I Got My Boots

At first I was going to avoid boots and go with something more like a trail runner, but a little extra support never hurt, and they are pretty light. Not to mention how comfortable the are. A new Dicks Sporting Goods opened up in my area so they had some pretty good grand opening sales going on so overall they were pretty well priced. 

Im going to Bill Jackson's later to see about getting a new spoon and maybe look for supplies to make that tarptent. Im still not 100% sure I want to try to do it, but it would be very nice to shed that weight. The downfalls in protection from the weather makes me more nervous than anything else. 

I have all of my resupply stops up till New Hampshire planned out, or at least all of my options planned out. I can always skip the ones I feel like I don't really need.  

I need a new spork

I melted my spork on my shakedown hike while making some mac n cheese. whoops. looks like a good excuse to go to Bill Jacksons. There are some made out of recycled airplane parts or something like that. super light.

In the way of weight, I've been thinking about taking some Ultra Light techniques to my not really Ultra Light gear. Cutting toothbrushes in half, cutting off excess strap length on my pack, crazy things like that.

Also I'm considering building a tarptent.

Something like one of these. weighs only 18 oz, so it would save around a pound out of my pack. only costs ~$40 to make. I'm game. it uses a hiking pole to set up, so I'd also save space when I won't have to pack tent poles. Not to mention that it gives me more space than my current tent. The little things add up.

I took some time and sat down with my copy of the thru-hikers companion and looked at all my resuply options for the first 389 miles. looks interesting, nothing too intimidating, but good to know when theres a long gap between towns like the 68 miles between Hot Springs NC and Erwin TN.

So over the past little bit I've taken a few short trips and I've realized that I may ditch the whisperlite and lean more towards an alcohol stove. It would shed right around a pound, and the cost of the fuel use due to its lower efficiency isn't that much higher. I think the weight tradeoff would be well worth it.

Also, I talked to my insurance company yesterday, and they said that because I am still making payments on my car it still has to be insured. Maybe my newly 16 year old brother and sister would want to use my car and they can pay insurance on it while I'm gone. We'll see.

one week to go

Good news: I leave for my shakedown in less than a week.
Bad news: Weather forecast looks miserable. (chances of rain 5 out of 8 days)

              BUT - I will have some times of bad weather during my thru, so I might as well get used to it.

I think the only thing I need to get now is bear line. I have all my food packed, everything is ready to go. I just need to get through the next week of school.

I've been thinking about making something to attach to my poles that will help me take pictures with myself in them. Then today, I found this: The Stick Pic. It slides right on the end of the pole with a camera screw on  it and it looks like this.

so for less than $12 and one ounce, I ordered one. I'll put more up about it once I get to play around with it. But it looks like a pretty cool little camera mount.

Tent Review

My tent arrived on Monday, much quicker than I had expected, very happy about that. I ordered a Eureka Spitfire from the Eureka outlet online that deals with factory seconds in order to save some money. These are the ones that for whatever reason could not be sold as 1st quality new products. The reason mine was considered a second? Two sections of the poles were reversed. All I had to do was take off the end cap, flip them around, and thread the shock cord back through and we were in business. I was worried that it was going to be difficult to do and I was just going to end up with a useless pile of aluminium and elastic. But in the end it was really simple and I'm glad that is all I had to do to save $40. The first thing I thought when I picked up the FedEx box was "holy shit this thing weighs nothing!"

Overall I think it's a great tent. Not a lot of extras. It seems to be very well built. Setup is extremely easy. Stake down the top part, attach the poles, pull on the foot of it and stretch it out and it pretty much stands up on its own. Great ventilation without the fly on, and with the fly theres a vent at the top that can be accessed through a zipper at the top of the mesh inside. Adequate elbow room, and I can sit up insdie comfortably.

Then comes the question of keeping your gear dry in foul weather, and this vestibule honestly does not provide much room to harbor gear, but it is there. There is one on the opposite ("rear") side that is inaccessable because the is not door on the "rear" side of the tent. It is usable if you put stuff in before you get in the tent. I threw a Nalgene in there to show some scale. So ill be able to keep some water bottles, boots, my stove, etc. in there.

 

I can see myself tripping over the guy-wire or something stupid like that, but I'll learn. I'm excited to get to spend a night in this, but for now, I'm very happy with this tent.

Clinic Day 2 and shopping

As hopeful as I was about this clinic, after doing as much reading as I have, I have to admit that the majority of what was covered was review for me. He went over the different types of sleeping bags (down vs. synthetic), and how they work. Stove types, and the different styles/types of tents.The one thing that I was most hoping he would cover, resupply, he barely talked about at all. I understand that you go into towns and resupply, but I was hoping to learn more about mail drops and how to schedule them. But it looks like the easiest way to resupply is to just buy what you need in town. Maybe that is better in that it will cut down postage costs. We'll see.

After the clinic was over, I spent a few hours walking around the store and I'm now proud to say that I think I have every piece of gear that I'll need.

• Poles - Leki Makalu
• I honestly don't know what to say about these, they seem pretty light, and from what I was told they are tougher to bend/break than any of the other poles in this series. So hopefully they'll last.
• Rain suit - DriDucks Ultralite 2 
• Also have very little to say here. Small and packable, waterproof and breathable. Seems to fit my needs.
• Sleeping bag liner - Grand Trunk silk sleep sack 
• I realized that my sleeping bag is a little lighter duty than I needed, so the added 10-12 degrees of warmth will probably be nice. Then later on I'll probably use this as my only sleeping bag through the summer months when a 30 degree bag would be torture.
• Socks and liner socks - wigwam liners and Thorlo's wool socks. 
• As long as they keep my feet dry I'm not concerned about their features. I mean, they're socks. 3 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of liners. 1 pair of socks will be in my sleeping bag at all times and not come out. guaranteeing that I will always have warm dry socks to sleep in.

I'm pretty sure I now have everything that I need. I think I might get some long thermal underwear bottoms, but other than that I'm pretty much set to go. I guess we'll see what I wish I had when I'm 3 days out off springer next month. So far, here's what I have.

 Driducks is the rain gear, Green dry bag is clothes and the orange one is food. Fuel bottle is not completely full to save weight. I'm going to estimate2 oz/day with 1 oz padding so 3 oz/day. The flask is for whiskey. Bandanna is taking the place of a pack towel after hearing how many people eliminate this piece of gear from their kit. (I'm not an idiot, I know the tent is missing, Its is on its way)

The best part of today was doing the math and finding out how under budget I am.  Very happy to have that weight off of my shoulders.

Clinic - Day 1

Alright, well tonight was the first part of theThru-Hiker clinic down at Bill Jackson's. It was interesting, the guy who taught it has hiked the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail. There was a surprisingly good turnout for an event like this, including some seniors who im sure just didn't want to be stuck at [the] home for the night and used this as something to do. I recognized a kid that goes to USF there, not sure if he remembered me, but the first time I met I did ask his girlfriend how she would react if someone gave her a pack of Urinelles as a gift.

Tonight however, he wasn't really "teaching" anything, instead he just kind of did a slideshow of some of the pictures along each, kind of did a guided tour type thing.

From his slideshow there was one picture that I learned the most from. It was a picture of his shoe with floss sewn through it holding it together. lesson learned: Pack heavy duty needles. I don't want to be stuck anywhere and be forced to walk any great distance with the sole of my shoe talking to the trail in front of me. Needles; good idea.

The awesome staff at Bill Jackson's brough out one of each of the Mountain House freezedried meals and made them and let us sample them all. Considering what they are they were really good, however the price of each is somewhere around $8-9 so I think I'll be finding an alternative. I would also tent to gravitate towards something that is not pre packaged like that so I can customize it and make it how I would want it instead of what the company decided.

Gear clinic tomorrow.