Knife

 

I'm going to hike the Arizona Trail

I have given it some thought and I think the health issue I had on the CDT was caffeine overdose. I peed too much, I could not sleep, I felt like I was dying. I think it was caffeine and chronic lack of sleep because of the caffeine. I won't make that mistake again.

I am going to hike the Arizona Trail at the end of March. I am really looking forward to it. This is a great year for the AZT. There should be a lot of wildflowers in the desert. There should be plenty of water. There may be a lot of snow, especially north of the Grand Canyon. You can road walk that section. This does not appeal to me at all, but I'll wait to see what it's like when I get there.

There should be a lot of hikers, too. The PCT is so snowy this year people are quitting before they even begin. Some of them will go to the AZT instead.

I'm going to mail my food and see how that goes. I found it hard to shop as I went in those small Idaho/Montana towns on the CDT. I assume some of these small Arizona towns could also be hard to shop in. So I will mail a minimum amount of food and supplement with snack foods in town.

The food I will send:

• Breakfast: Oats with dates, protein powder or collagen, chia/flax/pumpkin/sunflower seeds, milk or coconut cream powder, peanut butter. Breakfast Essentials and Starbucks Via (only 1 per day).
  
• Lunch/snacks: Larry & David Protein Cookies, extra strength Digest supplement (pea protein is hard for me), Ivan bars (so good), Just Fruit bars.
• Dinner: Three different dinners: 1) Cous-cous with dehydrated chicken, pine nuts, sundried tomatoes, olive oil. 2) Dehydrated refried beans (and more Digest supplement), dehydrated cheese, taco seasoning, dehydrated corn and red bell peppers, dehydrated chicken, dehydrated rice and store-bought corn chips. 3) Spam singles, dehydrated sushi rice, sesame oil and Japanese rice topping.
• Supplements: Curcumin with pepper (inflammation), Digest (for beans), Magnesium (for leg cramps), Lite salt (for potassium), Salt stick caps (electrolytes).
  

I've got my base pack weight down to 8lbs. This is about 5lbs less than the CDT. Eight pounds if I use a Nashville Cutaway pack, a little more if I use one of my other packs. 

The Cutaway is a small pack. They say it is 26L at the collar and 31L total. I'm a little worried I won't be able to fit all my food. Fortunately it is not until the Grand Canyon that there are any segments longer than 4.5 days. By then I should be able to hike more miles per day.

If I don't go with the Cutaway I have a Pa'lante V2 which they say is 31L just for the internal capacity, not counting the external pockets. I modified the Pa'lante pack to take the Nashville straps so this is my new favorite pack. I love the bottom pocket on the Pa'lante. It is big and easy to access. I can put snacks and my wind jacket and pants in there. There's a little trash hole to stuff in your wrappers. I took it on a thru-hike of the Backbone Trail and loved it.

The bottom pocket on the Cutaway is small and hard to access. I am not sure I would put snacks in there because it's too hard to reach in. The big uni-pocket on the Cutaway is weird. Sure you can reach everything in the big pocket without taking off the pack but nothing stays in its little area. It all flops around in there. It's all one big shapeless pseudo-pocket. The whole pack is weird and shapeless and sort of drives me nuts. I could thrash it to hell on the AZT and not care if it died, which is the reason why I am leaning toward taking it. Maybe if I have something to hate other than the trail itself I will be better off.

Lastly I have my trusty Zpacks Arc Blast which now seems too big at 50L. It's always been the most comfortable pack I've ever worn. I don't think I'll need huge water capacity this year. Almost 5L capacity is what I will have.