Land Between the Lakes North/South Trail in Two Days! 4/6-7/2011

Several years back my buddy Bill Ness and I attempted to hike the entire 58 miles North/South Trail in Land Between the Lakes (LBL) in two days. We had heard that others had done it but neither of us had much experience with that kind of hiking so we loaded up our typical 50 lbs. packs, heavyweight boots, etc. and took off. Well, about 15 miles in the first day Bill had blisters the size of silver dollars (new boots!) and we had already gotten off the main trail for an hour or so and most of the water sources were dried up so things weren’t looking too good. To his credit, Bill made it to the 30 mile mark that day, camped over night, then called for a ride home. I took off and was going to attempt to do the rest of the trail on my own. About 15 miles in I was severely dehydrated since I was having trouble finding good water sources close to the trail (I later found I had lost 7 lbs. in about 36 hours) so I finally called it quits.
Not having finished the trail had bothered me for quite a few years. So this past spring I decided that I was going to tackle it again. I had learned a lot about hiking and how to cut weight so I was able to cut my pack weight in about half and made several other improvements to my gear situation. Bill wasn’t going to be able to make it so it would be a solo trip but I wanted to go anyway. I had recently seen a video called the Green Tunnel which was a compressed, stop-motion video of the entire 2200 mile Appalacian Trail and decided I wanted to try something similar. So I attached a digital camera to my pack belt, hit the button about every 30 steps, and here is the result!