Practice Hikes

If we were doing this the "traditional" way, this is the time when we would be posting about our weekend or week-long "shakedown" hikes. The purpose of these hikes is to put our gear and our bodies through small samples of what we expect the AT will put us through. During these hikes we would basically load up our packs with everything we will be using out on the trail, and head out on hikes of varying length, from single night to week-long treks with the purpose of testing gear to make sure everything works and hopefully identify any problem gear in time to get it either fixed or replaced before we hit the long trail.

With Carolyn's work schedule and My school schedule however, taking enough time to do even one full on shakedown hike isn't seeming real likely (unfortunately).  So, we are doing our best with the few scattered days off we have. Once per week we have been trying to clear our schedules to do a hike of at least a few miles with our packs loaded as if we were doing a long hike. That means all gear packed, water bladders loaded, and extra water added to packs to simulate a week or two worth of food. We are hoping that these short hikes will at least get us used to hiking fully loaded, and identify any problems with the gear that can create the most problems if it doesn't work perfectly (packs, clothes, footwear).

Our first hike was up Mount Marquette, which is the backside of the local ski hill.  It is a 5 mile loop which is primarily intended as a mountain bike trail. Being a bike trail, it was probably rougher than most of what we'll encounter on the AT, but had plenty of hills and rock fields to keep us on our toes.  We passed a few people who raised their eyebrows at us for carrying all of our camping gear on a 5 mile hike, but we just smiled and waved.  The top was gorgeous, and may be one of the best overlooks in all of Marquette as you can see all of town, most of the shoreline, and both of the harbor brakewalls and lighthouses.

Beautiful hiking through the woods

View from the top included all of Marquette

Our next hike was to the top of Hogsback Mountain, the tallest peak in Marquette County. To those of you from out west, don't get too excited; the peak elevation is only 1,220 feet, but in michigan it qualifies as a good "summit" hike. It is still a fair climb, with 600 feet of elevation gain from the trailhead.  For this hike we brought along one friend who doesn't carry around heavy packs for fun but still enjoys the outdoors, and 4 legged friend whom Carolyn had attached to her backpack by a leash for a fair share of the hike.  The temperature is cooling down significantly as fall comes rolling in so we took advantage of a relatively clear, low wind day, even if the temperature wasn't expected to peak much past 50º. I think both of us may have decided that nice hiking gloves or mittens may be something to seriously consider.  This hike also involved fording a small river, since the bridge is now mostly under water thanks to a heavy rain that blew through a few days ago... Carolyn found out the hard way that when water comes over the top of your boot, no amount of waterproofing will keep your feet dry, but the SmartWool & Injinji sock combination did keep them warm.

A very wet trail -- there was 6 inches of water in some parts of the trail, not including the small river under the bridge which was partially running over the bridge.  The four legged did originally try to avoid the bridge...it didn't last long.

On the summit, enjoying lunch

So, after these two short excursions, here are a few of the things we have discovered about our gear choices. First, both of us are happy with our choice of boots, which was one of our biggest concerns because there is no shortage of horror stories involving footwear problems on the trail. Second, Carolyn's little experiment of wearing a thin sock liner as well as smartwool socks seems to be a winner. And last, but not least, both of us are convinced that we have made the right choice in backpacks. After the boots, packs are the next biggest factor making the difference between a good hike and a miserable hike, and they are also difficult to test short of actually filling them up and hitting the trail, so it is nice to know that we both made good choices, even if they were slightly unconventional for various reasons.

That is the end of this chapter for now, though we are hoping for at least a few more day hikes before the weather completely turns against us, so we may post on those as they come up. Until then it is back to the real world of work and school.