Will be home from vacation in a few days. Wanted to share my favorite pic from the trip so far.

OK. Finally back home and all settled in. I guess I will give a TR but I'll do it in pieces.

Part 1: Preparation

My 2 friends and I started planning a hike thru the 100 mile wilderness several months ago. The 100 mile wilderness is the northern end of the Appalachian Trail (either the beginning or the end depending on where you start). It's considered the toughest part of the entire AT (which is over 2,000 miles long). Mt Katahdin is at the very northern tip of the 100 mile wilderness.

None of us had ever hiked before but some of the pictures looked cool and it seemed like fun to hike through the wilderness for a week and then climb a mountain.

Here are two of the pictures that specifically lured us in




Blue Springs
So we started doing short hikes here in Florida anywhere from 6 miles to 12 miles in a day. We started in tennis shoes, normal shorts and regular backpack with a few bottles of water. Our first hike was 7.3 miles at Blue Springs, Pine Island Trail.

Learned a bit on the hike. 1) It's Florida, bring bug spray dummies. 2) Drink way more water. The trail was very sandy so our feet tended to sink in a bit with every step. It was also not very shaded. Towards the end of the hike all 3 of us were very tired and had tons of mosquito bites. Most of the trail looks like the picture below and is actually used by horses and vehicles as well. Was an easy trail to start with but definitely not what we were hoping for.


Most of the trail

One of the interesting views


Bulow Plantation

By this hike we had all picked up some hiking gear. We had purchased day packs with a bladder system, some more comfortable shirts and shorts. The bladder system is basically a pouch of water that fits inside your pack and has a hose attached to it that runs over your shoulder so you can sip water on the go. It's extremely convenient and looks like this:


This isn't the exact model I have but its close enough.

For the clothing we got things that were fast drying and breathable from the local outdoor sports store. Switching to a sports type 'compression' underwear also made a huge difference after several miles. No more chafing!

This hike was roughly 12 miles (iirc) and was much closer to what we had been expecting. The trail was in the forest and shaded for almost all of the hike. The terrain was a bit tougher with more elevation changes along with roots and puddles getting in the way constantly.

Here are a few pics.





This hike was much more enjoyable than the previous hike. We were a bit more prepared and the trail was much more interesting. What did we learn this hike? Chiggers suck. Bug spray does nothing to ward off chiggers.


This is a photo stolen from the interwebs but is exactly what we had on our ankles as well. Chiggers tend to hide on low plants and if you brush against the plants these nearly microscopic bugs hop on and bite the **** out of you.


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Have to leave the house. Will continue the TR soonly.

hopefully they didn't go too much higher than that =(

Luckily the tend to stay on low plants. I got a few bites near my knees once but they've never gotten higher. Thankfully.

Part 1: Preparation (cont.)


De Leon Springs

This trail was very disappointing. We had thought that the trail was 7 or 8 miles but when we got there we found out it was less than 5, but no other long trails were anywhere close so nothing to do but hike the trail. A decent portion of the 'trail' is paved or boardwalk style. There is a large tree named 'Old Methuselah' that was cool in theory because it is one of the oldest in Florida and very large, but its blocked off so you can't get right up under it and the branches of the smaller trees around it block your ability to see just how big it really is. There is a small side trail that leads to 'Monkey Island' where they kept some monkeys a few decades back, but its just a patch of land with a small dugout moat-ish type thing around it. No more monkey. Just looks like the rest of the forest.







Wekiwa Springs - first visit

This trail was by far the best. It's a nested loop configuration. This means that there is one large outer loop (10.2 miles) with lots of cut-off trails that allow you to shorten the loop by a little or a lot or even create a longer hike by winding through the trails in a figure 8 (or any other configuration).

The trail had a variety of terrain types. Some was through low grass and palmetto bushes. Other parts were thickly forested. Some of the trail was sandy, other parts were rooty. We attempt to do the full outer 10 mile loop but near the halfway point are told that rain has made a portion up ahead unpassable so we are forced to backtrack a bit and take another route.

We end up doing about 9 miles and at the end we dive into the springs to cool off an relax. Something unexpected happened. The water at the spring is 72F (22.2C) year round. We had been hiking in 90F (32.2C) weather for a bit over 3 hours. Ours muscles were very hot at this point. The moment I jumped in the spring it felt like I just just been hit in the chest with a brick. Everything in my chest tightened up and I almost couldn't breathe for a second or two. Everything went from being loose and warm to cold and tight and it was actually very painful. It took a good 10 minutes before i started to feel normal again and was able to swim around. It was a strange experience and I think I have a better understanding of how easy it would be to die if you fell through the ice on a frozen over lake. Not that I was in any danger at all or had any panic, but the feeling of everything tightening up so absurdly fast made me wonder about how incredibly painful it would be if the water was 30 degrees colder.

Been playing a bit of PLO and sweated a friend of mine while he 4 tabled yesterday.

You can check out his THREAD and/or check out the video we made of the sweat.



It's not intended to be a purely instructional video, though we do talk quite a bit about hand reading and strategy.

Cool TR nice pics!!

Part 1: Preparation (cont. again)

Wekiwa Springs - 2nd visit

By this point we've gotten 95% of the gear we will need for the big hike. But we haven't done a single overnight hike. We decide to go back to Wekiwa with a plan to hike 20 miles. 10 one day, camp there and do 10 more the next day. This should hopefully allow us to become familiar with carrying more weight, setting up and breaking down camp and hiking long distances for more than 1 day at a time.

Here is the list of gear I've acquired by this point with pictures of some of the stuff:
Lowa Renegade Goretex Hiking Boots

Deuter ACT Lite 75L Pack

Kelty Sleeping Bag rated for 20 degrees

Koppen 2 person tent (I opt for a 2 person tent so that I have enough room to keep my pack inside my tent with me)

1 inch sleeping pad (goes under your sleeping bag)
Small compressible pillow
2L bladder system (from my day pack, but fits in my full pack)
2x 1L platypus bottles (foldable, lightweight plastic bottles)
Lightweight, breathable pants and shirts
Trekking poles
SAM Splint
Other misc first aid supplies

We end up getting to the trail a few hours later than expected so we plot a slightly different route to the campsite that cuts a few miles off the trip and will give us ample time to make camp. We end up doing 6 miles instead of 10 on day 1.

We get to the campsite about 1.5hours before sunset. None of us has put together out tents before. Eric and Chris get theirs up in what feels like 12 seconds. Mine on the other hand seems to be very over engineered and I actually get help from Chris to speed up the process. (I later learn a few tricks to setting it up quicker). Even with my slow set up time we still have almost an hour before sunset and decide to leave our gear at the campsite and hike another 2 miles with no gear just to kill some time (1 mile out and 1 mile back).

We get back from our short trek and the sun is about to set so we sit around and chat while we eat some dried fruit and trail mix. One thing we realize is that even after the official sunset time, you still have quite a lot of usable light and can easily get another 2-3 miles in and still have enough light to set
up camp if you really need to.

We finally get bored of talk to each other and decide that we will buy playing cards before the big hike to kill time in similar situations. By now its pretty dark and there isn't anything to do so we each go to our tents. I often have a hard time getting to sleep so I take a melatonin to relax(this ends up being a life saver when we hike in Maine).

After about 20 minutes of failing to fall asleep, I realize there is a problem. It's hot as BALLS. My sleeping bag is rated for 20 degrees and its almost 90 degrees outside. Plus the tent adds another layer of insulation making it even warmer! I end up sleeping on top of the sleeping bag and completely naked and still sweating. It was uncomfortable but I manage to get some intermittent sleep.

The next morning we pack up all our gear and hit the trail around 9am. We plan on hiking 15 miles to make up for our shortened hike the day before and plan a route that has us ending at the springs for a nice swim. Unfortunately about 8 miles in Eric starts puking. Why is he puking? Because he a super noob and only packed some crackers and 1 power bar for the entire 2 day hike. We kept offering him food when we would take short snack breaks but he always said he wasn't hungry. After he throws up we alter our route to get us back to the car in the shortest distance and force him to eat some of our trail mix and power bars. We also make him chug some water. About an hour later we're in the car and heading home.

We learned a ton this trip. Figured out a few tricks. Found a few pieces of gear we were still missing. The real trip is a week and a half away and we have a lot of planning left to do to make sure everything goes well and also to ensure that Eric packs enough food because he is clearly too noob to do it on his own.


Here's the signpost at the camp site. Its basically just a cleared off flat area next to the trail. But its oh so cozy.

Dam Eric is such a noob

update?

Part 2: The Big Hike

I've been rather lazy about updating this thread. I figured the best place to start was to finish the hiking TR. I'll skip the drive to Maine for now since it would require its own full length TR (tho I may come back to it later) and go straight in the hike.

We purchased some maps of the trail online. I've scanned and uploaded the profile view maps here. These were actually more helpful during the hike than the overhead maps. Sorry for the mediocre scan quality, but the maps are large fold out maps so I had to piece together several scans for each map.




We decided to start our hike at Jo-Mary Road (mile 28 on map 1). To skip some of the tougher parts of the trail (ex the big ****ing mountain that peaks at mile 11). Our egos told us to just do the whole thing, but our brains told us we'd have a better time if we eased into it. And after we climbed Nesuntabunt a few days later (the smaller peak at mile 4 map 2) we realized it was definitely a good decision.

Day 0
The night before the hike we stay in some small cabins about 50 miles from Jo-Mary Road. The plan for tomorrow is to drive to the base of Katahdin, leave the car there and get a ride back to Jo-Mary Road. This way when we are done with the hike, its very easy to hop in the car and go to a hotel for a hot shower and soft bed (which we are sure we will want by then).


the cabins


Closer view of the cabin.


Nice view from a few mile up the road.


This outhouse had no doors... Used it at night with no flashlight. Pitch black and creepy as hell.


Cool little dog. Can't remember her name tho.


At dinner a restaurant nearby that had a great view.



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We were in bed by 10 with plans to be up around 5am the next day to finish our last minute preparations and then hit the road.

Will post Day 1 TR in a bit.

waiting for more storyes!

damn you skraper i hate cliffhangers

First graph is 400nl/600nl since I had to start my new database. Second graph is 1knl/2knl. Still losing at 1knl, but had a few megawhales at 2knl treat me right over very small samples to make me just about even at high stakes.



All together it looks like this. Appx 90% of those hands were played on Bovada. The rest are on Merge and WPN.

Any more updates on progress, such a good thread.

Sorry I take so long with these updates. I decided to upload and include some of the videos from the hike in addition to the pictures.

Part 2: The Big Hike

Day 1

Eric, Chris and I are up at 6am and very eager to get started. We finish all our last minute preparations, double check that we have enough food and hop in the car to follow Phil to park our car near the base of Katahdin. Our plan is to leave the car there and have Phil (I call him Paul in the video by accident) drop us off at Jo-Mary road and we will hike back towards the car so we can easily leave easily once we are done rather than having to find a ride to the car.




The drive to Katahdin take a bit over an hour. We pass the time by joking and singing along to songs on the radio but you can definitely tell there is a little bit of nervous excitement. At this point we still aren't entirely sure what its going to be like cut off from everything. Chris specifically is worried his anxiety might act up and cause issues when we are deep in the woods. (Phil telling us a story of having to break camp at 2am during one hike because a moose decided to knock over his tent certainly wasn't helping Chris' anxiety lol)



On the way to Katahdin we see a moose grazing off to the side of the road. We hop out and take a few pictures but dont stay for long because we don't want to waste any time. We don't know it yet but this is the only moose we will see on the trip so taking a few extra minutes to admire it might have been worthwhile. But hey, its just a moose, so nbd.

Once we're back on the road we round a bend and get treated to a fantastic head on view of Katahdin. For the first time we're able to grasp the size of the mountain. Even though the three of us are cheering and taking pictures excitedly, I think each of us was secretly a little intimidated. But with the big climb still several days away it was easy to put aside any fear we might have had and just stay excited.


We drop off the car and hop into Phil's truck for the hour long drive back to Jo-Mary Road. Phil gives us several last minute tips and also shows us a few non-marked campsites on our map which help our planning quite a bit. For each day we end up having 2 to 3 possible sites to camp for the night. It was really nice to have this flexibility and made a big difference on at least 2 nights.

An hour later we get out of the truck, Phil snaps a quick picture of us and we're on our way. Our plan for the day is to make it from Jo-mary to Nahmakanta Stream Campsite (mile 40 on the map below). We are fairly certain that we can do 12 miles even tho we don't quite have a full day of sunlight left. After a mile or two it really starts to hit me that we are completely cut off from the rest of the world (in fact my cell phone only gets signal 1 time for the rest of the hike from one very specific outcropping at the peak of Nesuntabunt) and I have maybe 10 seconds of a very very mild panic attack that I talk myself out of very quickly.







The three of us are in good spirits, with a little bit of adrenaline and stop to take a picture of every cool looking tree or stream. A few miles in we find a small, but marked, side trail. We check our guide books and its only .5 miles long and should lead to a cool view, so we decide to take it thinking it won't add much time to our day. At the end of the trail we are able to snap a few cool pictures but it was a little anticlimactic so we decide right then that side trails are probably not going to be worth the extra mileage and time they to our day (and most of the side trails are much longer than half a mile).






After many hours we notice that the sun is starting to go down rather quickly and we still haven't hit out goal campsite yet. We also haven't seen a clear landmark in quite some time that would even really give us a good indication of how far we have left to go. We are 100% sure we are still on the trail because its been very well marked the entire time. The only thing we know for sure is that we are somewhere between Potaywadjo Spring Lean to (we stopped for a quick snack there a few hours ago) and Nahmakanta Stream Campsite. Estimating our speed and the time since we left Potaywadjo we feel like we should have already passed State Campsite/ Tumbldown Dick Stream but we didn't see either which has us a little worried. Our estimations have us very close to our goal, but having not seen 2 major landmarks at all means we could be much much farther away.

We decide to pick up the pace quite a bit and go from a casual walking pace to a near jog (its pretty tough to actually jog on this type of terrain even without a pack, but we manage to get going rather quickly). After about 20 minutes or so we come to the largest/fastest moving stream we've seen yet. Crossing it is going to be intense. We scout up and down the stream a little bit to try to find a better crossing point but there doesn't appear to be one. The best option is a route that takes you across several large rocks. The rocks are much to far spread out to safely hop from one to the other even without a 50lb pack on your back. With the pack it would probably be impossible. But luckily(?) for us a lot of branches have gotten caught between these rocks that form a sort of floating raft bridge type thingy. So we decide, what the hell, lets go for it. All three of us make it across without major incident but one of the branches gave way underneath we and my left foot went all the way in. luckily my right foot was planted on a sturdy rock or I doubt I could have kept my balance and would have fallen in completely.




We decide that that must have been Tumbledown Dick stream, but we still hadn't seen State campsite and that was suppose to be before Tumbledown Dick stream, right? And IF that was Tumbledown Dick and we hadn't seen State Campsite then that means we had another 2 miles before we hit Nahmakanta and we were losing daylight fast. There is nothing to do but keep moving tho, so we book it. To our great surprise we come up on Nahmakanta Stream Campsite within 10 minutes. Meaning that we somehow passed Tumbledown Dick Stream AND State Campsite during the hike and never even noticed them. We are confused but are just glad we don't have to set up camp randomly in the middle of the trail. (We later figure out that there was a small side trail that we would have had to take to pass the other campsite).

Once we get there we meet a few other hikers sitting around a small fire. Once our packs are off I think every one of us immediately felt exhausted. The adrenaline of the big stream crossing and the last minute rush is fading away and we even have trouble summoning the energy to put up our tents and make dinner. We make tentative goals for day 2 and pass out shortly after we set up our tents.

Started a new thread for 2014 a while ago and forgot to link it here, in case anyone who was following this thread didn't see the new one

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...000nl-1404712/

Souns like you're really working on it, subbed and GL

I stopped updating this thread actually.

New one:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...000nl-1404712/