Ode to a pack

When you start backpacking, the first thing you're going to need is, of course, a backpack. It's the single most necessary piece of gear, and it's handy to have unless you want to be lugging your gear around in luggage.

My first trip was to Utah's Canyonlands, which is SERIOUS BACKPACKING COUNTRY. I was dirt poor and searching for an affordable option, which is difficult because yuppies also backpack, driving the prices far outside of my meager budget. After scouring the interwebs, I found my $45 internal frame red-and-black baby on Ebay.

She was a behemoth. She could fill a whopping 7200 cubic inches from top to bottom, and packs that large are extinct nowadays. It was like some ridiculous freak of evolution, a brontosaurus of a pack. In comparison, my current pack clocks in at a measly 5500.

I took it to all of my favorite backpacking places, and had so many great times with it. Whether it was a week-long excursion in Yellowstone or a weekend in Afton, my trusty pack came right along.

Sadly, its Achilles heel was the fact that it was not an expensive pack, and probably made by child slaves in a country without a lot of pesky labor laws or quality standards. As a result, the pack's durability reflected the fact that it cost about as much as a cheap night out on the town.

When in Yellowstone, about 12 hours before we encountered bears, I was attempting a sweet river jump:



and my pack could not manage the ridiculous weight I had loaded it with, and snapped:


Notice the jerry-rigged strap on the left. That happens to be right where my shoulder is, which making wearing an overweight pack even more uncomfortable.

This was only the start of the decline, as the pack slowly started falling apart. The other strap broke, then a few of the zippers went, and it developed an odor that I would describe as "bear-attracting." So finally, this spring we put the ol' girl out to pasture (i.e. the dumpster behind our apartment) Even though my new pack is cool (it's made of recycled plastic bottles! it's from a brand I've actually heard of!) I'm not sure anything could replace the first.

Destinations Part 1: How do I read a tide chart?

We're in a research phase right now and I love it. It's kind of a world-is-our-oyster thing. We have a general plan, but it's always pliable, and we have three whole months to go anywhere! So I've been researching my little heart out.

A pretty big chunk of our time will be spent in the Pacific Northwest, a part of the country that neither of us has ever visited. I came across a hike that Backpacker dubbed the Best Coastal Hike in their 2009 National Parks Hall of Fame.

It sounds pretty awesome:

Replay that image many times for 17.7 miles–add mad scrambles up rope ladders over steep headlands, tidepools filled with a menagerie of colorful sea creatures, and sunsets viewed from a driftwood perch–and that pretty much covers the three-day hike from Third Beach to Oil City.

This stretch of coastline is part of Olympic National Park, a destination that already had me hooked due to its temperate rain forest. The only problem with this hike?

They recommend you get a tide chart so you don't wake up underwater. We're a little lazy as far as hikers go, but the NPS's strong assertion that we dare not backpack anywhere without carrying a tide chart and a topographic map is pretty convincing. I looked at a few tide charts and they're pretty boggling. This a hike we'd have to bust out a map, a chart, and a GPS device to be able to safely maneuver - all things we've never had to worry about. We're landlocked people. Canoe country people. The ocean is a big huge mystery that I've only seen twice in my 24 years.

But I want to see this stretch of primitive coastline just enough to try and figure it out. So if anybody wants to pass on your extensive knowledge of the tides... let me know. Or just paint a big red line down the beach for us.

Bears!

During this trip, Julie and I will be venturing out into the backcountry in places like Glacier and Yellowstone. While we've done a lot of camping in the midwest, we've never camped anywhere that has the threat of grizzlies.



Julie is terrified. This, in turn, terrifies me. Not because of the bears, but because I'm afraid I won't get a single decent night's sleep for the 3 months that we're hobo-tripping.

Her fears aren't totally without merit. Before backpacking in Yellowstone, they make you watch a video based almost entirely on bear safety, and defending yourself in the event of a bear attack. It also doesn't help her fears that in the two times I've backpacked in Yellowstone, I managed to find myself 50 feet from a grizzly while changing pants in our camp.

Lucky for me, the bear wasn't interested in me and trundled off down the trail, after a few seconds of contemplating my edibility. It turns out that even though the bear didn't eat me, Julie is not at all soothed by that fact. Even when camping in non-bear country, Julie is extra vigilant, and spends most of the night waking me up to investigate all suspicious noises, real or imagined. Once, a turkey wandered through camp and Julie thought we were under attack by all manner of wild beasts.

Fortunately for us, in the last 10 years there have been a total of 29 deaths due to bears in North America, according to my finest internet research. If you don't count Canada, there have only been 15. That averages out to less than 2 deaths per year, and it also includes people who keep bears as pets and were then devoured. In contrast, 90 people are killed every year due to lightning. I'm not too concerned about any event that's 30 times more rare than lightning strikes, so once Julie wakes me up in the middle of the night to make me check for bears, I'll just tell her, "Go back to sleep, it's the lightning you have to worry about." Somehow, I don't think that will comfort her.

Yes, I'm going to blog about snow.

We're finally blessed with a layer of snow on the ground! Even though I hate winter for the inconvenient mess it makes out of my carless life, this snow is perfectly timed. Just as I was ready to start thinking about eventually getting serious about training for 3 months of backpacking... here it is! I've been saved from running, the sidewalks are icy and snowpacked now (and I refuse to run indoors). So now we'll be able to fit in plenty of cross country skiing!

This year I think we'll get the city of Minneapolis cross country ski season pass, since the Columbia Golf Course is a nice loop near our apartment. Apparently you can ski the lakes too, though I've never done it.

A season pass through the Minnesota DNR to go cross country skiing in the state parks is only $15, and with our wealth of parks, it's totally worth it. We had the best time skiing in Banning State Park last year and will definitely try to get up there more often.

So hooray for snow, and cross country ski season. I feel like it'll be pretty good physical preparation for the trip, at least spring comes and I can't avoid running anymore.

Trail eats

Our first big vacation and road trip together, and my first long backpacking excursion, was out to Utah in Canyonlands National Park. Zach has already mentioned what Canyonlands has taught him, but my biggest takeaway?

Never pack out a massive gallon bag of your homemade granola.

My granola was delicious. It was a healthy trail snack to boot. We ate a lot of it. But we literally carried a roughly FIVE POUND bag of granola around with us, and ate maybe 1/4 of it during the week. A three mile trek between sites in Canyonlands feels like 10 miles on flat ground, and it was miserable to be so poorly prepared and lugging so much extra weight. Obviously a huge priority for three months of backcountry and driving time is keeping food cheap and lightweight. We've gotten a lot better at managing our trail meals, though sometimes our food ends up looking pretty disgusting.



This was some dry package of jambalaya, I think?

There are some great resources out there for backcountry cooking, and I've taken a gander at a few books, but they frustrate me to no end. Many suggest that you take on complicated recipes that involve pre-trip prep in the kitchen and packing out small vials of truffle oil, roasted red peppers, or orange zest, etc, and I will. not. do. this. I can't imagine the chaos our packs would be if we had a whole section devoted to teensy little containers of condiments and spices. Not to mention that we won't have any sort of kitchen to do pre-trip prep in while we're on the road.

So we rely on some very no-frills meals. Who needs gourmet food when you're outside? At meal times, even with tent camping, I find that I'm grateful and ravenous for any food at all, and a standard package of red rice and beans feels like a total feast. If you're enjoying the same comforts and flavors of home while you're outdoors, I think you're doing it wrong. So does John Muir.

A three month trip is a special case, so I've been trying to poke around for some easy meals. Those packages of rice & beans might get boring after the first month. I turned to Backpacker.com and found a few helpful suggestions, like this simplistic Pad Thai knock-off. I don't know why we've never bought those little pouches of chicken or tuna before, that seems like an obvious choice for protein. I think I'll start compiling a list of ideas and have an experiment day to see what packs the most calories and protein while being the lightest, easiest to throw together, and cheapest.

Or we'll just have to forage.

Logisitics: Evolution of gear

In the three years that Julie and I have been backpacking together, we've managed to cobble together a pretty respectable collection of gear. We've got everything from sporks to stoves to headlamps to a spiffy little kit for spices and such in the backcountry. However, it was not always this way...

About 5 years ago, when I first started serious camping, I had nothing. On the first trip I went on without mooching off someone else, my friends and I headed to the Boundary Waters. We had no stove, no sleeping pad, and all our gear was packed into LUGGAGE. The kind of luggage with WHEELS. Also, there was about 3 times as much gear as we needed. It was a harrowing experience. We spent 6 hours portaging 2 miles, and when we finally got camp set up we were tired and starving, except with no stove we had to build a fire and slowly cook our food. And cooking over a fire takes FOREVER. We did bring a tent, which at least makes me better than Art.

I learned from that trip, however, and in future trips I made sure I had more than enough things to get me through a trip. However, this quickly lead to a critical mass of camping equipment that made me look like a very sad hobo:



Notice the 45 degree angle of my back.

So now, the key for Hobo Trip will be smart packing. We got two fancy new camp pads today (Thermarest ftw!) and a brand new pack for me (as my old pack cost 40 dollars, and worked about as well as you'd expect a 40 dollar pack to.) With a few more key purchases, we'll be set.

The inaugural post.

Hello & welcome! You’re reading this blog because you know and love me, and possibly even my husband, Zach. We’re opening up shop to share tales of our upcoming hobotrip, a 3 month adventure that we’ll be embarking on next summer. It’s essentially going to be like this: drive west for many hours, stop, spend a week or two in the backcountry, repeat. Eventually we’ll hit the ocean and then work our way back.

Why have we termed it hobotrip? Because we’ll be homeless, and though we won’t be riding any rails, we figure it’s fitting enough. And Zach has a hobo fascination.

Right now we’re in the planning stages and I thought it might be fun to start blogging it now, when we’re about 6 months out. This involves super-fun budget planning nights, asking for a solar shower for Christmas, and mapping, mapping mapping.

Our current hypothetical route will take us from Minneapolis through the Badlands, spending a couple weeks in Yellowstone, and then: Glacier, North Cascades, Seattle, Olympic, a coastal Oil City area hike, Mt. Rainier, possibly cramming in some Oregon coast and Crater Lake. After that we’ll head on down to Denver (to find an apartment for the fall), and back through Minneapolis to Ely for a few weeks in the BWCA during August, and perhaps a jog over to Isle Royale. Google maps makes it look like this:

View Larger Map

This has been a long time coming for us. We both grew up camping and have been on countless backpacking and canoe trips, but never any trips this long. And I haven’t had a summer vacation free of working since 2000, so I’m pretty excited for the trip, even if I have to boil water over a fire to wash my own underwear.

So… over the next 6 months we’re just going to keep up a blog about a variety of things. The planning, the changes to the plan, the parks we’ll be visiting, stories and photos of our past trips, probably some general backpacking features and a complete statistical breakdown of why I shouldn’t be worried about bear maulings. Stay tuned.