Log 2016121901

I just wrote on the Buckeye Trail's Facebook group that I finished the 10 Mile Continuous Hikes 2016 w/o Transit document and the result exceeded my expectations.  Over 137 hiking days, the mock hiker reveled that out of the circuit's unofficial total length of 1,441 miles, 1,079.89 (74.94%) of those are capable of continuous hikes in the ballpark of 10 miles per day or less during the spring, summer and fall.

My methods are probably very conservative than ones that would probably be used by others.  The mock routing had to satisfy the following:

1) The mock hiker can travel 10.0mi per day + a 2.5mi reserve.

2) If the reserve is evoked, then an automatic zero immediately must follow on the next day.
      Since zero days cost money and take valuable time, this is not desirable and must be avoided whenever possible.

3) I use camping and lodging amenities.  They must be within 2.5 miles of the trail.

One of the things that I wanted to ascertain was the "streak." In this case, I was looking for the longest hiking trip one could possibly have on roughly 10 mile days or less.  Today, I just used a calculator and added 17 printed pages of daily trail mileages to get the grand total.  But I don't have it for each streak.

When I did a similar 10 mile assessment for the using the Ohio Transit Hiker's Resource (OTHR) year ago, I only found the BT to be 37% hikeable.  But when you take into account that the Road Fork Section complies without transit beginning at it's Point 05 (07/2011 map & guide), but it's impossible to get there by way of transit because Noble County doesn't have a transit agency.  And transit amenities on Whipple are out of range for these 10 milers, OTHR has to eliminate most of The Wilderness Loop.  But it makes up for it, on most of the Norwalk Section as transit is the only means of reaching a camping/ lodging amenity at this rate.

They're governed by two different set of rules in the way that OTHR's data has to originate and end with access to regional transit.  When the access to that last amenity occurs, there could still be a streak that goes on, but won't reach another regional point.

The plan now is to update my Google Earth GPS records on Wednesday and starting with the urban and suburban local transit agencies, making sure that all of the bus and light rail routes that pertain to the trails and get the hiker from the regional and international transit areas are correct.  Once they are, I can begin to write those 10 Miler and Thru Hike assessments.  Because of developments on the West Union Section, I think that the Buckeye Trail is camping/ lodging deficiency free as per the OTHR.  But to be honest... I'll believe it when I see it.  To do that, I'll have to route the thru mock transit hiker to be sure.  I've been chasing this goal for the last five years, so I'm skeptical, but optimistic.  It's what OTHR was originally designed to do.