fx[if(water=0,walk,camp)]

I freaking love spreadsheets. We don't go on holiday until I've plugged the numbers, dates and other pertinent info into Excel and come up with a few fancy functions. Law, to it's detriment, gives  scant regard for the humble spreadsheet, but whenever I can, I use it, even drafting the odd advice (one advice changed as the client updated key dates and other material info. With an orange and white conditional formatted colour  scheme, it was a thing of beauty). So no surprise that this adventure was plotted first on spreadsheet. Populated with miles, conversation rates, dates, key supply points and critical snow windows, it was our first basic map of what we had to do. And all of my calculations came up with one magic number: 19.54. That was how many miles (with appropriate adjustments) we needed to walk each day to beat the snow fall in the Southern Sierras and have any chance of getting to Mexico.

One weakness of Excel, it doesn't walk the miles for you. For those following our progress, we started well below that magic number. With snow, resupply logistics, poor planning (not the spreadsheet's fault) and some early injuries, we have struggled to do much more than 15 a day.

Then the snow stopped, and the miles started to pick up, 16, 17, 18.5. Our longest days. Based on this, we left Snoqualmie planning on doing the 100 miles to White Pass in 6 days. After 2 days, of 16 and 18 miles, we hit a problem. The next camp with water was 25 miles away. Way more than we'd walked in a day so far. But, with the snow gone and our injuries resolved, we were finding the going easier and easier. So, without much option, we got up early and set off for our first 20 plus day...and nailed it.

In camp that night, high on our big day, we re-calced our hike in to White Pass and figured we could do it in 5, cutting out a whole day. This has changed everything for us. We can now carry less food for the fewer days between towns, and the extra miles per day will get that average back to the magical 19.54 we need to beat the snow.