I’m gone hiking!

 (Three hikes this summer)

1. May 1-21 finish Pacific Crest Trail in Calif.

Four students will help me finish the final 350 mile leg of my 2600 mile PCT hike.  We will begin the day after graduation by walking 100 miles across the searing Mojave desert then we’ll climb up and traverse the length of three mountain ranges: the San Gabriels, San Bernardinos and the San Jacintos.   Since it was such a heavy snow year in the Sierras we will some days be walking on multi-feet deep snow with little sight of the actual trail underneath.  Our re-supply towns are Aqua Dulce, Wrightwood, and Big Bear City.  Most of the hikers attempting to hike the entire PCT this year are now headed North from the Mexico line.  We will head south to meet them all telling them where the water caches are in the desert.

 

WANT TO SEND A NOTE?  We love to get mail in our tiny re-supply towns:

May 1-6   Walk across the Mojave Desert

Jeffrey Timmer,       Ryan Robertson,                        Kara Watson,                                Juli Neff

 

May 6 Aqua Dulce (address mail as follows)                    

 

    Keith Drury (PCT Hiker)

    C/O The Saulfleys

    11861 Darlings Rd.

    Aqua Dulce, CA   91390

   

May 11 Wrightwood (address mail as follows)

    Keith Drury (PCT Hiker)

    C/O General Delivery

    Wrightwood, CA   92397

 

May 16  Big Bear City  (address mail as follows)

    Keith Drury (PCT Hiker)

    C/O General Delivery

    Big Bear City, CA   92314

 

May 16-21 Hike Big Bear City to Palm Springs\

–Hitch back to LAX & home for several weeks to catch upon email ;-)

 

 

 

2. June 18-28——High Sierras

With sons David Drury, John Drury,

            100+ miles with my two sons entering the high sierras two weeks before many of the northbound PCT hikers reach the totally snowbound high sierras (and a week before the first ones).  We will carry ice axes, crampons, snowshoes and other mountaineering equipment to “break trail” through the toughest part of the high sierras for the “through-hikers.”   This will include negotiating (Lord willing) a route across snow-packed “Forester pass” along with a series of later passes that are challenges to  through hikers.  By this time I will have completed all of the PCT so this is our way of “paying it forward” to later hikers.

 

èNo mail drops for this hike—totally in the wilderness

 

3. July 1-21—Appalachian Trail-NH & Maine

With Josh Jackson, Phil Woodbury and perhaps one other student

200+ miles starting in Vermont on the Appalachian Trail and hiking north (with the AT “Through Hikers”) through all of the White mountains, the Presidential ranges (Mt Washington etc) and finally the Mahoosic range of mountains in Maine.  We’ll cover all of New Hampshire’s AT plus southern Maine.   When the through hikers (who started in Georgia have hiked 1800 miles and arrive at the Vermont-New Hampshire line the guidebooks says to them: “Good news: you have now completed 80% of the miles of the Appalachian Trail; Bad news: 80% of the work is ahead of you.  We’re going to do the 809% of the work section of the 2150 miles AT.

 

èMail drops for Appalachian Tail coming later