It’s hard to track down this one down. Busy, Busy… Busy.
Reaching Out To New Hikers & Inviting Them To Our Podcast As A Guest:
We have a list of people interested that we asked a year ago and we also have been reaching out to some new people to hopefully record over the winter and interview people that have completed the PCT and some hikers planning on hiking next year and our year. You can view the guests that have confirmed that they want to participate on our podcast.
Hopefully Our Second Summit: Mount Baden-Powell
We made a post of trying to summit this mountain along the PCT in the Southern California section near Wrightwood. You can view the post here about this Mountain.
The Sierra’s:
We added some photos of his majestic backdrop for the section after the desert. You can view the blog post here.
A Little Bit Of Cuteness On The Trail
Spiders! I don’t Like Them | Chantal doesn’t like them | We are scared!
OMG kill me now. Chantal commented that she would get on a plane if she came across any!
Colder Weather Gear Test & Hike | Silent Lake Provincial Park
Heidi and I hiked Silent Lake Provincial Park to test out colder weather camping and see if we would be warm enough. When we got up there we set up our tent and then set off for a loop around the lake. We cooked on the trail and took a longer break. We also took a break every 2 miles and a little bit of a longer one later on.
I think I forgot to record on my watch for about 5 mins. Lots of leaves on the rocks made it slow going downhill. Thank goodness they were not wet. Getting into our tents… we both felt personally that I’m cold now in the tent that by 3 am… I’ll want to be sitting in the car on with the heat. Thankfully, both of us commented in the morning that we both warmed up.
70% was my heart rate reflecting an easy pace… I felt pretty good doing the loop compared to before. The breaks to adsorb water are key I think with trying to prevent muscle cramps. Temp was great for hiking.
I think that’s about it this season. Maybe we will test our gear in the spring again. I know next year… would defiantly like to do lots of camping and hiking.
I Want To Eat A Thing The Size Of My Head
There is a famous Bakery in Stehekin, Washington and we have to check it out and get some snacks for the trail. The Stehekin Pastry Company also has cabin rentals.
Mt. Jacinto & The Dangers
Heidi and I were talking about our hike at Silent Lake and how Mt. Jacinto is a summit we would like to do. Heidi is a little scared of heights. You can visit our post about Mt. Jacinto and it is the first mountain we will have tried to Summit in our lives. So when I got home… I had to find a post for Heidi to look at. I think she could do it. But the first thing… any of us will try only if it’s safe to do so. Heidi is thinking that she will take the trail at the south section and walk north about 5 miles to the trail we will come down the mountain on if we decide to try and summit it ourselves and split up from Heidi for the day.
Closing The Year of 2021!
As 2021 draws to a close. I’m sure we are happy 2021 was not like 2020… but 2022 should be better. At least it’s always nice to be positive as we look forward. We were generally quiet. Our gear spending dried up at the beginning of the year. We went for some shakedown hikes (Dan & Heidi) and Chantal was out trying to live her best life and working and I’m sure she had to have some sleep in there. Moving in this past fall… I started to plan the Sierra’s and NorCal for the trail notes which was nice to get back into the swing of things.
I was on the phone with Chantal this past fall asking about school and I was commenting that she is on year 2 of 3 of her program. She then said she is in 2 of 4! My heart sank. I tried to picture a calendar and see if that overlapped with our hike. It does.
What does that mean?
Well… since our hike would be from an April to Sept window… she can’t go in between in her money-earning summer. So we have to push it to 2024 unfortunately. I know time moves fast. Hell… I started this countdown 1,200 days away and now we are in the 4’s. We are 452 days away from our planned April 1st NOBO start date in 2023.
It actually gives us more time to save. We will update our website with our 2024 goal. We are looking forward to the Class of 2022 starting soon.
Chantal and I are also planning some bigger shakedown hikes and getting her out more with us. Hopefully… Heidi will come out too. We feel bad that this push affects Heidi’s first month on trail with us since she will have to push it and we hope she still can come out with us on the hike. We hope to bug her to come on the podcast when she can too.
So this April… will be that familiar saying that Dan says on the Podcast…. “We will be one year away from ONE YEAR AWAY”. So that will take us from the 4’s and put us back in the 8’s and two weeks away from being in the 7’s with 799 days away.
What about Patreon and the people helping and supporting us? For anyone that is doing the $1 or $3 option… that will continue but we have one Patron who is doing $45 per month from Texas so we are going to pause it for her for one year and also recommend she simply bring it down to $3 per month since she individually has helped us so much. She is planning on hiking it so we are going to ask her if she wants to borrow something like our Garmin InReach to use on her trip. On our website, you can see info on our Patrons on our supporting us page on our website if you scroll down on our spreadsheet showing our savings.
