The First 42 days

Most of my AT maps arrived while I was in Seattle. I am still waiting on 2 but it’s not a problem as they won’t be absolutely necessary till the fall. With my full set of maps I also got the thru-hikers data book and thru-hikers companion. These are the most up to date resources as far as shelters, campsites and water sources are concerned. I have roughly sketched out my first 45 days of walking.
I say 45 days but really I mean 52 since I will be taking scheduled rest stops in addition to some low mileage days I have planned to minimize the risk of injury or re-injury.

I am still shooting for starting at either the end of the first week in August or the beginning of the second week. But as my thesis is due on the 13th I am open to the possibility I may need all that time to finish. After all 5-6 months hiking requires several different types of preparation.
The plan so far is to hike 10 days across Massachusetts from shelter to shelter trying to walk no more than 7 miles a day for the first couple weeks. Realistically though, it looks like I’ll have a couple 10 mile days pretty early on. For the majority of Vermont and New Hampshire I’ll be shooting for 10 mile days with a few 13’s and 15’s mixed in followed by low mileage days. So with a start date of let’s say August 15th in Barrington MA (667.8 miles from Katahdin) I’m looking at reaching the Vermont border on about Aug 27th, the New Hampshire boarder Sept 14-15, and the Maine boarder Oct 4-5. I obviously will not reach Katahdin by the close of Baxter on Oct 15th so I will probably only hike as far as the hundred mile wilderness and then leave that section for the next spring.

In addition to sketching out these 3 states I have been planning my diet. I will be trying to carry no more than 2lbs per day of food and the most caloric diet I can conceive of will get me 4,000 cal at that weight or 125 calories an oz. Light and ultra light backpackers try to get between 100-150 calories per oz and while I don’t think I will fall into either category of backpacker I will be trying to find foods that fall into that range. So if any of you have suggestions for high calorie low weight foods I would love to hear them. Please keep in mind I am vegetarian and at least until October things spoiling could be a problem. After October I may become a cheeseaholic.
I will start a running list of high calorie foods soon.

Also, I will be twiting my progress since it seems like the most useful way I could ever use twitter. I am twiting at http://twitter.com/#!/JessieHikes I have hooked everything up to my cell phone so I can text updates along the trail. Updates like “In a ravine, can’t get out IFKS!” and then follow up tweets like “ducking auto correct. HELP!”