A More In-Depth Gear Discussion

As promised here's a more in-depth gear discussion for my recent West Coast Trail hike.  I'll include a link to my Lighterpack list at the end of this post for anyone who wants the full gear list.  

My goal was to get my base weight (everything but food, water, and fuel) under 20 lbs which I finally achieved.  19.96 lbs (9.1 Kg) in fact.  When I was all loaded up with food, fuel, and a liter of water I weighed in at just over 27 lbs.  

Many of the things on this list are standard items for weight conscious people.  Let's be clear, I'm not saying that I've gone full Ultra-Light or that anyone else should compromise on anything that they're uncomfortable with.  At the end of the day nobody carries your pack but you so as long as you're happy with it that's your business.  With that in mind I'll give my rationale on my choices for certain gear items but skip over others.  If anyone has any questions leave them in the comments and I'm happy to answer.

Little Green Bag

My hiking style is to wake up early, hike fast and hard, get to camp, set up my gear and read/swim/nap/snack.  As such I need a pack that fits me very well, straps down pretty hard, and doesn't have anything dangling off of it.  I went with an Osprey Atmos 50 AG (size Medium).  They also make it in a 65 Liter version but that's too big for me, although I did see A LOT of those on the trail.  The pack is considerably heavier than most UL offerings and weighs in at a hefty 4 lbs.  It has an adjustable yoke system as well as adjustable hip-belt suspension.  The AG stands for Anti-Gravity and refers to the grey webbing that secures the suspension to the pack itself.  As a 5'10" 175 lb man I find that everything is made with me in mind.  Airline seats are pretty comfy.  I can take the jacket off a mannequin and wear it out of the store.  Seatbelts almost always fall right on my shoulder.  You get the point.  Anyway, this pack fits me like a dream.  Since I bought it I've finished hikes with my legs shaking and quaking but my back/shoulders have never hurt once from weight.  Not once.  Some of the straps are too long and I need to trim them and the hanging handle is inconveniently located but those are the only quirks.

I'm a "hammocker".  Full props to Lallo who got me into it and I'll never go back to sleeping on the ground.  Tents are faster and easier to set up, without a doubt.  I was the only hammock camper (without a backup tent) that I saw on the WCT and had many conversations with people about my choice of shelter.  It requires an underquilt (the blue thing), a topquilt (the yellow thing inside it), and a tarp (not needed b/c we had AMAZING WEATHER).  6 lbs of gear total.  My talented and beautiful wife has hand-made all three of these for me (as well as for herself and our boys).  Our gear is designed with a lower limit of 0 degrees Celcius (32F) b/c as a family we really enjoy shoulder season backpacking (Fall and Spring) when temps can drop unexpectedly.  

On the ground I used to toss and turn all night waking up every 45 min or so.  Left side, back, right side, back, left side, back...  In my hammock I occasionally wake up to readjust but just as often I close my eyes and wake up the next morning.  You do, however, have to be capable of back sleeping.  I've been a side sleeper all my life and so spent 3 months a few winters ago forcing myself onto my back many times each night.  Every time I woke up on my side I'd roll over onto my back and return to sleep.  Sucked, but it worked.

So in Ultra-Light jargon those are the Big 3.  Shelter, insulation, pack.  Mine total 10 lbs.  That's a lot.  Half of my total base-weight in fact.  

For my cookset I built everything around a Toaks 1L Titanium cookpot.  I made a reflectix cozy for it and my Optimus Crux stove nests in the hollow spot in the bottom of a Large fuel canister.  I boil 250-300 ml of water for each dinner (2 min of fuel)(my only hot meal of the day), stir up my dinner in the pot, put it in its cozy and set a timer for 15 min with one stir halfway.  The 1L is more space than I need for just me but the weight difference between that and a 500 or 750 is negligible and sometimes I boil for my family as well.  Most everyone I hike with uses a Jet Boil or MSR Windburner/Reactor system.  Those are great systems but I like the DIY nature of mine and I suspect that my reflectix cozy has a way higher R value than the neoprene sleeve the other systems use.  I don't eat out of plastic bags because I don't trust hot cheap plastic.  That means I have to clean my pot out after each meal but c'est la vie.

For my drinky-poo cup I have a Snow Peak 450 double wall titanium.  Many people prefer the single wall b/c you can heat it directly and I respect that but I've never needed to do it.  I have a cozy and cap for it but it doesn't cool off fast enough with those on it so I usually leave them at home.  I could cut weight by not bringing the 450 but I REALLY REALLY like a hot cup of coffee in the morning and I have too much dignity to drink my coffee from a cookpot.  Some people in the UL community don't bring fuel/stove/cookset and instead they just...are you ready for this?  They put some grains and water in a peanut butter jar in the morning and let them absorb till dinner.  At which point they sit down crosslegged (I feel that's probably true) and eat a joyless meal devoid of comfort or flavor.

My Sassy Chair

I carry a chair.  I know that there are lots of places to sit in the woods but both my ACLs used to belong to someone else (cadaver replacement surgeries) and whoever had them before me liked to stretch them out after a hard day of hiking.  This chair weighs about 1.7 lbs, which is a hell of a lot for a straight up comfort item, but I'll be 44 this summer and I don't give a shit if it's heavy.  I love it.

The two other items I consider indispensable are my knife and my watch.  The knife is a Fallkniven F1Z and the watch is a Suunto Ambit 3 Peak (Sapphire Crystal face).  These are straight up survival items.  The knife is laminated VG-10 steel with a convex grind.  All that means is that it's very good steel and easy to sharpen and use.  The watch is a modern GPS watch which tracks my hikes, talks to my phone, has altimeter/barometer/compass functionality and is mostly indestructible.  Both of those items go with me whether I'm hiking 50 feet or 50 miles.

The Nitinat Narrows and a Book

The last item of interest is my footwear.  Almost without exception everyone else on the trail was wearing giant waterproof hiking boots and knee length gaiters.  This was in no way a bad choice and if someone asked me for a recommendation I'd probably advise that's exactly what they do.  However, that's not for me.  I grew up hiking with that type of boot but over the last year or two have moved away from that paradigm.  Mine are Solomon XA Pro 3D Trail Runners.  They're some of the beefiest trail runners you can buy while still being able to call them that.  One of my fav reviews called them a "tank for your foot".  That's obviously from the perspective of a runner, which I'm not.  I subscribe to the Andrew Skurka school of thought on hiking footwear.  Your feet are going to get wet, either from sweat or from external conditions, and hiking boots don't dry out.  My trail runners are mesh uppers which lets air circulate, lets the water run right out of them and dry they weigh less than 2 lbs.  I have two identical pairs of socks (Darn Tough Grit, 60/40 Nylon/Merino) that are either on my feet or drying on the outside of my pack.  The advantage of this method is you don't really care if your feet get wet.  You walk right through streams if you need to and within 20 min your feet are damp but not wet.  When you get to camp you dry things out if you can but if not you still have a separate pair of sleeping socks so your feet stay warm and dry all night.  Skurka has some pretty strong ideas on this here if you want to read more.

For gaiters I have some low cut REI gaiters that we got on sale.  I don't usually wear gaiters unless I'm in deep snow so it was a bit of a toss up whether they were going to be good.  They were BOMBPROOF for this hike and I couldn't have been happier with them.  I'll wear them always and forever b/c they kept all the little shit out of my shoes and never came loose.

That's about it for interesting items.  My clothing, water filter, head lamp, battery brick, kindle, etc is all pretty standard.  I hope this was of help to people and of at least mild interest to the rest of the backpackers out there.  As promised, here's a link to my Lighterpack list.

West Coast Trail 2018 - The Toughest Hike You'll Ever Love

So I just returned from a 10 day odyssey to the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada where we hiked the West Coast trail.  I did it with my old friends Sam and Sharon and my new friends Eve and David.  Just in case you weren't aware (I certainly wasn't until I very much was) the stretch of water that leads up to and into the Juan de Fuca straight is a very dangerous section of heavily traveled water, especially in the late 19th and early 20th century.  So many ships were lost in this area that it became known as the Graveyard of the Pacific.  In order to address this very real threat to ships and their crews the Canadian government built lighthouses, a trail, and improved the telegraph route along this coastline.  With improvements to technology the frequency of shipwrecks decreased and in 1973 the trail became part of the newly established Pacific Rim National Park Reserve.

The trail covers 75 kilometers and runs from Pachena Bay at the North terminus to Port Renfrew at the Southern end.  You can hike in either direction but the Park Service only allows a limited number of permits per day and the trail is only open from May-Sept.  Online registration for permits opens in late January and is very competitive.  Our trip organizer, Sam, was online as soon as the site opened and they were disappearing as fast as he could reload the page.  He was persistent though and scored us a North-South permit starting on July 11. 

On July 9th I flew out to Seattle and the next day we drove to an AirBnB in Vancouver.  From there we dropped our car at the airport and took a chartered Seaplane out to the trailhead in Bamfield, BC.  In case you're thinking of vacationing in Bamfield BC, don't.  It was beautiful but there was one hotel, one general store, and a bunch of hikers either hyped up to start their trek or exhausted from their journey.

Our pilot Randy gets us ready to hit the friendly...water.

At the trailhead we endured a mandatory hour long orientation by Andrea that turned out to be necessary in at least 4 dangerous situations.  Andrea, if you're reading this, thank you and I apologize for mentally willing you to hurry it the hell up.

In the interests of not cursing ourselves not one thing was said about the weather forecast that we had at the outset of our trip.  The day before we arrived someone was evacuated for hypothermia and they medically evacuate about 100 people every season, which is only 4 months long.  But I'm home now so I can't screw it up.  OUR WEATHER WAS AMAZING.  Every day started at 5:30am with a fog bank that you could cut with a knife, got sunny and beautiful with a crisp pacific ocean breeze and ended with a cool evening that stretched out luxuriously till about 10:30pm over a driftwood fire and tales of our daily adventures. 

This was us at the outset on July 11.  We were so clean and naive.

Our first day on trail started at 3pm after our lengthy orientation (again, sorry Andrea) and we put a quick 8 miles under our belt to get to the first campsite.  One of the incredible things about this trail is that all the designated campsites (and they prefer you to stay at official campsites) are on the beach where creeks/rivers empty into the ocean.  This means that you really don't need to carry that much water and as any experienced hiker will tell you, that's huge.  The downside to it though is that every hiker stays at the same campsites.  The next few images are of our first campsite, Michigan Creek.

  







This was my pack all ready to go at the beginning of each day.  I took a pic each morning but they all look exactly like this (except when I had socks on it to dry in the sun while I hiked).  I'll be putting up a separate post with the technical info on my gear for anyone who is interested but the short version is that its an Osprey Atmos AG 50L.  We had to weigh them to get on the plane so I know for a fact that it weighed 27lbs when I put it on my back to head out on the trail.  Thats with 1L of water and 6 days of food.  I've spent a lot of time and effort (and money) getting my pack weight under 30 lbs because I'm old and don't want to carry a heavy pack anymore.

As we continued on this crazy-ass trail we discovered that what everyone had told us was true.  We had started at the easy end and things were only going to get harder.  Each day the trail got rougher, the boardwalks got fewer and farther between, the mud holes got larger, and the ladders got more frequent.  That's right, ladders.  So. Many. Ladders.  There are around 70 ladders on this trail and they range from a nice easy 10ft up a slope to 50 or 60 feet vertical up a rock face immediately followed by another 50 or 60 feet vertical up the same rock face.  They were insane.  At one point we descended 200 feet straight down, crossed a suspension bridge that almost forces you to close your eyes and make peace with your maker, and then straight back up 200 feet of ladders to where the trail continues. 

Little muddy...

In case of Tsunami climb like your life depends on it.  Which it does.

A few examples of the variety offered by this neurotic but stunning trail.

As you may have guessed there was a great deal of hiking on the beach.  Some of it was optional, some was not.  We took every opportunity to hike the beach trails because of the views, the varied terrain, the photo ops, and the sheer exhilaration of timing your hikes so that you don't get swept away by the tides.  True story.

The picture above is a great example of the terrain that you might encounter on this trail and why it's rated as "Experienced Hikers Only".  This boulder field went on for about 2 Kilometers and led directly to a 500 foot ladder ascent that was the only way to get back on trail.  This part of the trail was not passable unless the tide was below 6 feet so it was crucial to plan your hikes the night before with a tide chart at hand.

Altho I'm a dedicated hammock enthusiast I would not recommend bringing a hammock on this trail.  There just weren't enough hangs.  Especially if you're with a group and want to socialize and eat meals with them without a 30 minute hike back and forth.  All the tenting was on the beach which was pretty comfy they said.  That being said, I didn't put out my tarp once the entire time and spent my nights with a cool ocean sleeping breeze and the stars above my head.  My ideal sleeping scenario.

That last one was sketchy.  There were absolutely no trees available so I had to wrap my sling in some marine line to protect it from the rocks.  Again, I wouldn't recommend it but I wouldn't do anything differently if I did this trail again.  Which I won't. 

As always, you get to know the people you hike with pretty darn well.  I've known Sam and Sharon (the two on the left) since our time in Seattle and they're two of my favorite hiking partners.  The two in the middle are Eve and David, new hiking partners to me, but they were such solid people that I wouldn't hesitate to attempt any endeavor with them.  The group got stretched out a bit over some of the rougher terrain but we always caught back up with each other for the next phase of our adventure.  

After 5 days and 75 kilometers of brutal trail conditions we finally made it to Port Renfrew where we got a taxi to a local breakfast joint and ate till we were full.  No mean task.

Bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, toast, grapefruit juice, a margarita, and a water.

There are so many stories from this hike that didn't make it into this post.  Overall this was one of the most grueling hikes I've ever done but I spent the entire time with a stupid grin plastered all over my face because I was having so much fun.  My legs ached at the end of each day but I hit the trail each morning with a spring in my step because I couldn't wait to see what the trail held.  The remote nature of the location can not be overemphasized and as such you really are hiking through a mostly unspoiled temperate rain forest that the First Nation People have called home for centuries.

The true props for this hike must go my Wyfey tho.  I was gone for 10 days having fun with our friends on a hike that she couldn't do (back surgery) while she hosted birthday parties, worked, juggled camp for the kids, and kept our home running smoothly.  I couldn't have done it without her support and appreciate her more than she can know.

The full (edited) album of my photos is here for anyone who wants to peruse them all.

Overheard

Cayden: Hey Dalton, want to play Sprayberry ball?
Dalton: I can't - I have a death hand
C: Well then, take it off
D: oh….. Now I can play!

Back on the Network

Well it was a great trip out to the research station but there was very little internet there so there was very little blogging there. We're currently driving through South Dakota and relay towers are a bit more frequent than in the Teton national forest. 

There will be lots of pics to follow but just a few highlights of the trip were;

Learning to fly fish, the Tetons, Yellowstone, the Tetons, Jackson, watching Cayden and his new BFF, chef Willy, the Tetons, lake Jenny hiking, Bombus occidentalis, and most of all spending some quality time with the Dillons. 

Arrival

We made it!  After camping at 9,980 ft in the Medicine bow national forest Thursday night we drove the rest of the way into the Tetons and arrived at Jackson Lake yesterday afternoon. There's pretty much no cell service so if you need to get in touch email is probably best. 

It's beautiful up here and when we get back out of the woods onto a quicker network I'll post up pics. 

Drive Faster

When I was talking with my parents back in April about our plans to camp across the country until we hit Wyoming with a four year old and an eight year old, it went something like this:

Ann: What do people say when you tell them about this trip?
J: My students all say, "Wow! That is amazing! I wish my parents had done a trip like this when I was a kid.
Tim:  Have any parents said that?

In all honesty, I expected this to be an awesome trip, but I recognized the possibility that my kids might cry and whine for six days straight and we could end up in Wyoming filthy, smelly, mosquito bitten and bitter. We are definitely mosquito-bitten, but we are just the right amount og filthy and the kids have taken the alarming change in their routine like champs. On day two Dalton weakly lobbied to go back home, and when he realized that wasn't going to work he switched tactics: "I really think we should drive faster". Smart kid.

Starved Rock

Our first 2 days on the road have been uneventful in a good way. Sunday was a 6 hour drive to Ohio and today was one of our two long days at 8 hours. We're currently camped at Starved Rock near the Illinois river which left its banks behind 3 weeks ago according to the locals.