When to Go.

So, one of my Type A daughters, Corinne, is enviously reading these posts and is trying to figure out how to work it into her schedule.  You see, she's graduating from Carnegie-Mellon University in May and is one of the lucky graduates that have a job lined up.  However, before she joins the rat race, she wants to see the world (some more).  She's scheduled a trip to Scandanavia and Scotland for the month after her graduation, returns home for a month, then is planning on travelling with Gail and Valerie to Italy and other European destinations this summer.  She talked her new employer into not letting her start until August so that she can have her cake and eat it too! 

She'd like to come with me, however, it only fits into her schedule if we go during the first half of July.  I'm a bit nervous about hiking at that elevation that early in the summer because there is still snow at many of those elevations, making life a bit more challenging.  Two of the ranger stations along the route, Mowich Lake and Sunrise, don't open until the beginning of July.  If this year is any measure, it's been a pretty wet spring, particularly in the mountains. 

So, I need to do some more investigation, for although I'd love to spend a couple of weeks with my daughter, I also would hate for it to end up in a helicopter rescue from a freak spring snowstorm. 

(Note, for those of you who are not used to a Mountain climate, July may seem pretty late for spring to arrive.  The flora and fauna up in the mountains are used to a flurry of activity virtually as soon as they detect sunlight.  I would strongly suggest that you put a trip to a mountain meadow on one of your summer trips, the floral display at times is stunning.)  

Three days? Right!

After church on Sunday, we were talking to some friends of ours, Sue and Sonny.  Gail and Sue were teachers together a couple of years ago and we got to know them better watching their son Conrad playing for Jackson High School.  He's a senior trying to make the difficult decision about where to go to college, play football for Lewis and Clark College, or enroll in the Engineering School at Hawaii.  No bad choices either way!

During the conversation, we were talking about our summer plans, and I mentioned to Sonny that I was going on this 93 mile hike around Mount Ranier.  Sonny's response:  "So, how long is it going to take you?   About three days?"  Sonny, you see, is a Army Reservist.  Going through drills every month and spending a tour of duty in Iraq a couple of years ago, he sees this as a weekend bivouac. 

Needless to say, I'm looking at more of a 12 day trip.  I'm not looking for a death march.

Itinerary

I put together the itinerary for a 12-day trip and was a bit surprised.  The typical day has an effective range of 10-12 miles, which was not unexpected.  The leg that I was surprised with was the leg from Indian Creek to Longmire.  This is the one that parallels the road south of Mount Rainier.  When driving along this road from Box Canyon to Longmire, it seems to take an hour or so if you're not stopping to look at the waterfalls, Visitor's Center in Paradise, walk in the meadows.  It surprised me that this leg of the trip is only about 10 miles.  It cuts off some of the side trips, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

One of the things that tells me, though, is for one of my training hikes, we should be able to camp at Cougar Rock campground, hike to Indian Creek, overnight there and hike back.  Given that it's on the south side, that part of the trail opens a bit earlier in the summer, so I may have to give it a go in June or so.

One thing I haven't done yet is make a map of the hike for you.  There are many topographic maps, but I'm considering something that's a bit more point to point.  I'll give it a go and attach it in one of the permanent pages.

(I've since started and put one here.)

Winter Storm

We're spending the holidays on the Outer Banks in North Carolina, which is on the outskirts of the "Blizzard of 2010", so any training will have to consist of going up and down two flights of stairs.  We did manage to get outside and walk a few hundred feet up the beach before we couldn't feel our extremities.

So, I've been reading Bette's book about the trail to get more familiar.  She mentioned a method of estimating effort that I hadn't heard before.  The hiking center at Longmire suggests that you add a mile for every 1,000 foot elevation gain and add half a mile for every 1000 foot elevation loss.  Thus, the typical Longmire to Devil's Dream is 5.9 miles and 2,500 foot elevation gain, basically equivalent to a 8.4 mile hike.  Although it doesn't begin to estimate the amount of effort required, it is a good start to give me an idea how much stamina I'll need to have from a training standpoint.

As part of the planning, I have to plan a route to take.  Given that it'll change over time and depending on capacity of the campsites, I'll be updating my Itinerary frequently.