Gave an ultralight backpacking presentation tonight

The Man and I gave a presentation of our ultralight backpacking gear to some boyscouts tonight.

I had never been to a boyscout meeting before. It was kind of strange. They are pseudo military with their little color guard, but they have no discipline. They did have more discipline than a bunch of pre-teen and teen boys would be expected to have. Organized chaos in a way I guess.

Somehow we held them spellbound with our gear demonstration for an hour and a half. We brought our packs and The Man went first, unpacking his gear and showing it off. He has some high-tech stuff and the techie boys in the group were very interested. I have mostly homemade/recycled and minimalistic gear and I seemed to hold them spellbound by talking really fast.

I think I disappointed one of the troop leaders because I hardly pack any first aid stuff. What else do you need besides a few bandaids, some gauze and tape, a few ibuprofen and other pain killers, a needle for poking blisters, my pocket knife and a little neosporin? I could use my bandana and shirt for bleeding, my pad for splinting. My reading glasses were extra strong so I could see the splinters in my fingers. Anything worse than basic boo-boos and I'd be too far gone to help myself, I'm afraid. In that case, I'd have to use my phone or hope someone would come along who could go for help. I never needed anything from anyone, though, in all the 3000 miles I hiked.

We talked too long and could not show any pictures. The boys might have been bored with pictures anyway. I had hoped to show pictures of other hikers, of the places where we stayed, the water caches and how my tent is set up with trekking poles. I also forgot to give out my handouts of links to good web sites for gear. I gave them to one of the leaders to hand out later.

I hope they enjoyed our presentation. At least one boy wanted to ask more questions afterward. He really wants to hike the PCT one day. I'm sure that he will.

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.

Show and Tell - Going Light

I have used up all my free space on my various photo hosting web sites, so I posted a topic on Backpacking Light with pictures of my gear from the trip I took on the Sisquoc last weekend. You can see it here.

I don't really know what the weight of my pack was. I know when I left for the PCT last May my pack was a little heavier and weighed in at 12lbs without food. But I had a few other things (like journal and guide books) and a different pack. So my guess is that it's about 10 pounds now before food, and for 3 days I probably had about 4.5 pounds of food.

The key to my light pack is really the tent, which weighs a little more than a pound and uses my trekking poles to set up, the sleeping quilt which weighs only 16 ounces, the pack which is about a pound and my cook kit. After that, the key is never bringing a change of clothes. I walked 3000 miles without a change of clothes, I can certainly walk 45 miles without one. Also, hiking the PCT I really learned I don't need much to be comfortable. I learned how to be kind of a McGuyver about things and not really mind a certain amount of gear-induced discomfort. Hence my do-it-yourself gaiters made of stuff I found on the trail.

Result of my gear choices

So my choice of tent for my trip was a good one. Biting flies ate me alive so it was nice to have a refuge.

My choice of skirt was not so good. Like shorts, they allow your legs to get torn up by scratchy brush and stickers. A skirt is better than shorts but not as good as pants. I do like how with a skirt you can easily add layers underneath, so I will definitely use a skirt in the future, but only on clean, bug-free trails.

My choice of shoes was a disaster. Keen sandals are the worst of all possible worlds. As a shoe, there is no traction on the trail. I fell twice, once into a yucca bush that stabbed me deep into the muscle of my arm and punctured my hand and leg. In the water the shoes let in all the gravel and won't let it out again. Sand and gravel chewed away my skin as I walked. The trail was overgrown with foxtails which pierced the fabric of the sandals and collected inside. I was constantly being poked by foxtails. I finally resorted to fashioning gaiters and shoe covers from a stuff sack to protect myself from foxtails, but nothing could save me from the sand and gravel.

Last minute gear choices for my trip

I've decided to bring my tent on my trip this weekend. Even though I have a poncho tarp and a big 8x10 tarp that I could bring, I always come back to my Gossamer Gear One tent. It's really the lightest option of all my choices even though it's not the lightest individual thing. With the other tarps I still have to bring lines and stakes and some kind of mosquito net and then I'm stuck without a generous space of protection against mosquitoes and flies. So basically, I get significantly less with a tarp for only a few tiny ounces of weight savings, if any. So I always come back to my tent as the best option for weather and bugs. I think I'll sleep out under the stars, though. It'll just be extra, unused weight, which is unfortunate, but I don't want to be ill-prepared.

I'm still wondering about the skirt. I've never backpacked in a skirt. I worry that poison oak and scratchy brush will bother me. I have leggings I can wear but will it hold up under foxtails and scrub oak? Nothing to do but give it a try.

As for footwear, I am leaning toward my Keen sandals with liner socks to prevent blisters which I always get on the top of my feet. They are so clunky and stiff, but I wore them yesterday and my feet actually felt good at the end of the day, so maybe I'll be happy with the choice.

Making hiking clothing from scraps

A while back I led a Sierra Club hike on a primitive trail to a special place called Gorilla Rock. Along the way I tore a hole in my hiking pants. I hiked along for quite some time before the guy walking behind me finally said something about the growing hole in my pants. By the time he said something, the hole was about 6 inches long.

When I got home, I tossed my torn pants in a corner thinking I'd either toss them or fix them. Well, now that I have a sewing machine what I did instead was harvest them.

I recently bought some nice Ex-officio pants from the thrift store. When clothing companies that specialize in outdoor clothing make things for men they make them with reasonable waistlines, full length pants, useful pockets and a cut that accommodates physical activity. When these same companies make clothing for women they usually include none of those things, but they do use the same good fabric. These pants had very short legs (do women hikers somehow not mind sunburn and mosquito bites?), but the waistline was somewhat reasonable (a tad bit of gap-osis to show off my underwear to the world, but there are belt loops). The pockets are useful for small things, and there's one zippered pocket on my thigh which I like. In other words, they could work with a little modification.

So I made frankenpants out of them. I cut the legs off the torn pants and sewed them onto these Ex-officio pants. The pant legs are gray and the Ex-officio pants are khaki, but it doesn't look any more stupid than if I wore knee-high gaiters.

I was just about to throw out the rest of the pants but then I noticed they have good pockets. Perhaps I can harvest the pockets for my future hiking skirt project.

I also edited a Patagonia skirt so that it's actually useful for hiking. It was so narrow I couldn't even walk up stairs. I added a panel of nylon from the pants to flare it out so I can actually step over a log or something. I also fixed some casual pants.

By the way, I had a chance to try out my bomber hat this weekend. I wore it to bed when I camped out on my bike ride. It's very warm. It's also very big. My friends were polite and said nothing about how silly it looks on me. But I'm happy with how warm it is. It's a good addition to my sleep system.

This is very fun.

Ultralight backpacking - why

Of the people I know who go ultralight, they do it expressly so that they can do the following things:

1. go farther in less time
2. get to places they never could get to before
3. play with gear, be gram weenies, invent new things, play with new technologies
4. have the flexibility to add extra mileage, change the route, do some exploring
5. do more with less

The last one is sort of hard to explain, but it has to do with the "stuff" you want to bring with you.

Many of us ultralight backpackers have learned by leaving "stuff" home that it isn't about the stuff you bring at all. The less stuff you need, the closer you are to the nature you came out to experience. The less your trip is focused on stuff, the sharper the experience feels. It's about your skill, about feeling at home in the wilderness, about shedding not just the weight but the insecurities. When you reach the point where you're no longer packing your insecurities, you experience a special kind of freedom that has to be experienced to be understood.

I like going ultralight so I can bring luxuries, too. I brought a cup last time. I can hear you laughing. But since I don't need a cup, I don't usually bring one. Having a cup this time brought me great joy while I lingered over a hot cup of coffee. I also brought an extra pair of shoes. I'm choosy about my luxuries. They have to enhance the experience, not take away from it.

I like hiking and I like my hiking to be comfortable. The lighter my gear is the more comfortable my hiking is. It feels exactly the same as dayhiking when I go out for a weekend. I can't imagine a more comfort-driven system than that. Warm, safe, dry and it feels like dayhiking. That's what comfort is all about. It's not about being a beast of burden laboring under a heavy, uncomfortable load. It's about luxury where it matters and having fun the whole time you are out there. With only two days a week to enjoy ourselves in our work-driven lives, you have to maximize the fun. The fun really does go up when the weight goes down.