All packed up and ready to head out the door this morning.

Initial pack weight comes to 27 pounds, which includes 4 days of food, one liter of water, and about a pint of fuel for my stove. I’m actually pretty proud of having gotten it down that low. We are overnighting in Roanoke with family tonight, then in Dahlonega, Georgia on Sunday. And Monday morning, it’s off to the Trail.

(By the way: My updates from the Trail may well come all bunched up because they’ll upload when I have a connection, not necessarily right when I write or take a picture. So those of you subscribed to the blog may get a series of notifications all at once. Thanks for reading.)

There is a new and voluntary thru-hikers registry at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy website. There are currently 25 hikers registered to start their hikes on Monday 13 April. Make that “our hikes” as I am one of those 25. At the moment it looks like there will be 14 on Sunday the 12th, only 6 the day following me, but then 18 hikers on the 15th.

And since it is voluntary, there are almost surely other folks hitting the Trail on any given day.

The high point for this season was back on 1 April when 42 people said they were starting.  And, oh, yeah, the current graph on the ATC web site says there are a total of 1,263 hikers registered this season just going the same northbound direction I am.

But LAST calendar year there were officially an estimated 2,500 hikers who started at Springer Mountain, GA; only 1,267 of them passed through the ATC office in Harpers Ferry, WV (the 1,020 mile mark); and then only 653 reporting having reached Mount Katahdin, ME (for the full 2,186 miles). Less than a quarter.

The registration page and graphs are at http://www.appalachiantrail.org/hiking/thru-hike-registration

Information about the counts for previous years is at http://www.appalachiantrail.org/about-the-trail/2000-milers