YouTube: First Church of the Masochist Hikes

Instagram: @mattonamtn

Email: matthew.hengst@gmail.com (or message me on Instagram)

I've been exploring offering one on one video calls discussing any outdoor / thru hiking / planning / gear type questions someone might have. If you're interested in that for $45 an hour reach out and we can schedule something.

Want to physically mail us something? Just ask!

If you've been following our adventures you know we are primarily thru hikers though we do enjoy a good long distance paddling trip when the opportunity arises.

 

Right in the middle of working my way through the Triple Crown of Hiking I found out about something I never knew was an option in the modern day: paddling the 2,300+ mile Mississippi River from the headwaters in Minnesota down to the gulf aka the Mississippi Source to Sea or MS2S.

Similar to a lot of folks I primarily associated the Mississippi with having read Huck Fin in school. Meanwhile I had the impression that in the modern day that traveling down it in any sort of a paddle craft wasn't really possible as it had become more of an industrial / shipping river.

 

Then I came across a random website while hiking the CDT that not only explained it was a thing but mad it sound amazing. 

 

Considering I'm someone who stays relatively well informed about all the various long distance outdoor activities I was surprised something like this existed and that I hadn't come across it. And now having done it myself in 2023 I'm really blown away that it isn't more popular. Because it's a really amazing trip. 

I own multiple smart watches and standalone GPS devices and yet I don't bring them with me when I'm doing long distance hikes. This is because they are a hassle to keep charged and I always seem to forget to start the track when I leave camp leaving my stats for the day off by however many miles.

 

My general advice to new folks is just get a new ish modern smart phone and use that. If FarOut exists for the trail it's everything you need to hike. If it doesn't exist I generally find a gpx for the trail and load it into Caltopo or GaiaGPS. Both applications allow you to generate waypoints every x miles along a track which I then use to make mile markers. I then use these mile markers in conjunction with a Google Spreadsheet.

 

Previously I made this spreadsheet by hand every year and it was bloody annoying. Being the lazy ex software engineer I am I've now created a template complete with a script to generate all the manual bits. Easy eh! See below the cut for how to use it yourself.