A couple of days ago, we had our FIRST day since DECEMBER when we weren’t hiking either IN the rain, or with a THREAT of rain!  Wow!  No need to carry raingear!  No need to carry thermoses of hot drinks!  And both Bill and I were feeling much better after fighting off whatever the latest “cough thing” that’s going around.  So off we went to another of our favorite places to hike–Jack London State Park, near Sonoma, CA.   The park is basically the property that used to be Jack London’s “Beauty Ranch” and it well deserves its name.  It has a mountain to climb, with superb views at the top (including all the way to San Franciso–Jack London rode up here on the morning of the great earthquake in April, 1906, and could see the smoke coming off all the terrible fires in “The City”)   and there are lakes,  magnificent oak trees and grassland WITH NO WILD PIGS to mess it up, plus the latest round of spring wildflowers putting in an appearance.    And if you have time, you can visit the ruins of the Wolf House, or poke around in The Cottage or in the House of Happy Walls.  It’s a great place!

I am still up to my eyeballs coaching kids at Awana club–the first big competition is the weekend of Feb. 26-27, then another on the following weekend, March 6, and finally the last one on the weekend after that, March 12-13.   At that point, I may collapse for a day??? and then leap into SERIOUSLY preparing for the PCT, starting with collecting boxes to mail ourselves resupply packages.

But every day I take 15 or 20 minutes to do what I call GUIDEBOOK CODING.  It saved us TONS of time and frustration on the trail when we were consulting maps and trying to figure out where we were.

We use the good ol’ Jeffrey Schaffer/Wilderness Press guidebooks, and carefully take them apart so that we only need to deal with a few pages at a time–just enough to get us to the next resupply point.   I know there are some new guides out there, but we have not had a chance to really LOOK at them and decide if they are OK.  So we are sticking with the tried and true.

The problem with the Schaffer books is that the TEXT which describes the trail is often not on the same page with the corresponding MAP.   And once you manage to coordinate the two, then you have the “fun” of trying to figure out exactly where you are.  When you are on the trail and it’s raining or it’s ghastly hot, or you are very tired, or the sun is about to go down, or whatever, trying to deal with this is a major pain.  So I came up with a simple coding system that makes it possible to instantly coordinate map and text and know where you are.

First off, at the top of EVERY column of text, I write the number of the map that goes with it.  For example, if you are in Section K, and the column of text corresponds to map K4,  I write “K4” at the top of that column.  If the map number changes partway down the column, I draw a very black line across the column at the point where the map changes, and put the new map number next to the line.

Then I add what I call “guide posts.”   I study the map and text carefully and on the map I CIRCLE trail junctions, landscape features, etc. and assign each a number, which I write next to them on the map.   Then I study the text to locate exactly where in the text that trail junction or landmark is mentioned.  I underline it and write its corresponding “guidepost number” next to it.

Yes, that’s a fair amount of work, but on the trail, oh man, did it save us time and grief!   I would hate to think of the frustration of not having a pre-coded guidebook.   And what’s fun about doing it is that it’s kind of like “virtual hiking”.   I enjoy thinking about the things along that part of the trail.   OK, this is easy for me, since I have ALREADY HIKED the trail, so I have a mental picture to draw on, but even the first time,  it was still fun to do.   I highly recommend coding your guidebook, whichever one you use!