Day 9 - first zero

A full town day with no hiking. I'll keep it brief, since nothing much exciting happens on town days. The first and most important order of business is food--both town food and resupply.

Apparently, I have the attention span of a 5 year old, and a penchant for wandering grocery stores for hours looking at new products, positionings, packages, etc. I'm a glacially slow and highly distracted shopper, which I consider to be a professional hazard of working in consumer goods. That said, I'm an inefficient resupply person, so Gangles leads the charge here.

The other bit of business, gorging ourselves, invoved to exceptional meals: breakfast at the Two Med Grill (fabulous), and a delicious New Mexican place, Serrano's. Chatting with Bigfoot, we estimated our daily caloric expenditure while hiking at ~4,000-4,500. I'd guess we consume ~2,000 calories per day on the trail, so we try and close the gap in town. This is equal measures delicious, time-consumer and disgusting. I order food opposite to the way I would in non-trail life: extra sauces, heavy on the starches and fried foods, and highly calorically dense. Most hikers spend the day eating non-stop, and mostly junk: potato chips, ice cream. I personally don't have the patience to graze all day, and try to keep it down to 2-3 massive meals. I have to stop eating when I begin to stretch the physical limits of my stomach capacity, and it hurts to go on.

Though this sounds as though I would be gaining weight rapidly, my pattern on previous hikes has been to lose some weight (~5lbs) early on, then regain it over the course of the trip in some additional muscle mass. The major confounding factor is the temperature--if it is cold, the pounds just drop as our bodies use up any available stores to keep us warm.

All in all, a lovely day. And a lovely night at the Glacier Park Lodge. Enjoyed an acoustic concert in the lobby. Realized I'm a little starved to hear music, and enjoyed listening to something I don't hear on the trail.

Oh, and the photo today is from the balcony at the lodge. There's a ladder with a light at the top. Obviously, Gangles and I had to explore. The ladder reaches directly to the roof, not a roof deck, but to shingles and a rain gutter. It really should be capped. But so fun to climb up mystery things!

Ok, off to bed. Tomorrow starts our longest, wildest stretch of the trail in the Bob Marshall wilderness, more commonly referred to as "The Bob". We'll be carrying 7.5 days of foods, so our packs will be very heavy. We'll pick up food at a rustic ranch, but won't be in town until we get to Lincoln in 10-11 days. Will definitely be looking forward to town comforts like showers and restaurant foods.

Night.