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.
As I was recounting this story with that same friend the other day (and we still backpack together, by the way), it occurred to me that it wasn't that we didn't know that all this stuff was heavy, and it wasn't that we didn't know that most of it was unnecessary.  Our conversation was along the lines of, "What were we thinking?" but also "man, that trip was awesome." 

What were we thinking?  Well, now that I've had a few days to digest, I think this stuff made it into our packs due to three factors: youthful enthusiasm and a lack of planning; a "be prepared" attitude centered on gear vs. know-how; and finally, a desire for "easy" comfort.

Youthful Enthusiasm

So there we were, sitting on the couch, each of us easily 30+ pounds overweight, taking turns refilling the beer pitcher from the homemade keg fridge we kept in the kitchen of our rented house.  Being broke and unable to afford the trip to sexier spring break destinations like Daytona Beach, somehow the idea of heading south (warmer) and hiking a bit of the Appalachian Trail came up.

Literally a day or two later, we were in the car driving south on I-75 with a paper map printed from some now-defunct mapping website that existed back in the pre-Google era.  We left in the evening because hey, why wait until the morning when we could just get our trip started now.  Hell, everything is packed, let's just go.  So we did, and we drove straight through the night, some 10+ hours, giddy from lack of sleep and, as we got deeper into the south, amused at the number of fireworks/guns/alcohol combo shops we saw signs for along the highway.  Eventually we would arrive in Amicalola Falls State Park. 

As we were recalling this trip last weekend, we were trying to remember if we had trail maps or not.  Neither of us could recall, but if we did they would have been the free kind printed out of scale and with no topo lines that you can pick up at the ranger stations near trailheads.

With no real plan or itinerary, stuff got jammed into backpacks and loaded into the trunk of the car in a hurry, without a whole lot of careful consideration for what we were bringing and why. 

"Be Prepared"

As an Eagle Scout, I had this motto engrained into my very being from a young age - it's still there today.  I had also been taught, had demonstrated, and had even taught others all sorts of outdoor skills, from fire building and navigation to first aid, knot and rope-work, emergency shelter making, and all kinds of other things.  But I didn't connect this knowledge and experience to my ability to leave some shit at home.  I was thinking about gear redundancy, not about multi-purpose gear. 

For example, we each had at least one pocket knife, my buddy also brought along one of those Rambo-style kill-your-mother survival knives with the compass in the handle that unscrews to reveal all sorts of seemingly necessary but realistically useless survival gear.  I strapped a hatchet to the outside of my pack - you know, to make it easier to make fire.  He knew there would be nothing to kill with that knife, and that it was effectively useless for everything else you might want a knife for.  I knew no less than 15 ways to collect and prepare firewood without a hatchet.  But you know, just in case.

I had a full blown rain suit with me.  The kind they wear on fishing boats in Alaska.  I also had a $0.99 poncho.  The rain suit was part of my "layering system" (for, you know, those times that you wish you had a sauna, but you can't find a sauna around, you just put on your rubber pants and coat and walk up a big hill carrying 75 pounds of crap).  The poncho was my backup.  You know, just in case.

Also included in my layering system?  That wool blanket.  It was a prized possession of mine from my scouting days - it had an opening cut in the middle so it could be worn like a poncho, and was adorned with patches from all sorts of fun events that I had been lucky enough to participate in.  It was great as an extra blanket for my summer camp cot, not so great for carrying around Georgia for 5 days.  We picked the southern terminus of the AT because it would be warm, so that wool blanket made sense, right?  Yeah, just in case.

I won't even go into other clothing choices during that trip.  Let's just say that synthetic was not in our vocabulary, and why bring one pair of jeans when you might need 3?

In reality, we were prepared with appropriate skills, just not with the knowledge that we could use those skills to replace 80% of the stuff on our backs.

Desire for Comfort

The other sin weighing quite literally upon our backs was a desire for comfort in our campsites at the expense of comfortable walking.  Why sit on a rock or stump when you can bring a small chair?  Why eat freeze-dried food when you can bring frozen chicken and potatoes for the first night?  And Dinty Moore beef stew for the second night?  And pancakes for breakfast?  Why sleep in one of the shelters conveniently located seemingly every 10 miles along the AT when you can just bring your nice, big, car camping tent to lounge in (as an aside - we slept in shelters most nights)?

We definitely knew that we were packing "luxuries" - this was not naiveté - it was a willingness to carry extra stuff to in order to, in our minds, "have a good time."  Remember, this was our college spring break.  And we saw ourselves as young, strong, and more or less invincible.  We weren't going to Georgia to suffer, and we thought that bringing some luxury items would make the trip all that much better.  In reality all those luxury items were a cause of exactly the thing we were trying to avoid.

In The End...

I could tell stories for days about the actual backpacking trip, about the West Point Cadets who lapped us, the hippie chicks we thought for a split second that we might have a chance with, or the night in the hostel passing the bottle.  I could talk about pulling water from a roadside ditch with a sign that said "don't drink this water," getting cramps so bad that I couldn't walk, or about breaking a pack strap 2 days in (no doubt due to all the extra crap I was carrying).  I could tell the story of getting near the end, dropping everything and making a frantic run into town to buy beer, only to learn that the county was dry and subsequently being given directions to a moonshiner by a Jeff Foxworthy doppelganger. 

But maybe those are stories that should stay between us, or maybe I'll share them some other time.  It was long enough ago that I'm sure the statute of limitations has passed.  I think what's really important though, is that in the end we thought the trip was epic.  We had a great time despite our excess and hardships. 

Back then our kits were probably 60 or 70 pounds.  Today our base weights are closer to 15.  Sure, our gear had changed, but more importantly we've learned to rely on our abilities and experiences to replace most of that stuff. 

Our trips now are planned - we have maps and packing lists and we think about group gear and shelter and all those things that every backpacker should do.  With families and young kids, the preparation and planning leading up to our trips is a way for us to extend the trip... It's a proxy for more frequent trips, a replacement for the spontaneous weekend in the woods. 

We'll teach our kids all the skills we have, show them and let them experience things so they can learn even more than we'll ever know.  But a small part of me hopes that one day they'll set all of that aside, load up their car, and head outdoors for a week or two with a good friend and twice as much stuff as they need.

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