It was a dark and stormy night when I got the call.
I had just finished retrieving a pair of conjoined Siamese cats who had somehow gotten separated from each other and then from their owner.
That owner was an elderly collector of rare books and odd cats. He never went out himself and had no idea how his cats had come apart or where they'd gone afterward. Once free of each other the cats hightailed it off in opposite directions.
Cats.
You know the type.
All I had to do was drag a sardine around the neighborhood on a string and after a couple of minutes I had more cats than I could count.
I picked the two best looking ones and delivered them to my antiquarian friend. He looked happy. I must have guessed right. Or he was ready for new cats.
Either way it was all over pretty fast, so I didn't bother charging him. I just shook his hand, wished him a more interesting life, and headed back to the office after brushing the fur off my tie.
When I got to the office the phone was ringing off the hook. I answered it. On the other end of the line was a woman. I could tell by the voice.
Her name was Craft, Jo-Ann Craft. She ran a shop. A fabric shop. One that also sold hobby supplies. The kinds of hobby supplies that appeal to people. The kind of people who buy zippers and buttons.
Jo-Ann had problems.
She had bats.
Rabid bats.
Dead rabid bats.
Bats had been turning up in her shop lately and she wanted to know where they came from. And how to get rid of them. She asked if I could investigate.
I said sure, that's what I do.
I'm Richard Dick, but I go by my middle initial, "A", as in "A. Dick For Hire". It's on my business card.
Shortly after entering Jo-Ann's fabric shop I noticed something odd. Dusty tracks on the linoleum.
The tracks led straight to the bins of ripstop nylon, and then they looped around to the thread department, ending with a flyby of the cash register after skimming the Halloween display.
I asked Jo-Ann if she'd seen any odd customers lately. She said they were all odd, so I asked about any odd customers that were new.
She remembered one. A guy. He had lots of hair, all over, and had a thing for the outdoor fabrics. And he was dusty.
I had a hunch so I decided to wait, and see this guy.
Before long there he was. You couldn't miss him. I was pretty sure I was on to something.
I went over to talk.
When I introduced myself he said his name was Maggot, Dirty Maggot. That was his trail name. His real name was Joe Periwinkle, but on the trail he was Dirty Maggot. He was what they call a thru-hiker.
He looked the part. Whatever that was.
He looked like he hadn't had a bath in years, or changed his clothes either. And had no idea what a fixed address was.
While I stood there and shot the breeze, trying to get a fix on his m.o., I noticed something. Right away I saw a couple of spiders jump ship and scuttle off. They went straight for the lace trimmings and burrowed in.
Then there was a small avalanche of dust. Several of them. I was afraid that if all the dust fell off this guy, he'd be standing there naked.
And that was one sightseeing tour I didn't want to be on.
So I told him that the owner, Jo-Ann Craft, had been having a few odd problems over by the Halloween supplies.
Then I popped the question.
How about him?
Ever been over there?
Sure, he said. He was thinking of decorating the tent for his girlfriend, Snake. But he hadn't decided anything for sure, so he cruised by there every time he was in the store.
Despite all this he seemed like a decent enough guy.
We strolled over and stood in front of the cotton ball spiders and cardboard ghouls. Just as we turned away again I saw something move. In his hair.
It was a bat.
It fluttered out of his dreadlocks and attacked some crepe paper bats hanging from the ceiling. Tore them up pretty bad too. Then it fell down the wall behind the display. After that everything was quiet except for a few flecks of foam drifting in the air.
I was sure I had my man.
"Buddy," I said, "Here's my advice. Hiking season is over. Get a haircut. Take a bath. Lose the bats."
After he left the store I talked to Jo-Ann again.
I said if she locked the door when she saw him coming she'd be done with the rabid bats.
She seemed grateful to have the mystery solved, but then she did a funny thing.
She went and stood by the door, and watched Mr Maggot hike back down the road.
Well, that seemed to be the end of the story. Another case solved and I even managed to make a profit. Rabid bats are bad for business, so Jo-Ann was glad to toss a few bills my way.
I didn't see her again after that, until one day.
I was in the neighborhood.
So I dropped in.
Guess what?
No, not more bats. The bats were gone. For good.
But I was met by a pleasant young gentleman who seemed to recognize me. "Joe," he said, "I'm Joe. You probably don't recognize me."
He was right. I didn't.
I've see a lot of guys named Joe in my time but this appeared to be a new one.
Cleaned up, he had no resemblance to the former Mr Dirty Maggot. Dirty Maggot was now Joe Periwinkle, and he was working at the store. He and Jo-Ann had fallen in love too.
His former girlfriend Snake had slithered back to college when he got tidied up. Something about selling out, I guess. Then he said she's working on Wall Street now. Go figure.
Joe has a new life too.
He and Jo-Ann are planning to go backpacking soon. She got him interested in business and he got her interested in dirt.
Another match made in heaven.
And free of bats.
Just one of those stories you run into.
If you're looking for a Dick like me. Give me a call. Just check the phone book for "A. Dick For Hire". That would be me. I know how to keep things under control.
When 26-year-old Bitsy Wimbles woke up this morning, she was confused.
She has been hiking the famous Appalachian Trail for several weeks, and now it's gone.
"I dint do nothin diffrent, I swear," Wimbles says. "I was jus hikin like uszhal, and went to bed same as allays, and then I gets up and it aint here no more."
Ms Wimbles, a June graduate of Missippi State University, Muddy Stick Branch, was craving a bit of adventure when she first got onto the trail near Poke Hollow, TN.
"I thought I'd camp an hike a few weeks. But then I kinda never did stop. I caint splain it," she says. "I feel like a kid again, and I dont ever wanta leave."
Except that now she has no trail.
The Appalachian Trail, part of the National Park System, jointly managed by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, 31 local clubs, various state agencies, and a loose collection of random lurkers, is like a complex organism.
And though it may be hard to imagine, the trail does move around every now and then.
"It will always be in the same general area," said Marcus Wanker, executive director of the Appalachian Trail Handlers Association in Harpers Ferry. "But it's a living thing. You can't expect it to stay put. Much like a river writhes around in its bed during the spring runoff season, the Trail gets a bit irritated when too many hikers, campers, picnickers and party animals climb on board. Then it gives a little twitch and relocates itself a few miles to one side or the other."
"It's really nothing to worry about," Wanker continued. "Happens all the time. Believe it or not, only one percent of today's trail is in its original location. Our biggest headache is redrawing the maps, which we have to do at least once a year, sometimes several times. But that's life with the Trail."
So where does that leave Bitsy Wimbles?
"Caint say precisely," she replies. "My map dont work no more, so at the moment I guess technically I'm lost. Caint be far though. The trail that is. I'll jes feel around a bit and pretty soon I'll be back on it I bet. I'm due in Maine in a coupla months, you know. Gotta keep at it."
Meanwhile, Mr Wanker, standing in the shade of a nearby tree, seems lost in thought. "Did it move a little to the left or a little to the right?" he wonders while staring into a guidebook. "You know, ultimately it's all to the good. The Trail always comes to rest a little nearer to waterways or scenic landscapes, and continues to find a more relaxed and peaceful course. I think we'll be OK."
And with that Ms Wimbles gives a hoot and dashes off into the forest. "I found it! Over here! I see it now!" she says, and vanishes.
Backpacking alone is a good way to test yourself. Meaning, in a sense, it's a way to keep yourself occupied rather than dealing with the fact that you have no friends.
That's testing. In a real sense to some. In a dumb sense to others.
A lot of people, most people, have more going on than poking at tests. Like having fun. They don't need tricks and tests. You don't either. But solo backpacking does wear different spots than the usual cat.
The first things you notice are that you don't have to worry about who leads, who follows, how fast you travel, when to stop, what to talk about, or how long to wait for stragglers. None of that matters. You are alone.
It's freeing.
Sleeping late can be a problem because no one will get you up on time. But you don't have to listen to anyone else snore all night either. And no one will laugh at the little pink bunnies on your jammies.
Conversation isn't necessary but it's still possible, as are arguments, though they get a lot easier to win, with no hard feelings, ever. In fact you win every one you start. And you can restart them any time you feel like it, and keep winning the same ones over and over. Even wave your arms. If anyone happens to see you, tell them to look out for the flies.
They'll never know, even if they hear you. It's like that on the trail. Everyone waves their arms and swears at the flies.
– Who's your buddy? –
You are. That's the real difference.
Alone, you get to be free and wild, but you find out that you aren't really alone. You still have needs. You are a whole crowd of different people wandering around together inside one skin. And you are there to watch out for all of them.
There is the hungry you and the tired you, and the dumb you and the injured you and the sunburned you and the wet footed you and the bug plagued you and the map reader you and the lost you and the wrong headed you and a whole troop of other yous you didn't know you were.
So what happens is that you learn who y'all are and find a way to keep your selves together.
Keep your selves together so all the yous don't separate, wander off, and leave the residual you with real problems.
For example, one thing you learn early on is that there is a side of your personality really good at losing things. Maybe more than one side. Most parts of your personality might turn out to be like this, all against one.
So you force part of yourself to get all prunie and sour and puckered, with eagle eyes everywhere, and watch everything that happens and badger everyone else about being careful.
You develop habits.
Where and when and how to unload the pack. How to do the opposite of that. How to keep things inside a tight circle of awareness. How to search every spot you leave once or twice or three times, checking every square inch of ground that you touched, in case you laid something down where you shouldn't have. And then you search outside of that circle in case the impossible happened, because if you cover both the possible and the impossible scenarios then you don't lose so much.
And the rest of your life is the same.
You fight over whether to stop for lunch, fight against yourself to keep going instead. Even though you're hungry. Because you know each option is worth pursuing. You fuss and argue with yourself about where to bathe, and when, about passing on a great campsite because you have to make more miles. About giving up on today's mileage goal because dammit, you just found the perfect campsite and you are stopping.
And on and on.
It gets complicated.
– Make it work. But not too much like work. –
Shelter sucks.
Going solo, this might be your biggest problem. The farther you get from a traditional double wall tent the better off you are and the worse off you are, and it's all tradeoffs to boot. Tents are and heavy and complicated. The more pieces there are, the more weight there is. And there has never been a double wall tent that was big enough for one person and still light enough for one. It doesn't happen.
If you look hard you can find one or two solo-sized tents, but they aren't radically light. They just aren't. They can't be.
They have too many parts.
And they are too small as well. Crappy small.
You will always want a two-person tent, and two-person tents are always heavy. And some two-person tents are still too small for one person. And the bigger the tent the heavier it is.
If weight was no object then you'd take a four- or six-person tent. But weight is an object. And volume is too, if you travel alone. Even a weightless tent big enough for six, no matter how cushy to sleep in, would be like a huge, late-term pregnancy to carry, and would require half an acre of flat ground to set up. You can't do it. You can't carry it and stay sane. It is bulgy and voluminous and huge.
Guess what? The other options are not crazy great either.
Like hammocks or tarps. They all have problems.
Hammocks are fantastic for comfort, and for allowing camping in spots impossible otherwise, but they are not magically light. You still need bug netting and rain protection, and insulation under you. These add up.
Want the lightest possible choice? Go with a small tarp. Go with a small tarp and you give up absolute rain coverage. And absolute wind protection. And you are exposed to bugs. A five by seven foot tarp (around three and a quarter square meters) is teeny. Make it of the right stuff, rig it carefully, and you might get by for eight or 10 ounces (a quarter of a kilo). That's nice.
Add a light bivy sack to cover your bag, and some bug netting and you've doubled the weight. And you're still thin on weather protection.
Get a big tarp, say eight by 10 feet (7.5 square meters), and you have the weather under control but not the bugs. You still have no barrier between you and the nighttime creepy-crawlies, let alone the toothy dark-hour-snufflers. So you're up around a pound and a half, maybe two pounds (1 kg). And you alone have to carry all of it, regardless.
That's the thing. You have to do all of it.
Bedding is the same.
These days you have a choice among sleeping bags in the one pound/half kilo range. That is truly nice. But at the same time they are not that warm. With bedding, whether the bedding is a bag or a quilt, manufactured or home-sewn, heavier means warmer. Backpacking with a buddy will not save on bedding weight, so bedding hardly makes a difference. You are stuck either way.
– Note to self: Fry me up a mess o' grits. –
You can puzzle over shelter until you get dizzy and cry yourself to sleep. There is no perfect answer.
Likewise for bedding. You can trim an ounce or two, but bedding is like bricks — a choice of colors, slight differences in shape, same universal weight.
Cooking — a little different. Not much, but you have a bit of room to play.
If you are set on buying from a catalog then you are hosed. You will need a hundred-dollar stove weighing as much as your bedding. You will need one or two pots and a cup, and a cute set of folding utensils, or a spork thingy, made of polished and drilled plutonium. Without food, just figuring cooking stuff and fuel, you're looking at three or four pounds (up to two kg).
Now pretend that you are clever.
One thing you can do, since you are alone and can't have someone else carry the stove and pots, is to do without cooking. Ramen might not be your favorite food but you can eat it dry. It is already cooked, and though extra crunchy, is a decent meal. Leave it in brick form until you mash it with your teeth. Not the best food, or the only possible food, but an option, usable without cooking.
Go ahead, try it — not bad.
You can take flat bread and nuts, or make up some foods at home, and take them, pre-cooked and dried, to eat without cooking. Shortbread works this way, as do home-made high-fat, high-protein brownies, and various concoctions containing fruit and nuts.
Another thing, another option, if you cook, is using an alcohol stove.
The smallest and lightest are hardly worth weighing.
Combined with a frugal approach to fuel, if you shun meals needing elaborate cooking, an alcohol stove is a light and compact way to go. Put food into ziplock bags, take an aluminum cup as a pot, and your whole cooking/eating kit is under half a pound (one quarter kg). And small. Not hardly worth mentioning. Nearly invisible. Only a small lump.
– Do you still like my smell? –
When alone you needn't worry about some things.
Even on the trail there are reasons to comb your hair. The bigger the group, the more it is like being in church. If you look crazy, people will assume you are, and tire of forcing a smile.
Alone you don't need to think much. About that.
Being clean is nice, really nice, but if you are alone you can worry about getting clean and staying clean and not about looking clean or smelling clean.
Some clothing stinks, seemingly by design. No matter how much you launder some fabrics they never smell right. Wash a shirt, wear it an hour, and the part between your hide and your pack is wet and stinky. Some fabrics smell like you pooped in them, even if you've never even thought of that.
Even if all the sweat in your clothes is your nice, clean, fresh sweat. You still stink.
Take a bath, wash your hair, drip dry in the sun and you feel great. If alone you don't need to push it any farther. Meet someone on the trail and your cap will hide your Halloween hair. No problem. But this may not be so welcome when camping with six or eight others.
People get a tad fussy. Prissy. Formal.
Eh.
The point is that while alone you skip some grooming and save a bit of time if not weight. If you prefer, if it works for you, bathe less, or bathe without soap. Just rinse.
If it works for you.
Save a tiny bit of weight on soap, and a tiny bit of space, and some time, and no one will ever know but you. It is an option.
Going poo-poo is also on your list.
No need to be delicate about it.
As long as you are out of sight and don't contaminate water supplies or campsites you are good to go. On some trails no one may pass by for days on end, so getting out of sight is easy. Make it a poop in two movements:
Get off the trail
Do it.
Ditto for clean up. Clean up is fun. Clean up is good. (Maybe not that much fun, but you feel good when it's over.) Minimal shyness needed.
As above for bathing, no huge weight savings for pooing. Do it as needed, do it right, clean up after with a little water, and you feel good.
– One for me, one more for me. I win! –
Supply is up to you. You and you alone carry everything, from your shelter to your bedding to your clothing, sundries, odds and ends, doohickies, doodads, and food.
Preferably yummy-nummy food.
If you travel in a group this is still about the same. If you convince someone else to carry a week of food for you, you'll have to take on an equivalent weight of theirs anyway, to be fair, so it's a wash. No matter if you load up with and carry everything needed on the trip, or if you resupply along the way, it all has to go into your pack, onto your back, and you are no worse off solo.
That's life.
The only real difference in being alone, aside from (maybe) shelter, is riding herd on yourself. You have to be more careful. Your pack is your main buddy, especially when going alone, and you need to care for it while caring for yourself.
First, learn how to inspect and clean your pack. Do this before a trip. Start with a clean pack, and one that's freshly inspected, and competently repaired if that's needed. If anything is loose or torn you may assume that since it hasn't caused a disaster already, it'll hang together for another trip. Right.
Wrong.
Touch up your pack if it needs help. Mend the stitching. Replace straps. Check buckles. If you're sure your pack is good to go, be sure because you've checked it and fixed the problems, not because you have a good feeling about how your unbelievably good luck will hold through yet another week. Ride a close herd on those other selves of yours. Interrogate them when they tell you it will all work out. It will if you make it, but not on its own.
Keep tendencies toward unfounded optimism in line. And you'll do fine.
Develop habits (which we've covered).
Keep things together when they are outside your pack.
Have a place for everything, and put it there. You get to do less thinking this way.
A good habit is a good habit. Develop a way of doing each thing that guarantees success. Then keep doing it and keep succeeding.
No need at all to be clever. No one will notice anyway. But you will notice if you screw up. By God, you will.
– Non-gotchas. –
If you know your pack well, know how to operate it, keep it clean and in good working order, then you have a whole bunch less to worry about. If healthy you can go for a month without food. If you have to. If you really have to.
You can't actually get anywhere in the lower 48 states where it is possible to starve to death unless you insist on walking in circles. The absolute longest distance from a road is about 23 miles (37 km), not that far. One day's walk.
Say your pack is in good shape, and you have food, then what?
You are even better off. Your food will go with you, and everything else too. Develop a few basic habits and losing anything at all will be a major surprise.
About the only thing left to think about is repairs, more relevant for ultralight packs. For two reasons.
First, ultralight packs, believe it or not, are easier to damage. Some of them are almost not there. The fabrics are definitely on the delicate end of the spectrum. Fabrics can be abraded, cut, or torn. As with any pack, but more so with very light packs.
If you have a problem with regularly destroying equipment then think it through before taking up ultralight backpacking. Crushing rocks might suit you better. For the rest of us a little caution takes us miles.
Second, ultralight packs are easy to repair. Or modify. If you get into the ultralight world you are already experienced. No one starts that way. You know what you are doing. But you are not perfect either.
You can step on a strap while lifting your pack and pull the strap right out of the pack. (Guess who did this once?)
Maybe you get a great idea and have a spare, warm, trailside evening to experiment. Take out the needle and thread and have at it. If it's a repair you need, a few stitches will fix you up. Possibly permanently. Certainly well enough to get you home. On the other hand, say you discover that a small loop would be great right...there. So spend half an hour of camp time on it and see.
Ultralight packs are good that way. Trailside repairs are unlikely but feasible.
Trailside modifications? Also rare, even less feasible, but yours for the trying.
– Still talking to yourself? –
Even if you don't do it habitually, solo backpacking can be fun. It is definitely a different experience. It might be something you prefer, or have to do for any number of reasons, or it might be an occasional variation on your normal trip.
No matter what, you will be better off by knowing how to cope. You will need to keep your wits on board at all times. Mommy will not be there. Not to lead you around or to kiss your owies. And you might not like it all that well. (Solo backpacking, that is. Everyone likes Mommy kisses.)
But think of this as flexibility training. If you really need to head off alone, hiking out for help while an injured spouse waits for you, you will know how. How to hike, how to navigate, how to take care of yourself, all by yourself, for a good cause. You will know that you can do it and do it well. You will know what is different about it and what the pitfalls are.
You will also be ready to manage all your personalities and keep them headed in the same direction at the same time, and be sure that it's the right direction. That alone might be worth the price of admission.
OK, fishing is fine, mostly, but if you pull in one with teeth bigger than your toes, you could be on the wrong continent, or your technique is off.
Most people, when they have any technique at all, have the bad kind, and all they get is mosquito bites and maybe sunburn. You, you're too far off the other end.
Most important, when you're not fishing, be careful around your hamster. If you have a pet rat instead, this also applies.
Remember, these critters are used in medical research for a reason, because when you're done with them you can just drop them in the garbage disposal and nobody cares.
But the other reason is they can catch anything you can. And if they can catch it then they can hand it back to you.
So, no more kissing on the lips.
Number 4 On The Countdown...
If you are alive now, something you do will likely kill you.
If not now, then later. This has been documented by scientists.
So, some tips to prolong your stay are in order. Like avoiding scorpions.
Scorpions, as you may not be aware, are notoriously difficult to reason with, so if you find one in your pants, then offering it a bite of your sandwich - meh. Too little, too late, especially if your sandwich has mustard on it. Mustard sends scorpions into stinging frenzies.
Another good bet, avoidance-wise, is crocodiles.
No matter how cuddly they look, a lot of them are exceedingly cranky, to the point that every day seems to be a bad day, which makes them nippy, and you might be surprised to find that one of your arms or legs is going home with Mr Crockie without the rest of you.
Don't let this kind of thing ruin your day.
Poisonous birds? Once bitten, twice shy, as they say, if not dead. OK?
Number 3 On The Countdown...
Being in the South may kill you.
Meaning the southern United States. No one knows why. It could be the home cooking. Or the slower pace of life may be too stressful.
Anyway, now you know. Stick to northern states until you toughen yourself up. (But avoid Alaska - you don't have the skills. Too many big things with teeth. Speaking of which…)
Number 2 On The Countdown...
Mammals: dangerous — all of them.
Mammals are smart enough to be dangerous, and some of them have been to college. You can't tell just by looking.
They can learn tricks too, and an especially nasty trick is cheating at poker. Remember that painting of the dogs playing cards? Well, each and every one of them was cheating.
If you see a dog with a gun, keep still, especially if it has a cigar in its mouth and a weak hand. Dogs can't see you unless you move, except if you smell like food, so always brush your teeth after lunch.
Also, never get naked and hoot at a moose. Some really crazy things have been known to happen.
Number 1 On The Countdown...
Steer clear of backpackers.
Not the dizzy flipflop-wearing drunk looney-tunes on summer break in Costa Rica, but the ones who go out and sleep in the dirt. These tend to be highly infectious.
Most victims are close friends or even family members. Simply watching a backpacker preparing for a trip can have irreversible results.
First you watch, then you talk, and then, before anybody knows what's happening, you've become one of them and disappeared.
Oh, true, some do come back, apparently alive, but permanently mentally damaged after a summer of hiking. They never again return to what they once were.
The weather report is good. You're ready. You're in shape, you have the time, the equipment, the right attitude, and everything is looking fine.
So you go.
And then things.
Begin to go wrong.
Terribly wrong.
But it doesn't matter exactly how wrong things go, it's really how you feel about it.
You know, maybe it's only windy. Wind — how bad could that be? C'mon now. Wind?
Good attitude, wrong side of the argument. Wind can be as bad as anything, though mostly wind is not evil in its own right, but as an abettor of evil.
Hey, there are days (true, not often) when the wind is so strong that you can barely stay on your feet. That is bad wind. And if you are out in it you have to deal with it somehow, because there is no other option. That is, you have to deal with it if you are going to get anywhere, like home again.
At first you don't think that adding your backpack to wind and stirring vigorously will spell EVIL, but keep in mind that a backpack is like a sail. The bigger your pack is the more wind it catches. And relative size matters, too. If your pack is small, but big in relation to your actual body, then it has more leverage. And any force acting on it has effect. Like making you stagger drunkenly along an unprotected ridge.
So what can you do about it?
Not much. But here is a thought — use a smaller, lighter pack.
That will help.
Weight is always a negative. Weight is never good in any way, so the less weight you carry at any time the better off you will be, especially when tumbling crosswinds are throwing you around. And if your pack is smaller as well as lighter, then, well, that's even more better.
Having a small pack on your back is like giving the wind only a short handle to lever you with. Big clunky packs stick out, and as you know by now, the pack you carry goes on your back, which is an inconvenient side of the body in some ways. We are not equipped to handle tugs and shoves from that side.
So if your pack is smaller it stays closer to your body, and offers fewer hand grips for wind. And if your pack is light as well it can't throw you off balance as easily. Mostly you won't notice this a lot, unless you hit one of those hellaciously windy days, but any day with a noticeable amount of buffeting wind will tire you, especially if you are on the trail for 10 or 12 hours or more.
The less advantage you give to the wind the better it is for you.
– Getting your hump wet. –
Rain sucks. Always.
Not so much while you are sitting at home during the off season, and planning next summer's trips. Rain, you figure, is just one of those things.
Maybe it bothered you before, but by golly you've got it figured out now, and you won't let it get to you any more. Not with your new jacket. Not with your new pack cover. Not with your new attitude and shiny, squeaky new boots.
And then, come next spring, or summer, and you're out there on the trail, and the rain falls. On your head, on your face, down your neck, on your back, on your hands and thighs and knees. Everywhere.
It runs down your arms. It runs into your pack. It squishes up through your socks. Your pants stick to your legs. You get muddy and slimy and cold. You are wet all over and your clothing rubs you raw in inconvenient places. You decide that this is not for you.
So your next thought is that rain sucks. This is circular thinking. You have now come full circle.
You can't do a whole lot about rain except never to go backpacking during wet weather. But even planning won't perfect your score. Sometimes rain falls even when it isn't supposed to. Then you are hosed, eh? No way around that one.
About the most benign form of rain is dew. No, you never thought of morning dew as being rain, but it is wet, and that counts.
The big difference between dew and rain is that dew does not chase you. It hangs there, waiting, the way that ticks do, and you walk into it, the way you walk into shrubs virtually quivering with hungry ticks. Dew is especially bad if you have been wetted through the day before, and have managed to dry out overnight, after the rain stopped, and then when morning comes you are once again ready for a nice, dry day. Your clothes are dry, your sleeping bag is dry. Your pack is dry, and your shoes. You are all set. The sun is out, the day is going to be good. You are ready to go for it.
And of course.
The next thing that happens is that you chug along an overgrown trail chest high in dripping, overhanging weeds. And get soaked from the armpits down.
But that is a good thing. As bad things go.
You get wet, and then the day warms itself, and warms you, and you turn dry once more. Not a whole lot you can do about it, but it's over pretty soon. Doesn't bother your pack too much, either, though your feet may stay wet for hours.
Real rain though, is tougher. For one thing, as we noted earlier, the longer you stay out in rain the wetter you get. Rain is like that. Rain isn't smart enough to subtract but it can add. So it does.
Unlike wind or heat or cold, rain is cumulative. If you are cold, you can rewarm. If you are hot you can cool. When things are windy you can shelter and forget it for a while, and be no worse off.
Not so with wet. And rain is wet. This is the worst thing about rain. Wet.
Water conducts heat something like 80 times better than air, so when you get wet you get cold. The good news, if there is any, is that you don't need to worry about hot rain, only cold rain.
Right. Whoopee-doodle.
So rain makes you cold, and its wetness means that it sneaks in everywhere. Now we're getting closer to its significance for backpacks.
You get rain in your pants and inside your footwear and so on, and that's not great, but your body does have a central heating system at work. But what about the pack? There too, is the wet, but without a furnace. And that can be a bigger problem than having wet feet.
– Keeping your hump dry. –
Your pack is a big hump on your back, and that is not the bad part.
The bad part is that your valuables are inside it.
Keeping everything dry is good. Keeping everything dry is a problem. Keeping everything dry is not a good problem. It is hard, and failure is always an unpleasant guest.
People have tried sealing their packs, and sealing them again and again, so that they can have waterproof packs and can just shove things inside and forget about rain, but it doesn't work that way. As an absolute last resort, and overkill, you can get a dry bag that rafters and river runners use (some of them even have shoulder straps), and use that. But these are heavy and stiff, don't have pockets or most of the adjustments that real packs have, and they still leak, some of them, sometimes.
If you hike in places where rain falls in showers, then your sentence is light. You don't need much protection from that, and you can pretty much wait out that sort of rain.
A waterproof poncho works well. A lot of backpacking ponchos are extra long in back, and drape over a pack, protecting it, while still hanging low enough in back to do well by your tail and leg regions. Ponchos are not great in wind but they are simple, and cast a large rain shadow.
If you don't have a poncho then you can buy or make a pack cover. For short trips, especially if you are careful, a large plastic bag might work well.
Anything that covers your pack and keeps rain off it will help, unless you don't mind having a wet pack. Maybe not, but a wet pack picks up mud and gunk a lot more easily than a dry pack, or a mildly damp one, and will wear faster. If you use other rain wear than a poncho then your pack is in the open and will need its own cover. If you want it dry.
Keeping a pack dry is step one.
But step two is the important part.
Since the pack contains everything your life and comfort depend on you need to keep all of those things dry. By far the best way to do this is to wrap each item in its own rain barrier. Plastic bags are great. Some things, like sleeping bags, are critical enough to merit double bagging. Then even if you choose to let your pack get soaked, or it happens without your permission, you can count on its contents being dry and snug.
– Toggling the hatch covers. –
All this is pretty elementary, really, isn't it?
You have it figured out already. You do. The main problem with backpacking in the rain is not how to cover your pack but what to do when you need to get into your pack, especially when you need to do this several times a day. Whenever you stop, you take off the pack. This is one thing. This exposes it to rain.
You set the pack down. So the ground is wet, and you set your pack on the wet ground, and it gets wetter. And muddy.
Then you open the pack, and guess what? Rain falls inside it. This is one problem with the rain jacket/rain pants combo on showery days. First the rain begins to fall so you have to stop and pull out a jacket and your pack cover. While you're doing this rain falls into the open pack. Then you get all covered up, both you and the pack, and start hiking again, and you're fine, except maybe too hot after a while. Then the rain stops, so you do too, and put your wet jacket and pants, and the wet pack cover inside the pack, which gets the pack wetter. On the inside.
Repeat this five or six times and you might as well have skipped the pack cover.
For showery weather a poncho might work better. It can cover both you and the pack, and when you take it off, just strap it outside your pack. Or hang it through a shoulder strap. It's less likely to silently fall off and be left behind than a jacket. Say a $300 jacket. Or a $500 jacket made of MiracleTex.
The other main pack activities that might get it wet are breaking camp in the morning and setting up camp at night. These are times when you need to have your pack accessible and open. Because that is the point. But do that and rain gets inside.
One partial solution is to camp under a floorless tarp, which will keep you and your gear dry until the last minute in the morning, when you collapse the tarp and stuff it into a plastic bag, and then put that into your pack. If you use a double-wall tent you're pretty well out of luck unless you can devise a way to put away the tent while leaving the rain fly standing until the last minute.
In the evening, if you're using a tarp (or a floorless single-wall tent) you pull out the tarp, shake it out, and put your pack under it while you continue setting up the tarp. Your pack has less chance of wetting out that way.
An umbrella is great for rain protection in calm weather, especially for day hikes. It is great during trailside breaks and at the end of the day too, but an umbrella doesn't play well with trekking poles, unless you have an extra arm for holding it.
Mainly, though, you need to develop a system and rhythm that work for you, and keep as much rain out of your pack as possible.
– Sizzle fridge. –
Cold weather and hot weather don't have much effect on backpacks. Not like rain. Not even as much as wind.
The main issue, and pretty much the only one, is that you will sweat more in hot weather, and get your pack salted. You will as well transfer some body oils to the pack, and sunscreen, and bug juice, mostly to the shoulder straps, which will pick it up as you slither in and out of them, but that's about all.
The only other tiny issue associated with temperature is that hot weather is hot.
If you carry anything sensitive to heat you need to pack a bit more carefully. Two things come to mind — cameras and food. Few cameras these days use film, so protecting rolls of film from baking is no longer an issue, but digital cameras can do a heat-croak as well as other cameras.
Fresh and spoilable food either should be left at home or eaten in the first day or two of a trip, but even more robust foods will go bad if allowed to stay hot for days on end.
Food and cameras — the solution is the same.
When you take off your pack, set it in the shade. If you can't do that then turn the pack so that the most vulnerable side is away from the sun. Normally on a hot, sunny day you'll want to set your pack down so the back is facing into the sun, at least part of the time. The sun will then dry the part of the pack that touches your back.
If you carry a camera outside the pack, then put it under your hat, or tuck it into the pack's shadow. Be sure to keep your hat and camera tethered to something immovable so that you won't forget them. Anchor to your pack or to your trekking poles. A hat will invariably blow away during the one and only gust of wind on an otherwise calm day, and a camera (or anything else left loose) will be forgotten, one of those times, so keep everything that is loose and also valuable tied down to one spot.
OK, food.
This is easy.
Food will be inside the pack. Food is easy to protect.
Stuff food deep enough inside the pack so the food is insulated. If you carry your sleeping bag (inside plastic bags) in a layer along your back, you have a cushy pad that's easy on your body, and one that insulates well. If you put your food in next and then your spare clothing on the other side of the food, you end up with the food sandwiched between two layers of insulation and as far from the sun as it can get, so the food stays as cool as it can.
Hanging food overnight cools it, and packing it inside as much insulation as you have, in your pack, will keep it cool all day, even on hot days with little shade.
If you carry the current day's food separately, in an outside pocket or near the top of the pack, it will be less protected but you'll be eating it soon, so no to worry.
It won't matter if your food warms up between 8:00 a.m. and noon if you eat it at noon, or between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., if we're talking about supper. Any food that turns gaggy and dangerous in a few hours has had a head start. You have already abused it, and this one last hot day has pushed it over the edge. Pay more attention throughout the whole trip and you will be fine.
It's the main food supply in your pack, the food that needs to last a week or two that is the real concern, obviously, and a bit of care in tending it will prevent problems.
Cold weather, then. Right.
It is hard for cold weather to be a real problem. If you need to prevent something from freezing, just keep it close to your body and it will be fine. Food certainly won't spoil if if gets too cold. Not on this planet.
– Complexify me. –
Altitude. Not a problem. Doesn't matter how high you get while backpacking, as long as your feet take you there.
Loads make a difference, heavier ones especially. And loads are worse higher up.
The best thing to do with heavy loads is...avoid them.
It isn't always possible to avoid heavy loads but it is always possible to avoid excess weight. Repudiate wretched excess. Doing this one thing will save you the most grief.
If you are faced with carrying 50 pounds (23 kg), then drop some of it. Leave something home, or replace heavier things with lighter ones.
Even if you can make only a 10 percent difference, you will feel it. And maybe you can make a 20 percent or 25 percent difference instead of 10 percent. When you are used to smaller and lighter loads you can even tell if your water bottle is full or empty. You get that sensitive. Because it makes a real difference. Small, but real.
Weight is always bad. Remember that. Tattoo it upside down on your belly for easy reference. If you ever forget, then all you have to do is pull up your shirt and read.
Weight is always bad. Always. Everywhere and at all times.
For how to stuff a pack, refer to previous chapters.
A few other random tips come to mind though.
Take more breaks. They will do you good. Get the pack off your body. Stop to rest and to cool off. Drink. Eat. Eat and drink frequently to keep your energy up.
Learn how to remove the pack and how to put it back on again, the right way, so you can have your breaks. Many packs have a haul loop. This is a sort of handle at the top, between the shoulder straps. Use this to pick up the pack and set it down again. The heavier the load the more important it is to do this, especially with ultralight packs.
The haul loop is designed to take the weight and evenly distribute the stress into the pack. One way you can really hurt a pack is to grab one shoulder strap and yank. Granted, it's almost impossible to take off a pack without putting most of the stress onto one shoulder strap, until you hone your technique with practice, but keep it to a minimum until then.
Dangling a pack from only one strap pulls that strap to one side. Shoulder straps are made to work with a straight hang, not off to one side. They are made to run down your chest and support the pack while it hangs straight back off the other side.
Force your pack to hang from one shoulder strap and you might rip stitches because you are putting high, twisting stress on a small area. You can rip out the whole shoulder strap. On some packs, some times, if you are unlucky.
Know your pack. Respect it. Your life depends on it.
Let's say you're right handed. To put on a pack that's loaded, lift it with your left hand by the haul loop, helping to lift with your right hand from underneath. Set the pack on top of your right thigh, squatting a little to get the thigh up there, or put your foot on a rock or a log. Now slide your right arm through the right shoulder strap. As a second step, while swinging the pack from the top of your thigh around to your back, reach down under the pack and support it with your right hand, while keeping a grip on that haul loop with your left hand.
While the pack is parked halfway across your back, and with both hands, one on the haul loop and one under the pack's bottom, raise the pack up above shoulder level while leaning forward. This will lay the pack way up on your back and fully support it. Your right arm is already in place, so slide your left arm through the left shoulder strap and go from there.
This is one way to do it. Just get the idea of supporting the pack from two or more points at all times, if possible, and do the rest your own way. Doesn't matter as long as you are kind to the pack.
When taking off the pack, do as well as you can to reverse this process. If the pack is extremely heavy, and you're lucky, there may be a large rock or log nearby, or even a steep hillside. If you can, rest the pack on whatever is handy and slide out of it. Or sit down and lean back against that hillside and then wiggle away from the pack's embrace.
By doing this you lessen the strain on both the pack and your body.
Aside from the above, keep your pack's balance trimmed by adjusting the straps as needed, and pay especially close attention to the hip belt, if your pack has one. You will feel better if you keep as much weight on your hips as you can. When you have pain or cramps in your hips, take a break and let the blood recirculate.
– Odd, is it? –
Odd loads are like heavy ones, though they don't have to be heavy to be odd.
Rain causes more problems than just wetness. Constantly juggling rain wear means that you might be removing it from your pack and donning it, then strapping it back onto your pack or shoving it into your pack several times a day, in different locations.
If you carry trekking poles you might want to carry them in or on your pack every now and then, such as when crawling along a log during a stream crossing (there are times when walking is too dangerous).
Carrying water is a problem, a heavy one. If you need to carry large volumes of water it's usually for short distances, but water is unbelievably heavy. If you need to carry lots of water all the time, then you have more than one problem.
Mostly though, with odd loads, when you have them, your job doesn't get harder, only more complex. If you have things strapped outside your pack your number one concern is not to lose anything. Either your pack has a way to carry extras like this, or you need an extra webbing strap or two. When you need a strap you need a strap. Not much you can do elsewise.
After not losing things your biggest worry is getting stuck.
Even on a good trail, if you have trekking poles hanging out both sides, you snag on brush. It gets much worse if you're bushwhacking off trail.
Try to keep things arranged vertically, and behind you as well as you can. You, being a biped, are taller than you are wide, and you travel upright. Whatever you carry vertically fits well into this format. And when you carry extra things, if you can also carry them hiding behind you, so much the better.
While bushwhacking you'll be putting most of your effort into parting the brush ahead of you. Once that's done you're pretty well home free. You simply walk into the hole and you're there. As long as you don't have odd things sticking out to the sides, which is why it's good to have them behind you, and vertical.
If you have to carry two or four or six or eight extra liters of water a mile or two to a dry camp, you may have some repacking to do.
Carrying a bunch of water makes for a lumpy and suddenly much heavier load. It's important to put the weight into a place that can handle the weight, and to arrange it so it's properly balanced. That normally means inside your pack somewhere.
You may have to pull things out of your pack, replace them with water bottles, and then reinsert those displaced things elsewhere. Maybe not, but be prepared for it. Of course, the shorter your carry the less fuss. Brief agony is acceptable.
– Trip us up, whyncha? –
You can think of trip length itself as a bad condition. Longer trips are more complicated. You have to be more careful about everything, and weight becomes a huge issue.
For example.
Say you are now an ultralighter. Say that, aside from food and water, your pack weighs 10 pounds (4.5 kg, base weight). This is seriously light, especially if you might see some rain, or cool weather. OK, say your food weighs one and a half pounds a day and you are on a two-week trip. Your food comes in at 21 pounds (9.5 kg), which is two thirds of your resulting total pack weight, which is now 31 pounds (14 kg), not considering water. If you can't skimp on food and instead need to average two pounds of food a day, your food's total weight will be 28 pounds (13 kg).
You feel this.
So now add a couple pounds for a minimal amount of water, and your total pack weight is between 33 and 41 pounds (15 to 19 kg), depending on how much food you need per day. This amount of weight is truly ugly with a frameless ultralight backpack.
The phrase truly ugly does not express how truly ugly truly ugly is. So keep it in mind and believe it and avoid it. Or learn the hard way.
The good news.
Is that only your first day will be this heavy, but if you set out with this kind of weight in your pack you will find that even after the first week has passed you still feel it. With no doubt.
How to solve this dilemma? Eh?
First, know your limits. You learn by experience where those limits are. You backpack with a variety of packs at different times, through different landscapes, on trips of different lengths carrying different weights. You get a feel for how your body and mind cope with the challenge. That is good.
Second, be sure you are in good shape. A great way to go out for two weeks is by first making several shorter trips that season, with a week-long trip coming shortly before the big one. Far enough before it that your body has time to recover, but not so far that you begin to lose conditioning.
Nothing replaces being in shape, or being experienced, and you need to be experienced and in shape. Being young helps. Try becoming younger.
Two weeks is about as long as you can expect to go without resupplying, ever. Sure, you can push farther but not much farther. After two weeks you really want to knock off for a few days anyhow, even on a 3000 mile trip. Maybe especially so.
On a long section like this your pack will be stressed and you will be uncomfortable.
A fancier pack with a better frame can help a lot to distribute and soften the load, but a heavier pack is also a heavier pack. Heavy things attract, so if you choose a cushier framed pack over an ultralight frameless one, expect to fudge on other things. Expect to see your total pack weight inch up, or even to suddenly leap up, which puts your whole body at greater risk, especially the overlooked but critical parts like knees.
Something to keep in mind.
And if you carry big weight on a long trip you want a repair kit nearby.
For an ultralight pack, especially one you make yourself, your needs are slim. A needle and thread, some heavy duty safety pins, some rubber bands. These can go a long way. And a spare strap with a buckle. Get a rip, or pull something loose, and you can probably repair the damage well enough to get you home again.
Remember the main idea though: It is impossible to fix things if you have no way to do it.
For gnarlier, heavier, commercially made packs, there is good news and bad news.
Because everything is heavier-duty you are less likely to have a tear or have a strap pull out or a seam go kaflooey. But if that does happen you might not be able to shove a needle through the fabric anyway.
You might need an awl and some shoe repair equipment. Not that you're likely to have this sort of problem, but if you do it could be significant. The best insurance is to treat your gear with respect, know its limits, and inspect it before you go where your life will depend on it.
Which is everywhere.
– Having fits. –
Sounds strange, but if you're having a bad day, adjusting your pack's fit can help.
First and foremost, it's all about comfort.
If you feel miserable, then adjusting a few straps won't make you feel great, but it will make you less miserable. If you are on rough ground it's nice to have your pack tight, right up against you, so it moves when you move and doesn't try any funny business.
Lots of times, going uphill, you can loosen things. You're already trudging. There is no such thing as a fast trudge, and if the weather is stinky hot, then loosening the old straps will let the old pack hang back a bit, and give your old hide some breathing room. After all, you are slowly trudging anyway. Just sayin'.
Rain is always a problem (we keep going over this), but maybe keeping a taut ship can at least help you believe you are in charge.
Likewise for freezing cold weather. Doesn't make much difference how your pack is adjusted. But as long as it's comfortable you can do more hoofing and get someplace warm much faster.
Mostly, in fact, you'll feel best when your pack is tight but not cutting into you, and is balanced.
The odd times are when you carry a gallon or two of water, especially if you need to load it off center. A comfy hip belt is a blessing, as is knowing how to mis-adjust the right straps to rebalance a load.
– Craving weightlessness. –
This brings us back to weight, which is the big evil.
On one hand weight is a friend. If you carry weight, the right weight, it means that you can stay out on the trail, for a few days, for a week, for two weeks. Maybe longer. It means that because you are carrying food, fuel, clothing, a shelter, some bedding and so on, you are free. That is good. That is nice. That is what backpacking is about. You want to be free, but you need to know how to handle it.
The more weight you carry the more you ought to rely on a good hip belt. Keep it snug and on top of your hips.
Keep the shoulder straps snugged up to match, and use the sternum strap so the shoulder straps get pulled together and save your shoulders.
Load lifter straps up top, adjusted right, force the load in your pack to pull back against your chest instead of down on the tops of your shoulders.
Balance straps, down low, pull the butt end of the pack in tight against the base of your torso and keep the pack from wobbling.
Fine tuning is a personal matter, but adjustability is important, and helps a whole lot in getting you through a bunch of bad days.
Learn how to load and use your pack, to adjust it, and the two of you will become close friends. Adversity does that for you. Even with an inanimate thing like a pack. Know your pack, feel comfortable with it, use it right, and it will go a long way toward getting you through ugly times.
Remember that gross weight got this name for a reason, because gross.
Choose whether to carry weight in the belly or on the back, but is more easy getting accustomed to chosen weight distribution first, while still at home and can watch TV in a relaxing posture. Think about this.
Even trip of one thousand miles begin with one step. Best first step is buy a scale. Second step is learn how to cheat scale. This lesson is useful in many other time zones as well.
Practice hiking naked. Is practical of lightness. Naked people are also entertaining to watch. This could be you.
Do not carry things like heavy rocks in your pack. Expert hikers carry only the lightweight rocks.
If pack is so light that you forget it is there, then it is light enough. Expect to lose it in strong winds then, just before big storm hits. See? Is all connected, and you already know how to be naked from previous advice, so good to go.
Get base weight down to 15% of you body weight. Then diet. Continue this until all cares are gone.
Also, poop often.
Make the gear from camouflage cloth. Invisible is most lightest of all.
Plan ahead. Become efficient. Try to be good at this backpacking stuff, especially with the food. If food is too hard then learn to yogi from others while telling the entertaining lie. This also useful many places such as business and marriage.
Hold the breath. Breathing uses energy. Energy requires food. So. Breathe less — eat less — carry less. Simple.
Donate your old heavy things to your daughter’s boyfriend. Judge outcome as chance to hone observational skills. And as source of good stories we think maybe.
Humping a heavy pack is bad, especially if you are caught in this act. Goes double if someone has camera. Triple if is their pack and they have big sticks. Be always cautious. Learn stealth techniques or self-controlling. Sure, is lonely on trail, but use proper judgment.
If you need it, bring it. If not, don’t. If wrong stuff, borrow. If you can’t borrow, steal when no one looking. Also, practice your running away before attempting these advanced techniques.
Remember, swiftness is for the young, unless you have a light pack. Then, even geezers can run fast.
Avoid parasites. But if you are parasite, be amusing. Everyone loves a show, so a little missing blood is small price to pay for a good time, easily forgiven. Always to be smiling. This helps too. Most people are gullible.
Use lightest available brand of dehydrated water when possible, despite expense.
Do not covet the other person’s gear. Instead, take their ideas. These are also much lighter and pack smaller too.
Taste everything to see if it is good to eat. Surprises often come in small packages, but some have stingers.
Keep in mind that there are powers greater than you, and some of them will be hungry. Therefore, always hike with a buddy, and put buddy on point. You may later on have to live with sadness, but the living part is the important one. So learn to hide grin while doing the mourning.
Some people backpack only when the weather is perfect. They remain in training year round, senses taut, ever vigilant for the arrival of those few hours when the planets snick into alignment, when the sun is smiling genially, the skies are a rich shade of impeccable blue, the wind hovers near nonexistent, the bugs are on vacation, and children, spouses, relatives, and friends are all looking the other way. Then they roar out of town, down the road, intent on capturing those few hours of exact bliss, to return home self-satisfied and gloating about the wonderful experience they had, with a wad of pictures to prove it.
There are places, and whole years, when this never happens, and that makes for the perfect excuse. If the weather is not perfect then obviously you can't go backpacking, and if the weather is lousy the whole year, well, then you have a self-renewing excuse, and trailless life stretches ahead to infinity, like one big couch lined with pillows and overflowing with chips.
It's true that if you hit a good day, or a stretch of a few good days, you can have a lot of fun.
Life is nice if it's fun every now and then, as opposed to never. Never gets to be tedious. On the other hand, perfection is one side of the coin. There is no perfection without its opposite, which is some degree of confusion, accident, evil temper, pain, misery, and toothache.
So if you get out fairly often you come to appreciate the good days so much more, because you are constantly reminded what the others are like. You also find value in stumbling around in the dark, ending up dripping wet, shivering with cold, covered in flies, going hungry, and finishing with a fractured tibia or two, because that makes coming home alive to a quiet place where there is clean running hot water and a bed whose insect population is zero all the more reassuring.
– No wind, and not a hint of rain either. –
Those days when the weather is dry and sunny are the best, no doubt about that.
Not too hot, not too cold. Earth is orbiting the sun at about the right distance. If Earth strayed a bit closer, or wandered a tad farther out, we'd be sizzling like bacon on a griddle or blue and frosty forever in the deepy dark of freeziness. The same rule applies to the space our solar system fills in the galaxy.
The Milky Way is not a fun place, not every part of it.
The Milky Way is not just our own private misty smear across the sky, brimming with gloriously colored stars in a conveniently black sky. Not hardly. It is screaming with x-rays and gamma rays, and ripping with tidal forces and colliding stars, black holes, howling clouds of incandescent gas and all kinds of things we haven't even discovered yet, or only found out about all too recently, like that madly spinning pre-supernova Wolf-Rayet star, WR104, which is a mere 8000 light years away, its prickly north pole pointed directly at us. The very star which could collapse at any second and turn into a super duper whooper nova known as a gamma ray burster and incinerate the Earth and everything on it by shooting a ginormous death ray out its south pole, but more importantly, out its north pole too. The one that is aimed at us. 1
Since these Incinerat-O-Rays travel at the speed of light, exactly the same speed as any warning signs, our first clue would be all of us exploding into clouds of buzzing-hot ions while the surface of the earth was blasted down to bare rock, with nothing left of the atmosphere, the oceans, soil, forests, cities, sparkly lakes, restaurants, parks, or tidy gated communities but a few depressingly insignificant wisps of gas whooshing off into space like flocks of pigeons startled by a backfiring truck engine.
So, in short, we have it pretty good right at the moment, though for backpacking, some days are always going to be better than others.
But as with most of life, when things are good you don't have a lot to talk about, which generally works out fine. Living in interesting times has too many drawbacks to become popular with everyone.
Sometimes it is nice to get up a little late in the morning, and take a few extra minutes with breakfast, and then to go off walking at an easy pace with no urgent deadline in mind. Sure, you still have to get somewhere in a reasonable amount of time, but if you are healthy, in good shape, have food and water (and good enough weather) then you know it's going to work out.
On the other side of the coin, you've probably been out when making tracks, making the right number of tracks at the right speed and in the right direction for the right amount of time means you won't die right now, probably, or even today, probably, but will manage to survive, even if miserably, all day and through the succeeding night, and have a decent chance of making it home again, eventually. Which works too, if it works, but is more interesting because it is more stressful.
– Being mediocre in excellent times. –
What this all amounts to is that during good times you have a lot of slack.
If evolution has taught us anything at all, it's that tough times create excellent results. All those tens of thousands of millennia of living in the small dark spaces between rocks where dinosaurs didn't think to look, or were simply too huge to bother with, gave us mammals quick wits and adaptability as well as small beady eyes and a taste for crunchy insects. We managed, and well. Just look where the dinosaurs are now. That should tell you all you need to know.
But when things get a little better, or a lot better, better than you have any right to hope for, you can kick back and still get by. That's why nice weather is nice. You can turn off your higher intellectual functions and decline to the comfortable days of being a lizard again. Sleep late, move slowly, spend lots of time enjoying the warm sun. It doesn't equip you to be a survivor, but while the weather is nice, everyone is a survivor, without expending any effort at all.
Backpacking on nice days is not for Type A personalities. Backpacking on nice days is for Type L personalities. Continue asking yourself What would a lizard do? and you'll be fine. As long as the weather holds. There really isn't a lot to worry about.
Just keep the basics in mind (if you can be bothered to remember them) and proceed on auto pilot.
In fact, short trips in good weather are fine times to prepare for the worst, in a way. Times when you can build up good habits while you have plenty of time to fumble with false starts.
You can work on setting up and breaking camp without hurting yourself or losing anything, like your flashlight. Or one of your hind legs. So start then with the big things, which are easier to keep track of.
Say it's later in the afternoon and you plan to set up camp and goof off for a while, and enjoy watching evening slowly descend on the world. Good choice, especially if, when you empty your pack, you find that your tent is still with you. If you can get through a multi-day trip and not lose (a) your pack, or (b) your sleeping bag, or (c) your food, stove, and fuel, or (d) your tent, you are doing pretty well, especially if backpacking is new to you.
You get extra points if you manage NOT to lose pack, sleeping bag, food, fuel, stove, AND tent all on one trip. In other words, let's say, if you lose nothing equal to or greater than one quarter of your body weight. This is good. Mediocre, but good.
A depressing fact, other than that we have this gigantic and unstable star's business end pointed right at us and may be instantaneously zapped into clouds of dissociated molecules, unremarkable except for a lingering whiff of burned skin and overcooked fat, is that mediocre does not mean bad. Mediocre means sort of average, in an uninteresting way. Not unpleasant at all, only uninteresting. Adequate, if you're willing to settle for C-minus.
Mediocre does not mean easy, either. You might actually need lots of practice to get all the way up to the bottom edge of mediocrity. And good days are good for that. Practice now and prepare to advance into the ranks of the survivors.
– Make my expectations petite. –
Once you have been able to travel through the back country without losing any major body parts whatsoever, or, say, even your pack or boots, you can keep practicing so you get even better than that. (Yes, it is possible.) Among some people it is thought that the major accomplishment of an overnight backpacking trip is to simply return home alive, but better results are achievable. Really. Even by you, without too much effort. Also really.
But you know that. By now you have returned home not only alive but in reasonably good health with an acceptable number of fingers and toes remaining, and all your gear too. Good for you there, but remain humble if possible. Take it easy. Keep fine tuning your level mediocrity. It's good enough for now, but it won't always be so.
Keep at that habit building.
Now that you know you won't have to replace your pack every time you go out, and know that you won't constantly lose track of your tent and need to keep replacing that, you can begin to employ your higher faculties, and concentrate on refining your game. Keep the trips short but try not to lose your car keys. Or socks. Or your glasses. If you don't wear glasses then pick something else to worry about. Then get so good that you can keep track of everything and finish a trip of a day or two without actually worrying much. Or losing anything at all.
After a while backpacking reduces from a challenge requiring all your intelligence to a discipline requiring dedication (and some minor fretting) to a mindless habit.
Mindlessness. That's what we're looking for.
Once you achieve that you are thoroughly mediocre, which puts you in the middle of the herd. Not bad for a few days' work. The middle of the herd is a safe place. It gives you a cushy buffer. If any tyrannosaurs do show up, they'll nibble around the edges first, but you won't be there, because you have put yourself well away from those unpredictable edges where danger customarily looks for its snacks.
Good weather is great for developing feelings of comfort and adequacy. Remember to check the weather report, pick a place you are already comfortable with, take it easy, travel only with people who have never had more than moderately homicidal feelings toward you, and remain humble. With that, plus a season or two, you become adequate.
So give yourself a bronze star. (The little paper ones with adhesive on the back are fine. Lick one and stick it on the wall.)
– Longer than you expected, – less interesting than you feared.
After a season or two of backpacking, after you have learned to feel comfortable lying on the ground in a sleeping bag, spending hours in the dark completely defenseless against the resident predators, you should try some longer trips.
Go ahead, push your luck. Instead of an overnight trip, or one lasting only two days, try a long weekend. Three days and two nights, or four days and three nights, or up to one week.
Pleasant weather is just as good for these trips as for shorter ones. It will teach you a lot, while still remaining pleasant. You get to make mistakes with little or no penalty, and if you are the right kind of person you get to make the same mistakes over and over until you finally learn, or until you get bored, or the gods decide that you really are an insufferably superfluous twit and need to be made an example of. They all work.
In fact, if you don't have anything in particular to prove, and are just out to have a good time, and don't mind wasting a bunch of your annual vacation pointlessly mucking around in the dirt, then a week-long backpacking trip in fine weather is great.
The issues you face are minimal. You don't need to worry about getting too wet, or too cold, too hot or too dry. These are good times to experiment with different foods, or new shelters or bedding, or new locations, or new companions. Stress on your pack will be light, which is good, and likewise for stress on your skills and on your body.
Since the weather isn't really hot or muggy, you won't be sweating that much, and your pack will stay cleaner.
If you make reasonably short trips you won't be pushing it.
It is also possible that, unlike what happens during a several-month-long trip, your pack won't see a lot of ground-in dirt. These are all good things. Relatively short trips in relatively good weather are great times to find problems with your pack's comfort level, ability to carry loads, or its quality of manufacture, not to mention your true feelings about backpacking.
If you decide that backpacking is interesting, and have survived a few days at a time, and you move on to a couple of week-long trips, you'll be surprised at how comfortable you can be. Once you work out the basics and lose the idea that you have to protect yourself from the land, you can ease into lightweight and ultralight backpacking, which put more strain on your planning, require more intelligence up front, and more attentiveness on the trail. You'll be able to move through the landscape with less fear and more joy, feeling more a part of it and not so much like an intruder. More at home and less at threat.
