Solus Cum Solo
Singleton Backpacking Issues.
(You're on your own, dude.)
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.
– Footsie Notes –
"Solus cum solo": http://bit.ly/1yzhj9e