[pct-l] This Year's Going to Be Awesome! Woo!

[Robert Henry]

Amplifying a little on what Barry said...

HIke at night, get some sleep, then get up before first light and hike at
first light.  Sleep during the day.

When night hiking, you are trading off hydration issues against injury by
fall as you stumble along.

You can reduce the risk of the stumbling by being smart with how you
illuminate the scene in front of you.  If you put your headlamp on your
forehead, your eyes will see flat light and by definition, almost no
shadows at all.  If you instead hold your lamp in your hand, and your hand
is on your poles 2 feet out from your body, or your lamp is on your thigh,
the light will cast shadows.   (Make sure to attach your lamp to your body
some way, so when you do fall, you don't loose the light.) Your eye+brain
will now see the shadows and moving shadows, and much more easily
reconstruct a 3 dimensional scene, and you'll be less prone to stumbling or
tripping.

If you time the hot sections' night hiking during a time of full moon,
there will be plenty of light as long as you don't loose your night vision.
(Maybe part of the training regime is to eat lots of carrots.)

Of course when you are hiking the LA aqueduct north of the CA aqueduct at
night, you can hear the water anyway, or just walk due north by lining up
Polaris (the pole star) and walking that way.