Appalachian Trail: What Have I Gotten Myself Into ?!?

I am slowly ... too slowly really ... putting together a resupply plan for my Appalachian Trail (AT) hike.  I am a month away from starting and things are just now starting to come together.  Resupply is the most difficult.  The Camino was so easy compared to this.

This week I bought a small chest freezer so I could prepackaged some foods (Trail mix, jerky) to make it easier to ration while I'm hiking.  I'd bought a vacuum sealer a few weeks ago and combining the vacuum sealing and the freezing should keep stuff fresh until that need to be shipped to me on the trail.  The vacuum sealer also results in smaller packaging.

Smaller packaging is important.  I am really worried about getting everything into my 'bear proof' food bag.  This week, after my weekly shopping, I will have everything available to fully pack my food bag to see if it will hold everything.  It will be a tight fit.

Today I started dividing up the food into first stage food and five resupply boxes.  I first started with packing lists for each of the resupply boxes.  I'd already came up with a meal plan earlier making it relatively easy to figure out what should go in each box.  Along with food, some boxes will have shoes, clean socks and underwear, and seasonal clothing in some combination.

As I was generating the packing lists I was going through the stages and came across several discrepancies in the earlier version of my plan.  I ended up adding another stage (increasing the whole hike by one day) to divide up a large stage and shuffling a few stops to even out the lengths of other stages.  Changing the stages in turned changed the amount of food in one of the resupply boxes.  The result is version 3.0 of my plan which can be seen in the Appalachian Trail tab above.

As I worked on all this I began feeling the pre-big adventure jitters.  It happens every time.  I think I've decided not to do the AT several times already.  But I will do it despite all the creeping doubts.  Who knows how many things I am overlooking or mistakenly taking for granted.  Some things I can survive - I can buy what I need.   Other things may be more difficult like finding food in small town grocery stores.  Then there is will I be able to physically handle carrying so much weight up and down hills and mountains.  So many doubts.  I could just scream.

What have I got myself into?