Life on the Trail

Life on the Trail has set in - it is our life - it's what we expect everyday, well almost everyday, more like 25 days a month. It's what we want to do for the next 4 months or so! As April comes to an end we 'd like to show those of you at home how we roll here on the AT.

Here's our daily life in a nutshell...

Hiking - we spend roughly 8hrs walking the trail, up and down mountains (not hills), through creeks, balds and all sorts of forest types! We start around 8am and finish around 6pm, depending on how we're feeling. On average we travel about 16mi (that's 25km) - it's like a job!

Eating - we now have 5 meals a day plus snacks! Breakfast first thing in the morning, lunch #1 a couple hours later followed by lunch #2 and a possible lunch #3 all eaten on the trail. Finally we conclude the day with a big dinner (enough to feed four) before bed!

Sleeping - the sun dictates our bedtime for the most part. We're generally in bed by 9pm - hiker's midnight - and up by 7am. That's flippin 10hrs in bed! Though the sleep is never continuous, there's always something or someone making noise like a mouse running passed our feet, buddy beside us snoring (or sleep whispering, ya it's happened), or rain pouring down on the shelter's metal roof!

And that's all folks! Our beautifully simple lives on the AT!

19 days and counting

Today is day 19 of our adventure and we are doing the exact opposite of what we usually do. We are shopping, eating, cleaning ourselves and our clothes, and trying to be lazy and stay off our feet. We are in TOWN! I want to say town is a highlight of the trip, but that would be unjust to all the beautiful things we have seen and all the joys we have felt on the trail. Town is just differnt, and in that it feels great too!

We are currently hiking through our third state, Tennessee, and are in The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. No we have not had a personal appearance from Smoky the Bear, but we have heard from a few hikers that he is around. Yesterday we hiked to the top of Clingmans Dome, which is 6643 ft above sea level! This is the highest we will be on the entire AT journey! There is a road leading to the top of the mountain so it was filled with many many other tourists. It was odd because they took such an interest in us and the other thru hikers. They examined us, our packs, and quizzed us on our adventure. Some people even took pictures or videos of us! We became one of the attractions. On the other side of things us hikers examined them, their clothes, their ability to walk the final 0.5 miles to the top of the mountain, so in turn they were a different sight for us as well.

We have so far covered just over 200 miles (320ish km's) of the AT. Soon we will be hitting the 10% mark! Our small but meaningful victory for us. We will be celebrating! Here are some pictures of our journey thus far. One day we will find the time for a full and proper update!

low X and metric.

Us at the beginning of the trip! Still in Georgia.

Our 1% complete photo on Blood mountain. (makes me think of the you tube video...blood!)

Tent city at Low Gap!

From Left to Right: Keystone, Mr.Natural, Arrow Maker, me (metric), other me (Low X), and Raisins. This is the cabin we rented on our only zero day.

Low X in an old old fire tower in the Smokies.

Clingmans Dome view

Nick and Mel no longer...

One week has officially passed us by! One week of walking, walking, walking, eating and sleeping in the great outdoors! The week has been filled with so many highs and fortunately very few lows! How lucky we feel!

The greyhound to Atlanta was entertaining, to say the least. We were serenaded by no less then three rap shows, and once we reached Atlanta we were shown around by a kind homeless man named "gateway". Shortly after we met up with Hotrock, our first trail angle. He gave us a ride to Amicolola and gifted us our first snickers bar of the trail! YUM.

As soon as we hit the trail we started meeting all the fantastic people we will be seeing for the next six months. Some people, like Arrow Maker, Keystone, and Mr.Natural (aka salad dressing) we keep the same pace with and camp with every night. Others like Raisins, Lost and Found, Fling, John Wayne and many others we run into at unexpected times. Nighttime is hilarious, filled with exhausted people who find the silliest things a riot.

When I say we are Nick and Mel no longer I am somewhat eluding to the changes that are guaranteed to happen to us out here, but for now I am more referring to our new names. Nick = low expectations and Mel = metric.

I am already in love with this trail. There is so much to say but we must get back to walking. Hopefully on our next stop in town we will have more time to update the blog and put some pictures on!

Good-Bye Canada! Hello USA!

Its finally here! All the planning and saving and waiting for this day! Tomorrow we head on down south to Georgia where a kind veteran of the AT will take us to the start of the trail!

So good-bye Canada! We will miss your beautiful summer, swimming and canoeing in your plentiful lakes and hiking your forested trails! Good-bye loons, beavers, and swamp donkeys (aka moose which are aka bucket faces). Good-bye poutine, Tim Hortons, and maple syrup.  Good-bye playoffs, vinyl cafe, and Rick Mercer! And good-bye families, friends, and all Canadians!

We will be back in 6 months before our provincial health care gets cancelled!

xoxo!

We love food!

FOOD! FOOD! GLORIOUS FOOD! 5000 - 6000 calories of it DAILY! Never before in our lives have we eaten this much food (minus a few binges here and there), and the fact is we will not be able to eat as many calories as we are burning! The result of this will be seen as our emaciated selves return in six months time (picture Mr.Burns thin!). Food will be the thing we think about most, talk about the most, and dream about the most. What will our next meal be and when do we get to eat. This without a doubt is one of the things we do the most (after walking). As tough as this challenge is going to be we are willing to tackle it with mouths wide open, sporkful after glorious sporkful!

We took a picture of our first six days of food. Missing from the picture is our lunch's (to be purchased at the last possible time before departure), instant coffee (oh so important), oil (only for the purpose of adding calories), and seasonings! In all, we are carrying about 2 pounds of food each day for a total of 24 pounds of food!

                                              Nick dreaming about eating all our food!

A typical days worth of food would look like this:
Breakfast
2 packs instant oatmeal (250 cal) + meal replacement shake (150 cal)
Snacks
2 granola bars (440 cal) + 1 cup of chocolate (~900 cal) + 1 cup of nuts (~800 cal)
Lunch
2 pitas/wraps (400 cal) + a lot of peanut butter (250 cal)
Dinner
one dehydrated dinner pack each (600 cal)

So for the mathematicians out there that is still less then 4000 calories and that is where the oil comes in. Sounds gross but adding oil adds calories without much weight! Along with this we will be binge eating at every possible chance! I am counting on the American style all-you-can eat buffets to fill in some of our calorie deficits!

I am guessing that with food being numero deux on our minds (after walking) we will be blogging about it much more in the future, so look forward to hearing about some tasty concoctions we come up with on the trail! Also, family, friends, and others, feel free to mail us any delicious, tasty, high calorie food you think we might enjoy. Just message us to find out the address of the nearest post office off the trail! Much appreciated!

Today was the official one week mark to our departure. The anticipation has been building for well over a year but as the karate kid reminds us "patience young grasshopper".

 

Our bags are packed and we're ready to go...well not quite yet. But we're a few steps closer to our big hike now...

In prepping for the AT one of our biggest concerns was how to get to the start. After searching every possible flight down, we decided to take the trusty ol Greyhound (woot woot haha) from Detroit to Atlanta. It's a long journey - 16 hours - but luckily it's during the night. And of course the tickets were half the price of the plane tickets - $156.45 in total. So it's booked and we'll be departing April 5th, arriving in Atlanta at 10am April 6th. The next step was getting from the city to the trail, which turned out to be fairly easy to organize thanks to the ATC website. A shuttle will be picking us up right from the Greyhound station and taking us to Springer Mtn. If all goes smoothly we should be on the trail to the Trail (yes, there's an 8 mile hike up to the start of the AT) by 2pm-ish - fingers crossed.

Next was our packs...which we've almost got down to the perfect configuration and weight. So far our pack base weigh is 25lbs each, that's not including food and water. Check out the picture of all we have to carry! Missing from the picture is our tent, towel, and a few other odds and ends.

The Beginning...

Hi all,

this is the page we are going to use to post updates, stories, photos and videos of our 6 month hike on the Appalachian Trail.

So to begin with, a quick explanation of what we are going to try and accomplish in the next six months. The Appalachian Trail (from now on referred to as the AT) is one of several long distance hikes in North America. The trail begins in Georgia at Springer Mountain and ends a fantastic 3500 kms later in Maine at Mount Katahdin! To hike the AT we must follow the official trail marked by white blazes (white paint on trees and rocks) through the Appalachian mountain range. We will hike up and down mountains (including Mount Washington!), over balds, through rivers, farm fields, and even the odd town. We will carry about one week worth of supplies at a time in our trusty (and soon to be) very smelly backpacks!

On the way we are going to meet many others attempting to complete the AT. Every spring (March to April) about 1400 hopeful hikers leave Springer Mountain with the same goal of summiting Mount Katahdin before the end of October when the park closes for the season. By this point in the journey only 350 or so of the previously perky hikers who left Georgia will limp, crawl, or hobble up the final peak and claim victory over the AT! That is a 75% drop out rate!

So now that you know more of our upcoming adventure some of you may question why we would want to attempt the AT and even question our sanity. To that we say 'DO YOU EVEN KNOW US!!??' The challenge and adventure of the AT is enough to get us hooked, not to mention the promise of beautiful views and vistas, waterfalls galore, wildlife encounters, sunsets and sunrises, and new friends! It will be a new simple life where all we are concerned with is eating, sleeping, and hiking.

With that said we do not want you all to think that we are abandoning our friends and family. In fact we would love for anyone who is up to it to come and join us for a weekend, a week, a month, or the whole journey! If our description above has not sold you there is a second option. Live the AT through our page! We hope to update our page weekly with stories, pictures, and videos collected along the way. We also need our families and friends to keep us connected and would appreciate anything you want to share with us on here!

Happy Trails!
xoxo