First AT: Mount Taber Road to Little Rock Pond

Little Rock Pond

Little Rock Pond
Distance From Trail head: 2.2 miles (with options of a trail around the lake itself and a loop back trail that makes the total hike about seven miles or so.
Total Mileage for me: 4.4 miles
Difficulty of Hike: Easy to Moderate
Wildlife Sightings: One snake, several newts, a few birds, some minnows, and really strange white plants that looked like flowers but were probably mushrooms (no I didn't eat them!)

I have been planning on getting out to the Appalachian Trail for a bit now but seemed to always find reasons why I couldn't go. Finally after talking with my wife we decided to throw caution to the wind and check some of it out.

The first thing we did was pop over to the http://www.appalachiantrail.org/ and use their interactive map to scope out some trail heads close to us. If you haven't been to that site you really should go, it has a lot of great information and the map is seriously useful.

As we were looking for a place we saw one of the trail heads wasn't all that far away from our house and decided to check it out. The drive there was about an hour and a half long. We drove through the beautiful Vermont countryside and through a couple of quaint villages that I really should have taken some pics of but am still getting used to actually doing that kind of thing. Anyway we arrived at the trail head about noon or so and started making our way up the trail.

The first thing I noticed about this trail was that it was very well maintained and while it went upward it did so at a manageable grade. One of the goals I have before next summer when I take the girls with me through three states is to make sure I am in as good a condition as possible and a challenge like starting out up hill is exactly what I need. After a steep incline of about ten feet the trail again leveled out a bit and followed a gorgeous river that I couldn't help but stop and admire several times (my wife would say I was resting but that is not the truth!). I saw a awesome bit of water so decided to take a pic...

Part of the River

After snapping the pic I buckled down to business and made the rest of the hike to the lake itself. The picture of the lake on top really does not do this place justice. This lake is simply breathtaking and my wife and I got comfortable on some rocks for  while, ate our PBJ sandwiches and admired the natural beauty of the Green Mountains.

While we were eating lunch an old guy with a backpack stopped by and talked with us. I never got his name but he told us an interesting story about a farmer in Vermont who flew the hammer and sickle flag of the USSR during the cold war and how people in Vermont simply left the farmer alone. It feels good to be in a state where people honestly don't put their nose in my business and the story made me appreciate Vermont that much more.

After finishing our lunch and playing with some newts that were eating small fish in the shallow of the lake my wife and I checked out the nearby shelter. It was amazing and I can't wait to take the kids there and spend the night. I meant to get a picture of it, but got distracted by talking to a thru-hiker about his hike. After resting a bit and chatting with a couple of other hikers my wife and I made our way back to the car. We had intended to do the loop around but I had decided to wear my water shoes instead of my hiking boots. This was not a good idea and I have learned an important lesson. Next time we go out on the AT I am definitely bringing my boots and saving my feet a bit of pain.

Overall the hike was about perfect for where I am at as far as conditioning goes. I wish I had worn better shoes and had gone for more mileage, but we all have to start somewhere. I definitely plan to go back there with the kids and will make sure to grab a pic of the shelter when I do. Until then I am busy plotting out my next excursion and will make sure to write a post about it.

Happy trails.

Figuring Out Gear

One of the more daunting tasks I have in front of me in regards to getting ready for the AT next year is gear. While shopping for gear for one person is expensive, I am actually having to shop for gear for five people and that is going to be expensive. I have been poking around various sites like REI and EMS to get an idea of what the price will be and the numbers just kept getting bigger and bigger. I was feeling a bit disheartened when I stumbled across this article over on the White Blaze forums and have to say that this renewed my excitement and made me realize that getting gear for everyone wouldn't be the nightmare I was thinking it might be.

Not only did this article point out ways I could save money with bargain shopping, but it had some awesome links for making your own gear. At first I was like "what? make your own gear? Is that a good idea?" Then I started to read some of the designs of what other people had made and realized that making my own gear was actually a perfect answer to a few of my problems.

Aside from the cost of brand new gear, one of the biggest problems I was having was figuring out what to do about Jade. Jade is tiny and weighs forty pounds soaking wet. Looking through the various children's packs I wasn't finding any that would actually fit her tiny little back and shoulders, but with making a backpack for her I can actually make one that fits to her perfectly.

Along with being able to fit the gear to the kids better another advantage of making my own gear is that it gives me and the kids something to do that is a visible sign of progress toward our goal of the trail. It's hard to keep kids focused on something that happens tomorrow and keeping them focused on a goal that is nearly a year away is not easy. With making our own gear though, I have a way to keep the kids not only focused but invested in the trip.

You Might Think I'm Crazy...

About a week ago now I made a decision that starting next summer my family would start "section hiking" the Appalachian Trail (AT). A section hike of the AT is the term that is used for when you don't hike the entire trail at one time, but instead hike several sections over a period of years to complete it. While I would absolutely love to thru hike the AT and will do so someday, right now it just isn't something I think is realistic with the kids. It's not that I don't think the kids are tough enough it's because they only have a summer vacation to hike in and even a fast thru hike takes about four and a half months, so for now I will just have to live with section hiking.

It may seem like I am talking about the hike a long time before I actually go, but this is because I plan to do nearly three hundred miles of trail our first AT hike and that takes prepration. In the next ten months I have to get gear gathered, money saved up, bodies whipped into shape, dust off my old wilderness skills, teach my kids some wilderness basics, and even then there isn't a promise of sucess. That is actually quite a lot to do in ten months but I am sure we can as long as we don't lose focus on the bigger goal.

I will be using this blog to chronicle the steps I take to prepare for the hike and evnetually as a place to record the adventures of our hike. I started something over at trail journals, but want to save posting there for the actual hike itself instead of leaving behind what will be hundreds of posts on the challenges of preparing for a hike. This of course begs the question of why I am keeping a blog about prepration in the first place.

The answer as to why I am keeping a blog comes down to a few things. First, as I have started to look into preparing for the AT I have found that there isn't a lot of "family" friendly information out there. Most people who have information about their AT experiences are adults who have done the trail either solo or with a small group of other adults. This means that I will be kind of figuring things out as I go. While there are people who have done the trail with their children (the youngest thru hiker on record was six years old), it's not a commo practice so this blog will hopefully help ther parents someday.

The second reason for this blog is it gives me a single place to store information that will be useful as time goes by. Becuase I will be without computer acess for a lot of the time on the AT having a place I can get to with a smart phone that has the information I want in one place will be very useful.

Finally, I am blogging about all this because I like to write and I want friends and family to see what I am up to. I hope you all feel like you are part of the journey that will eventually end when me and the kids finish the hike in a few years.