Thursday, January 31, 2008

How This Works

We've chosen the West Coast Trail (see previous post) as our shake-down hike to work out the kinks in our virtual hiking system. We're considering the Appalachian Trail for our next hike--all 2175 miles of it, running from Georgia to Maine. This will likely take 2-3 years to complete!

We're open to suggestions if you can think of a good alternate. Here are some of the criteria that helped us pick the West Coast Trail:

We could find a decent map online that broke down mileage.
We could find photos.
We know people who have done the trail to nab additional info from if necessary.


We decided we wanted the visual reference that maps and photos provide, to help us visualize the trail and be more fun. If we're gonna walk so far, it's gonna have to be fun, don't you think?

So...how this works...
Calibrate your pedometer and get yourself over to Bamfield, BC.
You can count anything that you do under human power, you just have to be able to measure it. This means you can walk, cycle, row, whatever. Outside or on a gym machine.

Translate your steps into miles. Even though I'm Canadian and therefore bilingual as all good Canadians are (with miles versus kilometers, anyway!), it'll be easiest if we're all working on the same frame. Unless the West Coast Trail map proves to only be in kilometers, in which case we all get to translate. I forgot to check.

Every day, whoever's ready to tally up first can create a post with their mileage for the day, and the rest can post in comments. Doesn't matter who. Everyone here has author privileges; it's a group blog. We don't have to check in daily, but I'd guess two or three times a week might be the minimum to keep inspired. I'd suggest we post our progress as today's miles/ miles so far/ total goal.

We're going to post in photos when we can locate ones that show where we are, so watch for those!

Questions?

1 comment:

Bonnie said...

It should be noted that a couple thousand people every year complete the AT in 6-9 months. Just in case anybody wants a really ambitious goal to shoot for :D