Preparing for a thruhike

How do you prepare for a thru hike?

To quote Hemingway, at first gradually and then suddenly.

I’m not talking gym workouts here.

There’s only so much packing and planning you can do before the last few days.  For instance, you can’t buy groceries that will perish in any kind of time frame ahead of time.   Tortillas will last a little while, but there’s no point in getting them early.

Similarly, it’s not like if you mow the lawn a week ahead of time, it won’t need to be mowed again.  You can’t ‘bank’ yardwork. It’s always there, waiting.

Time flies

You make sure your bills are on auto-pay.  Your old jalopie truck is inspected.  You sign up for Google Fi so your phone can hop carriers if needed.  You reactivate your satellite tracker subscription.  All the mowers are gassed up, and the cans are full.  You may even check things off the big list on the whiteboard in your home office.

Sometime close to this point, you start collecting half consumed rolls of toilet paper. You focus on your four-square technique.

You get to the point where you can get a weather forecast for your starting date and then things start to seem real.

After this, you realize there are not enough days in the calendar to order or buy any new gear.  Then, there’s not enough business days left to do anything. It starts to sink in that in a few days, you’re going to get on a plane and fly across the country. It starts to sink in that when you get home, it will be a different season. It starts to sink in that you have to walk 1200 miles. Or maybe you GET to walk 1200 miles?  You write ‘Colorado things’ ans ‘September?’ on your itinerary.  When pressed, it’s hard to explain what those are.

You’ve stopped watching the news because it’s not going to matter once you’re out there.  You also stop worrying about all the chores you didn’t get to because it’s too late anyway.

You forget for a moment that you got laid off and are unemployed.

Getting your gear together seems easy.  You have all the things you need.  You make a big pile of stuff.  You track the weights of everything in a spreadsheet.  You make some decisions about clothes and what to bring, and you’re kind of done pretty quickly.  The night before you leave, you’ll repack at least twice.  The morning you leave, you’ll still be adding things.  One final hop on the scale to record your baseweight, and that’s that.

At some point, you reach the end of the hopscotch court, and you just have to jump off the end.  Maybe a better analogy is going to the beach?  When you’re in the surf, at some point, you need to swim out past the breakers.

You have no plan for how to get from the airport to your starting point. You don’t have a backcountry permit.  Somehow, that’s ok.

---

Day 0

Up at 4, all three alarms going off.  Airport by 5:45.  You take your shoes off like a good citizen.

O’Hare

Not Midway, for once.  Because you’re flying American for the first time in decades.  There’s no power plugs in the gates at O’Hare, so you find a business center area where 4 guys stare at their laptops.  While your phone catches its breath, you do stretches, ignoring the stares.  Deep vein thrombosis is no joke.  Plus, airplane seats suck.

Crammed in the back of the plane with the children and the babies, you swap seats so a mother can sit with her kids.  Don’t be a dick.  They seem like they’re on vacation.  They’re nice, they tell you that they’re in the health club business.  The kids seem polite. Maybe they’re going to Glacier?  Maybe they could give you a RIDE to Glacier?  The “yogi” fails, their car is full.

After the long parade of jets (the march set to Carmina Burana), you’re wheels up, with 3 hours to go. You change the time on your watch, optimistic.

Seven and a half hours later, you’re in Kalispell, Montana.