Well, this is it; we’re leaving tomorrow! Brent and Patrick have been at my house for the last 4 days while we finalized all our gear and food and hopefully got some acclimatization benefits from being in Tahoe.
The biggest thing I think we’ve all learned this week is that the final packing and organization takes a LONG time. We’ve been to grocery stores and gear shops every day since Monday buying little odds and ends and list minute additions to our kits.
We also learned that we bought way too much food. We spent two days just organizing and counting calories per day. All the food was organized into larger shopping bags for “breakfast”, “lunch”, and “dinner”. Our personal food came out to about 25 pounds per person and we had group food totaling about another 30 pounds.
We also had to pack a lot of medications, including: =Tylenol/Ibuprofin, Dexamthasone, Diamox, Azithromycin, Hydrocode, and daily vitamins.
We had all our gear laid out in my garage all week slowly de-duplicating items and adding other we just couldn’t live without.
Getting the gear to fit in bags that would be acceptable to Alaska Airlines was a real chore. We each ended up with two 50lb duffle bags, a carry-on, and a personal item. Our total weight per person came out to about 125lb with all the “extra stuff” for flying in.
