Day #2Mileage: 11.5
Long Trail Mileage: 14.3
Time: 8.25 hours
Day / Night Temp: 28 / 15 F
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As if welcoming us back to living in the woods, Mother Nature dropped temperatures a few degrees below zero on our first night, leaving us to wake to low single digits. We had planned for a 0600 alarm and 0700 departure, but the temperatures and new acquaintance to our gear pack and routine didn't allow us to get on the trail until more than an hour and a half after our intended time.

From Seth Warner shelter we had a gradual 1,000' climb up to an unnamed little peak, hiking through more of the ice covered snow with upwards of a foot of powder underneath. I had suggested snowshoes for today, and they proved very handy. By dispersing our weight over a mech larger area we are able to 'sink' less into the snow, and therefore exert less energy moving forward. The savings of sinking less are somewhat negated by the thought that goes into each step as we negotiate rocks and fallen trees with our wide footprints. As temperatures rose with the sunshine and clear blue skies we moved at a disappointingly slow pace towards our destination for the day. It was at some point in the first half of our day that Santa proclaimed he felt as if we were 'actively going nowhere', bothered with the speed at which we were traveling.

We ate lunch on a wide section of trail around noon, eating nearly frozen peanut butter and Nutella on equally cold tortilla wraps. It was during this brief break that my GPS alerted me to the fact that we were some 500' off the trail, and would need to correct that error before carrying on. Doubling back after our break brought us to the point where our snowshoes turned off trail, and after a minute of searching for the familiar white blaze I eventually found one uphill from us. A large fallen tree had blocked my view and caused us to turn left when we first came across it. We moved on with our snowshoes stored, instead using our Microspikes (aka light traction) on our feet. Comprised of a thick elastic rubber surround with a web of 1/2" stainless steel spikes underneath, light traction does a great job at gripping the ground without being as cumbersome as the snowshoes. Our speed increased slightly at this point, and morale along with it. As we made our way through the woods we found that navigating the trail was more difficult due to less frequent and more poorly painted blazes to mark the way. As I was breaking trail for us my eyes settled on a slight icy pattern in the snow, looking as if a small amount of water had trickled continuously down the trail itself. It shone in the mid day sun with a sheen that was discernible enough that I followed it effortlessly as it wound through the trees. As we hiked in silence I was reminded of the story of Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, who recounted a story of his fighter pilot being low on fuel in the Indian Ocean and not being able to find the aircraft carrier he needed to land on. A small electrical short took out the cockpit lighting, and allowed him to see the phosphorescent glow of the algae turned up by the ship's propellers, leading him straight home.

By 1500 we arrived at the Congdong shelter, LT mile 10, where we had intended to eat lunch. We stopped for ten minutes and snacked, and I threw back a swig of whiskey just to humor myself. We climbed up a few hundred feet over the next two miles, effortlessly walking in the tracks of a dirt bike that had torn through the woods/trail illegally. Eventually coming up on the 2,300' peak of Harmon Hill, we began a long 1.7 mile descent to VT Route 9 in the gap below. The sun set at 1615 and left us with a quickly darkening mountainside as we descended the northeast face. Steep and rocky, we swore aloud as we hiked down by the light of my headlamp, eventually emerging on the road and crossing to a trailhead parking lot. Our intentions had been to carry on another 1.5 miles out of the road gap to the next shelter, but we were both exhausted.

We set up the tent and cooked dinner quickly in the back of the parking lot. I made cheesy pasta and added in buffalo sauced tuna. We're sleeping with the door of the tent open for ventilation, so I'm able to look straight up from my sleeping back at the silhouettes of tall and barren trees with a clear winter sky as the sparkling backdrop.

Until tomorrow.

Texaco

Day #1
​Mileage: 5
Long Trail Mileage: 2.8
Time: 3 hours
Day / Night Temp: 18 / 0 F
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What a stressful weekend. I flew home very late Friday night, leaving a job in Florida to return to Boston's single digit temperatures. Saturday flew by with last minute errands and visits with friends as I tried to get my home life in order before departing for the next adventure. Sunday was my birthday, and was equally, if not more so, busy than the day before. I picked Santa up from Boston's Logan Airport around 1100hrs, and we immediately went to REI and the grocery store to pick up last minute gear. We had a great lunch with my parents and my dear friend Dana, then returned to my house to pack our bags for Monday's departure. I snuck in a quick nap before an amazing birthday dinner in the city, making it home early enough to attempt a full night of sleep. Phrase of the weekend?? "I need one more day." I've never felt so rushed and disheveled in my life.

Santa and I packed the car this morning only to find the rear tire flat, which ultimately delayed our departure until 1030, over an hour later than we had hoped for. My mom was gracious enough to drive us out to western MA, stopping for a not-so-quick lunch at the Friendly's restaurant in Greenfield before taking Route 2 to Williamstown where the trail begins. Despite our efforts to begin earlier, we managed to begin hiking at 1500hrs from the Pine Cobble Trail parking lot. The Long Trail is not accessible by road, and instead requires a 2-3 mile hike from either the Appalachian Trail crossing at Route 2, or this Pine Cobble side trail. Having already hiked the A.T., we unanimously voted on the latter approach.

A quick 0.8 mile hike up the well-traveled side trail brought us to Pine Cobble's small peak, with a carved sign indicating another 1.3 miles to the Long Trail starting point at the MA/VT border. We covered the distance at a decent pace, arriving as the sun set shortly after 1600hrs. We were quick with our photos, partially due to the 18 degree air temperature, knowing full well that the remaining 2.8 miles to the Seth Warner shelter would be covered in the dark. We put on our headlamps in anticipation of the wood's tendency to quickly become a pitch black environment, and carried on. While the beginning side trail had been well used, the LT itself had not been traveled at all, leaving us to break trail with every step we took. We alternated leading, putting our boots through a layer of frozen snow before compressing 4-6" of powder under every stride. It's exhausting work, and had we had more daylight we likely would have stopped for snowshoes to make the trek even a little bit easier given the additional weight on our backs.

Night hiking on the Appalachian Trail (and subsequently the first 100 miles of the LT) is not something I'm new to, but it's a whole different ballgame in the snow. We verbally called out blazes, or white painted trail markers, to be sure we stayed on track. Arriving at the Seth Warner shelter side trail around 1815hrs, we hurried down and set up our sleeping bags in the shelter itself, deciding against the tent for tonight. We'll see how often it's used, but either way I'm happy to carry the weight; at some point we'll most certainly need it. Dinner was cooked on a gas stove, and I had soup with spicy mango salmon (from a shrink wrapped package) mixed in.

It's more difficult to write this blog in the winter, that's for sure. Current temps outside are hovering around 3 degrees Fahrenheit, and will undoubtedly drop below zero as the night goes on. It's nearly 2100 now, and our alarm is set for 0600 with the hopes of making it 13 miles tomorrow to another shelter. We've mutually agreed on a bunch of safety checkpoints to make sure we're not pushing ourselves beyond reasonable action with our hikes.

That's all for now. I'm going to go hibernate in my sleeping bag. It's quite lovely here, despite the single digit temperatures... The light of the crescent moon is casting a million shadows on the white snow-cover, and the winter stars are brilliantly illuminated overhead. How lucky I am to be here.

Onward & upward..

Texaco

Dates: December 3rd and 4th, 2016
Day mileages: 9.7 / 7.1
NH 4,000 footer: Mt. Carrigan
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The point of this past weekend's small adventure was to do a shakedown hike, putting my new and old gear to the test. I hoped to figure out which way was best to arrange the inside of my pack, to confirm the comfort of my sleeping bag in colder mountain temperatures, and to figure out if there's anything else I needed to order before this trip gets underway in less than two week's time. I think it was a successful weekend, all things considered.
 
My dad dropped me off Saturday morning at the Sawyer River Road upper parking lot (elevation 1,400') around 8:30, and I began my 5-mile hike up towards Mt. Carrigan's summit. Located in the Crawford Notch region of New Hampshire's White Mountains, temperatures were in the low 30s and as expected, snow began falling about a mile in as I crossed over the trail's first river. It would continue to snow for the duration of both days of my hike. The first 2 miles of trail meandered through a quiet and slowly climbing woods terrain before crossing over the Carrigan Notch Trail, where it then began a steeper ascent. I took my time getting to the mountain's summit itself, letting a few groups of hikers go past me as they hiked up from behind. Each seemed to be sporting microspike traction (the lightest/least aggressive option) on their boots, and typical Osprey/Gregory 25 liter day packs with enough gear to get them to the summit and back. At that point I had no traction on and wasn't feeling it necessary, so I kept going bare booted. Halfway up the climb I shed my fleece layer, leaving me with just my long underwear top and Marmot shell that did me fine the rest of the way to the summit. I stopped at the upper ridge walk about 1/2 mile from the peak to take photos; with temps in the low 20s and wind howling across the ridge I got chilly quickly, but that's the photographer in me going any length for a photo. I'll have to get better at not doing that during the thru-hike.
 
I reached Carrigan's 4,665-foot summit around noon, slightly disappointed in my timing of 3.5 hours to cover 5 miles. This is another trait of winter backpacking I'm also going to have to get used to. Not every thru-hike can be accomplished at 3 mph. I didn't venture up the mountaintop's old fire tower, but instead snuck off to a little clearing in the woods, quickly eating a sandwich after putting my fleece mid-layer back on. The wind wasn't constant, but the temperatures were much chillier than they had been at lower elevations. At this point there were 20+ people in the vicinity of the summit so I packed up my stuff, affixed my microspikes to my boots, and began my venture down the aptly named Desolation Trail. It appeared from the snowfall and lack of previous tracks that I was the first person to head that way in quite a while. I had no issue in my light traction, but some steps on my descent left me in snow deeper than my nearly knee-high gaiters. I flew down that segment of trail and got to the bottom, elevation 2,200', where it crosses Carrigan Notch Trail pretty quickly. By continuing forward a mile or so I would come across Nancy Pond Trail, the one that would ultimately take me back to NH Route 302 the next morning. Deciding to cover the distance and cross both of the trail's wide rivers before stopping, I carefully navigated each being cautious to not get my boots wet or misstep. With lots of previous spring/summer/fall hiking, I'm used to little consequence in getting my feet wet crossing a river. In this instance I was exceptionally cautious with each step to make sure my feet wouldn't get wet as doing so could end my hike very quickly.  I found a nice flat spot alongside the second river around 1530hrs, knowing that sunset was timed for 1610hrs. I'll plan to hike later into the dark once Santa and I are on the trail together, but in this instance I was happy to stop and get camp set up. I was able to set up the new Mountain Hardwear Direkt2 tent within 8 minutes of dropping my bag, a remarkable improvement over my initial set-up in my living room. I do think I figured out the trick to getting it pitched quickly, something I was very thankful for given the isolation in the woods. I got all my gear set up inside in no time at all, set up my stove just outside the tent door, and immediately got dinner ready. It was at this point that I realized I had forgotten a friggin' (I assure you this was not my word of choice in the moment) lighter to ignite the stove with. Dinner Saturday night was a string cheese stick and a cold Pop-Tart instead of cheesy pasta, soup, and hot cocoa. Imagine, if you will, how disappointing that was.
 
With nothing else to do and darkness quickly settling over the woods, I slept from 1630 to 2100, waking up to pee and shed a few layers. One of the things I'll have to get used to is appropriately choosing layers to sleep with. I had initially fallen asleep with my compression shorts, fleece pants, long underwear top, fleece top, and puffy down jacket on. At 2100 I shed everything except my underwear base layers for the rest of the night. Temperatures dropped to twenty overnight, and hovered at about 28 inside the tent. When I awoke at 0630hrs (yeah... 14 hours of sleep!) I was concerned to find just how much moisture had been absorbed into my sleeping bag from my sweat and breath. Despite shedding the layers and hopefully sweating less as the night went on, I made the mistake of being super comfortable and burrowing down inside the bag itself, exhaling a ton of moisture into the bag. In researching this since getting home, I've learned that on a cold night a hiker can exhale up to a liter of moisture in their breath into the fabric of the sleeping bag. This is something I will not do again, and I felt lucky to be out of the woods as I left the sleeping bag unzipped on my forced-hot-water radiators today to dry out. I'm considering vapor barrier layers (VBL) for socks and sleeping bag liners, but I'm also wondering if by adjusting the ventilation and my breathing (both vents in the tent were open, but due to snow falling I left the door closed) I'll be able to not have this issue.
 
Sunday morning I took my time, striking camp in a little over 45 minutes, and was on the trail by 0800. There was an inch or so of new snowfall overnight on top of what appeared to be relatively untraveled trail, so I stopped and strapped on my snowshoes just to check how they worked with the extra weight of my pack. I followed along with what I believe were moose tracks (doubt anyone is riding horses in the Whites) and made my way up the 1,200' gradual incline to Norcross Pond. The trail got pretty narrow from there on, but the snowshoes continued working well and I hiked another mile to Nancy Pond, skirting the frozen water before beginning the descent back to NH302. About a half mile from the pond I met a solo hiker, chatting for a minute before continuing on. I think we both caught each other off guard, hats on covering our ears and otherwise silence in the woods. Neither of us expected to see anyone.
 
I stopped to send my dad a text around ten, estimating my arrival at Route 302 for noon exactly. I descended a bit faster than I thought, and he managed to arrive at the trailhead at the exact moment I was walking into the parking lot. Serendipitous. 
 
Take homes lessons:
 
1) Don't be a moron. Bring a f'n lighter. Seriously can't believe I left that out.
2) Need a vapor barrier for my feet. My boots were wet, my socks smelled like hell after one day... this will be horrid after a month.
3) Need to either practice better moisture management in the tent/sleeping bag, or add a VBL for that too.
4) Revisit lesson number one.
 
Honestly, other than that I think I did a great job getting some good mileage in and utilizing most of the gear I brought, save for my change of clothes and other socks. The SPOT GPS worked well checking me in and tracking my progress, and my apparel did a great job and covering different bases of exterior temps and body temp regulation.
 
At this point I'll pick up a few small extra items, and will turn my sights towards planning our routes/days, food, and other last minute small details before the hike. I don't love the idea of an itinerary for this hike, but I think that given our timetable it's going to be necessary to know at minimum where we need to be in order to finish on time. Trust me, for as much as moments of this undertaking might suck, we're going to have a blast.
 
Some photos for your enjoyment.
 
Texaco

Hey all, 

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving weekend! As the past few weeks have flown by, this upcoming trip has only become more real. I placed an immense order through REI for more winter specific backpacking gear than I already owned. Utilizing a "friends & family" discount coupon that a fellow '14 A.T. thru-hiker had (she's an REI employee) I was able to save almost $500 on my order, basically making my new tent a free gift. Huge thank you to Cori for making that possible.

Some of the major new purchases included my Cold Cold World "Chaos" backpack, sewn and assembled by a guy named Randy Rackliff in locally in Jackson, NH. While the highly regarded alpine/mountaineering pack typically is made with blue fabric, he made mine custom with red to match my Marmot jacket... I figured I might as well hike in style. Second up in the big three purchases of new gear was my Mountain Hardwear Lumina Z-Blaze synthetic sleeping bag. Rated for tempatures as low as -15 degrees and outfitted with an additional 15 degree bag liner, this combination should keep me warm well below the zero degree line. The final major piece of gear is my new Mountain Hardwear Direkt2 tent; an amazing and compact 2-man tent, it's the first choice for alpine climbers looking for a small footprint to pitch on the literal side of the mountains they ascend. While our hike won't be that extreme, the 2.5 pound weight of this tent made it the perfect choice for us to share during this trip; it will be close quarters, but ideally it won't be home for more time than necessary on the Long Trail.

I'm doing a lot of work in getting primary and redundant maps and gear for us to hike with, and am reworking my packing methods to get my bag to the smallest size possible, a tough feat given the extra size that each piece of gear is in comparison to 3-season camping gear. My new sleeping bag is fitted in a 30L orange compression sack, shown in the upper left corner of the first photo below, and occupies just under half the total height of my backpack. Fitting everything else around it won't be a huge problem, but it will take a little more effort to nail down the exact order in which things need to be packed in order to get the most out of the bag. Utilizing exterior straps I'm able to secure my Tubbs Alp Flex snowshoes, and a self-draining pouch on the front of the pack will be home to my microspike light boot traction when not in use. The fantastic news, though perhaps hard to imagine given the amount of stuff in the photo below, is that my pack weight comes in at 26.8 lbs (without food or water), but with all of my gear. Removing the clothing and boot traction I'll be wearing while hiking, then adding in a few days of food, I'll cross my fingers for a 30-35 pound pack weight with snowshoes accounting for nearly 4 pounds of that.

I'm planning to go hiking in New Hampshire's White Mountains this weekend to do a real-world shakedown with this gear. A 14-18 mile hike over two days should give me exposure to cold weather, snow of different depths, and at least one night in the mountains with this new tent set-up. I'm hoping to find weak points in my system early on so that I can replace them in the 2 remaining weeks before our departure date. 

Just wanted to fill you all in on where I'm at. Santa and I talk almost daily and compare notes, triple check redundancy, and exchange thoughts on our approach for this hike. There's been a lot of enthusiastic and some hesitant web feedback about my hike, and I encourage you to reach out with your own thoughts. In  all honesty, I'd love to hear from any readers in Vermont who might be willing to sign up and assist us with getting to/from a resupply location, or perhaps even offering a warm place to spend the night as we hike by if need be. The support from readers during the A.T. traverse was immeasurable and so helpful, I'd really appreciate even a fraction of that while we brave the winter weather to make our way to Canada. Having a list of potential aid ahead of time would be an amazing thing, if any of you are in a position to perhaps lend a hand.. I promise we're not high maintenence!

Signing off... I've set the tent up on my back porch tonight (I live on a hill) with 10-15 mph winds coming from the west. The "open this vent to avoid suffocation" warning inside the tent has been followed, and the circulation vent is wide open. I figure it'll be good to test warmth when my own bed and down comforter are a mere 30 feet away before testing it atop a mountain ridge this weekend.

Onward & upward,

Texaco