Training Hikes

 We've been upping our pack weights, Mark to 35 pounds and me to 27 pounds.  Our base pack weights are both hovering under 15 pounds, but we will be much heavier with the  water we will have to carry in our upcoming desert trip.  We are bringing containers to carry up to 8 litres each. We've also been  increasing our  miles this week, although it's been hard fitting them in.  Our lowest daily hike is a 4 mile loop, and we have a 6 mile loop and two times this week we went 10 miles with 2700 feet elevation gain and loss.  It takes us about 4 hours to go the 10 mile loop.    We are getting stronger,  but know we are not ready for  long, hot days of hiking ahead of us.  Only 9 more days to go till we hit the trail. 

We will just have to do our best and start our hike slow.  Our big purchase for this hike was a DeLorme inReach satellite communicator that sends and receives messages anywhere in the world.  Your phone can send text messages through the device as well.  It takes a bit of figuring out, so Mark practiced using it and I learned where the "HELP" button was. 

 My biggest fear is dehydration.  I can only imagine how dry and hot it will be.  Sounds kind of crazy that we want to head out into it, but we do.  The challenge and new experience tantalizes.  I wonder if I will feel quite differently a few days into it.

 These photos are all things we pass by on our hikes on the ranch.  This little calf was trying to get our scent.  We weren't too gamey, but that too will change once we take off on possibly a 342 mile trek from the southern terminus of the PCT to the Bests Western by Interstate 15.  That is a very ambitious goal for us in an unknown hiking environment, so we are open to just hiking a day to 25 days and call it all good.  No failures in our book.  Unless one of us dies.  Dying out there would probably constitute a failure.

 I bet we won't see many redwoods. 

 Or fat and happy cows.  Maybe some mojave green rattlesnakes or mountain lions.  And a lot of crazy, thru hikers.  Which we aren't. Yet.  Thru Hikers that is, we might be considered a bit crazy.  

 This is the area of our ranch that burned in 2003.  It was heating up this day, so we pulled out our handy, dandy Golite umbrellas.  Love these things.  I hope they do as good a job at 100 degrees as they did at 80. Although it could be cold on the hike.  We will (hopefully) be traveling through sections A, B and C of the PCT and it is a varied terrain.  In the San Jacinto mountains, snow has occurred in early May and every night the temperatures anywhere along the trail could hover around freezing.

Why are we looking forward to this?  Why do so many people head out to hike a trail? I'm not sure about everybody else, but for us it is for the challenge, the simplicity, the time together,  and because the possibility of some unknown beauty is around every corner.