Gear still to pick up (about $200 worth)

Here's the gear on my list that I'm still missing.

• A tarp (Outdoor Products All Purpose Tarp at REI) $8
• River shoes -- I could use some existing ones, but I'd really like closed toe river sandals, and I don't see any benefit in pricey Keen or Merrell ones vs. Ozark Trail river sandals at Wal-Mart for $11
• Fuel cannister $5
• A new lighter from the dollar store.  I could use an existing one, but given the cheap price, I'd like a full one
• Copper coated scrubbing pad.  Again; dollar store.
• JetBoil Zip cooking system.  The smaller one, for about $75.  It's a mite cheaper at Cabelas than anywhere else, for some reason.
• SteriPEN traveler water purifier.  I could punt and get some treatment pills for less, but at $50, this is a "permanent" option that I like a great deal.
• Camera.  I don't have one of my own that I'd like to bring (although I saw an option for $80) so I'll probably just use the one that is nominally my wife's instead.
• I have a headlamp that fits on the brim of a hat, but I'd like to buy a regular one.  Again; there are high-priced brand name ones, and there are low priced Ozark Trail ones at Wal-Mart for about $7.  I see no benefit in having a brand name flashlight.
• Permethrin--my first and best defense against mosquitos.  I need to buy a batch and treat my clothes, pack, tent and sleeping bag.  $10
• Trails Illustrated map.  $10 from Amazon.  Need to pick this up really soon to get the route details nailed down well in advance of the trip.
• Pack Rain cover.  The North Face makes a good one for $11 at REI.
• I budgeted $10 for any items I need to finish out my repair kits, first aid kits or wash kits. 

And, of course, the food.  You'll notice that I have two expensive items still to pick up; the water treatment SteriPEN and the JetBoil backpacker stove.  Other than that, it's just nickel and dime type stuff that bulks out the rest of the budget.

The entire trip has a budget of $1,000, about two thirds of which is gas and hotel cost associated with just getting there.  Next year, with a completed gear list, I'm hoping to lower that budget.  Or, more accurately, I'm hoping to maintain that budget, but have more of it left over to improve some of the items on my list.  I'd like to have a better tent, for instance, but good backpacking tents ain't cheap.  And by next summer, I'll probably need new boots/shoes again too.

Hiking in trail runners

In addition to all that I talked about in my last post, I'm going to be doing a bit of an experiment.  I found some $70 Trail Runner type shoes on sale for less than $30, and I snatched them up to use as everyday tennis shoes type shoes that I'd wear on weekends, or at the gym or wherever.  I don't actually need them quite yet; my former pair aren't dead yet, but they will be within months.

It occured to me as well that many people hike in trail runners, and in fact swear by the experience.  Hiking boots--and I have a big, clunky pair of those as well, are... well, big and clunky.  They're heavy, they're not necessarily comfortable unless they've been thoroughly broken in, and I was, frankly, a bit nervous about my feet.

I like hiking boots, don't get me wrong.  And I'm a little nervous about potential ankle twisting with trail runners.  But the notion of walking in these comfortable, lightweight shoes also feels like a major relief on something that I was frankly dreading.  I think it's going to make my trip much more comfortable.

All in all, I'd probably rather have a pair of high top hikers with a GORE-TEX liner.  Something like the Cabela's XPG hikers I highlighted a few posts ago.  Keen, Merrell, The North Face, Adidas, Vasque and tons of other folks make hikers like that.  However, they all sell for over $100.  Finding the shoes I did at the price I did was quite a steal.

I'll want to eventually upgrade them, but then again, I don't anticipate that they useful life on these shoes, especially considering that I plan to switch in the next few months into making them everyday shoes that I wear everywhere except work and church, won't be much longer than a year or two anyway.  For now, I'm going to just be glad I scored such a great deal, and then look for another replacement--maybe--for the 2015 hiking season.

I freely admit that this is a bit of an experiment for me.  Back in the day, when I was actually backpacking every season, I always wore hiking boots; in fact, I always wore the same pair of hiking boots.  But this time, I'm looking at my all-leather uppers Frankenstein boots and just not feeling the love.

It's decided: High Uintas

Well, I've decided on potential summertime trips--to be taken in very late June, straddling the first week of July, most likely.  Although there's a chance up to two of my sons might be involved, and a very slight chance that some friend or one of my brothers might join, most likely it will just be me by myself and on my own.  I like the Uintas for this trip for a few reasons:

• I've been there before.  Sure, it was 25 years ago, and I admit that I wasn't paying much attention to the details back then (nor would I remember them if I had been) but there's a sense of familiarity that seems nice for my first foray into a big backpacking trip in many years.  It gives me a chance to do something big and yet a bit familiar, which is marginally less intimidating than heading out across the country in a place I've never been before.
• Although the High Uintas wilderness area is big and lonely, it somehow seems a bit tamer than some of my other options; like the Yellowstone area, for instance, which is not tame at all, except in the highly popular tourist zones.  In spite of this, it is pretty lonely--solitude is there for the having in the High Uintas.
• I like Utah.  I have family I can stay with on the ends of the trip, even.  Plus, I really would like to climb to the summit of Timpanogos in the nearby Wasatches, and I could do that as a warm-up to acclimate to the altitude and stuff before heading into the Uintas itself.  Timp is no slouch in terms of summiting, but the summit elevation is still under 12k feet.  Ever since my teenage hike into the Uintas, I've been drawn to the area, though.  I don't even know where we went on that hike, which is curious.
• The place is big.  I'm going to be struggling to narrow my options down to something doable, and yet I'll still have highly desireable destinations left over--with half a dozen trips into the Uintas, I'd still only scratch the surface.

I'm thinking of taking at least ten days off work, but maybe more.  With two days to drive to the area and two days to drive back, even that would only give me six days to be in the mountains.  I'd like to see if it's possible to pump that up to ten days by making it a full two weeks.  Assuming I can arrange my schedule to accomodate that, then I've got two days to drive followed by a day to do Timp, six to seven days to do the Uintas, a day to recover and two more days to drive back home.  I'm looking at possible routes assuming that schedule, or something similar.  I may be disappointed in my ability to take that much time off, though--ten days total, with only five to six in the mountains, may be more doable.  But I'll cross the bridge in the next few weeks of planning.  I'm cognizant of the fact that I'm older than I was last time I really did this, and significantly heavier--as a 160 lbs. (roughly) teenager, my ability to do this was much better than my current state--a 235 lbs. 42 year old.  I imagine I'll come back out of the mountains noticably lighter, but that that will force my hand a bit in terms of taking it a little easy.  I don't want to be too ambitious and plan something that I can't actually pull off, either.  My ability to get serious about training in the time left, and lose a bunch of weight and get really good at climbing stairs or something, is somewhat limited, but I'm going to see what I can do...

OK, with those caveats in mind, what am I thinking?  I'd actually like to, if possible, make two backpacking trips out of it, and see two areas of the Uintas.  I'd like to do a two nights, two and a half to three day trip in the Central Uintas, and summit King's Peak.  I'd come in from the Henry's Fork Trailhead, go over Gunsight Pass and Anderson Pass, bag the peak, and then continue Eastward from Anderson on the Highline Trail to go into the Smiths Fork Basin.  I could pass iconic Red Castle Peak this way.  Continuing north, the trails will take me either to the China Meadows Trailhead, or there appears to be a cut-off trail that will take me back to Henry's Fork.  Blam!  Don't need shuttling or hitchiking to get back to my car.  Perfect.  I'd like to do this during the week, because King's Peak, as the highest point in the state, is a major draw.  Because it's a weekend sized trip, the weekends can get a bit crowded.  A weekday trip should help, and then the detour into Smith's Fork Basin should provide a bit more solitude as well.

With up to four additional days, I've got a lot of options for the rest of the trip, and that's where I'm not sure what, yet, I want to do.  Peter Potterfield's suggestion, in Classic Hikes of North America, is to come into the range from the Highline Trailhead far to the west.  You take the Highline Trail until it turns off to Naturalist Basin, and then explore that for a day or so.  Then hop back on the Highline Trail (which becomes a bit of a hikers' version of an expressway, according to his scheme) over Rocky Sea Pass to explore massive Rock Creek Basin.  He also suggests spending a few days exploring this basin.  The really adventurous could then, of course, continue on over Dead Horse Pass and have a look around West Fork Blacks Fork Basin.  If I were able to get a shuttle, I could hike up north out of this basin to the West Fork Blacks Fork trailhead, even.  More likely, I'd cut my trip short of the Dead Horse Pass and just turn around and head back to my car.  And, of course, I'd love to go even a little further... to Red Knob Pass, and see Mount Lovenia, and others.  But again; let's not get too ambitious the first time out.  If I go this route, I'll almost certainly confine my trip to the Naturalist and Rocky Creek Basins.  I only have, at best, four days to do all this, unless I get rid of my Timp day or cut short my Kings Peak trip, after all.  And, as I said, I'm older, fatter, and out of practice.

But wait!  There are, of course, lots of other attractive options.  Going in via the Christmas Meadows trailhead and exploring the West Basin, Middle Basin and Amythest Basins looks really attractive.  It may be possible to crest a pass off-trail from there into Naturalist Basin, but I need to do some research to confirm that first.  If not, it's still an attractive option on its own.  The East Fork Bear River Trailhead, as well as offering access to the Scout camp in the area, could send me by Lamotte Peak, Yard Peak, Mount Beulah and The Cathedral--all scenic gems of the northwestern Uintas in the Priord and Allsop basins.

Realistically, I could decide almost on the fly at the last minute, but I'd like to not.  I'm leaning a little towards the Naturalist/Rocky Creek route, just because it's so well described and I like the notion of not venturing too far off of well-described routes for my first outlay in so long.  But the other routes are pretty clearly described and "well trailed" as well, by all accounts.

It's nice to have choices...

Cabela's XPG line

I really like Cabela's, and for a variety of reasons, I'd rather shop there for my outdoor stuff than REI, or Dicks, or some other Joe Blow sporting goods store.  However, Cabela's is very focused on hunting and fishing, and where I'm looking for technical backpacking and hiking gear, they haven't always been the best choice.

I just got a new Cabela's catalog in the mail a week or so ago, though, and I can see that they've made an impressive foray into that experience as well with their XPG--Extreme Performance Gear--line.  The catalog I got was men's clothing, and that's where the majority of the new stuff seems to be, but it looks like there's been an XPG camping gear selection out there for some time.

Some of the stuff seems pretty good--$140 Gore-tex, lightweight hikers, for example, is as good as any on the market.  $300+ tents and sleeping bags, on the other hand, don't impress me as a great deal.

Still, there's some great looking things to be mined there.  If I had that corporate sponsor I mentioned a few posts ago, I'd go spend some $4000 overnight on stuff, and I'd basically wear Cabela's outdoor clothing as my everyday uniform.

This summer's backpacking trip...

My plans for the year continue to be in a bit of flux.  I have a fair bit of my vacation already "spoken for," including a cruise with the family.  I might go on a nearly two-week spread of day-hikes in the West with my family, if things work out.  If not, I'll go on at least a week or so backpacking trip by myself.  I've posted in the past about my day-hiking options.  My backpacking options are, I believe, as follows:

• The Teton Crest Trail.  With maybe a Shoal Falls loop as a warm-up in the nearby Gros Ventre wilderness.  This would give me a change to acclimate to the altitude before tackling the Tetons.  My biggest concern here is with bear canisters, and permits.
• The High Uintas.  I'd like to hit up King's Peak, and maybe Naturalist Basin further west.  Not sure yet how I'd link them, but I'd probably do them as two short trips, interrupted by a car ride to a new trailhead.  If I do this, I'd likely warm-up with the summit of Timpanogos first.
• If permits for the Teton Crest trail are scarce, I could do something similar in the nearby Wind Rivers.  Warm-up with a 3 day Gros Ventre appetizer, and then do two smaller trips into the Winds--one to famous Titcomb Basin and one to equally famous Cirque of the Towers.  I'd love to actually link the two, but realistically I probably won't this time out.  I'm still a bit rusty to take on something quite that ambitious.
• Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness loop hike.  Just to give Colorado a shout-out, and it is one of my short-list wanna hikes.  Permits and crowds, again, might be an issue.
• There's also the possibility of some autumn backpacking.  If I do this, I'd look at the Art Loeb Trail in North Carolina in October.  Or possibly a late October or early November Grand Canyon backpacking trip.

Hiking abroad

I've said before, and I'll reiterate now--I love the American landscapes.  Especially the American West.  I can get all the hiking I'll ever need in the Rockies, the Sierras, the Cascades, the Great Basin, the Appalachians, etc.  Heck, I can probably get all the hiking I ever need in Colorado alone (although frankly, I'm more inclined to look towards Wyoming and Montana for the Rockies, and Utah and Arizona for the Colorado Plateau experience.)  I'm almost jingoistic about preferring the American West, with a nod towards the American east as a nice secondary location.  But there is one major problem with this: the season is too short.

For mountains in the Rockies, the Sierras, or the Cascades, the season is (basically) July, August and September.  On low snow years, you can incorporate June, especially if you stick to lower elevations.  Because I don't do skiing--cross-country, Nordic, or otherwise, and I don't really like hiking in serious snow, my season is fairly short.

I can get desert hikes in on the "shoulder" seasons.  The best time to go to Canyonlands or the Grand Canyon is actually the spring and the fall.  The lower elevation mountains of the Appalachians, like the Smokies and the rest of the Blue Ridge, are arguably better in October than any other time, whereas the more northerly parts of the Appalachians, and the higher elevation Rockies, Cascades and Sierras are extremely iffy in October, if they're available at all.  But that only extends my hiking season to, oh, about seven months.  Maybe eight if I'm really pushing it.

During the "dead" of winter, I have slim options in the US.  There's some great hikes in Hawaii and American Samoa, for instance (although they're extremely hard to get to, relative to the Rockies).  Big Bend National Park, I can attest, is lovely in February (and presumably much of the rest of the winter) if you don't mind extremely arid hiking.  The same could be true of Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Saguaro National Park, and parts of Death Valley.  But what I really want is mountains, and to get those in the "off season", you have to flip over, find yourself in the southern hemisphere where the seasons are reversed, and try it that way.

Oddly, there are a few less options than you'd maybe think by doing this, since the percentage of the earth covered by land in the southern hemisphere is dramatically less than in the northern hemisphere.  But your best options probably include the Southern Alps in New Zealand (famous as the locations used in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies) or portions of the Andes in South America.  New Zealand has got to be the better of the two options, given that it is political much more stable than many of the countries of South America, and you don't have to learn another language to get by (as it happens, I already speak Spanish, and I learned it in Argentina, so I'm OK on that front.)  I've been extremely impressed, however, with photography that I've seen from hikers in the Andes, particularly the Patagonian Andes.  When I was in Argentina, the Bariloche region was often billed as a "little Switzerland" in terms of settlement patterns, architecture, chocolate, and... of course.. scenery.  I hadn't yet heard of some of the stunning vistas of the even more southerly Patagonian Andes--Torres del Paine, or Monte Fitz Roy, or Cerro Castillo, for instance.

I'd love to fill my Jauuary and Feburary itineraries with backpacking trips into the Patagonian Andes, and then come home to fill my July and August (and September) itineraries with the Rockies, the Cascades and the Sierras.  Heck, Argentina even has a reverse Colorado Plateau desert systems in Talampaya National Park and Ischigualasto Provincial Park to help round out my shoulder seasons.  If I can find a way to do this, I can hike at any time of the year in a stunning wilderness setting.

Here's some images I've grabbed over time on the internet of Andes hiking opportunities:



Now; does anyone know how I can go about getting a corporate sponsor to keep me hiking for about four months of the year, and support me for the remaining eight while I plan and equip myself?

Hiking pants, redux

I recently bought two pairs of "hiking pants."  Specifically, they are Cabela's brand "Lookout Peak Trail Pants."  They normally retail for $55 (about par for the course for hiking pants) but I kept my eyes open for a decent sale and bought they just under $30 each.  I've even seen them as low as $20 several months ago.  Cabelas.com is weird in that they frequently have short-lived sales that come and go.  I had some Cabela's gift cards to spend, and had been waiting for almost two months for a decent price before I hopped.

Be that as it may, what makes a good hiking pant, and why did I buy these?  Honestly, I bought them because I found them at just under $30.  I would have bought Railriders, or something by REI or Timberland or Patagonia or Columbia... or anyone else if they were the kind of trail pants I wanted at that same price.  And I had a gift card I could use.  Although I do admit that I prefer buying Cabela's when I can, and these pants are everything I want.  Namely:

• 100% nylon shell and 100% polyester mesh (for pockets and such.)  Good hiking pants need to be made of a material that is lightweight, sufficiently rugged, and quick drying.  There is of course more than one material or blend of material that fits this bill, but this particular combination does the trick.
• Loose enough to be comfortable to wear and move around in, but not so baggy that they constantly rub and snag on stuff as your walking.  On well manicured, wide trails, this may be less of an issue, but since I prefer to think that I'd go into the backcountry on trails that are narrow, possibly overgrown in meadows and whatnot, and otherwise of occasionally dubious condition, I want them to be loose, but slightly tapered.  Gusseted crotch for even better mobility.  Fits the bill.
• By the same token, I don't want or care for shorts or zip-off pants.  Lots of hikers hike in shorts.  I've done it myself.  It's a good way to get your legs all scratched up, bitten by bugs, or at least extremely dirty.  Worse case, I've had my shoes and socks completely covered in prickly seed pods.  Smooth, long pants would have completely protected me.  The zip-off feature ends up being something that you pay extra for, but which I don't want.
• In that case, of course, I want pants to be light enough that I'm not feeling really hot on summer days hiking.  These fit the bill.  In fact, since they keep the sun off of my skin, they may be better than shorts.  Although you don't get a lot of sunburn on your legs from walking anyway.
• Since they're light, I need to be able to comfortably fit a base-layer underneath them when it isn't hot, which is anytime in the mountains not in the summer, and heck, you never even really know about the summer.  Last night, I had to get into the power distribution box of my car.  With a pair of these, and a base-layer bottom, I was kneeling in the snow working on it for about an hour, and felt comfortable.  Ka-ching!  They work.
• A few pants come with a very expensive option: bug-resistance.  This seems like a silly frill to me.  Not that it's not a good idea, but paying all kinds of money for it is.  For $10 at Wal-Mart, I can buy a spray bottle of Permethrin, spray all of my clothes, my hat, my backpack, my sleeping bag, and maybe even my tent (or at least part of it) before it's empty and get months worth of bug-resistance.  Supplement that just a bit with a small container of bug-spray, and I should be good to go for an entire season of hiking, for just $10.  And a lot better to go than I would be with just bug-proof pants.

In all, I'm quite happy with this purchase.  This is way better than hiking in jeans or canvas cargos--or at least, I'm managed to avoid potential issues that those pants would carry with them.  And frankly, I didn't have to spend really any more money than I would have for those.