The Goods

We recently went on a bit of a tear with buying up our gear. Got some great deals on a number of items, and from the generosity of Aaron Labarre of Popeye's Supplements, we were able to get ALMOST all of the gear we need for the expedition.

From Right to Left:
Top Row:
Red Ram Merino TShirt
MEC Merino Hoodie
Patagonia Down Sweter
MEC Lightweight Rain Jacket
Exoficcio Men's Airstrip Lite

Bottom Row:
Marmot Trail Wind Jacket
Under Armour Underwear
Patagonia Capilene 2
Chlorophylle Raid Pants
Brunton Solar Charger
Spot GPS Unit

From Right to Left:
Top Row:
Patagonia Capilene 2 Long Johns
Moving Comfort Charity Bra
Asics T7 Short
Mec Merino Lightweight Hoodie
Middle Row:
MEC Merino Lightweight 2 S/S Crew
North Face Horizon Spire L/S Shirt
Marmot Trail Wind Hoody
Marmot PreCip Jacket
Patagonia Down Sweater
Bottom Row:
Chlorophylle Impulsion Pants
Outdoor Research Sun Bucket
MEC Thundersnow Toque 
Smith Redline Max Sunglasses 

Reluctant Retreat

After hours on the road, we finally reached Rain Lake, our entry point to Algonquin Park for our big 4 day hike. We had been looking forward to this hike so much and had put a ton of time and some money into preparation, so the feeling of finally being able to get on the trail and just walk was awesome. We packed up our bags, fitted our gaitors on our shoes, greased up our feet, slapped on sunscreen and Deet and hit the trail! Amazing feeling to be maching along the trail towards a destination. Every footstep is progress. What we weren't ready for were horse flies. I'm not talking the odd one or two, I'm talking swarms. Relentless swarms of these buggers that wanted blood, our blood, and they were gonna get fed or die tryin'.

After an hour or so filled with frustration and every effort to outsmart these bastards, our efforts proved futile. We didn't like the prospect of continuing on into the woods, not knowing when or if these guys would disappear. After a little discussion, we decided that it simply wasn't worth it to continue on and risk a horrible 4 day experience. Instead we turned back, reluctantly and with some hesitation, headed back to the car. It was a difficult decision, but was the right one. We turned up at Julia's parents' place 4 days early surprising and confusing her family. The next morning Julia had 4 or 5 swollen bites, as always happens with her, and I had a few of my own. Imagine the shape we'd have been in had we spent 4 full days on that trail!

We will plan another trip for the fall sometime and have another crack. We're committed to this thing and will do what it takes to get our novice camping butts ready for the PCT!

Four Day Hike Prep

After our last trip in May, we realized that we really shorted ourselves on the food side of things. We were somewhat lucky that we decided to bail a little early and cut the trip shorter than we intended, because we would have definitely ran out of food. This time around we've gone BANANAS! We've dehydrated a bunch of apples, bananas and even made a fruit leather. We've also got 6 detour bars at 460 cals each, and 10 Elev8Me bars at about 240 cals each. Both bars will not melt in the heat and both have some good protein content. We've also got 3 hearty breakfasts of oats, almonds and dates, with cinnamon and 3 dinners, 2 of which will be rice noodles and one of lentils. We've got some trail mix type stuff as well and some "cashew clusters" that we picked up at Costco. I'm thinking we'll be good this time around!!

Another thing that we learned last time was that our hydration strategy was less than optimal. We each had 2 x 1L bottles that we refilled and treated as we went. Problem was, they were never really convenient to drink from as we needed to take off our packs to get them from the side pockets or stop and help each other take them out. A few weeks ago, we picked up a couple 3L Osprey Hydraform bladders. Hopefully with this thing, we can fill it up each morning with clean water and have it last a good while and then add more mid day from the 1L bottles that we will use to treat the water with the AquaMira. Drinking will be MUCH more efficient and thus we will drink more often, which I think will be crucial as the forecast for this trip is HOT HOT HOT!. I'm also bringing some electrolyte caps to pop throughout the heat of the day, as I prefer to drink water but need those electrolytes to stay appropriately hydrated.

We both have some new shoe / clothing items to test out this time around. I picked up a pair of Brooks Cascadias, which have great reviews for long distance hikes and the ones I'll probably go with for the PCT. Julia found a pair of North Face trail runners that she really likes and will be trying them out with a pair of Superfeet in them.

For this trip, we'll be leaving our wicked awesome, super lightweight, super expensive sleeping bags at home. I really don't think it's going to cool off much at night, probably lows of like 20 - 22C. We're simply going to bring a bed sheet, and maybe a pair of light tights, just in case.

Anyways, that's it for now! We are PUMPED!!

Test trip #2

We just booked our second major test trip!

We'll be spending 4 days, 3 nights back in Algonquin Park, hiking the Western Uplands trail network of the backcountry. This trip we'll enter the trail from a different spot and hike 74.5k in total, covering a little of what we did last time as well. We're both pretty excited for this one as we took a lot away from our last hike and will be even better prepared for the terrain, weather and food needs!! Last time we felt we didn't pack enough food, mainly snacks. I think this time we'll pack 3 breakfasts and 3 dinners and TONS AND TONS of snacks to eat throughout the day. I'd be plenty satisfied with that.

This time around our packs will be significantly heavier due to increased food requirements and thus it's crucial that we take our time each day so that we don't kill ourselves just trying to get from A to B. That's more of a challenge for me than it is Julia. Sometimes I don't think of the fact that everything is so much more difficult for her because, despite the fact she's pretty darn fit, she's still a relatively tiny girl and so everything is just a little more taxing on the body. I'll try to carry the extra weight, but both of our packs will inevitably be heavier than last time.

Praying for good weather!!!

We'll be hiking July 22 - 25. Depending on how warm it is, I'm considering leaving my sleeping bag behind and maybe just bringing a light blanket of some sort.

We'll see!

Following Along

As part of our preparations, we've learned a ton from watching YouTube videos of people who have completed this thru hike in the past, or are currently on trail as I write this.

We've watched countless videos on the ideal gear for this particular hike, taking into account durability, weight, usefulness and in some cases, just to take the edge off living out of a backpack for 4.5 months! So many helpful videos out there and I HOPE to be able to contribute for future thru hikers. Two that are out there right now are:

Dug:
Website and YouTube Channel

Outpost and Echo
YouTube channel  and Facebook Group

Logistics Coming Together

Since my last post on here, a lot of logistical stuff has come together, and will continue to over this next week.

Firstly, Julia and I sat down one afternoon and hammered out a general (but pretty solid) resupply schedule. We used other people's stuff as resources as well as http://www.planyourhike.com/ website. Looks like we'll have 25 in all! Postage will be an absolute NIGHTMARE, and expensive, but we're working on that as well. :)

Secondly, and I can't say this enough, but Aaron (my boss at Popeye's) is helping us out HUGE. We still need a ton of gear and so he asked me to put together a list of what we need, with links to online stores, photos and total cost of each item. He's going to take this list and "shop" it around to the distributors that we do business with to see if they'd like to sponsor us by purchasing a piece (or 2 or 3 or 4!) of gear for us. In return, we'll use our means of social media (here, YouTube, tTwitter, fFacebook) to promote their brand. If we can get even just a portion of this stuff donated, it would be HUUUUGE!

I've also been in contact with Ray Zahab from http://www.impossible2possible.com/ about involving his foundation in this hike. I want there to be an education component to it and he's the man that knows how to make that happen! We'll most likely have a second blog (or maybe just this one) where students can ask questions and we can answer them whenever we're in town and have access to a computer. I'll be putting up videos talking about nutrition, health and fitness topics mainly, but perhaps also environmental, science and so forth as well. We want to use this as a means to teach kids about the benefits of proper nutrition and physical activity and to get them thinking about how they can be more active in their lives and/or how they can improve their eating habits.

As these things come together, I'll post more details!

First Trip!!!

Our first go at a decent hike / camp is a couple days away!

We leave Friday morning (early) and drive to Algonquin Park, as we'll be hiking the second loop of the Western Uplands trail over three days.

The length of our trip will be a total of ~57km of hiking, the biggest day being the Saturday. We chose this because we wanted to "ease" into it on Friday, so we are only going to be doing ~14k or so and will set up camp and figure everything out with that! Also, the forecast for Saturday is looking to be the best of the three so we decided to make this our long day, and will go about 24km. The overall trip will be 3.8k longer than the loop itself as we have to hike a bit off the route to another lake where there were available camp sites. No big deal! The physical part is not our concern. All Saturday is going to be sunny and moderate temps, so I'm anticipating that to be a great day to really test as much stuff out as we can with the tent, cooking, water stuff etc etc etc. Like I said, we are BRAND new to this, so hopefully everything goes smoooothly! Sunday is looking to be rainy, so we may just get up and hike out as early as possible, or start making progress at least before the rain hits.

After the weekend I'll have some videos and pics to share!!