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.