Final Prep / by Beth Whittington

Just as we did before we hiked the PCT, we did our final trail prep in Dallas, which is where our resupply guru/Nick’s mom/my mother-in-love lives.

While we were certainly more prepared than we were 6 years ago, there was a lot to do. Highlights:

Nick received a haircut courtesy of our nice and nephew.

Nick before haircut

Before

Nick after haircut

After

During

Ben was really focused on doing it right - so cute

nephew Ben about to shave Uncle Nick's head

Nate designed a logo for us.

Nick’s extremely talented brother, Nate, designed an incredible logo to put on our food bags (ordered from Hilltop Packs). Nick intended to surprise me with them, but I walked into the room when he was working on it with Nate. Oops. Nick had the idea for the design and Nate took that idea and made it amazing. Thanks for all your hard work, Nate, we love them!

Nick’s food bag will have a picture from Haleakala

My food bag will have a picture of the ocean (because I know I’m going to miss the ocean terribly whilst on-trail)

Those of you who followed the PCT blog might recognize where the inspiration for the logo came from. :)

We prepped for resupply.

In an attempt to keep things as simple as possible for Mary, Nick created an elaborate spreadsheet to help us determine how much food we’ll need in each resupply box. We will update/tweak this spreadsheet as we go, but if you want to see a copy of our initial version click here.

 

Packages waiting for us when we got to Dallas (bulk orders of sunscreen, mini-deodorant, hand sanitizer, nut butter packages, etc)

Costco trip to buy the basics for the first month(ish) resupply on the CDT. We’ll be supplementing what you see here with food we buy on-trail.

Our food for the first leg (5 days) of the hike according to the spreadsheet.

The weight of my food for the first 5 days, which is about 1.6 lbs a day. We’re taking it easy the first few weeks so this should be more than sufficient. I think.

Still so much work to do! Nick is organizing our printed maps and I’m working on the website.

It’s getting real! From here on out, Theresa will be uploading the blog posts. Thanks again, Theresa!