Story Break
Ten Tips To Prepare For A Backpacking Trek.
A list to guide your backpacking season.
Whoa, then, so you want to learn how to go backpacking? Well you can try, but Dude, some things you have to pick up as you go along, like how it feels to set your hand on fire. You don't expect to learn that kind of thing, but you remember it when it happens. It took me only a few tries before I backed off of that habit.
But there are some other things you can learn through your head, by following ten simple rules, without setting your head on fire.
1 – Make a checklist.
When spring comes I get itchy for backpacking. Maybe it's my winter clothes. Granted, I have a problem with wool.
Or maybe it's not doing laundry often enough. I don't know exactly for sure, but when spring comes, I'm right there at the front of the line. I pull things together and get out of town, just like I'm organized.
Organized? Me? Ah, no, Dude.
Problem is, I always kind of fuzz out on details. Being organized, you know? Always seems like such a fine, fine idea but I'm afraid I forget a lot from year to year. That seems to be the reason, as far as I can recall. OK, enough of that. Let's move.
After too many hours digging behind the sofa, spelunking in closets with a flashlight and coming out only with things I never wanted to find again anyway, I tried making checklists. Two of them. One for packing and one for unpacking.
They helped, a bunch. So did Hikin' Bob. He's my friend, and his collars have buttons on them, which is a little odd for a backpacker but on him, you know? They kind of work or something.
Anyway.
Hikin' Bob made me sit down one evening and create my very first checklist. This was not easy. There were some disagreements over the kitchen table that night, I have to say, but I think it was largely because I am not used to working at a high level of precision without beer in my system, not to mention that unexpected mishap with the wrong end of the pencil.
Did I mention that yet? Well, I'll get to it sometime. So anyhow, after that, when I had my list all done it was easier. I was set.
Every time I wanted to go backpacking after that, I had a list, right there. It was great! I forgot less, I had fewer disasters, I had more fun. I started to feel pretty good about life in general, like I was in control again. Getting organized was almost a routine, almost natural, until I lost my list.
Here's a tip you can write down: There is no checklist that says where you left your checklist.
That was a real, four-barreled pisser for a while.
So I worked out another list eventually and then had it tattooed right above my navel, upside down, so I can read it just by pulling up my shirt. End of problem one.
But there are more things to deal with.
Lots.
2 – Examine your gear.
With a checklist I don't have as many lost moments, you know? I don't wander, which helps now that I'm older. That huge, empty gap between getting out of high school and whatever happened next changed me somehow. Before, things seemed kinda OK and stuff, and now it's all confusing. A trick like a checklist brings back a sense of order.
And now I have more friends too.
You wouldn't believe how many people come up to me and ask what's that thing on my arm. I tell them it's a wristwatch and eventually we get around to talking about stuff, like gear.
Like, when you wrangle up your gear first thing in the spring and take a good close look at it. Ever do that, take a close look at what you've got?
If you do, you start thinking. Thinking as though it's the first time you have ever really seen your backpacking gear. So you wonder. What is it really? Why is it that way, exactly? What is it actually for? How did they ever come up with it? If it never existed, and I needed it, what would I do? Would I invent stuff like this?
And now that I've got this stuff and all, what kind of shape is it in?
Tent seams OK? Check.
Sleeping bag clean? Check.
Backpack working? Check.
Stove? Check. I go through everything.
I sharpen the dull things, wash the dirty things, buff the tarnished things, fill what's empty, empty what's full, and start to feel on top of it. Whatever it is, I deal with it. My annual gear exam is not always easy, but once it's done I feel good all over.
Good enough to think about going somewhere and forgetting about examining things.
So then it's map time.
3 – Study maps and routes.
I use printed maps just like you, not having enough skin for the needed tattoos. You can fold printed maps and put them away if you get dizzy, because face it - a map is nothing less than a portal into an alternate reality. Maps can do strange things to your head if you let them.
Like you open your map and you lean in toward it, and then you start to notice - things. Map scales are many thousand to one, so a thumb's width on a map could be an hour's walk, or a day's drive. It depends on the scale. At a small scale you don't notice so much.
But the bigger the scale, the more detail you see, which makes it easier to get lost in there.
You see things, you imagine things moving around inside. Inside the map. Animals. Forces. Things. Secret things. There are things with hooded eyes, there are unexplained sounds, dark holes, covert trackways. Some are harmless, and some are not, but they are all in there, and each one has a soul, so you need to pick a map you can handle, and one that is at the right scale. Keep the forces in balance, so to speak.
The most accurate and most dangerous map would have a one-to-one scale. One step on the ground in this world to one step in that other world. Using binoculars to lay out a trip, you'd need a flyover. Of the map.
Spooky, Dude.
You couldn't carry a map like that. Just getting too close to one that scale, with that level of detail, could do you in. Come too close, and who knows what? Gravity? Cosmic tidal forces? Event horizon? Something. Like a black hole with contour lines.
Something could grab you by your scruff, and there you'd be, getting pulled in, falling toward the center. Anything at all could be there, waiting. You wouldn't know what. It might be hungry, or have an appetite worse than hunger, even if it looked cute and fuzzy. In that world you would never know for sure until it was too late.
Even with regular maps life can take interesting turns. Just hunched over at home while laying out a trip I can feel the pull sometimes. Reality, that's what does it. Reality is that big empty hole that is not on any map at any scale, but is still there, somewhere, behind it all. That's it. Reality is full of its own invisible forces.
Because of all those things it pays to be nimble, so I try to stay light.
4 – Determine how much weight
you're willing to carry.
Now weight. There's an issue. It's good to be prepared for stuff, but not too prepared and heavy and all, in case you have to run for it.
Determine how much weight you're willing to carry. That's what I read somewhere. Hey. I like it. That's a good rule for work, at one of those places where it's all about being a member of the team and being a team player and playing by the team rules on the kind of team where there is no i in it. About carrying the flag all the way to the goalpost, for someone else. Someone full of traditional values who promises to watch your back, the way it is at International MegaOmniCorp, Inc., where the mission statement is You Go In First And See If It's Safe.
Or.
Skip determining how much weight you're willing to carry and skip the team and think about yourself. Think about a different kind of teamwork, about being a team of one and maintaining an even strain. Think about being a light, nimble team promoting and enhancing its full survival while ensuring that you remain Number One on the priority list.
How?
How so: I recommend you get to know yourself. How do you feel about your self, your own self, your real self?
Too big? Too small? Too heavy? Too light? Too this? Too that?
Or close? Probably not too far from close. Probably close enough, no matter who you are, or exactly what you look like right now. Probably close enough. So why pile stuff on?
Another Word From The Experts: "Add the weight of your gear, tools, food and items like a camera, journal, and cell phone - and it's an easy 35 to 50 pounds (or 16 to 23 kilograms)."
So easy. Sure. Right. Check. Sounds good. Uhhhhh-huh. An easy 35 to 50 pounds.
So, so easy. Easy as pie and ice cream if all you want to do is stay home tap-tapping that keyboard, telling others to do this, do that, because it's so easy. Damn fine easy, that's for sure, and good work if you can get it.
Push away from that keyboard and try it out on your own back then, Peckerhead, is what I say. I have, just personally speaking, no need to prove I'm stupid by collapsing under tonnage prescribed by someone whose greatest accomplishment is farting at the world through a blog post, no matter how finely aligned the bullet points are.
Pile on your backpacking tools? Sure thing. Do it, check, Roger Commando, Sir! Space Cadet Dimwit ready for takeoff, Sir!
You never know which wrench you'll need at tree line, so take them all. Check. Take a journal, cell phone, satellite dish, case of fuel cells, color TV, electric toenail clippers, dog waxer, vibrating Relax-O-Lounger with the heated leather butt cup and built-in popcorn salter, hot tub, and weather radar. All completely necessary for the major modern backpacker. Check.
So back up then. Back up just a few, Little Buddy.
Are those 35 to 50 pounds as noted instead of body weight, or in addition to it? Is it going to be cell phone, dog waxer, and tools? Or food?
Which is more important?
So think.
Forget entirely about what you think you are willing to carry. Here's how to determine how much weight you are going to carry.
Start with your pile of equipment on the floor and a route sketched on a map, and push aside everything you think you can probably survive without. What's left, take.
If you want to know how much that is, go ahead and weigh it.
So now you have that idea down, let's go back to safety with...
5 – Leave information on your planned
route with family or friends.
Aron Ralston's hand got its own funeral.
Do you know about Aron Ralston?
He cut off his hand to get away from a rock that liked his hand so much it wouldn't let go of it.
Aron Ralston had a bad day. In fact, he had five bad days in a row, standing there with his hand under a rock full up to the brim with mineral intensity, generating 800 pounds of mindless, crushing immobility. Crushing his hand and not letting go of it. So he let go of his hand, left it there with the rock and went for help.
Seldom if ever do I approach the need to physically remove parts of my body to end a backpacking trip, or would I want to. To get out of a meeting, or away from relatives, yep, I'd consider it. While backpacking though? Nope. Don't want to start that conversation.
I haven't died yet, or come close on purpose. I hear that the dying stuff gets more likely the longer you live, which seems backwards.
Everything else, you get better at, less prone to major screwups. But they say life is different, which is decent evidence that something is seriously wrong around here. I wonder if we're in a board game with some Giant Overlord Doofus making up rules with random tosses of the Great Fuzzy Dice.
So then you wake up one morning and you're dead. How does that make sense? After a start like that you can bet nothing else will go right with your day.
About the best I can say is when you leave home, never forget at least a kind farewell to the cat. Leave a note if you have to.
Get a sock puppet if cats are beyond you. Or a dog if you can't work a sock puppet. The point is having someone who remembers you even a little, even if it's only because you kept the food dish full. Some people have friends or relatives, but we can't all be like that. Do what you can, OK? That's what I do.
Relatives do work out, often if not always. They are sort of obligated, even if they hate you. Leave an itinerary and a sketched out map of where you'll be and hope for the best. Eventually guilt will motivate all but the most careless or peevish relatives.
And never leave an upset cat behind. They don't take to abuse, and are a bunch smarter than they act. You don't want come back to your lot in the trailer park and see nothing but weeds outlining a dry spot where home used to be. Think about it.
Basically, look ahead, even if you need to fake it, and try to do the right thing.
6 – Have a contingency plan.
Hell, I can barely spell this one. I guess it means don't fully commit. You could cut out the middleman and spend a week in a bar instead of going backpacking, only keeping your pack handy for a getaway if some guy with a broken bottle wants a closer look at your liver. That's a contingency plan, I guess, right? Outside of that you're pretty much safe anyplace there is no whiskey.
Nature is unpredictable they say, but nature is a rank, stumbling amateur compared to humans.
Take the highway. Lots of people are out there expressing death wishes every day on each and every inch of road. Speak into this here microphone about your contingency plans, if you will, please. I would like to hear about them, and how you deal with raving, deadly, free range idiots screaming at you from inside steel boxes going a hundred miles an hour while they make vigorous and colorful two-fisted one-finger gestures.
Sometimes there is hope for humanity, but only among wishful fools. With nature, hope is built right in.
If you are twitchy and fret about the dangers of hiking, then tie a piece of dental floss to your car and the other end to your pants so if you get scared about cavities or baggy socks or anything else on the trail, you simply turn around and clean your teeth all the way back, pull up your socks, and drive home.
Or bring seeds and plant gardens as you walk, so if you end up going in clueless circles for weeks you will have fresh greens to keep you stoked with vitamins.
Practice being lost, alone, cold, hungry, and afraid whenever you get a chance.
This is easier to do at home than you might think.
Just get up from the TV and step into the rain every now and again. Afterward have someone critique your performance while your core body temperature inches back toward normal. Shoot for an average score on this type of adventure that is better than six out of 10.
Cats are also good here. They reliably rate you toward the high end if you're a decent roommate, but if you do get it so wrong as to be embarrassing, they will be honest about it. Tip: Don't drip on a cat when you are wet. It may be your last act as a conscious being.
Other than that, in your spare time work on your smoke signals, your semaphore, your Morse code or plan on hiking with a box of carrion pigeons. In case you do expire, they will gladly bite out little pieces of you and carry them home in their beaks. Not enough of you to fill a standard casket, but still. Some is better than none, and few of the dead achieve even pigeon altitude. You can if you try.
If you are genuinely in trouble, and can't manage anything else, live off the land. Practice makes perfect here too, since few of us can switch to a diet rich in dirt and bugs without determination and serious discipline. But you will be glad you brought that dental floss, and self-discipline (and hunger) will disguise many shortcomings in your food supply.
As a last last resort, disappear without a trace. It has been done, so you can too. And sometimes it just happens, like it was destined or something. If that's you, well at least you've found your niche.
7 – Check local weather conditions.
Tell me there's someone out there who doesn't check the weather. Go on. Try.
The real problem is, the weather where you are might belong elsewhere, but got bumped off its flight path.
Sometimes I spend a whole day hunting for the right weather. Used to be you could go to the weather page in the daily paper and it was all there printed up in crisp columns, black text on white paper. Didn't say much, mostly the high and the low (for the previous day, no less), but it was easy to find what you wanted, or something close. Though once found in the paper, it wasn't always easy to find on the ground.
The way it works for me is all winter I want hot weather, and all summer I want cool weather. No matter where I am I want the opposite. Nowadays you need nothing less than a computer and an internet connection to figure out where the good weather is.
Like today.
Weather for Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 21°C or 70°F, light rain showers, wind, SSW at 14 mph, humidity: 94%. So there it is humid, but not bad otherwise.
Christchurch, New Zealand is foggy, 1°C, 100% humidity. Which might be OK, especially since the wind is 2 mph from the NW, and there's probably nothing to see there, ever, unless there is fog to look at.
So search around like that and you'll find nice weather. Then put that idea, that idea of nice, in your head and go hiking wherever you really are physically. It's the idea that counts. That's all.
It's all in your head anyway. And what isn't, you don't even know about, so you won't miss it.
Now you would have a problem if the weather was actually rain and then the rain turned to snow and the snow turned to hot acid and then the acid dissolved all the rocks and made smoke so things were hard to see (amid the rain and smoke and acid). That would be difficult all right, but things are rarely that simple.
Usually when you have a problem with the weather it isn't the weather as such, it's someone you're with. Certain individuals upset the natural balance and generate unfortunate circumstances. This type of person deserves a customized sort of weather, like a highly localized, tightly focused meteor shower screaming earthward at hypersonic speeds with deadly precision.
And there are in fact times when a rogue group of the Perseids say, flying in close formation, do break away from the main cluster and come tearing in from heavenside to slam down exactly where they're needed, and rid you of a pest you really knew you shouldn't have gone backpacking with in the first place.
But that kind of thing does not happen nearly often enough. Not nearly enough. No.
Most of the times when it does happen, well, you are only having daydreams. Though sometimes, sometimes... So always take a camera and don't put your tent too close to the next one. If you hike alone, go under an assumed name or paste on a fake beard, in case it's your turn to have a shower.
8 – Check and recheck every item
you plan to take.
As with the previous item, remain sensitive to omens and companions who do so seriously not deserve to continue breathing.
If you are not smart enough to screen your own companions, then be on the lookout for anyone whose back has a big red X on it. Or a big check mark, either red, or green, or any color really. You see anyone seriously marked up, no matter how, and you know they've been handed around a lot, and are a likely target for something you want to avoid. Develop your own sense of judgment and you will be ahead, likely.
But, sad to say, not everyone is clearly marked so it is often a guess, and sometimes you guess wrong.
Aside from that, didn't we cover this with checklists? Make a checklist. Examine your gear.
OK, already. You should be good to go.
9 – Become familiar with local flora
and fauna.
Once upon a time somebody wrote up one of those things called Ten Tips To Prepare For A Backpacking Trek and put a bunch of random stuff in it. Like this here. You can tell the howling demented idiots from the merely screaming idiots by what they try to get away with.
"In a survival situation insects and small animals that are easy to catch could be the survival difference." Right. But for you or them they don't say. You need to think about it from both sides. Remember the story about the dog that caught the car. After that, what? This could be you holding a bag of bugs.
The basic rule is, any animal that's easy enough for you to catch has serious personal problems. Often these very problems are ones it's just itching to pass along to you. And at some point you must expect to be dealing with teeth and claws. Or parasites. Steer clear of anything with foam on one or both ends, even if all you want is a closer look at it.
This includes water.
Do not be fooled by fools who tell you to prepare for living off the land because it is too hard for you.
What you really got to do is be prepared to fight off everything that wants to sink its sucking parts or teeth or stingers or root hairs into you, and in case you feel you can be cocky about it, remember how seriously you are outnumbered.
Your survival advantage (and this one item is the whole list) is that when you reach the point where you're exhausted, hungry, cold, covered in an ugly, seeping red rash, and out of enthusiasm, you can go home again. Without that single, slim escape clause you don't stand a chance.
The absolute best way to become familiar with local flora and fauna is by viewing from a distance, with a full belly, while sitting behind industrial strength mosquito netting, surrounded by an electric fence, and perhaps in possession of loaded firearms. It is especially fun, from this sort of safe vantage point, to watch stuff try to get your leftovers hung high overhead, for which you should also...
10 – Carry an appropriate garbage
container.
Now, for the long distance backpacker, starved for calories, and traveling as light as may be, the hands-down best garbage reduction unit is a growling stomach backed up by an over-aggressive digestive system. These come standard as original hiker equipment. One factory-installed gut can reduce almost anything to basic atoms faster than you can shovel it in.
They say garbage in, garbage out, but anything in, garbage out rings truer.
After internal processing, whatever remains has no backpacking utility and is best left where it falls. Carry it around if you like, but my rule is if it doesn't make me happy to have it along, then it doesn't belong in my pack.
That's about it for now. Read this again if you don't have anything better to do.