Steady Moving

Mile 26!
Well, sorta mile 35 but the first nine were not on the actual trail. It's been some tough hiking. Up and down, up and down. The views are amazing but The A.T. makes you pay before and after each one. Sometimes they sneak up on you. You look out over this awesomely mountainous terrain and can sorta see where you just hiked from. Then you become pretty proud of yourself.

We got some great trail magic today. A girl, Overkill, who had hiked a small section brought us into Suches where we purchased some severely overpriced necessities, like dog food, wet wipes, A SPRITE, and food. This happened as Caveman took CamDog on ahead. Little did I realize I'd have to carry 4lbs of CamDog's food up one of the steepest mountains yet. Oy!

So, after about an 8 mile day today we rolled up to Lance Creek where they were full. Not a flat spot left. So, Reverie, CamDog, Cave Man, and myself forged on an extra mile.  We set up camp at a spot off the trail the does not appear to have been camped in for years. We had to clear a spot for two tents and are far away from everyone else for the first time. It's kinda nice aside from the lack of a privy for the morning time. We are actually on the border of the national forest. So close that we are about 150 yards away from some gorgeous mountain homes tucked in a mountain cove. We took a little walk. They were all very friendly and offered some easy water access via hose. 

We might have gone on to the next shelter had there not been an ongoing mandatory bear canister rule. That's also why Lance Creek was so full. It's a 6 mile stretch that you cannot camp in without the expensive canister. So, we hung one hell of a bear line so that no unwanted guest shows up and eats out food and scares the shit out of us.

On the whole, everything's feeling pretty good. Packs are heavy, shoulders hurt, yet feet somehow only very mildly blistered. Filming is going well. Lots of nice people.

Real quick, it rained yesterday. Fortunately, the camera got put up and the pack covers gaiters put on in time. It was pretty brutal for about an hour. It was really cold. We found a little half cave to hold up in until it was over. Put on some dry clothes and prayed it wouldn't rain while setting up at the next shelter site. Thank god, it didn't. 

Tomorrow is Blood Mountain. 4200 feet. BIG climb. But then to town. Neels Gap where we'll be getting some more delicious dehydrated meals.

We miss everyone and can't wait to tell you more!

Wooo!

Man, the A.T. is beautiful. Yesterday we decided to start from Amicicola Falls instead of Spinger Mountain. It was gorgeous waterfalls but a really tough hike with minimal amounts of water. Thought we'd never reach the beginning. But we did shortly before dark. Caveman was there waiting for us. It was awesome. Beautiful sunset. However no time or energy to cook supper. Plus, there were some amazing Southbounders just finishing. It was surreal. Our first day, their last. Very insperational. Very encouraging. Very fit. Splash and Cook. Planned in 6 months south but took nearly 9 months. Whoa.

Late start this morning but easier hiking. Another pretty day. Oh, and Long Creek Falls. An amazing waterfall. Chaser is doing well. People love him. "Is that a camera on his pack? That's amazing!" So, he's CamDog. Lindsay is Reverie. I'm Spiral. For now at least. We were able to cook one of our meals tonight. They were sooo good. Very satisfying.

Either way, we are alive and having a good time. Praying this great weather continues. Hit y'all back when we have some signal again!

And We're Off!

Headed to Spinger Mountain now. The drive is Absolutely beautiful. So is the weather. Several hikers leaving from the hotel we stayed in. Gonna be a crowded first couple of weeks.

Ready to hike!

Springer Mountain's Eve

Half way to Dawsonville, GA where we'll staying tonight. In the morning we head to Springer Mountain and this thing going. It's beginning to getting hilly allowing us to really visualize small amounts of what we'll be up against. It's exciting. 

Lindsay, Austin, Chaser and I are all pretty tired. It's hard to sleep knowing it's the last night in your own bed for some time. We'd like to be nice and rested up for Trail. 

The dream to hike the Appalachian Trail with Lindsay, our dog, and some cameras begins tomorrow!

The Time has Come

It's finally here. We have all of our ducks in a row and are ready to roll. Tomorrow my mother transports Lindsay, Chaser, Austin, and me towards our beginning. Typing that really excites me! Here it finally comes. We are ready.

The last few days have been nuts. Our going away parties were great but all too quickly gave way to the immense amounts of food preparations we had yet to do. We didn't dehydrate ALL those meats, fruits, veggies, and bread for nothing! It was time to place our collection of foods together, partition, and vacuum seal. And that we did. The original goal was to have about 165 for each of us. That's 330 total. We ended up with 125 each and I'm okay with that. I had originally thought, when we began the process days ago, that we had acquired too much food for 6 months. I was wrong. There were a few runs to Walmart for extra crackers, cereals, candies, vitamins, and vacuum seal bags. It was a long, tedious process that I'm very glad to be done with. However, when the vacuum sealing was done, the drop box preparations began. Yet another awkwardly organized, lengthy process, especially since we didn't make our mark. Which ones get shorted and which ones do not? We figured it out.

M.R.E

I was afraid my amounts were off so I made one.

It was exactly the right amount. Perfect. And delicious!

This was made by putting, dehydrated ground meat, onions, bellpeppers, and corn in with half an Alfredo Pasta Side with some extra powdered milk. I hope they all turn out this way.

Thursday, we put them in their place.

There they are. All, like, 40 of them. Preaddressed and ready to go. My mom will now be the one to send us these packages. It works out a little better that way. Thank you, MOM!

Alright, this is our last day in Louisiana for a bit so I gotta make the rest of this quick. This is my best attempt at an ETA for everybody. Needless to say, keep up with the blog as it will be more up-to-date as we go along.

Blairsville, GA
April 8-9

Hiawassee, GA
April 12-13

Franklin, NC
April 16-18

Nantahala Outdoor Center
April 20-21

Fontana Dam, NC
April 23-24

Gatlinburg, TN
April 27-28

Hot Springs, NC
May 2-3

Erwin, TN
May 7-8

Hampton, TN
May 12-14

Damascus, VA
May 17-19

Troutdale, VA
May 22-24

Bland, VA
May 31-June 2

Pearisburg, VA
June 4-5

Catawba, VA
June 11-12

Glasgow, VA
June 17-19

Waynesboro, VA
June 25-27

Linden, VA
July 2-4

Harpers Ferry, WV
July 7-8

Fayetteville, PA
July 12-14

Duncannon, PA
July 18-20

Port Clinton, PA
July 24-26

Palmerton, PA
July 29-30

Delaware Water Gap, PA
August 2-3

Unionville, NY
August 7-8

Fort Montgomery, NY
August 12-14

Kent, CT
August 18-20

Salisbury, CT
August 21-23

 Dalton, MA
August 27-79

Bennington, VT
August 30-31

Killington, VT
September 7-9

Hanover, NH
September 11-13

Glencliff, NH
September, 15-16

Gorham, NH
September 22-23

Andover, ME
September 26-27

Stratton, ME
October 2-4

Caratunk, ME
October 6-8

Monson, ME
October 10-12

I realize these calculations result in cutting it close to the closing date of October 15 of Mount Katahdin, but it's so hard to say right now what our pace is gonna be and when. Nevertheless, there it is.

If you'd like to send us something, fill it out like this:

ATTN: Hold for AT Thru-hikers

Coltin Calloway and Lindsay Fasic

General Delivery

Whatever town, Whatever state ZIP

That's to most towns. The only ones that are different are the ones that don't go to post offices. Though I wish there were more drops not P.O. dependent due to their hours of operation, there are places like 

Nantahala Outdoor Center

13077 Hwy 19 W

Bryson City, NC 28713

that will hold it for us. Also,

Brown's Grocery Store

613 Hwy 321

Hampton, TN

And

P.O. Box 807 Washington St.

Harpers Ferry, WV 25425

(That's the Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters)

And, I think, one more

Fotter's Market

152 Main St.

Stratton, ME 04982

Oh, and

Shaw's Lodging

P.O. Box 72

17 Pleasant St.

Monson, ME 04464

Everything else should be General Delivery to post offices. Again, make sure you put "Hold for AT Thru-hikers" and our names.

Next time we blog to you, it'll be from the iPhone on Trail. Thanks again to everyone who has helped us make this happen. All of you are awesome. Thanks for all the support and we'll see you 6 months.

Special thanks to my dad who allowed us to live at his house as if it were our own and slipped us many financial backings that have helped so much. AND the awesome crawfish last night. Lindsay, Chaser, and I will miss him very much. Sorry bout all the messes the Trail-related gear, food, and everything else that has cluttered the house. You are awesome.

9 and half pounds on his back and his tail is wagging!

Happy Trailin'!!!!!!

One Week Count-down

It's been a couple weeks since we've last updated. This is because our routines have dramatically changed since the last blog. As of the Friday before last, March 16, Lindsay and I parted ways with our day jobs. It was tough, but necessary. We both had pretty resounding exits.

Now that our jobs don't consume our lives, we have more time to focus on preparations. I'm happy to say that dehydrating is just about complete. We've been ripping apart dinners,(Hamburger Helper, Pasta Sides, Bear Creek Soups) and partitioning them into meal sizes. We get all of our bags of dehydrated ground meat, chicken, corn, tomatoes, peas, beans, and okra and place them in the bags with the meals. Using the Backpackchef.com method, we pack a dinner, snacks, lunch, and breakfast into a vacuum sealable bag for our homemade MRE's.

We mark them to let us know if contains meat or fish as Lindsay does not eat meat. We will then distribute to boxes to be shipped. The idea, originally, was to have one for every potential night on the Trail. We have adjusted that seeing how I will be consuming many cheeseburgers and won't need to rehydrate as many meals. Nevertheless, we are still working towards making as many meals as possible. In addition to all that we've purchased, a ton of food as been kindly donated to us from our awesome friends and family. I do believe we have enough to eat very well every night. Now for the crunch time event: organizing all the food! We have a long ways to go but I have faith we'll complete it within the next couple days.

This past weekend has been packed with going away gatherings. We have a lot of people behind us on this adventure. They are psyched on the journey, the idea of the journey, and the films and paintings to come of it. We feel the love and will throughout our hike. 

I've been feeling much more confident about the construction of the film within this adventure. If nothing else Chaser's new backpack camera set up has performed flawlessly. The shaky, 95% unusable footage is a thing of the past. We were able to attach the camera much better than before. The test results have turned out incredible. It's funny, when I was first tinkering with the idea of Chaser having a camera, I did some Google searches on how other people have connected cameras to dogs. Not a lot out there and they didn't seem to work that well. I hope I have time to post a little footage before we go. The real beauty about Chaser's cam is that we will have no way of looking at it until after we get back. Good dog.

Chaser also got a microchip implanted, just in case. We opted out of trying dog booty after dog booty even though it was quite a funny site. He looked like a show pony plopping around. Instead we are going to treat his paws with pad enhancers. If this isn't as effective as we hope, we'll submit to booties.

We may not have much time to post another blog before we depart for the mountains. It's here. It's finally here. Stop talking, start hiking. We are very excited and look forward to keeping everyone who cares so much updated.

There are too many contributors to count in the last 2 weeks. We have been truly blessed by a lot of people. We thank all of you for believing.

Even Stella, my best friend, Dustin, and his awesome girlfriend, Logan's, baby showed up!

Too cute.

Oh wait, there will be one more post of a guestimated mail drop list.

See you on the Trail

26 Days Until The AT!

March has me all kinds of backwards right now. So many last minute buys and preparations are flying around in my head. Camp cups... pot cozies... doggy booties. Ideally we won't show up on the Trail and have a "DAMMIT WE FORGOT THAT" moment. The basics are covered but we are more than basic. I'm sure throughout the trip we'll narrow down to the bare basics. There are many things we simply won't know until we spend a couple weeks out there. But I think that goes for everyone, so we don't feel so bad.

The anticipation 3 and a half weeks prior to our departure brings a large range of emotions. Excited. Nervous. Ready. Not Ready. But ultimately we are ready and will be more so when that day comes. It's right around the corner. The preparations, themselves, feel like a journey. I haven't really had much of any free time. Before and after work consists of nothing but food prepping for dehydrating and removing other freshly dehydrated food. I wake up earlier to take food off/put food on and go to bed later than normal to do the same so food can dehydrate as we sleep. Nonstop. Currently we have diced tomatoes/Rotel, black eyed peas, cooked noodles, and bread with syrup, honey, and cinnamon sugar dehydrating. I had to start utilizing the oven due to lack of dehydrating space. Set it on the lowest setting and leave a good crack for air to escape. The only thing is you gotta be there the whole time if you use the oven. Too much about dehydrating? Sorry. Had to get it out.

We organized our foods that we've been collecting for months last night. I'm impressed with how much we've accumulated. I'm gonna estimate it's about 4 months supply. We'll be out there for about 160-180 days. Therefore, we need about 115-130 meals ready in the mail drops. So, we haven't quite accumulated enough. A big trip to the grocery store again is coming up soon. Oh, and so much vacuum sealing needed, so little time.

 

Sure looks like a lot, right?

That's because it is. This doesn't include a substantial amount of dehydrated foods(meat, veggies, bread).

We haven't been able to do as much training recently. Simply no time. We are split between work and working on the Trail. But I'm not really scared about it. I believe we'll hike just fine. Of course, everyone struggles at first. Few are truly in shape at the beginning of a thruhike.

I do, somehow, manage to find a little time to do some skateboarding. It has to happen. It's been my anchor of sanity for many years and I will miss it greatly. It's amazing how long I can entertain myself just thinking about a nollie kickflip noseslide even though I can't do that. It often haunts me in the best way as I rest my eyes to sleep or gets me through a long day of work. My brain battles between the Trail and skateboarding all the time and I really don't mind. I envision myself returning in 7 months and slinging my first nollie flip. The thought, itself, is so satisfying. 

Adventurer on and off the board.

Couple years-old footage.

Skateboarding, NPR, Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, my friends, and my family. I will miss them all. But we shall return.

Real quick, special thanks to my cousin Jimmy who works distributing Little Debbie and Lance snacks and is coming up with a gift package for us with as many long-shelf life items as he can. Jerky, crackers, and other snacks. Perfect.

We love all you guys. Looking forward to updating a fraction of text that these blogs contain but from the Trail!

PS. www.backpackingchef.com has helped immensely and we appreciate that it exists.