My new JRB quilt

I got a Jacks R Better wearable quilt. Here I am wearing it.

It's a summer weight sleeping quilt. I plan to use it inside my 20 degree quilt as an extra layer of warmth on trips where it's going to be down in the 20s. When worn like this, it's pretty warm, if pretty stupid looking. I think I could leave my down jacket at home and just wear some fleece sleeves and throw my wind jacket or rain jacket over it. That would make up for the extra weight. I can also use this instead of the 20 degree quilt on hot summer trips.

It also feels great to just wear it at home, like a snuggy. I should bring it to work sometime. There's no heat at work and sometimes it gets pretty cold.

Ordered a JRB quilt

I have a backpack trip coming up over Thanksgiving weekend. We were going to go on one this weekend but it was canceled due to weather. So we're going to try again over Thanksgiving weekend.

We'll be going to relatively high elevation (6000') and I'm worried my 20 degree quilt will leave me cold. I'm not as adapted as I was when I was a lean and mean PCT hiker. I have an older sleeping bag that is rated for zero degrees, but it weighs around 3lbs. So, instead of using that, I ordered a summer-weight JacksRBetter wearable quilt to use as an extra blanket inside my quilt. It weighs one pound and my current quilt weighs one pound so it comes out as less weight overall. It ought to be heavenly, if it works. And since it is wearable, I can possibly also wear it in the morning while people are taking forever to get their shit together. Multiple use with less weight is always better for backpacking.

It has not arrived yet. I'm looking forward to seeing this contraption.

Meanwhile, I have to go to the dentist again today. My third big dental surgery in the last 8 weeks. I am hoping this is the last one. I'm tired of the dentist and I don't particularly like the way my teeth fit together now. Too many changes.

Fleece works well in wet weather

I did a day hike yesterday in the rain. It was not raining at the start but the bushes were wet and it was a bushwhacking adventure so I got pretty wet. It was still a nice hike. It finally started raining for real near the end of the hike. My fleece jacket worked out well. I have resisted fleece for a long time because I don't like how it gets all full of static cling and my hair sticks to it, but it worked out well in the rain. Warm when wet.

It's really pouring right now. There was a couple at the trailhead yesterday that looked like they were just setting off for a backpack trip. I wonder how they fared.

Gonna make Bilgy Parchos

I have ordered kits to make Bilgy Parchos for me and The Man. We don't believe that a poncho can serve as both a shelter and rain gear unless it's near 100% certain you won't need to use it for rain gear. This is because if you are using a poncho as a shelter, you probably want to leave all the tie-downs attached so it's easier to set up at night. Otherwise, you'll be stuck standing there in the rain removing them in the morning and reattaching them at night.

A Parcho is a cross between a rain poncho and a rain jacket. It's basically a jacket with a big bulbout for your pack. It is loose and ugly like a rain poncho so you don't get to hot and sweaty.

We may like them or not. I kind of favor umbrellas and cursing the rain. But The Man usually uses a rain poncho. The Parcho may be an improvement for both of us. We'll see. At any rate, it's another project for me.

I tested my hiking sandals

I tested my new hiking sandals today. I walked to work and home wearing them. Then I did a short hike on Rattlesnake Trail wearing them. They are very comfortable and have great traction.

It feels like my feet slip backwards in them a little bit when I walk uphill. They are definitely too long. One thing I have to keep in mind is that the heel will be set flush with the edge. When you try on flip-flops, your heel isn't flush with the back edge. But in these shoes they will be. So that means they were about two inches too long in front.

I didn't glue the front of the sole on one foot very well and it started coming loose. I remember when I was gluing them together I went out to check and it looked like one of them wasn't sticking in front. I thought by putting heavier things on top I fixed it, but apparently I didn't. I will have to reglue them. No big deal.

They are all dusty now so I washed them and will have to wait for them to dry before I can glue them.

I would like to try and make another pair. Use smaller and thinner flip-flops and see if I could make them out of something other than leather. It is fun to make your own shoes.

Homemade hiking sandals

I've been wearing my modified tire sandals around and they seem secure and comfortable. After such a success, I decided to make some new hiking sandals from other materials.

I sent away for a pair of Vibram boot soles, a pair that did not include a raised heel. The smallest size they had was a mens 8. They were awful big but I thought they might work out okay in the end. I also ordered some Barge cement to glue them together.

My original plan was to glue some leather tops to the soles. But the soles were very thin. So I went to Rite-Aid and bought some cheap flip-flops. I wanted cheap flip-flops because I didn't want a raised heel or any fancy shaping. Just a flat piece of foam and hopefully a sole without any ridges. I found a pair of sandals that met these criteria. There was a very light pattern on the sole, but I thought I should be able to glue it to the boot soles without a problem.

I cut off the flip-flop straps and glued the flip-flop soles to the boot soles. I put heavy things on top and waited a few hours for the glue to harden. Then I cut away the excess boot sole from around the edge of the flip-flops.

Then I cut leather for the side tabs and the back heel area. I decided I would try a two-tab sandal first, rather than a four-tab like my tire sandals. Instead of holes cut through the tabs like my tire sandals, I cut slits. Two slits so that I could thread the lacing through. Hopefully this would rub less against my skin.

Once the glue was dry, I nailed the tabs to the soles. I tried them on and moved some of the placement around until they seemed to fit right. Then I loosened the nails and applied glue. After letting the glue dry for 20 minutes, I pressed the pieces together and put in all the rest of the nails to hold the glue together.

You might wonder why I nail the pieces to the edges rather than cut holes and thread them through, or glue the tabs between the foam and the sole. There are three reasons. One is that hammering the pieces to the sides turned out to be the easiest way. The other is that my feet are wide and this gives me a lot more room for my toes. Gluing the leather between the foam and the sole leaves little raised areas and honestly I couldn't figure out how to do the heel. Nailing the heel on was much easier.

Why have that big heel thing? I tried all kinds of different lacing methods and my feel would always slide out the back. The big heel area holds my foot in securely and feels the most comfortable.

The only problem I can foresee with these sandals is they are a little long in front. I might have to cut off some of the front. I hope I don't have to because it might ruin the (relative) perfection of the boot sole on the bottom.

The sandals turned out really comfortable even if they aren't the prettiest. I have to try them on some trails to see if I can actually hike in them. I'll try them out walking around town first.

It is relatively easy to make clothes. Making shoes is a lot more difficult. I feel pretty good that I was able to make shoes even if I had to use shoes to make them. It was relatively inexpensive (if you don't count all my trial and error), compared to buying new hiking sandals. The boot soles were about $10, the flip-flops $2.50, the leather was about $6, the laces were $12, the glue was about $5. I could have found cheaper laces but I didn't know where to find them at first.

Maybe someday I will get better at this and my homemade shoes won't look so obviously homemade. But for now, it's kind of cool that they look homemade because it's fun when people ask me if I made my own sandals. I was asked that about the tire sandals and the person who asked me thought that was really great to make your own sandals. Making stuff is fun so I like to inspire people to do things like that if I can.

I can't wait to fully test these. Hopefully I'll have a good contribution for the Make Your Own Gear forum on Backpackinglight.com.

Hiking gear from the thrift store

I scored at the thrift store today. I found a North Face hiking skirt. It had all the features I want in a hiking skirt: Wide skirt so you can actually hike, pockets and belt loops. I also found a pair of Patagonia hiking pants without zip-offs. They, too, have belt-loops and decent pockets. I have to have belt loops because if it's a long hike, I might lose weight. Also, too many clothing items are made so your butt crack shows when you sit down. A belt helps prevent that.

Both of these items appeared to be brand new, never worn. Unfortunately, both items were too big. The skirt was a size 14 and the pants a size 12. I bought them anyway and used my sewing machine on them to make the waist bands fit better. The big pants are nice because I have big thighs so at least they are generous enough to hike in.

I have been searching for these two items for about a year. I'm glad I found them even if they weren't the right size.

Playing my strumstick

I have this awesome little instrument called a Strumstick. It's basically a mountain dulcimer oriented like a slender little guitar. I used to have a mountain dulcimer but when I started playing music with the Glendessary Jam, I could not hear myself play my dulcimer and couldn't tell if I was playing the right notes. I got discouraged and gave my dulcimer away. I started playing a mandolin instead. Eventually I started playing a fiddle because I took a class and my teacher played at the Jam and I didn't want to disappoint her so I kept playing the fiddle. I kind of grew to enjoy the fiddle even though I'm worse than terrible at it.

I've tried a lot of musical instruments and as a result, I have a large inventory of different instruments lying around the house. I have simple-system flutes and pennywhistles, a mandolin, a violin, and a strumstick. I have a silver band flute, too, but it doesn't work. I play all my instruments except the silver flute. I'm not particularly good or talented but I do enjoy it.

When I first got the strumstick I had a hard time figuring out how to play it. The maker of the instrument claims it is easy to play, no wrong notes. Well, to me some of the notes do sound wrong. And it is very difficult to slide your finger up and down the high string quickly enough to get a good tune out at a decent dancing speed. Most of all, no instrument is easy if you don't have tunes in your head that you can actually play. I set my strumstick aside for quite a while as I focused on my fiddle at the Glendessary Jam.

Over the course of a year and a half of playing at the Jam, I've picked up a lot of tunes. They are memorized in my head. I have never looked at the sheet music to play them. I just go to the Jam and listen as they play a tune and pick up as many of the notes as I can. Eventually I learned quite a few tunes this way.

The other day I picked up my strumstick and realized that the first two strings are tuned just like my fiddle. D and A. The last string is tuned to D instead of E. It's so close to the fiddle that I just started picking out tunes. Instead of only playing melody on the high string, I played melody on all three strings just like on a fiddle. Wow! It worked and suddenly it really did have no wrong notes. The Old-Time tunes we play at the jam work perfectly for the strumstick. The chords and the melodies just seem to match. When I'm on the D strings the A string harmonizes well most of the time. When I'm on the A string, the D strings seem to harmonize well most of the time. Once in a while they don't quite harmonize right, but it's not exactly wrong, either. It has more of a simple, old-fashioned sound.

It's so much fun to play tunes on my strumstick. It's like having a little band in a box. I can play a melody and have chords going as a self-accompaniment at the same time. It makes me sound like I'm a real musician and know what I'm doing.I brought it to the Jam last weekend and had a blast strumming out the tunes. With a capo I can even play tunes in G and I suppose by retuning I could play in A, but I haven't tried that yet.

I've been thinking I would like to take my strumstick backpacking. I have the largest strumstick that McNally makes. Their smallest would be better because the large one is probably longer than a yard and could be difficult to pack and bump into low branches. I met a PCT hiker named Chief Daddy who had the smallest one. It was very tiny, packed well and had a nice tone like a mandolin. Mine has a deep tone more like a banjo, but with the capo I can get a brighter, higher tone similar to his.

Beach mat sleeping pad?

I have been wondering if a straw beach mat would be a suitable backpacking pad for those hot summer months.

I currently use closed cell foam. Closed cell foam isn't really all that cushioned, so I think I could handle the even less cushioning of a straw mat. Site selection can also help. I could sleep on a thick bed of pine needles or oak leaves, if possible.

Closed cell foam is really hot during the hot months. I will often wake up sweating against the foam. I use a quilt so I sleep directly on the foam. It's quite uncomfortable when it's hot.

I bought a straw mat for $4. I think sometimes they are even cheaper. It was not very light but it was huge. It came with 3 panels of straw sewn together. I cut off one panel.

It was about 6 feet long. I'm only 5'3" tall so I cut off a little from the end. This caused the straw to start to unravel. I quickly sewed some light fabric around the cut edge and then I reinforced a few loose places here and there. They don't make these mats to last very long.

With the mat cut to the new size, it feels like it weighs the same as my full-sized closed cell foam. I usually use half a z-rest and half a blue foam pad with velcro to stick them together. The velcro adds weight, so if I just had a torso-length or a pad not cut in half, the foam would weigh less than the mat.

I prefer a full-length pad because I have a quilt, sometimes sleep without pants and don't like having my skin against the floor of my tent or plastic sheet.

Foam is bulky. The straw mat rolls up quite a bit smaller. I can even fit my weekender bear canister inside the Relay with the straw mat. I'm planning a 5 day trip on the JMT next month. I'm not sure if I could trust the mat instead of the foam insulation, however.

I might give this a try next week on a trip I'm doing from Bucks Lake to Highway 36, the midpoint portion of the PCT. I'm sure the loss of insulation will be a bonus at this time of year. I remember being very hot last year.

Why even consider a straw mat? I think it would be a more environmentally-friendly alternative. Perhaps in the future I will weave one myself from spongier cattails or tule reeds, perhaps only torso-length. I guess I kind of enjoy toying with a sort of survivalist mentality. Could I survive sleeping on reeds instead of plastic?

What do you think of this idea? Probably pretty stupid, huh?

Wide Chacos don't work for me without modifications

I've got these wide Chaco sandals. The wide part, the footbed part, fits really well. My regular width Chacos gave me nasty blisters on my heels because the heel cup was too narrow. I had to slice the heel cup with an exacto to make them fit. My new wide Chacos don't have that problem.

My new wide Chacos also are the kind that don't have the toe loop. That is much better. My old Chacos have the toe loop. I've given up on the toe loop and have flattened it, but I can still feel it under my foot. It's not that bad to feel it, but the rest of the strap is too long and I've had to sew it shorter to compensate. Also, I can't adjust the straps very well with the toe loop flattened.

The trouble with the new wide Chacos is the straps don't feel like they are placed properly and they are much too long. They ride too high on my ankle in front and rub my ankles raw. I've tried everything to try to fix this and finally resolved it by wrapping elastic bands around the buckles to attach the buckle to the middle strap so that it won't ride so high. I've also adjusted the straps so the buckles ride far to the inside of my foot and sewn the excess length on the outside edges to take up the slack. The middle strap still rubs painfully across the top of my foot. It's like it hits a nerve or sensitive area. Nothing seems to fix it. It's like the straps are just placed all wrong.

Today I tried sewing some fake sheepskin strips to the undersides of the straps to see if that cushions the pain. It seemed to help. I don't need the elastic bands anymore at least. I may try getting some real sheepskin and sewing that to the undersides of the straps. Real sheepskin will stay cushy and soft longer. I might rip out the sewing I did to take up the slack and let the sheepskin take up the slack instead. They had real sheepskin pieces at Art from Scrap.

I would return the sandals but the footbed part just feels so good. Tevas don't do it for me. Their footbed isn't the same, doesn't feel as good. I can hike in the Chacos. I hiked 15 miles or so the other day in them and felt great all day. I just have to do a lot of mods to them to work.

Using my homemade mosquito net with a tarp

My homemade mosquito net tent works well with my 8x10 tarp. It does not work with my poncho. The poncho has velcro on it so I don't even want to get near my gossamer cocoon with it. But even without the velcro, it's just not the right size or shape to work with the poncho.

Because of the way I made the edges around the bottom, I can use stones instead of stakes, which is nice. That means I don't have to carry extra stakes if I need to use the tarp to form a roof. Since the tarp can only be set up one way using the net, there is no room for creativity and I can leave extra guy lines home, too.

The weight for the tarp plus mosquito net compared to my tent is heavier. But I can sleep without a roof now without worrying about mosquitoes. So for a few extra ounces I think it might be worth it to sleep peacefully under the stars. Since it is summer, I can leave home other things when using the mosquito net so it will all even out.

Now I need to make an esbit stove.

Homemade mosquito net tent

I sewed my own mosquito net tent.

It was not easy to sew. The netting would get stuck in the sewing machine foot. It's mosquito netting, not no-see-um netting, so it had holes big enough for a sewing machine foot to find its way in. I figure it should be sufficient for the kinds of bugs I usually experience in my area, which is mostly mosquitoes and flies.

There's no door. I could not figure out how to make a door. The netting is not strong enough to sew a zipper directly into it. If I ever figure out a way to add a door, I may add one later. For now, it's easy enough to just crawl under one of the long sides.

It's quite light, but without a sensitive scale, I'm not sure how much it weighs. With the two lines attached, tt feels to weigh about the same as my Equinox bivy, which is listed at 6.5 ounces. I don't mind that it is white. I used to sleep under a mosquito net tent that I bought in a travel store that was made to go on top of your bed in a tropical hotel room. That sucker weighed a pound. It was white, too, and I could see the stars through it at night just fine.

When I first met The Man we did a little backpacking together and one thing I used to like to do was get inside my mosquito net tent and just lay out naked and enjoy the air free from the flies that plague our backcountry. One time I did that while he was out cutting brush on the trail. When he returned to camp, he was surprised to see me. He told me I looked like a beautiful maiden in a gossamer cocoon.

In warm summer months I sometimes feel sad that I am stuck inside my tent without the ability to see the stars. I've tried just using a headnet but if the night is warm, it is too hot to be confined to my sleeping bag. I about died of heat in Seiad Valley when I tried to sleep without a tent and just a head net. I needed to stick arms or legs out but mosquitoes were biting. Having a full-sized mosquito net tent like this means that I can sleep outside of my sleeping bag on warm nights without worrying about mosquitoes.

I may give this a try on my up-coming hike in the Sierras. I'll bring either my poncho or my big 8x10 tarp in case of rain. I have to try the poncho and the tarp to see which one I can actually set up with my mosquito net tent.

More new shoes

I have been happy with my handmade Piper sandals. They feel good, they look good and they are made well with quality materials.

With this happy experience, I decided I would order a pair of custom-made leather shoes from Native Earth. They will be made to a tracing and measurements of my feet. They will be a simple pair of light boots with a flat, no-heel lug sole. I will use them for hiking if they fit well. Leather shoes will keep the foxtails out.

Additionally, I ordered another pair of Chacos in the wide width without the toe loop.

My plan is to eliminate all poor-fitting footwear from my closet and wear only top-quality foootwear that fits and that can be resoled and repaired. The initial cost will be worth it if the shoes are long-lasting and can be repaired. No more disposable, ill-fitting, over-engineered, plastic running shoes for me.

That's my plan anyway. I do not know if after all these years of wearing low-cut shoes I can go back to ankle-high shoes. And I don't know if I can deal with leather after enjoying breathable mesh. The boots may be for the cooler months and the sandals for warmer.

Goodwill got a lot of my old shoes when I came back from hiking the PCT. They're about to get more.

More footwear testing

I did another test walk in yet another pair of sandals. This time I walked for an hour wearing some $10 Teva knockoffs. These knockoffs had very little shape to the footbed. There is no heel rise or arch. There is only a sort of design stamped in it with small bumps where the toes go. These felt really good for most of the walk but at the end I felt my sesamoid injury.

So here are the results of my tests:

Shoe	Features
Chacos	Sandal Arch support Moderate heel rise (3mm)
Results	NO Sesamoid pain NO Limping NO Achilles tendonitis pain NO Behind the knee pain NO Too small toebox NO Too much toespring YES Chafing
Feelmax Osmas	Moccasin-like shoe No arch support No heel rise
Results	YES Sesamoid pain YES Limping NO Achilles tendonitis pain NO Behind the knee pain YES Too small toebox NO Too much toespring NO Chafing
Brooks Cascadia	Standard trail running shoe Not a motion control shoe Standard running shoe features
Results	YES Sesamoid pain YES Limping YES Achilles tendonitis pain YES Behind the knee pain NO Too small toebox YES Too much toespring NO Chafing
Piper Sandals	No heel rise Arch support
Results	NO Sesamoid pain NO Limping NO Achilles tendonitis pain NO Behind the knee pain NO Too small toebox NO Too much toespring YES Chafing
Imitation Tevas	Cheap sandals No arch No heel rise
Results	YES Sesamoid pain NO Limping NO Achilles tendonitis pain NO Behind the knee pain NO Too small toebox NO Too much toespring YES Chafing

So what's the lesson? It could be any of these:

• Freedom of the feet and toes to move is the most important thing
• If shoes can't be foot-shaped, people without shoe-shaped feet should wear sandals
  
• Low/no heel is good
• Arch support helps my sesamoid injury
  
• Too much shape in the footbed is bad (that toespring thing where the ball of the foot is in a depression with toes pointing up is extremely damaging)
  
• Chafing is the main problem with sandals
• Cost does not inform about the healthfulness of the shoe
  

Plastic bag bag

I was poking around the Internet on the subject of plastic and found videos on how to make sturdy, reusable bags out of plastic grocery bags. I decided to give it a try. That picture is what I made.

We used to have a cupboard overflowing with bags but The Man recently cleaned it out. I do not know where all the bags went. I searched around in closets and found enough to make a bag of bags.

Basically the tutorials I found online, including this one, tell you to follow the following simple steps:

1. Cut the bottoms and handles off plastic bags.
2. Turn the bags inside out so the ink is on the inside, otherwise it will melt on the paper and make a mess.
3. Between sheets of wax paper, iron 8 layers of bags until they fuse together. Set the iron on something between polyester and rayon.
4. When the plastic is fused, you will have a strong material much like tyvek. Check the fabric for places that did not get fused and try not to over-do the fusing because that will make the material lumpy and hard to work with.
5. With the fused fabric, sew whatever you like out of it.

My iron did not have a setting for rayon so I set it on polyester. That seemed to be slightly too hot, so I set it lower. But even at a lower setting, the wax paper melted so I switched to newspaper. This caused the newsprint to get all over the plastic. In the future I think I should use paper bags for the fusing process.

The resulting material is smaller than the original plastic bags and it is stiff. It turned out a bit lumpy and I think there are a few places where the plastic didn't fuse. I figure that for a small shopping bag, this isn't a big deal since the original material was only 1 layer thick and worked just fine for shopping.

To make a bigger bag I would have to sew several fused pieces together. It would be nice to have a full-size bag. Of course this means that I will have to find a way to collect plastic shopping bags. We've already made the switch to reusable bags. It's easy to find plastic shopping bags, though.

It seems to me I could fuse long strips and then weave with it like a basket. Or create very thin strips and twist them to make a sort of twine and weave that. If I had a collection of nicely colored bags instead of the rag-tag bunch of white ones I had with logos on them, I could create nice bags that even my fashion-plate sister would like. If I could get the fusing process down so that it didn't come out so lumpy.

But, best of all, though, since the material created by fusing is so much like tyvek, I could make hiking gear. Perhaps a hydration pack or fanny pack, maybe a dry bag or camera bag, or really funny would be a rain jacket. I ordered a bunch of mosquito netting so that I could sew my own mosquito tent so maybe I can use fused plastic bags for parts of my tent.

Doesn't solve the plastic problem on the Earth, but I feel better about it knowing I can turn something that might otherwise choke and kill birds and turtles into something useful.

Finding injury and relief from different kinds of shoes

From trial and error with different kinds of footwear I've come to the conclusion that I overpronate in my left foot. I'm finding Chaco sandals to provide tremendous relief but I am not sure I would be able to hike the Pacific Crest Trail or long distances with them. I had to modify them some, too.

I wore a wide variety of shoes on the PCT. I had a lot of success with a couple of different brands of shoes and some terrible failures. Everybody seems to love the Montrail Hardrocks (or at least they did a couple years ago.) Those sent me off the trail with stress fractures after I had been doing so well in other shoes. I learned from them that I can't tolerate shoes with too much stiffness or other corrective properties (motion control and all that stuff.) I also had a lot of trouble with shoes that were too narrow. I spent a lot of time with my womens size 7 feet wearing mens size 9 or 10 shoes and feeling great. Then I found some 4E mens shoes and was in heaven. But even after finding shoes that didn't hurt me too much I still ended up injured because hiking the PCT is a repetitive stress injury machine. In my search for relief after the trail I've tried the motion control shoes again (reinjury), I've tried moccasins (some relief but not enough) and Chacos (hooray, relief at last.)

You have to do what works and be willing to get rid of or make modifications to any shoes that are giving you trouble out there. No matter how much you paid for them, no matter how much other people rave about them, no matter how much you like them, if your shoes are causing you pain you must get rid of them quickly and move on to something else. I used to walk into shoe stores and let shoe salesmen fit me. No more. I know so much now about my feet I tell them what I want and they look at me like I'm nuts but in the end they say, "wow, I thought you were nuts but I think you are right."

So really I don't have any advice. After all I am injured (tendonitis and sesamoiditis). But whenever I hear someone say the answer is boots I have to say something because it's not. Boots are tight, stiff, hot, have tremendous toe-spring, immobilize your feet and would have driven me off the trail in 3 weeks.

Fixed my Chacos

I decided to give my Chacos another chance. I flattened out the toe strap and took and exacto knife to the part that rubbed against my heels. With my still-tender blisters from the other day, I went for a hike on the Jesusita Trail up to Tunnel Trail, a rocky, dusty trip of about 6 miles. I made very little effort to baby my feet. I wanted to give them a good test. No problems at all. The Chacos are fixed.

As I was walking down the Tunnel trail, I overheard two men as I was catching up to them. It sounded like they were talking about the Saufley's house in Agua Dulce. Finally as I approached, they stopped and just as I came up to them one of them said, "They're all hard core like this lady here with her sandals on."

I asked him what was he talking about because it sounds like the PCT. He said yeah, he was talking about the PCT. I told them about having just finished the trail last summer and so we started talking about the PCT. They wanted to know if I stayed at the Saufley's. I said that I did and that I got a ride to the REI while I was there. It turned out that one of the guys works at that REI.

We started talking about gear a little bit. They wanted to know if I wore the Chacos on the PCT. I said no, but I was really liking them now and I might be able to do the PCT with them. The PCT isn't like Tunnel trail. It's smooth and level mostly. They asked if I had a really big pack. I said that I did not. I told them about my light gear and that most of the space and weight in my pack was food and water. I tried to impress upon them that the longer you are out there the less junk you need to carry, and that I found that a lot of my gear beyond the main stuff was just recycled stuff, homemade stuff and bits and pieces of things. The news seemed to blow the REI guy away a little bit. I reassured them that most hikers wore shoes like what the two of them were wearing.

As I descended the trail, my feet did start to hurt a little bit. The Chacos are pretty hard. I think I could do the PCT in Chacos if I toughened my feet up a bit and maybe if I swapped back and forth during the day with Crocs. Anyway, I'm really happy I fixed my Chacos and I think they will be my primary hiking shoes for the time being. I'm glad I don't have to buy any hiking shoes for a while.

Went for a hike in Chacos, got blisters

I decided to wear my Chacos for a hike today. It would be a relatively easy 11 mile hike, first on a dirt road and then along a creek where we'd get our feet wet in the thigh-high, warm water.

The thing I noticed with Chacos is that I walk like a normal person in them, not like Frankenstein. Which is to say, normally my left foot turns in too far and I end up limping a little bit, kind of lurching down the trail like the Hunchback or some kind of zombie. Walking normal meant that nothing hurt. No knees hurting, no feet hurting. I liked that.

But, Chacos give me blisters. I get blisters from the toe strap. I should have gotten the kind without a toe strap. But I also get blisters from the heel cup. The heel cup is too narrow for me. But my feet are too small for a mens. I wonder if the wide Chacos are wide in the heel.

I brought some athletic tape because I was pretty certain before the hike that I'd get blisters. I always get them when I wear Chacos. I bought the tape from CVS. Recently all the good drug stores in town became CVS drug stores. CVS sucks. All their products are of the worst quality. The tape had no adhesive qualities whatsoever. I am not shopping at CVS again.

Sewed my own hiking gaiters

I made my own Dirty Girl gaiters.

I searched around town and the only place that sells spandex fabric is this place called Art from Scrap. Art from Scrap gets a lot of industrial waste and sells it to people who want to make art out of it. There are a lot of medical things, shavings from skateboard wheels, broken surfboards, leftover scraps and molds from the Teva factory and lots of other odds and ends. They had only about 5 scraps of spandex so I bought the best one and made these gaiters.

I used my Dirty Girl gaiters as a pattern. I do not have an overlock sewing machine, so I sewed with a zig-zag stitch to preserve the stretchiness. It worked! I think they came out pretty well, although not as professional as Dirty Girls. She doesn't have to worry about me encroaching on her turf, that's for sure! They're wild enough to look like real Dirty girls, however.

I hope to test them out this weekend.

I have not posted many pictures to this blog because I used up all my free space on Picassa. I still have a Flickr account, but it's also free so whenever I upload pictures I am not allowed to organize them into new sets. So they get lost eventually. I figure I could use Flickr for my blog because I don't really care if the pictures are organized for the blog.

Comparing ultralight shelters to more traditional ones

The thing with ultralight gear is that it takes more effort sometimes to stay warm and dry. That doesn't make ultralight gear less worthy. Much ultralight gear is not made for people who don't want to think about the external issues involved.

Ultralight tents in particular depend on you adding a few crucial ingredients, including choosing a good camp site where there is limited wind, katabatic air (cold air that sinks), condensation etc, and choosing a good spot in the site where there won't be a puddle of water forming and where trees and bushes can provide some additional warmth, shelter and condensation protection. Very frequently this means that the typical backcountry campsite that most people aspire to, such as a nice lakeshore site or a spot in a meadow, are rejected because these sites will be cold, wet and uncomfortable. Much better will be a mid-slope site protected by trees. Sometimes you have to pass by the nice lake-side site or select a tent site a small walking distance away to be able to attain the kind of warmth, dryness and protection that a more robust and heavy tent will provide. Not a problem to me because the hours I spend at night are unconscious while the hours I spend hiking are enhanced by a small pack.

You can't just throw up a shelter like a Z-Packs hexamid any old place and expect it to work as well as a heavy, double-wall shelter. But with care you can choose a good site, arrange the ground sheet and other items well, and sleep warm, safe and dry. That is the trade-off. Easy warm safe and dry with a lot of weight, or warm safe and dry with a little extra thought and care. So it's only with the thought and care added that ultralight and more traditional shelters can be compared.