Practice Hike a Success - Barely

I ended up going with the group from work on their fourteen mile hike and I'm glad I did as I found out where my limit is as of today and learned some valuable lessons about being prepared.

We started at eight in the morning. I checked the weather forecast before driving out and it called for overcast and rain all morning and into the afternoon. Foolishly, I believed it and left my hat and sunscreen at home - I won't ever do that again.

About eight thirty or nine, it started to rain and poured for about fifteen minutes. Not only soaked, but the trail became pretty muddy too so we had to be careful walking, particularly downhill because the clay gets really slippery.

After it quit raining, it was really very cool and pleasant, so we finished the first half of the hike in three hours and I felt really good, so I kept on the second "half". By then, the sun was out in force and the humidity was terrible being by a lake and having all that standing water around. I could have borrowed sunscreen at that point, but I thought I could tough it out and was so sweaty that it wouldn't stick anyway.

The good news was that I was able to keep up with a bunch of twenty-somethings and I don't think I slowed them down much. I didn't pack a heavy backpack, but I probably started out with twenty points (including water) and by the end it was probably down to 12-15 pounds. The second half also turned out to be much longer in mileage and duration, so instead of finishing by 1:30 or 2, it was 3:30 when we finished, we'd all run out of water and the heat was starting to get to me.

All in all, we covered about 15 miles in a total of seven and a half hours, with a half our break for lunch.

It was definitely hard but it gave me some confidence that I can hike a long way. There was enough up and down that I get some experience with the elevation, though it wasn't a sustained up hill at all. At least it wasn't totally flat. I'd say thirteen miles is a good safe distance for me to start out with. Next time, I will take extra water as well as a hat and sunscreen, regardless of the weather forecast.