The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Thursday 5 April 2012

Plans: June

Previously I announced our plans for April and for May. April (as you may have noticed) is suddenly upon us, Mick & I are once again (gainfully) unemployed, and it is but a couple of days before we set out for our first trip (providing that the house full of lurginess abates in time) – and I haven’t yet announced the biggie of our ‘not really big’ walks for this year.

Plane tickets are now booked, a wilderness permit is in hand and somewhere I’ve got a campfire permit too (not that we intend to have a campfire, but apparently in California a gas stove counts as a campfire) – so we’re all good to go for a jaunt along the Pacific Crest Trail.

Not all of it, I hasten to add; that really would be a long walk. A modest section of California will do for us this year. We’ll be walking northbound, joining the trail at Agua Dulce (which is south east of Lancaster on the third map below) and walking around 500 miles into Yosemite (to somewhere south east of Lee Vining in the first map below). So, that takes us across a corner of the Mojave desert (hot, hot, hot!) and through the Sierra Nevada.

imageimageimage

All of the photos I’ve seen promise that it’s going to be quite spectacular.

It’s going to be quite a logistical challenge too, as you may notice that we don’t cross a road for the vast majority of that middle map. There are going to be some heavy loads of food being carried!

Happily, it’s been a remarkably low snow year in the High Sierra, so the going should be easier than it was in last year’s high snow year.

We’ll be staying in LA for a couple of days when we get to the States to sort out our food parcels and pick up some other bits and pieces and whilst we’re there I will be trying to sort myself out with a local mobile phone so that I can blog as we go (or as much as the limited reception on the route allows).

We’re off on 29th May. That’s not far away now, is it? <skips excitedly around the room>

10 comments:

  1. Wow! Good luck and enjoy yourselves!

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  2. I am quite looking forward to reading about it ;-)

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  3. Oooooh! I'm somewhat envious, to say the least - looks fantastic!

    Have a great time - and go carefully!

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  4. Stunning, can't wait to read your blogs on this big adventure

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  5. Have you read Chris Townsend's bit in the May TGO (p. 68)? The PCT certainly gets a good write up there.

    This will be a great adventure and I admire your determination and prioritisation to go for it.

    Would that I had become involved in long distance backpacking a few years earlier.

    I strongly recommend anybody with hesitant thoughts of taking on big challenges to make a huge effort to find or manufacture a way to get out there and do i.

    I look forward to following the story, and wish you both all the very best..

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  6. Section hiking now. Look forward to the trip report on this.

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  7. Lucky you. Enjoy. Looking forward like everyone else to your reports on the trip.

    Carol

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  8. Hi Gayle, caught up with your blog after Mick's comment on Facebook re Jaffa Cakes! Looks like an exciting adventure - have fun!

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  9. Wow, that sounds absolutely brilliant! I'm looking forward to following your posts from there! :)

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