Steve Tabor Maps & the Desert Trail Town Guide Yeti made
Preparation 01-26-2022
Yeti and I have already been preparing for this amazing trek for over a year. Thanks to the amazing work of desert hikers like George Huxtable and Steve Tabor (of the Desert Survivors), guidebooks exist for part of the trail - through Nevada. Originally, a route that was planned ended in So. Oregon. Hiker' Colter (2012) was the first thru-hiker to put in a route all the way to Canada through Oregon and Washington, followed by Dirtmonger. Subsequently, Buck 30 and his friend Heather hiked the Desert Trail and compiled lots of useful info about caching and towns along the way. Yeti and I made up a town guide for our trek taking info from Buck 30 and adding to it, including town maps. Without the amazing footprints of these hikers, it would have been hugely arduous to do this trek. We follow in the footsteps of giants....
Lemstar
De-hydrator we bought for this hike
Preparation 01-28-2022
Madly busy dehydrating some food (I was really late to decide to try this) so we'll have some good stuff to eat along the way. So far, I've prepared pea soup, turkey chili, sweet potatoes and broccoli. Beets will be next. The rest is bought food. I should have started 6 months ago. We actually will buy a lot along the way, so will rely on what we can get in markets. We start the hike on March 7th, but have to drive down Feb. 20 to set all the water/food caches (18 in all - 6 with food). Unbelievable - this is a first for us. Today, I'm still madly doing some de-hydrating, Turkey Chili again. I decided very late in the game to buy a de-hydrator and a vacuum sealer machine to seal bags to keep the food fresher longer. Beets are next and that's it. I've been meaning to do this for many past trips and just never got my act together. Maybe we will eat better quality food on future hikes. The only downside if you de-hydrate most of your food is having to do more mail drops, which we've never liked to do. This will be a good test. We have 10 mail drops or hand-delivered boxes and six caches that have food, so I can use what I've prepared to put in those boxes. We are going on a short hike today. Cold, brrr...Zero degrees still at 7:40am. We'll have to keep ramping up our hike training with packs. Bozeman area has had so little snow so skiing has been only so-so. I've taken a picture of the de-hydrator, a Cosori model, which so far has performed really well. Lemstar
Yeti on a local training hike
Preparation 2022-01-29
We went yesterday on a not too long "hike" in Bozeman. It was a beautiful day and not a very hard hike. Next week we must get back to longer hikes with our packs on. We went with my BWAG friends (Bozeman Women's Activity Group = BWAG). Since Covid, four or five of us have gotten together for hikes, as opposed to doing bigger group hikes. Beets are in the de-hydrator. That's the last batch of stuff I'm drying. Then, we'll start assembling the mail drops and caches. Our leave date is looming....still so much to do to get ready!
Lemstar