day 28: how to use awol

Miles: 7
Water: 1l
Trail magic: 5 pancakes

Short day today, just 7 miles, sight seeing detour. Tomorrow should be a big one in the rain.

So Kerrie asked a bunch of questions about basic life on the trail. I have been so caught up in this stuff for the last year, and I'm surrounded by trail experts every day it is easy to forget that not everyone knows what's happening. So here is the first in the series of trail basics, in no particular order.

There is a book called "the Appalachian trail guide", by a guy called Awol. I would give you his full name but I tore the front half of the book off to save weight. The book is about 5"x7" and a pleasant green color. Nearly every long distance hiker carries one. There are other trail guides, most with fancier maps, but the awol guide is the most common. Some hikers save weight by burning the pages as they go, until the book is completely gone. Others will tear out the pages they need for a section and mail the rest of the book ahead. I went with tearing it in half and using it to log our progress. Just today I started logging weather conditions too.

I included a photo of our current spot, the circled miles halfway down the middle of the top page is us. Looking at that line the first number in a regular font is the south bound millage number. The bold number next to it is the one we care about, the northbound mileage. Next to that is a description of a landmark or shelter. These are commonly places with nice views or water sources. After that there are icons so you can see a glance going down the right side of the page, water, consistent or sporadic, shelters and how many they hold, if there is an out house there and a few other things.  The last number on the far right is the altitude. You can also use the crazy heart monitor line down the middle of the page to get an idea of the terrain. Often how level or steep the ground is holds importance to us than the distance.

The other type of pages are the towns and services pages. These have maps of nearby towns, and address and phone numbers for things like hotels, restaurants, grocery stores, locals who offer shuttle services, and outfitters.

Sorry for the info dump, paragraphs sir, use them!

So let's look at our plans for tomorrow. We took a light day today, after several longer ones. Looking down the page I see lots of water, a couple if roads and towns we could get off at, but no tenting areas or shelters until you get to the pochuck mt shelter just after the page fold.  That shelter is at mile 1349.8, we are at 1337.4, so 12.4 miles away. (If you look on the description line of the shelter this info is there too.)

So our options are pull a longish day, for us anyway, of 12 miles in the rain, or hike to a road, head to town and find a hotel or hostel. Well we just resupplied, and we should be in good shape after a day off, so those factors pushed us to aim for the shelter.

If things get ugly on the way we can always tent in the woods near the trail. But that is illegal in new jersey.

I really like the awol guide, one of the most useful books I have owned. It presents all the info you need to know, in a visual format to boot, which is good for someone like me who needs the pictures. The fact that so many people carry it allows you to use it as a frame of reference in conversations. It contains all the information that is important to know, but would be impossible to memorize. Also there is a scavenger hunt in it. It is really more of a tool than a book. When I first got it in the mail I tried to figure it out and use the information, but it just looked like a jumble. As soon as we started hiking it snapped into focus. I use it at least twice a day. Sometimes more if we need to figure out how much water to carry.

So that is the way too long answer to "how do you know where you are going?"

We have a book that tells us.