[at-l] Longest Resupply

[Ryan Crawford]

A little secret Mark...

Where are you planning on hiking next summer?

The Alps, the CDT, the PCT, Minnesota.  Where?????

Put on a loaded backpack and do some relatively flatland hiking and see how 
far you can walk in a day.  I think you might be surprised.  Remember what 
they talk about when it comes to hiking the PCT.  Since you don't have the 
steep climbs on the PCT like you do on the AT you can put in way more mile 
per day on the PCT because the terrain is easier.

I have a trail right by my house, 75 miler, that I have thought about doing 
as a nonstop hike.  Straight through no camping no nothing.  I figure I 
could do it in around 24 hours and it still has three peaks that go up to 
near 3000 feet and would have a total vertical climb of near 10,000 feet. 
I've did 24-25 miles on it averaging at the end of the day 4+ mph pace. 
Granted I was only carrying food and water but I still could have been 
easily averaging 3.5-4 mph fully loaded.  I wasn't in shape for hiking 
either at the time.  I did it totally on a whim.  I averaged 3 mph on most 
of the AT.

The terrain you walking on makes a BIG difference as to how many miles you 
can do in a day.  Admittedly, thinking MN, how well the trail is marked also 
would make a big difference.

I see no reason why it should take over a 10 day supply to cover the 300 
miles.  Heck you could probably pull it off comfortably in 6-8 days.  It all 
depends on several factors starting with what do you want to do and what do 
you think you are capable of doing.  The second one more important than the 
first one.

Like I said put on a fully loaded pack and hit some fairly flat trail and 
see how far you can hike.  The closer the conditions are to MN the more 
reliable the data you will have.  See how far you can hike in 5-10 hours. 
Heck spend a couple days in a row on the trail so you have real good data 
after two days of the distance you can do and how you feel afterwards.

Remember you won't have many people out there hiking with you so you won't 
have to worry about wanting to make it to a particular shelter that your 
friend is going to be stopping at for the night.  You'll be setting the 
pace...not someone else.

The dynamics behind what you are looking at doing is very different from 
anything I think you have did so far.  Take the dynamics into consideration.

MEANT 2B