Trip Planning 101

Most of my trips happen on short notice and go to places that I know like the back of my hand.  Planning for those trips takes minutes, not hours or days.  Who's in?  Who's going to drive?  What time should we leave?  I toss some gear in a bag and off we go. 



Not so with the bigger trips.  These are the trips that happen only every few years and go someplace great.  For me, the planning of these trips is an outlet for the anticipation and excitement that's building, and a chance to re-think gear and methods that are normally just "my way of doing it."  I thought I'd share what goes through my head during this planning process.

17 Things I Keep In My First Aid Kit

I recently re-packed my first aid kit that I take backpacking, and I thought I would share what I carry in mine.  This is not necessarily meant to be an educational post, since what you will carry in your first aid kit should be fairly personal and customized for the duration of your trips, the places you go, and the kinds of ailments you might reasonably have to treat in the field.  It should also reflect your know-how.  A shaman might need less or different things than me, because I don't know how to forage for special medicinal herbs. 

Water, Water Everywhere... My Backcountry Water Treatment Dissertation

 

"Water, water everywhere / Nor any drop to drink" - an oft quoted excerpt from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, expresses the desperation of a ship's crew adrift at sea, surrounded by salt water but out of clean drinking water, and without a breeze to blow them to land.  The poem is much deeper and darker than that, but the quote comes to my mind when I think about drinking water during backpacking.

This will probably be my most controversial post to date - simply because people are generally passionate in believing that whatever method they've chosen is the best and everyone else who does something differently is loco.  I will describe to you how I gather and treat water in the backcountry currently, as well as methods I've used and discarded in the past.  It's really easy to argue about water treatment methods, which ones work, which are the best, etc.  Everyone has their own preference, this post is about mine.

April Showers

Instead of a single specific topic, I thought I'd share a few short updates on my life that probably won't ever make it into a full article.  Here's the quick rundown: (1)Tarpon Fishing in the Florida Keys, (2) Progress (or lack of) on my backpacking teepee, (3) Teaching my daughter how to tie flies, (4) My bum knees, (5) Memorial Day weekend camping, (6) Going west, young man

Let's dive in, shall we?

Benchmade Griptilian Custom Knife - First Look

I recently found myself in the market for an almost every-day carry knife.  Most days I still carry the small folding knife that I bought myself with store credit that I earned working as a counselor-in-training at a Boy Scout camp a long, long time ago.  It's a great knife - sentimental, well-loved, and still in great shape.  The knife that I'll someday hand down to my son.

I somehow talked myself into having a second option available for those days when I might want to carry something a little more substantial.  I did my research, laid hands on lots of options, and in the end chose a Benchmade Griptilian.  One of the things I really liked about the Griptilian is that it is a part of Benchmade's custom knife program, meaning that you can get it customized from the factory more-or-less the way you want it, for a small premium over the MSRP of the standard Griptilian.

On Lightweight Backpacking, Being Prepared, and Being Comfortable

• Wool Blanket
• Hatchet
• Rambo-style survival knife
• Chicken (frozen) and potatoes w/ enough aluminum foil to wrap and cook a cow
• A bottle of Jack Daniels
• Full-blown Gordon Fisherman style rain suit
• Dinty Moore Beef Stew, still in the can
• Half a dozen cans of chewing tobacco plus a couple packs of smokes
• Pancake mix (the add water & shake kind)
• Tripod-style seat
• 3-man Dome tent, w/ bathtub floor & full coverage rain fly

I could go on.

These things were all in the kit that my friend and I took on a backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail back in college.  This was not 1978, unfortunately, though perhaps if it were the packing list would have been more excusable.  No, this was the 90's, and by this time I had been backpacking for years.  My buddy was a farm boy who rode horses competitively in 4-H and spent plenty of time outdoors.  Neither of us were city folk with no appreciation for what it takes to live outside.

My Limmer Boot Journey - Part 3 (Care and Feeding)

My posts about my Limmer Lightweight boots have been quite popular, so I thought I'd post an update now that I have a couple hundred miles on them -  not that you would be able to tell if you looked at them.  In case you missed it, here's part 1 where I talk about what it takes to get even off-the-shelf Limmer boots, and here's part 2 where I discuss my first impressions and how I broke the rules and wore them backpacking way sooner than recommended.

MYOG Backpacking Tipi - Part 1 Design

For a while now there have been a number of things pushing me towards going to a Tipi (tepee? teepee?) for backpacking.  Normally I'm a hammock guy, and it's a great solution for trips where I'm sheltering alone.  A recent 4-person trip to the Dolly Sods Wilderness was the first thing... Four of us carried two 2+ pound shelters... not bad, but probably improved upon with an ultralight 4-person solution.  The other thing that got me thinking about it was my desire to take my kids backpacking.  Real backpacking, not car camping, which would mean lots of weight on my shoulders and no real lightweight solution to sleep more than 2 of us together.  Putting someone in their own tent without Daddy would be a non-starter at their ages, so I need a big and light shelter for the whole family.  Enter my defining MYOG project for this winter... a lightweight backpacking tepee capable of sleeping 4 adults or a few adults and a lot of kids.

Fat Pants

19 Pounds.  8 ½ Kilos.  That's the weight I've gained since my last race at the end of September.  Here I sit, January 5th watching all the fools with their silly New Year Resolutions scramble to the gym to get that treadmill.  For them this will finally be the year they get back in shape.  At least for the first 3 weeks. 

Typically I take January off to avoid these idiots.  They clog the locker rooms, the pool lanes, and even the outdoor running paths.  This year might be different.