Well, I am now almost ready for the walk. Planning completed, equipment bought and tested and almost fit to carry 30 lbs up and down mountain paths for 7 weeks. I am presently walking some 25 miles a week carrying 30 lbs and whilst this is not exactly on mountainous ground, it includes ascents and descents of about 150 ft per mile around Charnwood Forest. This compares with the average ascent on the HRP of about 300 ft per mile.
I am planning on using my mobile phone with the Viewranger app to navigate and the route has been plotted using 1:25,000 French and Spanish survey maps with some 3000 waypoints. The walk is approximately 450 miles and includes average ascents and descents of 3000 ft each day. I will also have copies of 1:50,000 paper maps and the Cicerone guide book by Ton Joosten.
My main items of kit are:
Tent: MSR Hubba 1.47 kg;
Sleeping Bag Gelert 0.60 kg
Sleeping Mat NeoAir Xlite 0.32 kg
Rucksack Exos Osprey 58 1.19 kgStove MSR Microrocket 0.09 kg
Stove Trangia 0.15 kg
Boots Salomon Quest 1.30 kg
Mobile Phone Samsung Galaxy S Advance 0.12 kg
Navigation app Viewranger nil
So my next milestone is a training walk up Snowdon in the middle of June and I just have to keep on walking and increasing the weight of my training pack, hopefully up to about 35 lbs which should be more than I actually have to carry. I only carried 22 lbs on the Tour du Mont Blanc but then I didn't have to carry a tent, sleeping bag, sleeping mat, stoves and fuel nor did I have to carry much food.
