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?

Trial Hike -- West Coast Trail

Tomorrow is February first, and we will all strap on our pedometers and begin a shake-down hike along the West Coast Trail. For those of you who don't know it, the general information for this trail is here. The West Coast Trail is along the west coast (hence the name!) of Vancouver Island, off British Columbia's coast. It is 47 miles long (75 kilometers), and we are estimating three weeks to hike it. (2.5 miles per day would allow you to complete the trail in 19 days.)

Here is our starting point, the village of Bamfield.


Check out more of what we're going to experience here.

For the record, I've never hiked this trail but I have camped at Pacific Rim National Park just north of the West Coast Trail a couple of times. It's awesome scenery.

Testing for Val

This is a progress bar generated by the FM version then copied to my website.



So I suggested that anyone who wanted to use the bar should put it in a text widget on the sidebar of the blog, like under Contributors or something and Val said I had to say how :P.

The answer is that anyone who has one should give Val (as blog creator) a link to the bar. She then has to add it to an HTML/Javascript Page Element as an IMG tag, probably with a BR or two between to separate.

Probably not what she was looking for, but it's the truth. It's under Template.

Posted on my GI Blog

So I posted over on my other blog about this virtual walk. Comments welcome here or there.

Hello!

I'm going somewhere, starting February first. I wonder where? I wonder how fast? Don't know, but I'm going.

Testing again

Silly blogger ate my first post. Bad blogger. Bad...

Road trip anyone?

testing

it said it was a group blog, but it doesn't look like it now that I'm here. I guess we'll see.