6/9/16 - Los Angeles

Even though I was pretty much all set to get on the trail there were a few things left that I needed to get done before we leave town on Saturday.  Scott and Sara were both up and out to work early, so I decided not to waste much time and left the house and walked to the local grocery store called Ralphs.  They told me I could use their extra car, but after being cooped up on the train for 3 days I just wanted the exercise to keep my body ready to start hiking.  It was a mile and a half each way, and after buying my food, and combining that with my gear and the water I was starting to get scared of my starting weight.  My gear is so much lighter than it has ever been, the problem is the water.  

I am going to be starting the trail at literally the driest part of the whole trail.  For the first 140 miles, I will be walking on average about 17-20 miles between water sources in 85-100 degree weather.  There is even one section where there is the possibility of 42 miles of trail without water.  There are reported caches of water that locals have put out near road crossings to help the hikers, but you can never plan on having those caches be full when you get to them.  Especially right now as I will be going through right after the big pack of hikers have just gone through and could possibly have cleaned out those caches.  For this reason, I will be carrying 6 liters of water out of town on sunday.  1 liter of water weighs about 2.2 pounds, so that means I will be carrying over 13 pounds in just water.  5 days of food right now is weighing in at about 12 pounds, so thats an extra 25 pounds of just food and water.  My baseweight of all my gear is in the 18-20 pound range, so on the first day out, I will be carrying somewhere in the area of 40-45 pounds on my back.  Not ideal.

The next stop was to check out if I could find a new piece of Tyvek to use as my groundcloth.  Tyvek is relatively cheap, light, and waterproof if you can find someone to sell it by the foot. Normally you can only buy it by the roll.  Some hardware stores carry it by the foot and the only one that was in walking distance was an Ace Hardware, and unfortunately they didn't have any so I guess I'm going with the old piece I have had for the beginning of this hike too.  After this I got some Subway and headed back to the house just in time for Scott to get home.  

I was lucky enough to see my cousin Chris the day before, but I was really hoping I could get to see my other friend Matt from college who also lived here in LA.  That night we decided to meet somewhere in the middle and Scott, Matt, and myself drove down to Long Beach for a few drinks at the Belmont Brewery.  Pretty nice place right on the ocean.  It was great catching up with them.  After a while I was also lucky enough to have my cousin Chris come out too with one of his coworkers Eric.  I was ecstatic Chris came out as well because I felt bad we didn't have more time to talk the day before when I visited him on set.  

 

 

Overall, a pretty outstanding day.  Still a lot to do tomorrow though before we leave on Saturday.

Patch