 10am."
"Oh," I said, trying very carefully to stay cheerful and not freak out. "Thank you so much! Except... it's ice cream."
"It's ice cream?"
"Er... yes."
"The package is ice cream?"
"Yes. I'm really sorry. I don't want it to melt. Is there any way she can pick it up today?"
He sounded distressed. "I'm not sure... it's after 8pm and our service centers are closed for the weekend."
Of all the luck. I was still pacing wildly around the room. Things were looking very grim. I was making contingency plans in my head, but the whole time I was fearing that all my work would end up a soggy puddle in the back of a UPS warehouse.

"Let me see what I can do," the helpful gentleman told me, and put me back on hold.
I had very slim hopes, since I doubted anyone was still open. I felt horrible for being THAT customer who calls at 8pm on a Friday night trying to get help from some poor UPS worker who just wants to go home. I was wearing holes in the carpet, the hold music whining in my ear.
A minute later, he was back.
"Good news! They're going to keep your package at one of the customer care centers. The driver is going to stay open until 9:00pm just for her. Can she make it before then?"
I checked my clock. 8:35pm in North Carolina.
"Wonderful!" I freaked. "I'll send her right now! Thank you!"
He gave me the address and I hung up, immediately dialing Courtney.

"Oh, heeeey," she said, "I'm just going to dinner."
"NO!" I cried, "you have to go to the UPS store and pick up your package!"
"What, now?"
"Yes, now! I can't tell you why, you just have to go now. It's important. They're staying open just for you."
"But it's across town..."
"No, he said it was 8 miles away from you. Google Maps says it will take 15 minutes to get there and you have to make it by 9:00!"
"But we have dinner reservations..."
"I'm sorry," I said, "I promise it's worth it!"
"Ok, fine. Brian's with me. We'll go right now."
"And you have to bring ID with your name and address," I remembered.
"But my ID doesn't have my current address... I just moved here."
I groaned. "Do you have mail, or something with your address on it?"
"Yeah... maybe. But I'll have to go home and get it."
8:40pm.
"HURRY YOU HAVE TWENTY MINUTES."

I sent her the address, and while she worked on getting to the UPS warehouse in time, I paced the room, checking the clock every few seconds and staring at my phone.
8:45pm.
8:50pm.
8:55pm.

Meanwhile, Courtney and Brian are in the car, driving through the dark to a lonely road in the middle of nowhere.
"I wonder why I have to pick it up today?" Courtney wondered.
"Maybe it's alive," her friend Brian suggested. "Maybe it's a fish."
"Maybe it's a puppy!"
They ended up at an abandoned warehouse covered in UPS trucks and no sign of an entrance. Two men are standing outside, and they nervously approached.
"Where's the door?"
"It's closed," they told her.
"But I need to get a package."
"Sorry, it's closed."
"They're telling me it's closed," she texted me.
"No! They said they're staying open for you!" I frantically texted back.
8:57pm.

"Where's the door?" Courtney asked the men again.
"It's closed," they repeated, "but it's around the side, feel free to check."
They drove around to the other side, and as Courtney got out, she saw a man walking toward the packing lot.
"You here for your package?" he asked her.
"Yes!" she said.
A moment later he re-emerged with the box in question. The one currently causing me so much stress on the opposite coast.
"This must be some really good ice cream!" he said.
"It's ice cream?!" Courtney said.
"Oh... oops. Was it supposed to be a surprise?"
"It's my birthday present!" she said, and then saw the label. "Salt and Straw!!!"

A moment later, Courtney phoned me with the whole story, much to my relived delight.
"You got me ice cream!!" she cried. "And I thought for sure it was a puppy!"

And that is the story of how I almost got my sister a puddle of sugar for her birthday.

The end. :)

P.S. - the flavors are: Almond Brittle with Salted Ganache, Cinnamon Snickerdoodle, Arbequina Olive Oil, Strawberry Honey Balsamic with Cracked Black Pepper, and Stumptown Coffee & Burnside Bourbon.Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-9474851726981433132014-05-09T10:00:00.000-07:002014-05-09T10:00:01.541-07:00{duo lingo}I took French all through high school and college, but somewhere along the way I stopped practicing and life took over. It's hard to keep speaking another language when you live in a country that doesn't require you know anything but English. Spanish is your next best bet as far as practical application, but French? Hardly anyone speaks French here. (At least, not in North Carolina or Oregon.) So it's difficult to get any decent practice in.

That being said, I completely forgot about the language until my trip to hike around Mont Blanc last summer. I spent two weeks immersed in French, Swiss, and Italian culture, and it was glorious. It's amazing to visit a place where English is not the primary language, for it knocks some reality into you. Everyone I met spoke two, three, four languages with perfect ease and beauty, the syllables like music to my ears. I wanted every part of it. I wanted to understand these languages, to turn the words over in my mind and savor them. I wanted to taste them on my tongue like cinnamon.
I latched on to every word my guides said. Though they spoke perfect English, I was fascinated by their beautiful French accents, and as they taught us more and more about the culture, the landscape, and the history of the area, I tried to commit it all to memory. I listened to them as they spoke French, delighted when verbs, conjugations, and phrases resurfaced in my memory, like interlocking puzzle pieces.
I was told my accent was good, that I remembered the language well. When my guide quizzed us about the names of the ranges and glaciers around us, I repeated back the beautiful names:
"Col des Grandes Jorasses."
"Mer de Glace"
"Aiguille du Midi."

And with each new thing I discovered, I wanted to learn French even more. I came home with a renewed desire to speak the language. I looked for classes and books and materials. I looked for simple ways to practice that would fit into my every day life.

What I found was a cute, free iPhone app called DuoLingo. It reminds me of a simpler, cheaper Rosetta Stone, by throwing you directly into the language and helping you to learn it piece by piece. You are given prompts to translate phrases to English, to speak them in French, to type English phrases in French, and to match English words to French words. You answer questions in a series of lessons, building on what you've already learned. It also makes it a game, so you lose "hearts" every time you get an answer wrong, and if you lose all your hearts, you have to do the lesson again. You gain "points" as you go, and you can connect with friends through the app or battle against a "bot" to see how you are progressing in comparison to them.
Of course, there are a variety of languages offered, not just French. And if you are already well versed in a language, you can test out of the easier lessons and jump into the more advanced ones. It's fun and oddly addicting to "play" at learning a language.

So if you have been thinking about brushing up on a language (or learning a new one! Portuguese, anyone?) check out DuoLingo. It's not without it's faults (sometimes its lack of explanation of grammar rules can be frustrating) but it's certainly a fun way to spend some down time on your phone - and you'll learn more than by hanging out on Facebook all day. Win win!Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-6980971378200201442014-05-07T10:00:00.000-07:002014-05-08T11:47:58.040-07:00{illustration class}I started taking a book illustration class, as part of my "30 before 31" goals, but also because I just LOVE taking classes, and if it's about a topic that I already adore - even better!

So far I'm loving the class. I've wanted to be a children's book illustrator since I was in kindergarten, but somewhere along the way I forgot about it. This class makes me feel like I jumped in a time machine and zoomed back to my childhood years... we get to spend all class talking about our favorite children's books (oh, the memories!) and how to incorporate color, character and layout into a brilliant 32-page masterpiece, and of course we get fun drawing assignments each week.

My instructor is an illustrator herself, and it's fascinating hearing the "inside scoop" on what it takes to make a manuscript, send it to publishers, work with an agent, etc.

I was initially a bit intimidated to take this class, since I was afraid I would be waaaaaay out of the league of most professional artists/designers these days. And truth be told, my class consists of six female students who are each extremely talented in their own way. But I don't feel as out of touch as I thought I would. In fact, I usually end the class feeling incredibly inspired, and I rush right home and spend hours with my colored pencils and pens, enjoying each moment spent in my art-world. I guess my kindergarten self really did know all along what my true calling was!

So the class has become my favorite part of my week, and I really wish it lasted longer than eight weeks. Hopefully even when it's finished I will find time to keep creating! (And to keep reading children's books... they're just as magical as an adult as they were as a child, I've found. And my favorites are still the ones I remember best from when I was young.)

Here are a few of my sketches from the first few weeks (more to come, I'm sure):

Brittanyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-62510137079741428612014-05-05T10:00:00.000-07:002014-08-24T16:30:55.587-07:00{30 by 31}Once upon a time in 2014, I turned 30.

It felt like it would never happen. In fact, I thought for sure I would be in my 20s forever (I know a lot of people who turn 29 every year) but believe it or not, I hit a new decade.

It feels kind of strange; most birthdays lately swim by without notice, but this one feels different. As if my biological clock is suddenly ticking and I am struck by the notion that I'm supposed to have my life figured out. Little by little I'm realizing that I may never truly have my life "figured out." And that's okay. To be honest, I would rather live adventure to adventure my whole life than work a 9-5 job for fifty years. I don't want to wait until I retire to go exploring - I would rather reach it thinking, "damn, what a good life!"

So far I think I'm doing pretty well. I've done a lot of cool things in my life, which now includes the Pacific Crest Trail, something that is on a LOT of people's bucket list. Check! And now I'm growing up and getting married and it's all an adventure in some way or another.

To keep things fun and interesting, I'm trying something inspired by Wit and Whistle. Each year she makes an annual "bucket list" of things she wants to do before the following year. It's a list as long as you are old, and you have one year to complete these things, big and small. I'm a little behind (since my birthday was in March) but then again, I've already started on a few of these. It was surprisingly hard to think of 30 things! (I didn't want to make them all "huge" accomplishments, but sometimes it's the little things that are the most difficult, after all.)

So without further ado... here it is:

30 by 31:

1. Get married
2. Take a class on a topic that fascinates me - done!
3. Expand the product selection in my shop - done!
4. Create an easy house-cleaning schedule
5. Designate one "technology free" day each month
6. Actually print some of my photos... and fill my wall frames with them
7. Finish the last 80 miles of the PCT
8. Write 6 gratitude letters - 1/6
9. Practice French more frequently - done!
10. Host a party/ game night/ dinner
11. Try 6 new restaurants - 5/6
- Podnah's
- Tabor Tavern
- Screendoor
- Russell Street BBQ
- Southland Whiskey Kitchen
(As you can tell, Tanner likes BBQ, so that's where we ended up going, more often than not. My personal favorite was Screendoor. Amaaaazing.)
12. Travel somewhere new
13. Learn Adobe Illustrator
14. Volunteer somewhere
15. Learn a new hobby/ instrument
16. Do yoga once a week
17. Make the ultimate playlist (of songs Tanner and I both like)
18. Create a complete emergency kit
19. Stick with a workout routine! - done!
20. Apply to a craft show
21. Buy a plant. Keep it alive.
22. Organize my pantry once and for all
23. Get a job I adore. If I don't adore it, find something else. - done!
24. Do at least 6 new hikes in the area
25. Find 10 new dinner meals that Tanner and I will BOTH eat
26. Return all phone calls and emails within a day
27. Write a letter to an old friend
28. Do Trail Magic on the PCT this summer
29. Create 5 new DIY projects
30. Go on a true date night once a month

What are your goals this year?Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-58239226804011164432014-05-02T10:00:00.000-07:002014-05-02T10:00:04.703-07:00{new stamps!}
I decided not too long ago that I wanted to make the packaging on my orders more fun and handmade. A postage stamp and an address label alone didn't quite cut it for me... the envelope was definitely missing that "special something." I know I love receiving a package in the mail that has been lovingly created by someone, right down to the twine ribbon and colorful washi tape, so why not create that in my own packages, too?

I decided that what they needed was a little "stamp pizzaz" and immediately went on the hunt for the perfect rubber stamp designs. Unfortunately, after days of hunting, I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. I was discouraged, and on the point of settling with a design I didn't love, when suddenly I was struck by a moment of insightful creativity: I could design my own!

This idea should have struck me much sooner, of course, since I can draw... but I never considered turning one of my own designs into a rubber stamp. But why not? The idea was intriguing.

So I scribbled up some designs, giggled to myself, and uploaded them to an online stamp manufacturer, who created and delivered them to my house only a few days after placing the order. Magic!

And what do you know? They turned out great!

I love them, and I think they give my packages a little extra "something." That's what buying homemade is all about, amIright?

So pardon me while I go a little stamp crazy... and ignore the ink stains on my fingers, please. :)
Brittanyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-35140310869128029052014-04-30T10:00:00.000-07:002014-04-30T10:00:03.279-07:00{mother's day cards!}Can you believe it's May already?! Like, what happened to the first half of the year? Seriously.

With May comes Mother's Day, and this year it falls on Sunday, May 10. Which means it is.... less than two weeks away. And you should buy a card. Hint hint.

I added a few new Mother's Day cards to the shop and all the oldies from last year are still there. The new cards primarily focus on new moms, since this - apparently - is the year of babies. (At least among people I know.) Then again, maybe if you're in your 30s you should just assume that every one one your friends on Facebook is procreating and posting daily pictures of their offspring.

I also updated a version of my "long voicemail" card, as seen below. Last year it had a black iPhone on it and looked rather dark and dated, and I didn't really like it. The new white iPhone version seems to be doing well. It gained some recognition on Buzzfeed last week and has been the most popular one in the shop lately. I got slammed over the weekend and fortunately had Tanner at my beck and call to help me package orders. Yay for tolerant fiancees. ;)

Happy May, everyone!Brittanyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-16303117410529691392014-04-28T10:00:00.000-07:002014-04-29T11:43:25.356-07:00{did you miss me?}Hello readers!!

Hello? ....Hello? Is anyone still there...?

My sincere apologies for being extremely negligent in my blogging these past... er... *cough* three months *cough.* Life seems to have gotten away from me. But it hasn't been without its adventures! Now that I'm being a responsible blogger and writing again, it seems only fair to catch you up.

So. What have I been doing for three months? Wellllll, if you must know... here's the abbreviated version:

January/ February:
- Tanner and I moved into a new apartment, roughly 45 minutes away from where we used to live. Though it's a nicer place, it feels sort of sad and lonely since our friends are far away.
- Just as soon as we got all our boxes into the new place, Tanner left. On a business trip. For two months.
- I had the joy of unpacking every box and trying to find homes for every piece of junk by myself.
- In the midst of this, I was starting a new job, getting up at 5am every day and working until 4pm.
- Then life got chaotic as Valentines season hit full swing. I was literally logging into Etsy the second I got home from work and packaging orders until 9 or 10 at night. My life became nothing more than: Sleep. Work. Etsy. Eat. Sleep. Work. Etsy. Eat. Sleep.
- From January 1-February 14, I processed 1,300 orders and shipped out over 2,500 cards. Of the 1,300 orders that came in, 900 of them were placed in the last two weeks before Valentine's Day. Can we say insanity? Oh yes.

Speaking of my shop, I made some interesting changes this year to help expedite my order-processing. Last year I had Tanner and a whole slew of friendly worker-elves (namely my good friends Elizabeth and Jason and a few bottles of wine) to help me out. This year I was living far away and by myself, so I did most of the work solo. It made me re-evaluate my process and realize that I was spending more time than I needed to on menial tasks, such as creating shipping labels.

Hence, I bought a label printer! This fancy little gadget is worth its weight in gold. Plus, it works with my Etsy shipping program so I can send hundreds of shipping labels to it in one go and it prints them all out in a matter of seconds! Brilliant. I'm not sure how I lived without this thing in my life. LOVE IT.

I also bought a card folder. You know... one of those $5 bone folders that you can get at any craft store. It seems like a silly purchase, but I discovered that after folding thousands of cards, I was literally wearing away my nail bed on my thumb and gaining some crazy calluses. Ouch. So I invested in a bone folder and, silly as it seems, it's straight-up one of my favorite shop purchases now.

March/ April:
- And.... rest. My shop got significantly quieter after Valentine's, and I was able to remember what "free time" was like.
- Plus, Tanner finally returned home!
- My 30th birthday! More on this later. But weird. I'm thirty.
- Wedding planning kicks into full steam ahead. Only six months left until the big day!
- My mom and sister came out for a visit to help with wedding plans and to see the sights for a week.
- I started an illustration class! More on this later, too. But it is awesome so far.
- Mother's Day card season starts ramping up... and I have some fun plans for the shop (I know I keep saying that, but it'll someday be true...)
- Also, April 25 was my one-year anniversary of starting the Pacific Crest Trail. It seems so surreal that it was a year ago... and how I miss it!

So that's my life in a nutshell. Of course, there are lots of stories in there, but I imagine I'll get a chance to talk about them soon enough. In the meantime, how's life in the blogosphere? I've definitely been out of touch and need to invest in some rainy afternoons catching up with my favorite bloggers. Until then... take care. And thanks for hanging in there with me while I took that unexpected hiatus! You guys are the best. :)

Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-81421752479813034182014-01-03T06:06:00.000-08:002014-01-03T06:06:50.168-08:00{valentine's day card line 2014!}Whew! This week has been crazy. I'm still knee-deep in boxes and learning the joys of having every one of my possessions in some random corner of the house. It makes getting ready for work a new kind of challenge. (Where the hell did I pack my toothbrush?)
It also tests the limits of my OCD, because EVERYTHING IS MESSY. I hate packing and unpacking because there is STUFF. EVERYWHERE. As much as I enjoy the act of organizing things, if everything is a wreck it messes with my chi. Once my world is clean and organized again I will be a much happier individual.

Somewhere in the midst of all this chaos, I managed to whip up a brand new line of cards for the Valentine season! I love this time of year, because making goofy I love you cards is my favorite thing. And this year I came up with some particularly goofy ones. For some reason I was feeling really "punny," so you'll get a kick out of how cheesy some of these are. (Seriously. Like, groan-inducing.) And of course, it wouldn't be Darkroom and Dearly without a touch of geekiness. Harry Potter, Star Trek, Doctor Who and Indiana Jones all made the cut this year! :) Woo-hoo!

The cards are up and available in the shop, so get 'em while they're hot! You can see the whole Valentines Day lineup {here!!}
(And shhhh... I still have a few secrets up my sleeve... I have some new products which should be hitting the shop sometime soon! I'll keep you updated!)

Valentine's Day 2014 - Friday, February 14

First the punny...

Then the geeky...

Oh, and can't forget this one I posted a month back... an oldie but a goodie. :)

Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-53818269010512573932013-12-23T10:00:00.000-08:002013-12-23T10:00:02.782-08:00{diy: christmas instagram gift tags}I love having fun with instagram photos (do you follow me already @darkroomdearly?) and coming up with brilliant new ways to get crafty with them, like my Polaroid coasters. So of course I was super excited to see fellow blogger Bonnie of {going home to roost} post a really awesome instagram Christmas craft on her blog!

{instagram gift tags via going home to roost}

By utilizing your own instagram photos (or hers, which she also provided for you!) you can create gift tags for your Christmas gifts that look classy and festive all at the same time!

{photo via going home to roost}

How cute are these??
I had fun making my own with some of the PCT photos I took this summer. (Not very Christmassy, I know, but they still make for great pictures and tags!)

You can print them to sticker paper and attach them directly to your gift, or print to cardstock and use fancy ribbon or twine to tie them to your wrapped present. These cute tags will give any gift some definite Christmas flair!

Bonnie has graciously put several different file formats of these gift tags for upload so you can choose which suits you best. Visit her page to download them for free! Enjoy! (And get tagging quick... Christmas is almost here!!)

I hope everyone has a merry holiday. I will see you again on Friday!Brittanyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-10438166891364553682013-12-20T10:00:00.000-08:002013-12-20T10:00:07.116-08:00{a frozen gorge}Last weekend was the last of my free time before work kicks in full swing (and I say goodbye to vacations for the foreseeable future). I utilized it by heading into the Columbia Gorge with a new group of friends I met on an outdoor Meetup site. My knees are finally starting to feel a little stronger after hobbling around on them for two months, so I decided to put them to the test with a small four mile hike. It was also the first time I would get to see the gorge in the middle of winter - a real treat!

The hike was one I've done before - Horsetail, Ponytail, and Triple Falls (seen previously here and here) - but with a fresh layer of snow and ice it was a different experience entirely. I've never seen waterfalls so large with so much ice, and the result was beautiful. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take my nice camera along (since I already had hundreds of photos of this hike... why would I want more?... Right?) but upon seeing the snow (and killer icicles!!) I wished I had brought it. Instead, I snapped some shots with my phone and enjoyed a lovely afternoon on the trail with some new friends.

After two miles the trail became too icy to traverse and we had to turn back prematurely. Instead of going home, we stopped by the incomparable Multnomah Falls, and I got to see her in all her winter glory. Stunning.

Have a great weekend!Brittanyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-24501137909434955352013-12-13T10:00:00.000-08:002013-12-16T21:36:07.071-08:00{old friends revisited}Upon returning home from the PCT, I quickly found myself in a rut. The days were passing by without anything interesting happening; I was waking up, drifting aimlessly through the day, and going to sleep. My sense of purpose had been taken from me, and instead I was left trying to piece together the bits of my life and make something new with them. But change in a familiar place is hard, and the monotony was beginning to wear on me. While Tanner was at work, I sat at home and missed the trail and my friends.

And one day, after a few weeks had passed, I got a message from my trail friends Dance Party and Focus, whom I hadn't seen since the Sierras. They had finished their hike to Canada by road walking 100 miles to the border and were now traveling around Oregon trying to figure out their new lives. Dance Party's aunt owned a beach house on the Oregon coast, and she and Focus decided to spend a few days there. She sent out a note to her Oregonian trail friends, inviting us to the beach house to reconnect with the trail life we were all missing.

I was only too happy to accept. As it turned out, Dance Party and Focus were the only two of the group that I knew really well. Hikers by the name of T-Rex, Kitten and Chik-Chak were also making the trip, but they were friends I had met only briefly on trail. I knew Chik-Chak because she and Focus's Aussie friend Starfox had gotten together on trail, and T-Rex had been part of their group, hiking with her boyfriend Rocky. I hadn't formally met Kitten yet, though he and I had mutual acquaintances through a great number of other hikers.

I planned to ride to the beach house with Chik-Chak, T-Rex and Kitten, all of whom were leaving from downtown Portland one Tuesday afternoon. I was a little nervous about riding two hours in a car with a group of people I had spent very little time with, but I soon learned I had nothing to worry about. Thru-hikers, after all, are one big family, whether you've met them or not. Two minutes into our car ride we were already laughing and joking as though we had known each other for years. There was something deeply bonding about sharing a 2,650 mile journey with someone, even if you didn't hike beside them. We shared the same joys and hardships, and we were connected by something stronger than social ties.

I quickly discovered, too, that this was exactly the trip I needed. It was cathartic. At last, I could talk about the trail with people who understood. I had been wandering through my weeks feeling lost and alone, deprived of anyone who knew what I had been through. And here, suddenly, I was among my own people again, and everything we said was wholly and completely accepted. We cited our culture shock moments, our struggles with re-entering society, our disappointment in how much we had changed yet how little the world around us had. There were many exclamations of, "YES!" and "Exactly!" and "I've been going through the same thing!" It was wonderful to hear my trail name so casually on the lips of these friends; it revived my other life, my trail life, and it refused to be forgotten.
As we talked, I felt myself healing from the inside out, relieved in so many ways to hear all my frustrations about "real life" reiterated by fellow hikers. It was our own brand of group therapy.

Hello, my name is Bramble, and it has been three weeks since my last day on trail.
Hello, Bramble.

We laughed, we talked, we shared stories and reminisced about the trail.

Remember that time...?

Do you guys get carsick? Like, all the time??

Are you still incurably hungry? Does that ever go away?

My coworkers keep asking me about the trail. They all say, 'how was your vacation? Was it relaxing? You must be so well rested!' I didn't even know what to say. Vacation? Relaxing? Well rested? How do I even start that conversation?!

I want to talk about the trail all the time, but no one wants to hear it. And that's the only thing I have anymore; it was my whole summer. People go on and on about their horrible days at work and all I want to say is, 'when I was in the desert...'

We told story after story after story, until the Trail felt alive again. We brought it back with our memories of it, and brought ourselves back to life in the process. We were piecing together our shattered existence with the only thing we knew: the Trail.

When we reached the beach house, Focus and Dance Party were waiting for us with huge pots of chili. There were hugs, and more laughter, and time spent beside the large windows, looking out at the ocean. We played games, told stories, and became our own version of a trail family, far from the trail.

The next day we spent our time out on the beach, climbing the shifting dunes, twirling on rope swings, splashing through the ocean surf and wading through tide pools looking for sea life. We stopped in a small pub beside the water for drinks and climbed again over the hills, looking out over the ocean and contemplating how tiny we were in the universe.

We cooked up another huge dinner, relishing the delights of fresh kale, smoked salmon, and freshly picked mushroom risotto. We played games before bed and tried to assemble the next bits of our lives into some sort of path. Chik-Chak was already back at work, T-Rex was in the search, Kitten was traveling the US for another month before returning home to the midwest, and Focus and Dance Party had their sights set on South America for a few months. I was job hunting, too, but I no longer had the desire for it. I needed the challenge, the stimulation, of having something to do every day, but I knew that challenge no longer came from a 9-5 office job. It was out there in the wild somewhere, begging me to explore it. But I no longer knew how to get there.

After a few short days on the beach, swimming in old memories with good friends, we returned home to Portland feeling a little more whole. I returned to my job hunt with a stronger sense of purpose, and yet still feeling like a lost little girl looking for the footpath she used to walk upon, wondering which way it was leading her.

----------

The journey continues...
forward to {PCT overview} - you can read more about the logistics and gear of my journey in the links listed under "learn about my hike"
back to {FAQs about my hike}Brittanyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-22435201231457843832013-12-11T10:00:00.000-08:002013-12-11T10:00:05.796-08:00{popular gear choices on the pct}Ever wonder what the most popular gear choices on trail were, and whether they were worth it? If you're a gear junkie, this post is for you. If not... well.... sorry. There will be some non-PCT posts one of these days. Maybe.

THE MOST POPULAR PCT GEAR CHOICES ON TRAIL (from my perspective)

PACKS

1. ULA Catalyst
This particular pack was a trail favorite for a lot of thru-hikers. At just over 2.5 pounds, it proved to be a great pack for ultra-lighters who could keep their pack weights below 40 pounds.
Another trail ULA favorite was the Circuit - the Catalyst's smaller, lighter brother, if you want to lighten your load even more.

2. Granite Gear Crown 60
Granite Gear has several different packs that thru-hikers oogled over, but the most popular by far was the Crown. With a large 60 liters of capacity and weighing in at 2.2 pounds, it proved to be a great fit for a lot of hikers. Plus, the roll-top ensured that the pack could expand and collapse as needed when you're carrying more or less than usual. The Crown's little brother, the Blaze, was also a popular favorite.

3. Gossamer Gear Mariposa Ultralight
The lightest on the list at 1.6 pounds. Personally, I think once you start shaving too much weight from your pack, you lose comfort and durability, but some ultralighters can pull it off. This pack was usually seen on the hikers who were carrying a sub-10 pound base weight. Impressive.

4. REI Flash
I saw a lot of different iterations of this pack on trail. It comes in a men's 45 liter, men's 62 liter, and a women's 52 liter. I saw every size/color of the Flash throughout the trail, since there have been several updates over the years.
This is the pack I carried, and I loved it. It weighs just under 3 pounds for the 52 liter size and I found it to be really comfortable. I was jealous of those who could pull off the 45 liter size effectively. I had to wear the 52 to fit all my stuff, and even that was a challenge when I added a bear vault.

WATER FILTERS

1. Sawyer Squeeze
Hands down, this was the most prolific water filter on the trail. Gone are the days of pump-action water filters. They are slow, heavy, and way behind the times. These days, thru-hikers carry gravity, squeeze, or in-line filters for convenience, weight, and speed. Each type has its own pros and cons.

The squeeze is notable for its small size and ease of use. You simply screw the filter onto a water bottle filled with untreated water, then squeeze the water through the filter into another clean water bottle. Alternately, you can simply drink the unfiltered water directly through the attached filter.

At first this system seems like the perfect thru-hiking water filter. And in a lot of ways, it is, especially for overnight backpackers who don't have to worry about putting in a certain number of miles. They have the luxury of taking their time. But there are some notable cons with the Sawyer Squeeze that frustrated a lot of thru-hikers I know:
a) It takes time to filter your water. When you're in the desert, carrying up to 6 liters of water at a time, and you're planning on doing a lot of miles, filtering water is time consuming. You can sometimes spend up to an hour filling dirty water bottles and squeezing them into clean bottles through the filter. For a hiker who always wants to be moving, it can be frustrating to stop at each water source and take so much time filtering.
b) The squeeze bags the filter comes with break. Granted, this isn't too much of an issue because most people just use water bottles instead. But the squeeze bags are quicker and less prone to air pockets. Unfortunately, they also spring leaks quite often.
c) You have to keep track of your dirty/clean bottles. I can't tell you how many times I saw a hiker accidentally filter water into one of his dirty-water bottles, despite well labeled bottles. Making that mistake can quickly contaminate a lot of hard work. When you have half a dozen water bottles to contend with, it can be easy to mix them up.

In the end, most people who had Sawyer Squeeze filters ditched them for something simpler, like Aqua Mira drops. After a while they just weren't willing to take the time to sit at a water source and filter water for an hour.

2. Platypus Gravity Works
The Platypus Gravity Works has a few pluses that the Sawyer Squeeze doesn't: you don't have to sit and manually squeeze water through a filter for an hour. And you won't mix up your water bottles. It does the work for you, by simply filling up the labeled "dirty water bag" and letting gravity filter the water through the filter and into the clean water bag.

The con, unfortunately, is the time it takes. In the beginning all gravity filters are pretty speedy, but as you use them, they slow down, and even with a good cleaning and backflush, they're never quite as good as brand new. With two attached water bags (often ranging between 2 and 4 liters) they can also be bulky in your pack, depending on how much water you're carrying. In the end, this is a good system but your breaks at water sources will still be dictated by how fast your filter is filtering.

3. Sawyer 3-in-one inline filter
I find this filter to be the best of both worlds, and it was the one I carried throughout the trail with nothing but love for it the whole time.
This system essentially takes the water bladder and filter from the Platypus gravity system, but it eliminates the need for a clean water bag. Rather than waiting for your water to filter into another bag, you simply add the inline filter to the hose of your current water bladder. Then you fill up your water bladder with dirty water, put it back in your pack, and drink from the hose as you walk. Since the filter is integrated into the hose, it filters as you drink it, so you don't have to waste time filtering the water right when you find it.

The downside of the inline filter is that it slows the rate of water coming out of your tube. Some people find this frustrating, though I find that when I'm hiking I don't necessarily "chug" water. Instead, I sip at the hose in small doses, which is perfect for the flow rate. The only thing I didn't like was that I didn't have clean water at-the-ready when I wanted it. When I was taking breaks or eating lunch, I wanted a clean water bottle to chug, preferably with some flavored electrolytes in it.

So to compensate, here is the water system I came up with:

I carried a 3 liter Platypus water bladder tucked in the back sleeve of my pack. I drew a skull and crossbones on the bladder so I would remember that it had dirty water in it. I cut the hose on the bladder and clipped my Sawyer in-line filter into it. In this fashion I could drink dirty water directly from the bag while I was walking.
I also carried two 1 liter Gatorade bottles. One was labeled "dirty" and one was labeled "clean." (I also distinguished by keeping the label on the clean bottle and tearing it off the dirty one.) The dirty bottle I used for scooping water up from streams and rivers and used it to replenish the water in my bladder, since it was much easier to leave the bladder tucked into my pack rather than dragging it out every time I needed a refill. Generally, while I was walking my dirty Gatorade bottle was empty (unless I needed to carry an extra liter of water in dry areas.)
As for the clean Gatorade bottle, I only ever put clean, filtered water in it. To do this, I unclipped the mouth piece from my bladder hose and strung up the bladder from a tree or trekking pole and gravity filtered the water from the bag into my bottle. It was a slow process, but I only did this during breaks or lunch so I wasn't wasting time on trail. A lot of times I put the water bladder on my head and let it filter down toward my feet. This was sometimes easier than trying to find a branch to hang it from. This method tended to get a lot of laughs from fellow hikers.
Once I had a full liter, I could add drink mixes to it, and this became the water I drank when I stopped for a break. It was always wonderful chugging something with flavor after drinking straight water all day.

This system worked really well for me. I know there were some people on trail who disliked the in-line filter because it kinked up on them often and they couldn't get a good flow to come out while they were walking. This happened to me a number of times, too, but I could generally get it working again without too much effort. Overall, I loved the convenience and speed of simply filtering water on the go, and I was blessed to never get a water-borne illness because of it.

4. Aqua Mira drops
The final way people filtered water was through some sort of chemical. This is by far the lightest method you can use - Aqua Mira, iodine drops, and bleach in tiny bottles weigh hardly anything, and you only need a few drops per liter. There are a couple of downsides to chemicals, however:
a) You need to wait 30 min to 4 hours to kill everything. Generally you only need 30 minutes, but even that amount of time means you have to plan your water treatments carefully and make sure you won't desperately need some before time is up.
b) It's not advisable to use chemicals for more than two weeks at a time. Iodine and bleach do some seriously nasty things to your stomach. Most of the time it's too watered down to make much difference, but for those hikers who misjudged how many drops to put in their water paid the price with some stomach illnesses. I also knew a lot of hikers who got Giardia while trying to use bleach, whether from incorrect use or inconsistent use, I'm not sure. But if it were me, I wouldn't take chances.

I carried Aqua Mira drops as a backup. I never wanted to be stuck in the woods with a broken filter, so drops were there for me if I needed them. It turned out that I only used them once or twice my entire trip. Usually because I filtered water from a really gross cow-trough and, though I trusted my filter, I really wanted to kill everything in there. Otherwise, I carried them for peace of mind.

TENTS

1. Tarp Tent Contrail
For hikers who want the best of both worlds - the lightness of a tarp and the comfort of a tent - a tarp tent seems like the obvious solution. Tarp Tent makes a large variety of styles, but the Contrail was the one I saw most often. It was made for one person but is roomy enough for two - it seemed to hold up beautifully in the desert, but many people discovered its downfalls in the rainier states. It had a tendency to leak, and since the mesh lining was directly connected to the rainfly (ie, single wall) it managed to get everything wet inside, too.

2. Big Agnes Fly Creek 1 (and 2)
This was the most popular choice by thru-hikers. Most opted for the one person version to save weight, but when they realized the two person version is only 7 oz more and gives you twice the space, they gave themselves a "doh!" slap on the forehead. Weighing in at 2 pounds 10 oz (with stakes and footprint) it's a comfortable way to backpack across the US. Of course, it does have its shortcomings - a tiny vestibule, small zippers that are prone to breaking, and condensation issues, but even in the wettest conditions I was usually impressed by how well it withstood the elements.

3. Big Agnes Copper Spur 2
For couples traveling together, the Copper Spur was an often-seen tent on trail. As a free standing tent, it's much roomier than the two person Fly Creek, giving each person a little more wiggle room and therefore (hopefully) keeping everyone happy.

4. Sil nylon tarp
For ultralighters, hardly anything outweighs a good ol' tarp. You can rig it up in any configuration you like with some stakes and two trekking poles, and the weight you save in your pack seems to make up for the lack of comfort in less ideal conditions, right? While this seems like the way to go in more arid environments (most people slept without tents in the desert, anyway) I wouldn't be caught with a tarp anywhere north of Crater Lake. But I don't like getting drenched with rain while I sleep. Maybe that's just me.

So those are the big gear choices everyone stresses over. The other big one would be sleeping bags, but that category ran all over the map and I hardly ever saw the same bag twice (although most everyone carried 20 degree down bags, from what I could tell) And for stoves and sleeping pads everyone carried the same things: for stoves it was the Jetboil Sol or an alcohol stove, and for the sleeping pad it was a Thermarest Z-lite in the desert and a Thermarest NeoAir everywhere else. (Although I did spot a few people with Exped pads.)

Hopefully that satisfied some gear junky cravings you've been having (admit it.) If you want to know more about what I carried on trail and how it worked for me, visit this page about my gear.Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-24330270343338129822013-12-09T10:43:00.000-08:002013-12-15T22:46:29.217-08:00{what do you eat on the pct?}
The main questions I received on trail were always about food. Where do you get it? How much do you carry? What do you eat? were very common curiosities from dayhikers, locals, and fellow backpackers. They wanted to know if I hunted/foraged for food, or if I stopped in town. They wanted to know if I ate junk food, processed food, or fresh food. They wanted to know how often I resupplied and whether I mailed myself food or bought it in local stores. They wanted to know which foods I craved and which I didn't.

 As you may have already read, I did a lot of pre-hike work on my food resupplies. I bought, prepared, boxed and labeled over 14 separate packages to mail to myself on trail. I created spreadsheets, organized itineraries, labeled shipping dates on calendars, and left Tanner behind with carefully bagged meals for every single resupply stop. I bought foods that I had eaten previously on backpacking trips, I went to WinCo and bought bulk foods: trail mixes, rice, pastas, banana chips, rice cakes, tuna packets, off-brand pop tarts, granola bars. I dehydrated vegetables and created pre-made meals for myself in ziplock bags. I was wonderfully prepared and I was convinced I would be set for the whole of the trail.

I was wrong.

Something happened that I would have never expected: I lost my appetite. For three whole weeks on trail, I could barely stand to look at my food, much less eat it. I carried it hundreds of miles through the desert, but when I stopped for snack breaks, I had to force myself to eat. The heat of the desert, the new experience of walking so many miles a day, the exhaustion and dehydration zapped me of any desire to eat. It made me nauseated. And so I carried pounds and pounds of food every day and barely ate any of it.

When at last - at last! - my appetite returned after three weeks on trail, I was ravenous. But I quickly discovered that I had a new problem: I didn't want anything I had packed for myself. My new backpacking body had specific needs, and like an overly pregnant woman, I had some very strange food cravings.
This was a surprise for me, because I assumed I would crave stuff like ice cream and candy bars, but I never did. In fact, I started to hate candy bars. I was the only hiker on trail who gave away all my Snickers bars. I started to crave stuff like fresh fruit, ice cubes, and gatorade. Flavored drink mixes helped, but they were never cold on trail.

I also started to crave things I never had much interest in before the trail, like hard candies, pancakes and chocolate milk. Something about the sugar and the carbs and the protein was just what my body wanted. In town, we would buy a whole gallon of chocolate milk for one day and drink the whole thing before leaving the next day.

I hated the trail mixes I packed in every box. I grew quickly tired of the rice meals I made. I choked on the off-brand pop tarts (cheaper isn't always better). I gave away all my snacks and off-brand granola bars and spent my time in grocery stores, trying to find foods that satisfied my food cravings. After a few weeks of playing with combinations, and through trial-and-error, I finally came up with my perfect resupply box.

I am one of those weird people who usually doesn't tire of foods. I think I ate PB&J every day in school growing up. This was a blessing, because once I knew which foods I was craving, I could pack the same things in my resupply boxes and not get tired of them. Prior to my hike, I had packed boxes all the way from Mexico to Portland, assuming I would pack my Washington boxes when I got home again. This was a great idea, since I knew much better by then what I liked.

Here was a typical week's food resupply for me:

Breakfasts:
4 packages of Pop Tarts (generally raspberry or brown sugar) - for quick mornings
3 ziplock bags filled with granola and powdered milk - for slower mornings
3 Instant Carnation breakfast packets - vanilla or chocolate (to add to granola or oatmeal)

Lunches:
1 package of 10 large tortillas
7 foil packets of ready-made tuna salad
7 small bars of cheese (Tillamook has individually packaged cheddar slices)

Snacks:
1 small jar of peanut butter (the Planters chocolate and cherry one was a favorite)
1 package of turkey jerky
20-30 granola bars, assorted (depending on my mood)
1 package of dried fruit, nuts, or trail mix
5 packets of strawberries-and-cream instant oatmeal (I added water and ate this right out of the bag, usually for snacks rather than breakfast)
1 14oz bag of Skittles
Jelly bellies, jolly ranchers (great for the desert to keep your mouth from drying out), or other assorted hard candies
7 Little Debbies oatmeal cream pies (a personal favorite - I never eat them at home)
7 individual packets of Crystal Light flavored caffeinated drink mixes

Dinners:
7 Knorr Pasta sides, assorted flavors (I tried them all and grew tired of most of them, but the few flavors I could stand by the end were: broccoli and cheddar, spanish rice, and cheddar macaroni. By Washington I was mostly just making myself tuna wraps for dinner since I was too tired to cook.)

I made myself a tuna-cheese wrap every day for lunch and a pot of pasta every night for dinner. I snacked mostly on granola bars throughout the day, often covered in peanut butter for more protein. My "backup" foods were tortillas and peanut butter - if I was completely out of everything else, for some reason, I usually still had enough PB and tortillas to get me through to the next resupply stop.

I also loved picking up little treats for myself in towns. Different types of candies were always fun desserts, and special snacks for the middle of the day made me really happy when I opened my food bag and remembered they were there. My absolute favorite treat on trail was a bag of dried mangos - I had such a ridiculous craving for anything mango-flavored that I'm surprised it wasn't my trail name, since my hiking friends loved to tease me about it. (Treekiller even found me a mango-flavored beer in Bend!) I could never find dried mangos in town (it's sort of a specialty product) but my mom was awesome about sending me care packages. At every stop in town she would mail me a bag she had picked up from Costco. I'm sure it cost her just as much in postage as it did to buy the bag, but I loved it. The whole thing weighed at least two pounds, but I would happily carry it, trying to make the treat last me all the way to my next town stop.

For future thru-hikers who have questions about food preparation, I usually tell them the same thing: only send yourself boxes where it's absolutely necessary. There are a few stops on the PCT like that (Warner Springs, Seiad Valley, and Stehekin, to name a few) where there aren't any grocery store options, so it's better to mail yourself food. For everywhere else, you'll be better off buying food in town. Yes, it's a little more expensive that way (although factoring in shipping prices these days, maybe not...) but you're able to tailor your cravings directly to what you'll be eating on trail the next week, and having the right food is huge. A hungry hiker is an unhappy hiker. By the time you reach mid-California, you'll know exactly what you like and don't like, and a lot of hikers make themselves boxes along the trail and bounce them forward to more expensive towns ahead. Treekiller and Sunshine spent a whole day in Bend, OR making their boxes for Washington so they wouldn't have to worry about it later.

No matter how much you plan, your tastes and cravings change quite drastically when you're hiking 25 miles a day. You start to realize how wonderful fresh foods are, and you feel the effects of eating weeks and weeks of processed food, but ultimately you realize that processed foods are the quickest AND lightest way to get the required number of calories in you. (A lot of hikers drizzled olive oil on everything since that has the highest calorie per weight ratio) And in between, there are town stops where you have the luxury of eating whatever you want, whenever you want, to great excess. I like to say the PCT is a tour of food... you spend your days eating your way through the United States and, on occasion, walking it, too.Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-25787593945815443752013-12-06T10:00:00.000-08:002013-12-06T10:00:05.794-08:00{how do you navigate on the pct?}A common question I get about the Pacific Crest Trail revolves around navigation. "How easy is it to find your way?" or "Is the trail well marked?" are often curiosities to people who haven't hiked the trail before. This post will help explain the nature of the PCT and how to find your way from Mexico to Canada.

First of all, the PCT is a very well-trod footpath. It has been a proposed trail since the 1930s, designated as a National Scenic Trail in 1968, and finally fully completed in 1993. Since then, hundreds of hikers every year set out to walk the entire 2,650 miles along a trail that is merely one foot wide.

MAPS

To find your way through three states and from one end of the country to another, hikers navigate in a few different ways. Most carry detailed, printed topographical maps that cover the entire trail in something like 500 pages worth of data. (You can see the maps yourself here). A hiker named Halfmile has very generously devoted his time and effort to make these maps available online for hikers for free. Not only do they show the PCT's route over contour lines and county lines, but they highlight campsites, water sources, show warnings and regulations, and give helpful tips for each section. For almost every thru-hiker on trail, these maps are a lifeline and a God-send. We divide up the pages by section and at each resupply stop we mail ourselves a new section of maps so we don't have to carry the entire 500 pages at one time. A lot of hikers re-use the maps by writing their journal entries on them.

Besides printed maps, hikers these days have become more and more reliant upon iPhone apps and guides to help them along their journey. The two most prevalent sources of electronic information this year on trail were Halfmile's App and Guthook's PCT Guide. (You can read more in detail about these programs on my "staying wired on trail" blog post here).

Both of these apps were helpful in their own way. Halfmile's App worked in conjunction with his printed maps; they showed waypoints, points of interest, campsites, and let you know exactly which mile marker you were at (and how many miles to the next waypoint). If you happened to stray off the trail, the app told you how far you were away from it and gave you a compass direction to find your way back.
Guthook's App had several helpful references that Halfmile did not: it utilized GPS tracking (which worked even without cell service) to pin-point your location on a map of the PCT. It gave you detailed information and photos of upcoming campsites, road crossings, water sources, and towns. It also gave you accurate elevation profile data, so you could see your overall gain/loss for the day and gauge your hiking speed accordingly. You could also see your approximate mileage based on nearby waypoints, but unlike Halfmile's App, it did not give an exact mileage number of your current location.
Both apps had their pros and cons, and by utilizing both on trail, the data was infinitely more useful. (For example, Guthook often had campsites listed that Halfmile did not, and Halfmile often had more detailed town information that Guthook did not). Overall I was very impressed by the ease of use and helpfulness of both these apps. On more than one occasion I found myself off trail, and with a quick look at Guthook's GPS, I could easily navigate my way correctly back.

On my hike, I relied most heavily on the PCT apps I had on my phone, and Katie relied on the printed maps. With both sets of information, we were able to get an overall view of what our hike looked like. You can get away with one or the other, but having both is invaluable.
I grew so attached to knowing my exact mileage and elevation for each day, that when I returned home and went on a long dayhike, I found myself reaching for my phone on more than one occasion to check my mileage. It was annoying realizing that I didn't have information close at hand anymore!

NOTES and MARKERS

If you set out to hike the PCT with a set of maps and good head on your shoulders, you will easily find your way to Canada (provided you can read the maps accurately, of course.) Although this is enough to guide you, once you're on trail you quickly discover that the PCT has some tricks up its sleeve. The footpath is simple enough to follow: generally its the only trail there is to follow, but just in case you're worried, every few miles or so you come across a PCT marker to reinforce that you are, in fact, on the correct trail.

But sometimes, especially in popular wilderness areas and national parks, you come across a multitude of trails all converging in the same place. There are signs everywhere, and more often than not, the PCT is not explicitly marked. The trail junction will say something ambivalent like, "to Spruce Glade Trail" or "to Bear Ridge," and unless you happen to know the surrounding system of trails really well (and you won't) you have no idea which path to choose.

Despite that the PCT signage people have some work to do in this area, most of the time you won't have to take out your maps to puzzle over which route to take. Why not? Because there have been hundreds of hikers who have had this same exact problem hundreds of times before you. And because hikers are naturally helpful, generous people, they will have left you a clue, just so you don't make the same mistakes they did.
These clues come in several different forms.

First: vandalization. It's probably not kosher, but the simplest way to inform hikers where the PCT goes is for the first hiker to write on an existing sign in sharpie: "PCT North" with an arrow. And unless the sign has been swapped out recently by the forest service, these signs stick around for a long time, so years and years of hikers can all follow the same sharpie note that someone wrote back in 1998. And inevitably, a few minutes later you will see that distinctive PCT sign nailed to a tree or post, confirming your choice.

Second: notes on trail. If there's not a good sign to write on, hikers resort to writing on little scraps of paper and leaving them behind with duct tape or under a rock. These sorts of notes are found all over the trail for various reasons: trail markers, wayfinding, pointing the way to water, warning hikers about wildlife in the area (bears, wasps, etc), and anything else you want to explain to those behind you. Some hikers even leave little notes of "hello! I miss you!" to hiking partners they haven't seen in a few days. These notes are extremely useful, joyful, and an efficient way to pass back information to a group of people who have no access to cell phone service or social media. In some ways, the PCT is its own pony express, creating communication in a place where otherwise there could be none.

Third: markers in the dirt. If there's not a good sign to write on, or any paper to write with, the simplest way to tell a hiker where to go is to draw in the dirt. You can create all kinds of leave-no-trace artwork with sticks, rocks, pinecones, leaves, or lines in the sand. These creations are semi-permanent and easy to follow. We often come across mileage markers ("100 miles!" "2000 miles!") created on trail with bits of rocks or pinecones. But more importantly for navigation, we leave each other arrows, "this way!", or just two deeply dug tracks in the dirt that create a "highway" to walk along. If the trail split three ways, I learned to automatically look down at the dirt and search for the two parallel lines that someone created by dragging their trekking poles through the dust. These lines created a path that pointed the correct trail to follow.

In the beginning, I didn't always trust these lines or markers in the dirt. Who was to say that a thru-hiker made them? Or that they didn't lead somewhere incorrect? The markers were often vague or half-destroyed, and I usually double-checked my maps to verify the route. But in the end, the markers were always right. They were always right because hundreds of people followed those same markers every day, and if they were wrong, someone would have changed them already. Thru-hikers are very good about leaving notes for each other, as we've already discussed, and if someone had written an incorrect note, it would very shortly be changed/ added to/ corrected by someone else. By the end of my hike, I was 100% trusting every single marker I came across on trail without even a flicker of doubt, and they never steered me wrong.

FOOTPRINTS

And finally, the third way hikers navigate on the PCT is by footprints.

This is an acquired super-hero power that you gain after hundreds of miles of walking the same way. When you begin your journey, you walk for 700 miles through the most desolate desert terrain you have ever seen. In fact, it is so desolate that no one except thru-hikers ever seem to walk these trails. Thru-hikers, after all, are the only ones stupid enough to walk in the desert for two months.

But after days and weeks and months of walking the same pace, behind the same exact hikers every day, staring at the trail all day, one foot in front of the other, you start to notice things. Weird things. Like footprints. Sure, there are hundreds of them, daily tramping over each other, burying the old ones beneath the new prints, but somehow... they are familiar.
You start to notice the differences. You start to notice the patterns, and the lugs printed into the dirt, and the traction marks. You notice the backwards brand names, the size of the print, whether they pronate or supinate. At breaks you start to notice what shoes your fellow hikers are wearing. You find yourself glancing at their sole patterns when they sit down. You start noticing these patterns showing up in the dirt ahead of you while you're walking all day. You notice which shoe prints show up the most often. (Brooks Cascadias.)
And then, one day, the magic super-hero power strikes you. You can see them, the hikers, in the dirt. You know exactly who left each print. You know exactly when they came through, and who hiked through after them. You know exactly which direction they took, which path they chose, which water source they stopped at. And like a forest native, you begin to track them. You make choices based on their choices. Did they go to the left or right? Did they take a lunch break under this tree? Did they take the side trail to town or keep going?

Sometimes these choices influence your own. My hiking friends Wocka and Giddyup found their way to Kennedy Meadows one day because they followed Katie and my footsteps through the dirt. When our footprints suddenly ran out, they realized we had turned onto the paved road to the right of the trail and walked to town instead of continuing on the PCT.
When Katie and I walked through the Mojave Desert Aqueduct at night, we had a difficult time navigating the trail in the dark, since it was so flat and open. To keep ourselves on track, we shone our headlamps on the trail and followed Sansei's distinctive Chaco footprints all the way to our next water source.
When our friend Birddog took afternoon naps, he would wake up to find himself disoriented and often began hiking accidentally southbound, until he ran into another hiker. Finally Rotisserie gave him the tip: "when you wake up from your nap, Birddog, just check which direction the footprints are going!"
When Katie and I wore the same Brooks brand trail runners, I would hike behind her, intentionally placing my left footprints beside her right footprints as I walked. Hikers behind us would frequently joke, "it looked like you were hopping down the trail!"

We became stealthy, knowledgeable trackers and learned the footprints of our friends as well as we knew their habits and personalities.

And so, through map and GPS use, markers, notes, and footprints, these are the resources PCT hikers utilize to guide themselves - and each other - north from Mexico to Canada.Brittanyhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-51604323026773365482013-12-04T10:00:00.000-08:002013-12-04T20:10:15.199-08:00{my daily routine on trail}While I was writing my posts on trail, I spoke a lot about what we were doing every day, and special events that arose in the course of walking, but I never really got down to the nitty-gritty "routine" of things on the trail. For me, this routine was so ingrained that I barely gave it much thought, but I realize that it might be of interest to you to hear what a typical "day on the trail" was really like.

Throughout the Pacific Crest Trail, there are several different lifestyles you lead based on what ecosystem you're currently walking through. Life in the desert, for example, is much different than life in the mountains. So I'm going to break down the different parts of my hike and explain to you hour-by-hour what a typical day of hiking looks like. Hopefully this will give you some insight on what it's really like to walk 2,650 miles. :)

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: the desert
Mileage per day: 18-22 miles per day

4:00am - 5:00am: Wake up. (Usually a little bit before Katie) Get dressed in the tent and crawl out. While I'm packing up my gear, Katie is changing in the tent. I carefully clean and bandage up any blisters on my feet for the day. I eat a quick breakfast on the go and Katie and I break down the tent together. She packs up the tent body and I pack up the stakes and footprint. I hobble around camp for a while until my feet regain feeling. They are always, always sore when I wake up and it takes me a while to walk properly in the mornings. Brush teeth, take a bathroom break.

5:00am - 8:00am: Start hiking; the goal is to get in as many miles as possible before the heat of the day is too unbearable. My feet are still warming up and until they settle into the rhythm of hiking, I stumble along the trail at a slow speed. It takes about 30 minutes to get into the groove.

8:00am - 8:15am: Second breakfast. We've gone about six miles and the pop tart from 4:30am is not holding me over anymore. I eat a granola bar with some peanut butter and a few other small snacks, depending on how hungry I am. We can't stop long because we need water and the sun is getting hotter.

8:15am - 12:00pm: Hiking - it is usually miserable by now. After 9am the sun is brutal and we have to get through the miles as quickly as we can. Our usual goal is to hike "ten by ten", or ten miles by 10:00am. If we get started by 5am each morning, this isn't too difficult. Our next huge goal of the day is to find an appropriate place for lunch. Knowing that we will be there for some time to escape the worst part of the day, we have very specific things we look for: shade and water. If we find water, we can fill up our containers and rinse the dirt out the socks we wore yesterday. They will be hung on the outside of our packs to dry in the sun while we walk. We can't always find water (it depends on the location of the springs) but shade is non-negotiable. If we happen to find a good tree at 11:00am instead of noon, sometimes we'll stop early, especially if the heat is particularly bad that day. 9am until noon is essentially spent scouting out the perfect siesta spot.

12:00pm - 4:00pm: Afternoon siesta. This is what we look forward to all morning. If we're lucky, we've found a tree with a decent amount of shade. Usually there isn't water, so we have to ration ourselves carefully until dinner. I always have a spare 2L of water that I reserve for cooking dinner, and I try not to drink it during the day. My total water capacity is 6L and if I'm not careful I can drink it all in the course of an afternoon.
During the afternoon siesta we roll out our foam sleeping mats in the dirt, take off our shoes and socks (very important. There's nothing better than the feeling of naked feet after walking all morning) and take naps. Unless I'm really tired, I'm not very good at sleeping in the heat. Instead, I catch up on my journal and make myself lunch. I eat bits and pieces throughout the whole siesta so that I keep myself from getting unnecessarily hungry. Every ten minutes or so we have to rotate where our mats are lying because the sun and the shade shifts around us. Sometimes it disappears altogether, which can be very uncomfortable.

4:00pm - 7:00pm: If we've been making good time all day, usually we only have five more miles or so to hike after our siesta (sometimes more if we stopped really early.) The goal in these few hours is to find water. If we arrive at it early, we will stop to make dinner where we can replenish our water containers. If we're really lucky, we will have water at our campsite for the night. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen very often. More often than not we will stop to cook, wash up, fill up, and walk a few more miles to dry camp. We need to collect enough water to get us through the next morning, as well. Water sources almost entirely dictate our mileage for the day, and we usually look ahead on the maps to plan out our route so that we can arrive at them in time. People camp together quite a lot in the desert because we walk to where the water is.
Hiking after 5:00pm is my favorite part of the day. The sun is barely starting to set, and as the hours go by, it gets cooler and cooler. Since it is still high summer, it is light out until 9:00pm, but dusk lasts long enough for us to get our final miles behind us.

7:00pm - 9:00pm: We find camp (usually a designated spot on trail so we can minimize our impact, though it's not usually hard to find a flat spot to camp in a pinch) and set up our tents. If we've already eaten we have more time to relax in camp. If not, we cook and unpack our gear into our tents. We have plenty of time to socialize before dark. Everyone changes into camp shoes - our feet are stained with dirt by now, as well as any dust that has been kicked onto our legs. Before bed I roll up my pants and scrub down my feet and legs with baby wipes. It takes some muscle power to get the dirt off, but I love cleaning my feet because it feels like a foot massage, and my soles are so sore. If I have blisters, I take out my first aid kit and carefully empty and clean them. I'll leave them unbandaged for the night so they have time to heal. I change into sleep clothes, brush my teeth and crawl into bed to write in my journal. I usually write until it gets too dark to see, and then fall asleep.

CENTRAL CALIFORNIA: the sierra nevadas
Mileage: 15-18 miles per day

7:00am - 8:00am: It is really cold at 9,000 feet, so we sleep in and wait for it to warm up a little. We do our usual morning routine, getting dressed and packing up. There are a few small alterations to our routine in the mountains: we often have to keep our wool sweaters on for the first hour of hiking until we warm up. I keep mine stashed at the top of my pack instead of at the bottom so I have easy access to it. We also have to contend with a large, plastic bear vault for our food. It keeps my meals organized and un-crushed, but it's a chore to get it to fit in my pack. I put it in last, which means I can get at my snacks quicker when we stop for breaks.

8:00am - 11:00am: Our big goal of the morning in the Sierras is to get over the mountain pass before second breakfast. We generally are camped only a few miles from the next pass, and each one is spaced about 15-20 miles from the last one, so we climb one pass per day. The morning is spent slowly climbing up the rocky faces from 9,000 feet to 12,000 feet. If the pass approach is only 5-7 miles long, we can usually make it by early afternoon.

11:00am - 11:15am: Mountain passes act as a great reward system: do some really difficult climbing for a few hours, and be rewarded with an amazing view. It's a great feeling to sit at the top of the world and look down over the landscape. Usually we can see beautiful blue lakes and more mountains stretching in all directions. We pull on all our layers (because we're sweaty and it's really cold and windy at the top) and take a break to eat second breakfast.

11:15am - 1:00pm: The nice thing about the Sierras is that your elevation is pretty consistent from day to day. You spend all morning climbing up to 12,000 feet, and then you spend the rest of the day descending from the pass and approaching the next one. The next few hours are spent carefully navigating snow fields on the north side of the passes and slowly descending into the valley below. Our goal is to find a gorgeous lake to have lunch beside. It's not a hard task.

1:00pm - 1:30pm: When we've found the perfect spot, we sit to make lunch and enjoy the amazing views. I usually wish we could stay here all day, or at least spend an afternoon siesta there, as we did in the desert. But we cover much fewer miles in the rigorous Sierras, so we don't have time to stop for hours in the middle of the day. The temperatures are usually in the 70s and perfect for hiking. I'm in heaven.

1:30pm - 4:30pm: Though we're usually descending in the overall elevation profile, there are many small hills to climb and rocky terrain to navigate. We walk no faster than 2mph, and sometimes slower. It's hard to complain when the scenery is so stunning. There is water everywhere so we have gotten used to carrying no more than 2L at a time. This makes our packs much lighter and easier to carry. We also don't have to plan our day around water sources, since they are quite easy to find.

4:30pm - 5:00pm: We will still stop early for dinner if we get hungry enough. Between the cold weather and the tough terrain, we have been burning so many calories that we need the energy to keep us going for the next few hours. A warm meal does a lot to revive us. We clean out our pots at the end and pack everything away. Cooking before getting to camp also makes sure that no unwanted guests visit us in the night, looking for leftovers.

5:00pm - 8:00pm: We cover the rest of our mileage before dark. Campsites can be a little trickier to find in forested and alpine areas, but there are enough of them on this stretch that we manage to find something. We get updates about the trail ahead from southbounding JMT section hikers, so we can plan out our daily routes more accurately. We pitch our tents and quickly bundle into our warmest layers, since it gets cold when it gets dark. Instead of washing myself off with baby wipes, I am usually rewarded with a flowing water source beside our campsite. The only downside? It is glacial runoff and freezing. And though the dust is less prominent here than in the desert, I still enjoy cleaning myself off before bed as best I can. We stay up to talk and then I write in my journal in the warmth of my sleeping bag. We are usually asleep by 8:00 or 9:00.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA AND OREGON
Mileage: 25-30 miles per day

6:00am - 7:00am: This section of trail is an interesting blend between desert and mountain life. The days and nights are very warm but there is enough tree cover and water that we don't feel the effects of the heat as in Southern California. We settle into a routine of a 6:00am wake up call. I have my own tent now, so I learn the habits of how to pack up my own stuff in an efficient amount of time. We are usually in a hurry to get going, so I often skip my morning bathroom break and wait until I'm on trail to find a spot. Breakfast is still on-the-go and my hunger is such that I can't hike very long without getting hungry again. I don't have blisters to tend to anymore, but my feet are still sore every morning. I am so used to hobbling around for the first half hour that I don't even notice anymore.

7:00am - 9:00am: We have found our stride. We walk at a strong 2.5-3mph and with the flat, rolling terrain, we are able to cover a lot of miles each day. The trail can get kind of monotonous through this section, so I find that my favorite parts of the day are breaks. We create a clockwork-like schedule and stop every 5-6 miles, or two hours to catch up with each other.

9:00am - 9:15am: Second breakfast. We usually tailor our miles to stop at a water source. Water isn't as frequent as in the Sierras, but sometimes we can go up to 15 miles between sources. Fortunately, since we cover miles so quickly now, it isn't as dire as in the desert. We carry about 3L at a time. We snack on granola bars, jerky, dried fruit and peanut butter, and take time to filter our water before moving on.

9:15am - 12:00pm: This stretch of hiking is mostly spent thinking about lunch. The main goal is to cover at least half - if not more than half - of our miles for the day before stopping to eat. We will suffer through hunger and fatigue if it means we will have fewer miles to hike in the afternoon. Generally this means we will have to cover 15 miles before stopping for lunch, though depending on the difficulty of the terrain, we will stop after anywhere from 12-15 miles.

12:00pm - 1:00pm: Since we don't take afternoon siestas anymore, and since we can cover more miles in a day, we compromise by taking a long lunch. We often hike alone, at our own paces, but we always make sure to stop as a group for breaks. Lunch is the best part of the day because we can strip off our shoes, pull out our sit-mats and enjoy a leisurely break. We make elaborate lunches and tell each other jokes and stories. We try to find shade and water, but neither one is a necessity. For once, no one is in a hurry to move and we take the full hour to sit, which feels luxurious in a full day of walking.

1:00pm - 7:00pm: A good lunch usually powers us through the next few miles. We stop for small snack breaks every 2-3 hours or to fill up water. We will have dinner on trail near a water source if convenient, otherwise we'll have an extra snack break and keep pushing until camp. My body gets used to my new eating routine and tells me every two hours to stop for food.

7:00pm - 8:00pm: We generally try to be in camp by 7:00, since the sun is setting earlier and earlier, and it is usually dark by 7:30 or 8:00. There is a little bit of time to socialize or make dinner, but long days exhaust us. We walk anywhere from 25-30 miles, and by the time we get to camp, everyone just wants to go to bed. Sometimes I skip dinner if I'm too tired to cook. I stop writing in my journal and instead keep notes on my phone, since I don't have time to write everything out. I still clean myself off before bed, but it doesn't take as long since the trail is much less dusty.

WASHINGTON
Mileage: 20-25 miles per day

6:00am - 7:00am: In a lot of ways, we try to keep the same routine we had through NoCal and Oregon. But the terrain in Washington is much more difficult, and we soon find that we cannot sustain 25 mile days every day. We continue to wake up at 6, though this fluctuates based on weather. If it's raining, sometimes we stay in our tents another hour. It is usually cold and wet, so we dress appropriately and eat a quick breakfast before getting on trail. I try to keep at least one pair of socks dry at all times for safety, which means that often I have to put on wet socks day after day in the rain. Hiking warms us up and there are many difficult mountains to climb ahead.

7:00am - 9:00am: The first six miles are difficult, and usually I am starving by the time we stop for second breakfast.

9:00am - 9:15am: Second breakfast. This is also prime drying-out-gear time, so instead of looking for shade and water (as we have done in the past) we instead attempt to find a flat, dry slab of rock. There we can spread out our tents and sleeping bags and let the condensation (or rain) dry in the sunlight (provided its sunny by then). If it's still overcast or raining, our breaks are very short and sometimes we stay standing, since it gets much too cold to stop moving.

9:15am - 12:00pm: We keep hiking, trying to get in at least ten miles, if not more before lunch. Some days this is easy and some days it is extremely difficult. River fords take up more time than accounted for, so often this sets us back.

12:00pm - 1:00pm: Ideally, if it was overcast this morning, it gets sunny by lunchtime and we have time to dry out our gear. This isn't always the case, and sometimes we are forced to eat lunch under our umbrellas, which is tricky and uncomfortable. If the weather is nice, we take a long break and cook our meals so we can eat something warm. If the weather isn't nice, our breaks are shorter and we keep moving to get to camp as quickly as possible.

1:00pm - 6:00pm: We stop for water and snacks every few hours, but we're moving slower than usual and our days are dictated by the terrain and the weather. Often we keep granola bars in our pockets and eat on the go. We carry only 2L of water at a time - we should be drinking more, but the weather is so wet that we spend most of our time drenched and we don't think about drinking. Sometimes I go days before refilling my water. We try to get to camp as early as possible. Fall is in full swing and the nights are getting dark so fast. If we're not careful, we end up hiking with our headlamps on more than one occasion.

6:00pm - 8:00pm: Ideally we reach camp at 6, just before dark, but usually we can't get there until 7 or 7:30, when it's already pitch black outside. If we manage to get in camp at 6, it's cause for rejoicing and a very precious hour spent with friends. If it's raining we eat our lunches for dinner in our tents - this is the other reason we cook dinner at lunchtime - and if it's not, we have the luxury of building a bonfire in camp and eating around it. We set up our tents and pull on our warmest clothes, since it's very cold. I give up trying to wash myself off before bed - usually I've been drenched all day and I just don't care anymore. I write a few notes to myself before bed and fall asleep sometimes before 8:00.

As you can see, life on the trail is full of routine, but it also changes with the seasons and the landscape. Hopefully this has been a fun peak into what day-today life is like on the PCT!Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-29798357744517765882013-12-02T10:00:00.000-08:002013-12-16T21:29:18.366-08:00{FAQs about my PCT thru-hike}Hi readers! Thanks for all your great questions about my hike. And sorry about the length of this post... I warned you that once I start rambling about the trail, it's hard to get me to shut up. Hopefully these answers will help satisfy your curiosity. Let me know if I forgot anything!

And now, without further ado....

How much planning did you do before the trip?

I only had one month between the time I got laid off from my job to the day I started hiking on the PCT. Most people spend two years or more researching and planning for a thru-hike, so having only a month was a little stressful, especially since I'm rather OCD and NEED to plan out my life in advance. Fortunately, since I didn't have a job, I had plenty of time to prepare during the day. I had most of the gear I needed already, so most of my time was spent refining my pack and planning out my food drops. (This was a ridiculous task. More on this below.)

I was also fortunate to have a hiking partner who had been doing a few years of research about the PCT, as well as some friends who had hiked it previously. Having them to lean on when I had questions was a huge help. Also, I recommend Yogi's PCT Thru-hike guide. I read it cover to cover and while the advice should be taken with a grain of salt, overall it is very useful.

How exactly did your food packages work? Did you ship them all in advance or did you tell Tanner when they needed to go out?

I spent a LOT of time prior to the trail figuring out my food. I made sample itineraries, dates I would be arriving in each town and which stops had good grocery stores vs. ones that I needed to mail myself food and/or fuel. For places with little to no food options, I filled a USPS flat-rate box with the number of days of food I would need based on mileage and elevation for the next section. I made a pretty cool spreadsheet that detailed all of this: town stops, elevation gain, mileage, date of arrival (including if I arrived on a weekend or holiday so I would know that the post office would be closed), what was included in each box, and date it needed to be shipped by in order to arrive in time. I addressed and labeled all the boxes and left the spreadsheet with Tanner, so all he had to do was check the list and bring the pre-packaged box to the post office on the date specified. I even left him pre-labeled bags of items (such as cheese) in the fridge so he could just pull them out and add them to the box before mailing. All in all, I made the process very simple and fool-proof for him so that if I couldn't get in contact with him on the trail, at least I knew I would have food waiting for me at the next town.

Inevitably, for the first few boxes I called him quite a bit to add or subtract items as needed. My food preferences changed quite a lot over the course of the hike and in the end I didn't like a lot of the things I packaged for myself once I was on trail. When I arrived in Portland, I packaged all my boxes for Washington with the things I knew I liked by then. It was a much easier process the second time around, since I knew what I was doing. All in all, I made and shipped 14 boxes over the course of my trip.

What foods/drinks did you crave on trail? What was your favorite meal on trail? What food did you get tired of?

I started to answer these questions separately and then realized that food for the PCT is a whole post in and of itself. (Cravings, meals, resupply, etc etc) so I'm going to write a more in-depth answer to these in a future post. Stay tuned!

How much did thru-hiking the PCT cost? What did you find you spent the most money on?

They say thru-hiking costs about $2/mile, which would be just over $5,000. I would say most people spend anywhere from $2,000 to $8,000, with $5k being pretty average. Grated, this depends a lot on how you hike your hike. I had a lot of gear before I started, so I didn't spend as much getting outfitted as a lot of people have to. I would suggest spending your money on a good sleep system, tent and backpack. Everything else is just stuff and it's going to get trashed anyway, so don't spend too much on top-of-the-line clothing or anything, since you'll most likely be going through multiple sets. (Plus, the less you buy, the less you have to carry!)

Actually, gear is only a small percentage of what people spend. Most of your expenses come from staying in towns along the way. Hotels take up a big chunk. And no one told me this, but when you get to town, you'll eat at MINIMUM four meals. Plus snacks. Plus dessert. Plus midnight grocery store raids. I knew I'd spend a lot of money on food, but I didn't realize I'd spend MOST of my money on food. You're just hungry all the time, so you spend to satisfy an incurable beast.

What piece of gear did you think you needed but didn't? What piece did you not think you needed but did?

I dumped a lot of gear my first day out on trail. It was difficult giving some of it up, but I quickly discovered that I didn't need any of it. And I hung onto a lot of stuff that I should have gotten rid of then, too. I would say the most notable thing that comes to mind was my solar charger. I was convinced it was going to be worth the 14oz that it weighed, and I had a hard time sending it home. But most people who kept their solar chargers ended up getting rid of them. A backup battery is much lighter and it works just as well, since you're in towns frequently enough to recharge everything anyway.

I didn't think I would need gaiters, but I brought a pair of lightweight Dirty Girl brand ones, anyway. Granted, they didn't keep me from getting filthy (mesh shoes will make your feet dirty no matter what) but by tucking my pants in them, I did manage to keep the amount of dust that blew on my legs to a minimum.

Another piece of gear I didn't think I needed was a bandana. (I know, right?) I wore a sunhat through the desert so I assumed I wouldn't need one, though I fortunately brought one, anyway. Bandanas are the amazing jack-of-all-trades in a backpacker's world. You can literally do everything from blowing your nose to filtering chunks out of your water with it. (Maybe different bandanas..) I was shocked to learn how much snot/ mucus/ blood/ dirt/ sweat came out of every pore in my body in the desert (no one tells you that your nose will bleed for three weeks if you're not used to dry weather!) so a bandana saved my butt. If it wasn't in my pocket within close range 24/7 I panicked.

How did you write all your posts along trail?

Writing posts was a surprisingly difficult thing to do. I wasn't sure the best way to go about it in the beginning, so I tried several different approaches. At the start of the trip I was determined to keep a hand-written journal. I had a bunch of loose paper I would write on every single night and then mail home to myself when I got to town. After 1,000 miles I had written over 200 pages worth. I also tried to write a daily post on my phone so that when I had internet signal I could post it online.

I attempted this method for the first half of my trip. It was stressful and time consuming to write every day, but in the desert I could often keep myself caught up by writing during our afternoon siestas. Once I was in Northern California and we were walking 28 miles every day, it was much harder to keep up with my journal. I stopped hand-writing pages every night (this saved some weight, too, since I didn't have to carry paper) and instead I just kept notes on my phone about each day and updated my online journal when I was in town. Town days can be really stressful too, though, and sometimes I didn't have the chance to update my blog. There were a few times (such as in Bend) when I spent a whole zero-day writing a month of entries to post daily while I was walking. I hated writing blog entries on my phone since the screen was so small, so I gave up writing them on trail after a while. It was much easier to do it on a computer screen, especially since I can be verbose sometimes. There were a number of people on trail who faithfully kept up their blogs even while walking 30 miles/day and I have no idea how they did it. I was usually too exhausted to do anything but sleep at the end of the day.

How did you remember all that happened to create a post every day?

I kept notes for myself so I could look back and write the entries. Though they weren't very detailed notes, I was surprised how much I could remember about every day. Your memory does crazy things on trail. When you're living so completely in the present, it's amazing what you can recall. I could write myself a note like, "climbed 5,000 feet in the first ten miles today and stopped by a stream for a snack break" and I would be able to remember every step of the climb, envision what the views were, who I was walking with, and how I was feeling. It's incredible what the mind remembers when you're so fully immersed in your own life. I can still play back every day on trail and remember minute details like it was yesterday. It's like having a super power!

Did you see any wildlife along that way that scared you? Most specifically... snakes?!

I saw a lot of wildlife on trail, but nothing truly terrifying. Bears and rattlesnakes may have been the worst, but even they weren't that bad. I have had many encounters with black bears on the east coast, and I'm still not that big of a fan of them. Fortunately, they hate noise and if you yell at them, they'll leave you alone. Thru-hikers see a lot of bears but very rarely have issues with them. You just want to make sure to be vigilant about your food storage.

Rattlesnakes I was worried about if only because I had never encountered one and I was really nervous about getting bitten. But after the first few encounters, the fear goes away. The nice thing about rattlesnakes is that they do NOT want to have contact with you. They have a nice, loud warning that you can hear from far away, and you're only too happy to give them some space. The rest of the snakes on trail were very small and harmless, and they never bothered anyone. They also don't live above 10,000 feet, so when you're in the mountains you don't have to worry about them. I had heard rumors about snakes crawling into your sleeping bag if you cowboy camped, which terrified me, but after cowboy camping a few nights, I realized this is very unlikely. The joys of sleeping out under the stars eventually completely outweighed my fear of snakes (and I am a big wuss). After a while, you learn to co-habitate peacefully with the wildlife on trail, and for the most part, if you don't bother them, they don't bother you. Honestly, the biggest pain in my ass were the ants in Southern California. Those bastards are EVERYWHERE. They truly rule the planet.

Other cool animals I saw on trail included: marmots, rock pikas, horny toads (SO CUTE), elk, deer, pine martens, white scorpions (only while night hiking), rattlesnakes, gopher snakes, garter snakes, black bears, gray fox, mountain goats, cattle, bald eagles, hummingbirds, ravens, grouse (scared the shit out of me the first time I heard one. It sounds like a grunting bear), mountain chickadees, stellar jays, quail (actually, birds of ALL kinds, but I can't name them all), crawfish, lizards, banana slugs, butterflies, squirrels and chipmunks. I also saw mountain lion and bobcat tracks in the sand but never saw one (they're quite elusive).

What were your biggest fears before starting the trail? Were they unfounded or come true?

I had a couple main issues before I started hiking. In retrospect, they seem kind of silly, but they worried me enough to keep me up at night and wondering if I shouldn't hike the trail after all.

First, I hate sleeping outside. Yeah, I said it. I'm a really light sleeper and I wake up at anything. Literally. If some tree branch snaps outside my tent, I'm wide awake and my mind is screaming BEAR! BEAR! BEAR! I hate it. I have the craziest imagination and it sucks sometimes. I was petrified about spending every night for five months inside a little piece of nylon, as if it would protect me from bears and snakes and other wildlife that wanted to kill me.

In reality, you hardly ever get bothered at night. And even bears leave you alone when you yell at them. I also found that I was so exhausted every night that I passed out within seconds of lying down. I started to enjoy sleeping outdoors, and even grew to love cowboy camping. It's hard to be frightened of the dark when the stars are so bright. Now I miss my tent... sleeping indoors on a soft bed feels too stuffy, too luxurious.

The other thing I was wary about was hitchhiking. I had no interest in it, and even went so far as to think about walking to towns rather than catching a lift. This was another fear that was quickly abandoned. For one thing, I made sure to never hitch alone, and this made me more comfortable. For another thing, almost every "big, scary" city on the west coast is situated on the coast, and every town that is over the mountain range, in line with the PCT, is tiny. Therefore, all the locals are well versed with thru-hiker tradition, and if they see you hitching, they know why. I met some of the nicest people on hitches to town.

How long does it take to "earn" a trail name?

Most people had trail names after two weeks. In retrospect, this is SO fast. But when you're on trail, two weeks feels like forever. Every day has so much going on that after a week in the desert you could swear you've been out there a month. Ideally, you should get your trail name after spending enough time with the people around you that they can name you accurately, based on some silly story you told or trait you have. Otherwise you end up getting stuck with a name like "Commando" or "Irish" just because you wear a kilt, or "Giant" or "Bigfoot" just because you're tall.

Overall, having a trail name is a great part of the spirit of the PCT. It's not just a "nickname", it's your second identity, your second true name. It represents the life you have outside your life. The trail challenges you to your very core, and like a true spirit journey, you are reborn with a new name.

What was the toughest part physically and mentally?

Physically, central California and Washington are the two hardest sections. Although, looking back, I don't remember the Sierras being that difficult. Of course, I know they WERE, but I was just so enamored by the mountains that I didn't even care. Also, we were only pulling 16 mile days, which made life a lot easier. Washington I recall being much harder, because the terrain was difficult and we were doing 20-25 miles every day, and it was the final stretch of our journey so it was annoying to get crushed by the trail after killing it for so long.

Mentally, the beginning and the end were the hardest for me. I don't do well with heat, so the desert was a very difficult struggle for me. I thrive in places with water and mountains, and Southern California had neither of those. Since it was the start of a very long journey, I had to battle some strong inner-demons to keep myself motivated every day. But once I hit my stride, the trail became much more enjoyable for me. The end of the trip was also mentally exhausting because of all the logistics with the weather and trying to finish at the border. It was very emotionally trying and though I wouldn't change anything about my journey, it was a difficult dream to let go.

Did the trail ever get easier? (For example, was day five harder than day fifty?)

I don't think the trail ever gets "easier." It does, however, get "less hard." In the beginning you're dragging yourself through the miles and the weather, but after a while, your body gets stronger and you find you can suffer through a lot more. I had this grand vision that someday, when I had been hiking for a month and I was physically fit, that I would be able to scale mountains at a run with a full pack on. This is not the case. Uphill climbs are always hard, no matter how long you've been hiking, and most likely, your pace won't change. (This was a bummer for me, since I hike slow. The most I accomplished was 2mph at the beginning to 2.5mph by the end) The main difference I noticed was that my endurance was higher. I hated climbs, but I could get through five miles of uphill without stopping for a break because my legs could handle it. But they were never fun.

A friend of mine summed up a thru-hike well for me. He said: "the longer you hike, the stronger you get, but at the same time, the longer you hike, the more your body starts to break down." It's a strange dichotomy, that even as you get stronger, your body is also falling apart, piece by piece. Things just start hurting and never stop. You learn to live with it.

How much did you train before starting the trail? Could you hike 20 mile days right away?

Ugh, I hate to admit this, but I didn't really train at all. I tried to, but really anything you do at home is just not going to accurately duplicate the severity of Southern California (unless you live there). My first three weeks on trail were nothing short of hellish. I was tired, I had no appetite, I felt ill from the heat, I had no energy, I was thirsty, I had blisters all over my feet, I was in pain most of the time, I was hot and stumbling along the trail every day. I can see why a lot of people quit early on - between the heat and the long miles and the lack of water, it's a mental battle as much as a physical one. The only reason I made it through was my own tenacity: I was too stubborn to quit. That's really all it takes to accomplish a thru-hike, is the desire to keep yourself going, even when the going gets tough. On my hardest days I just kept thinking about all the people back home who were rooting for me, and who believed in me. This was strong enough incentive to keep going: I wanted to make everyone proud and I knew I couldn't live with myself if I let them (or me!) down.

I couldn't do 20 mile days right away. I did 20 miles my first day out, and then after that dropped down to 11-16 miles a day. Even that was a stretch sometimes. Fortunately I had an equally stubborn hiking partner who kept me going even when I didn't want to. I doubt I would have made it through the desert without her there, so I'm thankful for that. After three weeks I finally regained my appetite and grew some stronger hiking legs, and life was considerably better after that (though not necessarily easier.)

I'm curious about how your body adapts to a strenuous hike - did you lose a lot of weight on trail? Can "unfit" people thru-hike?

I lost about 10 pounds on trail. Most of it was lost in the first month, and after that my weight stayed pretty stable, even considering how much food I was eating. There weren't many scales or mirrors available on trail, so it's hard to say how much my weight fluctuated. The only gauge I had that I was losing weight was that my pants were growing looser. The first time I saw myself in a mirror was shocking - my face had grown a lot slimmer, too. I loved it - I stress about food and exercise at home, and being on trail was like having a free pass. All I had to do was walk every day and I could eat whatever I wanted. It was wonderful.

Almost everyone loses weight on trail. How much you lose depends on how heavy you are to start with. I had a couple of friends on trail who lost anywhere from 30-50 pounds, proving that even if you are out of shape, you can hike the PCT. All you need is some fortitude and a love of walking, and you can make it. The trail will eventually whip everyone into shape. In general, guys lose a lot more weight than women do. Women become more muscular, while men turn into skinny bean poles. You do want to be very careful that you're eating enough. Some people have this mindset that the trail is a great "workout", but it is NOT a diet. If you eat less, you won't have the energy to keep hiking. We were consuming anywhere from 2,000-5,000 calories a day in food and still losing weight. I found that hiking the PCT put me more in tune with my body and what it was craving, and when it needed food, and what would happen if I didn't get the calories I needed to keep walking. It was really fascinating.

How easy is it to get lost on the PCT? How did you navigate?

The PCT is a very well marked trail and it's very simple to navigate 95% of the time. That being said, we did carry maps and a GPS phone app that kept us on trail. I'm going to go into more detail on this in another post, so stay tuned for more info!

How did your expectations differ from the actuality of hiking long distance?

The main thing I wanted to get out of my thru-hike was a sense of community and a chance to be out in the wild for five months. I received both of these things, to a degree I did not expect. I knew the people of the trail were a huge part of why you'd hike long distances, but I did not realize what a strong bond you create in such a short period of time. Because you're all suffering and triumphing together every day, you become very close. You share an experience that only those people can relate to. I'm a pretty guarded and introverted person most of the time - I have a hard time expressing/showing my feelings and emotions out loud - so it was interesting to me to see how barriers and facades completely crumble when you're out on trail. There's just no way to hide if you're tired, or grumpy, or hungry, or elated, so you share your "true self" to everyone, whether you want to or not. A friend of mine told me upon returning home that I talk a lot more than I used to. Over the few months I spent off the grid, I grew accustomed to saying whatever I wanted and being accepted for it by the people around me. It's a very freeing and honest way to live.

What I didn't expect was the outpouring of human kindness along the trail. I knew about trail angels, of course, but I never expected the amount of magic they bestowed on us, and to the degree they did: opening up their homes, their backyards, giving us food, showers, rides, laundry, a place to stay... some angels, like the Sauffley's in the desert, even cart in something like an extra 300 gallons of water for thru-hikers to shower when they come through. And most of these expenses from their own pocket, as even our donations could hardly compensate. It's truly amazing, the goodness of people.

What were your favorite parts of the trail? (Do you have any recommendations for shorter backpacking trips?)

The whole trail is nothing short of amazing. It's hard to pick an absolute "favorite" section, because I loved all of them for different reasons (even the desert!) I would say if I were forced to choose, I would go with these three:

1. The Sierra Nevadas. It's easy to see why the John Muir section of the PCT is a favorite for backpackers. It's stunning - gorgeous mountains, lakes, blue skies, vistas... it has it all. Plus, arriving in the Sierras after 700 miles of desert was just breath-taking. It was completely worth the months of heat and dehydration just to walk among those peaks for a few weeks. I would go back in a heartbeat.

2. Alpine Lakes Wilderness and Glacier Peak Wilderness. Despite having horrible weather and difficult terrain 50% of the time I was walking through Washington, I was completely in love with it. Everything north of Snoqualmie Pass (the Northern Cascades) was breathtaking. The towering mountains in all directions were beautiful, and for some reason felt so much more remote than any other part of the trail.

3. Goat Rocks Wilderness. Though technically we walked through the whole wilderness in one day, it's worth a return trip. The PCT only goes through a very small part of the park and the views are incomparable. Despite being terrified most of the time I was walking the knife's edge, I looked forward to Goat Rocks for 2200 miles and I wasn't disappointed.

If I had to pick other small sections that would be great for smaller backpacking trips I would recommend the San Jacinto Mountains to Whitewater Preserve near Idyllwild, CA, the Vasquez Rocks area near Agua Dulce, CA, the Crater Lake and Three Sisters Wilderness in Oregon, and the section between Snoqualmie Pass and Steven's Pass in Washington. But it's hard to go wrong.

What were your favorite trail towns?

I loved trail towns!! Most of them were tiny and adorable and easily walkable, which is a huge plus for people who don't have cars. I kept saying I want to take a road trip someday and visit all the towns I stopped through along my journey. Some notable favorites include, California: Julian (so adorable. Amazing pie), Idyllwild (rustic, full of pine trees and cabins, which I loved, so cute), Bishop (the views of the Cascades are amazing), Etna (so tiny. So cute.) Oregon: Ashland (hippie central. I wanted to stay there forever!), Bend (what's not to love about Bend?!), Portland (duh), Washington: Trout Lake (if you want to know why, read my blog post about the people/trail magic we received there. I still tear up.) Stehekin (a little town on the lake with an amazing bakery... done.)

Actually, it's funny: most of what thru-hikers remember about towns is the food. Ask about what we did there, and we'll regale you with all the amazing places we ate. Picking the right restaurants for each of our four daily meals was a very, very important decision.

What do you think about when you're walking all day? Don't you get bored??

Believe it or not, I didn't have a single bit of music for the first 1,000 miles of my journey. Most people listen to their iPods while walking through the desert to keep themselves entertained. I was determined not to - mainly for two reasons: I didn't want to get sick of my music, and I wanted to be able to hear the world around me (ie, rattlesnakes.)

Of course, one month in I was desperate for entertainment. I told myself the sounds of nature would be enough, but you grow quickly jaded by it (much to the shock of the dayhikers you run into, who think listening to iPods on trail is blasphemy.) I finally compromised and put podcasts and audio books on my phone, which turned out to be very entertaining, because they were always different and interesting. I found I listened to them a lot more when the trail was boring - I went through endless podcasts the whole time I was in Oregon because the trail was so flat and monotonous. In places like the Sierras and Washington, I didn't really have a need to listen to anything because I was too focused on the scenery and the difficult terrain.

When I wasn't listening to something, I thought about all kinds of stuff. Mostly about the trail - I did a LOT of math in my head, everything from how many miles I had hiked to how many I had left, to how fast I was going, to how fast I'd have to go in order to make it a certain number of miles by a certain time, etc etc. It began to sound like a high school physics class test. ("If Bramble leaves camp at 8 am hiking at 2.8 mph and she has 24.67 miles to go to camp, how many hours will it take her to get there, assuming she takes a 10 minute break every two hours and 30 min for lunch?") I got really good at it, actually. I was to the point where I could calculate how long it took me to walk 1/10 of a mile, so when my GPS told me I was 7.6 mile from town, I knew exactly what time I would be there, down to the minute. Sometimes this was satisfying and sometimes this was frustrating, for example, if you reeeeeally want to make it there faster and you know you just can't. The numbers never lie. If you suck at math I suggest hiking the PCT. It will turn you into a top-notch student.

When I wasn't thinking about the trail, I thought about the things I wanted to do when I got home. I hardly ever thought about "real life" - that just meant bills and work and all that, something I didn't want to focus on (even though I hoped I would discover my "true career" on trail, I never thought about it even once). Instead, I thought about living in a lake house someday with Tanner and sitting on the porch painting next to the water. Or I thought about car camping, bringing stuff like CHAIRS and GRILLS and HAMMOCKS. Or I thought about the next adventures I wanted to take. In the desert I dreamed a lot about water. Or I wrote novels in my head. Out in the wild, I felt like I could do anything. Go anywhere. Be anyone. It was immensely satisfying. Sometimes I would pick a topic to think about. We would joke about it in the mornings before leaving camp - "what are you going to think about today?" and see how long you could stay on one tangent. Your mind is a weird place when you're stuck with it all day.

What would you do differently if you hiked the trail a second time around?

A couple main things come to mind.

1. I would send fewer resupply boxes to myself. I got tired of most everything I made for myself in advance. Shopping more in towns allows you more creativity with your food cravings, and when you're on trail, you think about food a LOT. If it makes or breaks your happiness, why chance it? And knowing now what I do about towns, it would be much easier to plan a second time around.

2. I would bring less stuff. Or at least get lighter stuff. I consistently had a heavy backpack and carrying less weight ultimately makes your journey easier. Sounds like a simple concept, but a lot of people (including me) think "but I need this!!" and carry extraneous gear "just in case." Most of it is unnecessary. Plus, it's annoying to have to pack up every morning, so if you have less stuff to pack, it doesn't take as long. Win win!

3. I would make some adjustments to my gear. Knowing what I do now about weather and conditions in each of the sections, I could tailor my stuff more accurately - footwear, clothing pieces, rain gear, etc.

4. I would train more before leaving. It would make the start of the trip more enjoyable if I wasn't fighting terrain, weather AND an out-of-shape body.

5. I would start earlier and go slower. The unfortunate thing about the PCT is that you're always racing the weather. You usually have to start in late April so you don't get to the Sierras too early, in case they still have snow. But on dry years like this summer, I think if I had started earlier in April it would have made the conditions in Washington easier.

6. It's funny.... while I was hiking the trail I kept telling myself, "why do people hike this trail more than once? Everyone who finishes immediately wants to do it again. But I have no desire to ever do this again." And that statement was true for most of my journey. Yes, I was having a good time, but no, I wouldn't willingly do the hardest thing I have ever done in my life a second time. What am I, a masochist??

But as Starfox kept telling us, the PCT is known as "type two fun." Fun you have only after you've finished having it, and not during. Now that I'm off trail, now that I'm looking back and remembering it... it's hard to forget the wonderful moments and easy to forget the terrible ones. And I know if someone asked me again if I wanted to hike the PCT a second time, believe it or not, I would say yes.

Thanks everyone! I hope you enjoyed it! I'll be returning to my regular posting schedule of Mon/Wed/Fridays, so I'll see you in a couple days!

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The journey continues...
forward to {a trip to the beach}
back to {culture shock}

Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-17760995427383422502013-11-27T10:00:00.000-08:002013-12-16T21:28:01.740-08:00{things i've forgotten about real life}
Oh, culture shock.

If I thought I would have an easy re-entry from trail life (after all, didn't I spend many of my trail days languishing in the delights of town?) I was mistaken. Simple, easy things I would have never considered to be issues are suddenly life-altering decisions. Wait, I have to take a shower every day? Is that truly necessary? And why are there so many toothpaste options at the drug store? I could spend hours in the aisles trying to decide between "whitening action" or "preventing tooth decay."

Here are a few more things that caught me by surprise during re-entry:

* I have so much stuff. Seriously. It just sits there.... on shelves... doing nothing. And then, when I'm not looking, it migrates all over the house and I have to spend inordinate amounts of time putting it back on shelves, where it sits... doing nothing. All of it wants attention and cleaning, and I have better things to do with my time. Thru-hiker motto: if each object doesn't serve at least two purposes, it's extravagant.

* Why is peeing so much more annoying at home? There are way too many steps involved. Open bathroom door. Close bathroom door. Lift toilet lid. Pull down pants. Sit. Pee. Stand up. Flush. Wash hands. Open bathroom door. I would just pee in my yard for the convenience of it, but apparently in society, people frown on that.

* I have too many clothing options. Suddenly everything is cute or fashionable instead of practical for the weather. I'm used to different combinations of layering with my three available options, not this whole closet-full of superfluous outfits.

* None of my shoes fit. None of them. This is kind of annoying, except for the fact that I really don't care. I've been wearing one brand of sneakers for the last five months, so any excuse not to wear high heels is fine with me.

* This insatiable, incurable, ravenous hunger!! I can't eat like a thru-hiker anymore, content that my 25 mile days will keep off whatever 4,000 calories I've just consumed in 15 minutes. I forgot how stressful it is to count calories and force myself to exercise all the time. I liked it way better when I could just hike all day, eat whatever the hell I wanted and still look and feel awesome.

* I still don't have feeling in my toes or the bottoms of my feet. I think the latter is due to my awesome bomb-proof calluses, but telling people I can't feel my toes seems to alarm them. Oh, is that not normal?

* Indoor air and water. It smells different. It tastes different. So... manufactured. And fake. And not at all appealing.

* I get momentarily super excited when I see a convenience store. In my hiker-brain, the presence of a convenience store means chocolate milk, a new packet of wet-wipes, and possibly even a microwaveable pizza. Then I realize that I live within close proximity to approximately 497562 convenience stores and I can go there whenever I want. (And that there are better options out there.)

* When did I become an old lady and have to pee in the middle of the night? I think my body is confused by the over-excess of water that I'm suddenly not expending in sweat every day.

* Claustrophobia. Now, I'm not a claustrophobic person, but being inside too long, or around big crowds is enough to make me feel stifled. I went downtown a few days after returning home and almost had an anxiety attack. So many people. I miss my remote wilderness.

* My knees are killing me. I was extremely lucky not to have any trail-ending issues while I was hiking, but now that I'm home it's like my body is telling me, "oh, we're resting now? Ok. I'm going to start hurting, then." And I can barely even walk. After feeling so strong for so long, this sucks.

* Suddenly bills are a thing. Like, I have to pay for my shelter, even though it doesn't have cool new views every day. And I have to pay for my light source. And water. And this filtered stuff they call "air." And apparently I have to do this monthly. Or they get angry.

* Speaking of money, life is expensive. Did you know you can live in the woods for practically nothing? As long as you have shelter, clothing and some food, you can figure everything else out. Now I can't even leave the house without spending $50. Why is that?

* I used to get migraines a few times a month at my last job. From the day I stepped foot on trail until the end of my journey five months later, I didn't suffer a single headache or even remotely get the sniffles. I think it may be the longest stretch I've gone in my life without getting sick. The minute I rejoin society, I seem to be plagued by illness again...

* I can relate everything back to the trail. Everything. Veteran hikers told me this would happen, but I didn't realize how much. Someone will be telling me a story and I'll want to pipe in and say, "Oh, this one time on trail....!" but then I stop myself because apparently not everyone wants to hear me talk about the PCT 24/7. This is sort of depressing, because some days it's all I have/want to talk about.

* I don't have to buy things based on weight. Oh, I can get the cost-effective two-pack instead of the travel size? How novel.

* When I wash my hair, I don't have to shampoo it three times. Like, it lathers on the first try. Weird.

* Society's dependence on time. You have to be at work at a certain time. And pay bills on a certain day. And keep up with deadlines and anniversaries and holidays and important events. I'm lucky if I know it's a Monday. I'm used to clocking my days by the sun, and the miles...

* Driving is hard. Forty miles an hour? In traffic? In the dark? That is not a normal speed for the human body to be traveling. When I'm going at 2.5 miles an hour at least I can see the rattlesnakes ahead. And prepare for the next water source. And take photos while I'm walking. Forty miles an hour? How do you even get a chance to experience life at that speed?

* Apparently there's more to talk about in life than the trail, food, pooping, and sex. (There's not. You're just too polite to admit it.)

* Nothing is simple and everyone puts on facades. What, I can't pee wherever I want to? Eat whenever I want to? Sleep wherever I walk? Walk wherever I please? Say whatever I want? There are too many rules to follow, too many hoops to jump through, too many etiquettes to follow. I just want to be me, and be accepted for it.

* The dependence on communication. Suddenly I have internet and cell service every day instead of once a week for an hour. Suddenly there's the compulsion to keep in touch, to reach out, to be on social media, to check my email a million times a day... why is this important? I was so much happier without it in my life.

* I have forgotten how to relax. On trail my "easy" days meant walking 15 miles instead of 26. Even my "days off" in town were full of resupply shopping, calling home, cleaning my gear, finding a place to stay the night, getting food to eat, doing laundry, taking a shower, etc etc etc. And all of this in the span of 12 hours. Now I have an infinite number of hours to relax and it's making me feel... useless.

* Decisions are so hard. I didn't make any decisions on trail. Nothing more earth-shattering than "when should I stop for lunch?" or "how many miles should we do today?" The only important decision was to keep walking north. Now suddenly I have to make a decision every 5.2 seconds or life will fall apart. Everyone wants to ask me, so what are you going to do now? What's next? What jobs are you applying for? When does the wedding planning begin? Are you going to stay in Oregon or move? I can't even make a decision about what cereal I want to eat in the morning, much less decisions that change my life. This is incredibly stressful and it has given me a few breakdowns in the past few weeks. I'm slowly learning to manage all these priorities again. It's not easy.

* We have a saying on the PCT, that the "trail provides." Even on your crappiest, awfulest days, there will be something that inevitably pulls you out. Maybe it's the kindness of a stranger, or a sunny day after a week of rain, or a friend pulling you through. Whatever it is, things always seem to fall together on the PCT, to make more sense, to create a kind of chaotic harmony. Life at home isn't quite like that. Sometimes bad days are just bad and life doesn't always "provide" in the end. Things fall apart and sometimes they don't fall back together. If we took a page from the trail and we spent a little more time looking out for one another, rather than looking out for ourselves, we'd probably find that life was a little more harmonic and we'd all be a little happier in the end.

* And you know what the most interesting thing I've discovered about this journey has been? Most people hike a long-distance trail, in some way or another, to "find" themselves. And while you're on this journey, you're consumed by pain and doubt and fear and trials and tribulations, and all the while you're thinking this is hell. Why am I doing this again? How is this helping me to discover my true calling? And then, slowly, you discover the joys, the triumphs, the successes, the beauty. You learn to appreciate each and every day.

And yet, still you don't truly "find" yourself. At least, not in the way you thought you would. You discover your strengths, and what you're capable of, but you don't come out of it with a whole new outlook on life. You aren't struck by some dazzling ray of enlightenment: "I KNOW WHAT I WAS MEANT TO DO IN THIS WORLD." Instead, you come home and feel dazed and confused and slightly depressed because you haven't figured out what you were put here on this earth to do. You haven't figured out your life's calling. You spent five months in the woods on some sort of spiritual journey and you ended up even more lost than when you started.

But the thing is, you discover that that's okay. You spent every day on trail not thinking about WHO I AM, but about water. And food. And how your feet hurt. And how far the next campsite is. And after hundreds of days just like that, you realize that you survived it all, and that without realizing it, you became stronger. So who cares if you didn't discover your life's calling? Who cares if you didn't spend every waking moment thinking about your career or where your life is going? Because while you weren't thinking about these things, you were living them, instead. Your life is a journey that only you can take, and even if you don't find yourself along the way, you're going to have one hell of a ride if you just throw yourself completely in.

So life is confusing and I'm slowly trying to readapt. (Though part of me really doesn't want to... there's a lot to be said for living very simply, and I miss that.)

In the meantime, I've kept away some of my post-trail depression by writing up these journal entries. I've really enjoyed re-living my journey, and I'm glad you guys have been enjoying it, too. I'm currently trying to go back to the earlier entries and add photos so that you can see what the desert looked like. Feel free to check back on those if you're interested! Some of them are pretty awesome. It reminds me that though the desert is a hot hellish place, it's also a beautiful one.

Now that the journey is over, I'm hoping to add some post-hike info regarding some things about trail life such as my daily routine, gear choices on trail, food/resupply info, navigation, and some other tid-bits. But I realize a lot of you must have interesting questions for me about my journey (something better than "what was your favorite part of the trip?" because I know you wouldn't ask me something silly like that, right? :) ) But if you do have a burning curiosity about some part of my journey that I didn't fully expound on, feel free to ask! You can leave me a comment, write me a Facebook message or send me an email: brittany(at)darkroomanddearly(dot)com. I'll compile an FAQ sheet in the next few days and add it to the blog. So rustle up those questions!

Meanwhile, I'm going to take a little break for the Thanksgiving holiday... I'll be back next week with more posts! Happy holidays!

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The journey continues...
forward to {FAQs about my hike}
back to {learning to accept the end of the journey}
Brittanyhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-5072728307617622313.post-13234949194717610542013-11-26T10:00:00.000-08:002013-12-16T21:26:25.523-08:00{learning to accept the end of the journey}When I returned to the real world from the trail, part of me didn't quite realize what a culture shock it would be. Of course, I knew after five months of living in the wild that certain things would take some adapting to, but I never realized how difficult this would be.

I came home expecting to spend my days basking in my own wonderful glow of adventure. Instead, I felt myself buried by small things: there were bills to pay. And my lease was up in a few months. And I needed to find a job to pay for all these things. Life caught up to me, and I realized how much I hated living on the grid. I hated being a slave to rent payments and responsibilities and the things in the real world that tied me down. I wanted to feel the freedom I felt on the trail, knowing I could do and be anything I wanted to be. Knowing that the world was open to me, that nothing was unconquerable if I wanted it desperately enough.
But now, suddenly, I felt reined in by society's demands. You're almost thirty. You're supposed to have a mortgage and a career and thirteen kids already.

I felt myself slipping into a post-trail depression. I used to wake up every morning surrounded by friends. I would walk through beautiful landscapes and stunning scenery. I would breathe the open air and feel the strength of my body propelling me forward. I would go to bed surrounded by friends and do it all again the next day.
And now I was just... alone. I woke up every day in a stuffy house. Tanner would leave me to go to work and I would be at home, not knowing what to do with myself. It took me a long time to figure out what it was that was causing this overwhelming gloom.

And then I realized: I no longer had a purpose.
On trail I had one overwhelming purpose for five months: walk north. Walk north. Walk north. And the desire and the dedication to complete my goal was enough of a spark to keep me going. I was seeing new things! Meeting new people! Walking from one end of the States to the other!
But suddenly, I had none of that. My one driving goal was gone, and with it, my sense of purpose.

I wandered through my days like a zombie, trying to pick up the pieces of who I was when I was on trail. I am strong. I am capable. I am vibrant and adventurous and bad-ass.
But suddenly I didn't feel it. Suddenly my self-esteem was leaking out the door. I couldn't remember why I had been so confident in myself, why I had felt like I could take on the world. Now I was trapped in a tiny world when I had become accustomed to wandering through a big one. I wanted my wilderness back. I wanted my sense of purpose.

It's heartbreaking to leave behind a dream you've carried for 2,600 miles, especially when the goal hovers just tantalizingly out of reach. Fifty miles and I would have completed my journey. Fifty miles. And part of this depression that seeps over me at home, part of it has to do with the fact that I haven't finished the task I set out to do five months ago. Part of it has to do with the fact that I want to finish, and instead I'm trapped at home, feeling useless and without purpose.

Friends and family at home try to console us: "it doesn't matter that you didn't finish. Fifty miles out of 2,600 is nothing! We know you made it from Mexico to Canada."
Yes, fifty miles is nothing. A two day walk, no more. On any other stretch of trail, it would barely even register. But on the final fifty miles? Nothing could be more crucial. Nothing could be more important.

Our friends and family still try to console us. They don't understand. They say, "remember, it's the journey, and not the destination, that matters."
It's a nice sentiment in a way, and I can't find the heart to argue with them. But if I'm being truthful, I can't agree. Yes, the journey was wonderful. Yes, it was life changing. Yes, technically I walked from Mexico through most of California, Oregon and Washington. But to say that the destination doesn't matter is a slap in the face. Friends and family don't understand what it is to be a thru-hiker. They don't have that mindset. They don't understand that for five months, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, we had one driving goal. One. To walk north to the monument.
In the real world, you battle with hundreds of goals every day: working hard enough to earn yourself a lunch break. Working on a project that's due at the end of the week. Saving for a vacation at the end of the month. Saving for a new house. For a new baby. For retirement. Goals are coming and going so quickly that you barely notice them. You celebrate them daily, begin another just as fast. Imagine working for five months on a project merely to have it torn up in your face by your boss. But it was all the work you did, and not the final result that matters, right?

And for a thru-hiker? Life is simple. Life is straight forward. Every single person walking the trail is living in the present moment and no further. And every single moment of your day is spent reaching one mighty goal: to make it to Canada. To reach that northern monument, just as you left behind the southern one. There are no big decisions to be made. There are no stresses. There is nothing hindering you from your one overwhelming destination. You wake up. You walk north. You go to sleep. You wake up. You walk north. You go to sleep. And as you grow closer and closer, the obsession grows stronger. Your will power grows stronger. Your resolve, your strength, your determination grows stronger. You realize that you have broken every barrier you have ever built for yourself and you've just walked twenty six hundred miles from one end of the country to the other. And dammit, you deserve to touch that monument. You deserve to reach your goal. Because if you work hard enough, it's within your grasp. It's all you think about. You spend hours of your day walking north, and monumental daydreams leak into your head.

What will it be like? Your mind drifts forward in time. You imagine your feet aching after a long day. You imagine coming around the bend in the trail. The trees open up. There is a clearing ahead. And there, just ahead of you, is the weather-worn gray wooden monument. It looks just like the one in Mexico, except that it is in Canada, 2,650 miles away from the one you left five months before. You fall to your knees. You press your forehead against the wood. You begin to cry. You embrace your friends, you cheer, you drink champagne and let a thousand emotions run through your thoughts. You take a hundred pictures standing beside your final milestone. You say goodbye. You reminisce. You move on.

And all these things run through a thru-hikers head every day. Every day. Every day since our first day on trail we have dreamt about the monument. Every day we dream about taking that photograph next to it. And so it is little surprise that reaching the terminus becomes an obsession. Thru-hikers are a determined group of individuals: once we have a goal in mind, we will walk to the ends of the earth to achieve it. We will walk through 100 degrees of heat. We will walk through four feet of snow. We will walk through days of rain. We will ignore the weather and the warnings and the risks. We will defy the government. We will put ourselves in harms way. We will make smart choices, but if there is still a choice to be made, we will always choose the one that takes us north.
It's what we've worked for for so long. And if we can, we will.

And that's why the destination matters. Yes, the journey is important. Yes, the journey will be the memories we remember. But the final monument is a thru-hiker's Valhalla. It may seem crazy, it may seem superfluous, but until you've spent every waking moment of five months working toward one specific goal, you can't judge when I'm heartbroken to leave it behind. You can't judge when I don't accept that it's only about the journey. Because if I'm being honest, the journey is also about the destination.

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The journey continues...
forward to {culture shock}
back to {day one hundred thirty four}

Brittanyhttp://email@example.com