Backpacking!

I went backpacking two weekends ago.  A 2-day, 2-night (Friday evening --> Sunday afternoon) hiking/camping expedition along a 16-mile loop through the backcountry of George Washington National Forest, in western Virginia, carrying everything I would need to survive on my back.  (Clearly living up to the heritage of, and making proud, I'm sure, my alma mater.)  A trip, the likes of which I've been looking forward to for ages.  I have had very little camping experience (until this trip, I had only been car-camping thrice before), and I find it extremely difficult to pack light when I travel (I was never a Boy Scout, but I've always strongly felt the need to be prepared for any circumstance that comes my way, which means that almost anywhere I go, I carry around with me half a bookbag's worth of assorted toolkit gadgetry), but the idea of being able to survive out in the wilderness with just the barest of equipment --- a knife, a compass, something with which to make fire, a rope... --- has always called strongly to me.  (As it has to many others, too, I'm sure.  But this story is about me.)  Pop culture and the romance stories I read as a youth no doubt had a strong influence in this --- Rambo, Tarzan, Robinson Crusoe, the Swiss Family Robinson, Crocodile Dundee, stories of "Injuns" and the as-yet-untamed American frontier... Ah!  No man can live as an island, and yet we strive towards self-reliance, to give free rein to the independent spirit within us!  Like one of my favourite quotations by Robert Heinlein (author of the excellent *book*, "Starship Troopers") proclaims, "a human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly."  The ideal human being is, quite clearly, a walking, talking Swiss Army Knife.

So last summer, after I had successfully defended my dissertation, and could emerge from my cave and once again have a life, I decided that camping would be my next big Thing.  (Dancing/practicing with my new partner and preparing for the DCDI and Ohio Star dance competitions was what *really* became my Big Thing for the latter half of 2008, taking up all my non-working time and sweetly, but firmly, shoving all my other hobbies out of the way.  Not that I'm complaining in any way --- it was the experience of a lifetime.)  So I bought myself a tent (an REI Halfdome 2 HC), and a sleeping bag (a Lafuma Yellowstone), and a sleeping pad (a Therm-a-rest Z-Lite), and a stove (a Primus Yellowstone Classic) and camp-cookware (a GSI Pinnacle Soloist Cookset and the REI Campware Mess Kit), and a headlamp (a Princeton Tec Fuel), and various other gear, bit by bit building up my pile of equipment as and when I found the items on sale, and I did a trial run of all my gear by camping out in my cousins' backyard (10--20 times the size of my own) one night in August, and made plans to go camping with the siblings/cousins/aunts/uncles, but we could never get the schedules to agree, and the plans never came to fruition, and the summer came to an end, and people's schedules got even more tight, and the weather started to get colder, and the Dancing Thing became more important, and the Camping Thing never happened.  A camping trip with dancing friends did get planned for the Thanksgiving weekend, in the Dolly Sods wilderness area of Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia (as a trial run for a hiking trip along the Inca Trail in Peru that said dancing friends would be going for during the coming January), but frigid temperatures and humongous dumpings of snow in MNF that weekend put that plan on ice.  Literally.  

No camping.

Meanwhile, I sat at home and looked wistfully at my squeaky-clean pile of gear, and read their instruction manuals/pamphlets over and over again, and practiced tieing knots, and flicking my knife open and closed with one hand.  I got to use my sleeping bag during my Christmas trip to Toronto, and during another trip down south to Charlotte for a weekend about a month later, but that was it.

Then I bought a backpack.  REI came out with a new model --- the Flash 65 --- that got rave reviews, including being chosen as a Backpacker Magazine Editors' Choice for 2009, and it was incredibly inexpensive (just $150, compared to $250 and up for most decent brands/models), and I Had To Have It.  Plus, I had just gotten by REI dividend, along with a 20%-off coupon, which meant the price came down to a measly $40 or so.  The stars rarely align so beautifully!  I had been debating whether to get myself a snowboard (after having had Snowboarding be my Big Thing for the winter), since snowboards would then be on sale at the end of the season, or a backpack, and I decided on the latter since I figured it was something I'd be able to use more often, year-round instead of just during the three-month winter-sport season.

Tent: check.  Sleeping bag+pad: check.  Backpack: check.  Stove, cookware, med-kit, snake-bite-kit, various other gear: check, check, check.  Experience to go it alone if I couldn't get anyone to go with me: errr.... Damn.

Meanwhile, with the start of the Spring semester, more and more trips were being announced over the list-serv of the Terrapin Trail Club, the outdoor recreation student organization at UMCP, including several backpacking trips.  So I renewed my membership (which I had allowed to lapse during the dark days of the dissertation dungeon), and signed up for one, meant (so the announcement said) both for experienced  backpackers as well as beginners like myself, along Ramsey's Draft in GWNF.  It sounded perfect!

Two weeks before the trip, the trip leader announced that he might have to cancel it, because he had injured his leg, and would not be up to traipsing around the backcountry with 30--40 lbs on his back.  Unless somebody else stepped up to lead it.  I would gladly have done so myself ---- I really really wanted to go on this trip! --- except I had no backpacking experience whatsoever, and I told him as such.  Luckily, one other person also volunteered, and this other person --- Dave --- had eight years of backpacking experience under his belt, and so between the two of us, we made it happen.  I took care of the administrative stuff (emailing people, taking their money, getting the gear from the TTC storage locker, planning the drive/directions), and Dave took care of deciding what food we needed to take, and making pretty much every command decision once we got to the trailhead.  It worked out well.

The original plan had been to get to the trailhead well before dark, and, even though there was a small campground right there at the trailhead, to hike along the trail for about a mile or so and then find a place to bivouac for the night.  However, what with leaving late from campus, stopping to get the special Lithium batteries required for my Steripen water purifier, Friday-evening I-495/I-66 commuter traffic, and stopping for dinner at a Cracker Barrel, we only got to the trailhead at around 9:30pm.  And even if we had preferred to bed down for the night at the campground there, we couldn't, because it was filled with camping Boy Scouts.  So we picked up our packs, tightened down the straps, and headed off into the forest, headlamps bobbing in the darkness, singing as we single-filed along the switchbacks.  Not "heigh-ho, heigh-ho", but "American Pie".  Or rather, the disjointed parts of it that we could remember.  Not at all what would have been my first thought on being asked to select a hiking song.  Back at the trailhead, before we entered the forest, the sky had stretched above us in a vast, unbroken, inky-black canopy, the stars so huge and bright, they literally looked like diamonds.  It was spell-bindingly gorgeous.  We had been in such a rush to get moving, so that we could find a place to set up camp as soon as possible, that there had been no time to take any photographs.  I really wish I had, though, because we never got to see that sight again that weekend.  Now, inside the forest, the tree-tops closed above our heads until we could hardly see any sky at all (thank goodness for the headlamps/flashlights!!), and clouds covered up the stars the following night.

Among the various equipment that I had bought was a pair of trekking poles.  I've seen people with them on numerous occasions, and I'd always scoffed at them, because it seemed to me that they would be more of a hindrance than a help --- at least on the trails where I've seen people with them: the Billy Goat Trail at Great Falls, MD (Link 1, Link 2), and the trail up Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park.  Both of these trails involve a lot of boulder-hopping and rock-scrambling, where you'd need to get down on all fours and crawl or shimmy up/down/around rock faces and crevasses and cracks, and if you've got your hands full clinging onto these glorified sticks, then they're going be little more than a nuisance!  But on long hikes on mostly-level-ish terrain, with a heavy load on your back, they're supposed to be quite helpful, so I sprung for a pair.  And yes, they sure did help.  I'm fairly good at keeping my balance, even while moving on uneven terrain, and I probably would have been alright without them, but they did offer some reprieve, giving me two more points of support between which to balance the load I was carrying (which was about 30 lbs --- I weighed it before I left the house).  But where they came in most useful was during ascents, when I'd begin to tire, or if I needed to move faster (Dave was setting a pretty mean pace!): with the poles, I was now able to use all four limbs and my entire torso to propel myself, just like using an elliptical machine in a gym (I'd imagine --- I've never actually used one), and the acceleration I was able to achieve that way was stunning!  Oh, and my knees were probably very grateful for the assistance, too --- on a number of occasions in the past, after (or during) particularly strenuous hikes, my knees have gotten inflamed with mild (but still painful), temporary cases of bursitis.  After this weekend, however, even with the much heavier load, I had no problems whatsoever.  It could be that I'm in better shape now, but I think the poles had something to do with it too.  Granted, I didn't really use them all that much for the majority of the hike, either carrying them or loosely resting them on the ground as I walked, but I did use them every now and then when I needed a little extra oomph to ascend a rise, and sparing my knees that extra effort is probably what saved them.

Back to the narration: 
Two and a half miles later, and 750 ft higher up on the western ridge of the Shenandoah Mountains, just past the end of the Road Hollow Trail, we finally found a place flat enough to pitch our several tents (5, + Dave's hammock); it was 1:00am.  The previous night, in my living room at home, I had practiced putting up and taking down my tent (Bagheera was most interested, of course, and eventually I had to lock him in my bedroom so that he wouldn't accidentally tear the cloth) and now, setting it up this late at night, tired and sleepy, amidst rocks and stones and tree-roots and creepy-crawlies, I was really, really glad I had!  What took me 10--15 minutes (not counting the time taken to figure out which was the most level section of the ground from which I could also clear away tent-floor-piercing stones and twigs, and to clear away said hazards) would otherwise have taken me two to three times as long.  The tent and sleeping bag/pad were, of course, at the bottom of my pack, so I first had to unpack everything else from on top to get to them.  And then we had to collect all the food/toothpaste/scented toiletries into bear-bags (for which we used the sleeping-bag stuff-sacks), and find a suitable tree from which to hang them.  It was 2:00 am by the time I got to actually switch off my light and lie down.  It wasn't very restful, that first night.  The ground on which I had pitched it wasn't completely level, so I kept rolling into one wall of my tent.  And I kept getting up, initially, to check that no scorpions or centipedes or spiders had managed to get into the tent --- either during the few seconds while I had the doors unzipped to enter myself, or somehow through a small hole somewhere --- and were hiding behind my pack or under my sleeping bag, lurking and waiting to bite me while I slept.  And at some point during the night, some animal came shuffling and sniffing around my tent, and of course, my first thought was --- bear!!  And I reached for my headlamp and slowed my breathing and tried to be as still as I could.  But the sounds were too "small" to have been made by a large animal, so I figured that it was probably a mouse or a squirrel or something, but it was still exciting.  

... Oh, and it was cold.  The weather forecast was upper 70s / low 80s during the days, mid 50s during the night, and, in trying to keep the weight of my gear down, I had erred in not bringing a warm enough insulating layer.  All I had were an Under Armor ColdGear base layer, which I was saving for the second night, when my cotton undershirts would be soaked with sweat, and a thin rain jacket.  When we got out of the cars, at the trailhead, I was cold!!  And scolding myself for being an idiot.  15 minutes into the trail, though, the exertion of the uphill climb and the rapid pace that Dave was setting meant that nobody was cold any more, and everybody was stopping to unbutton and peel off layers.  Once we stopped, though, we got cold again, of course.  My sleeping bag was supposedly rated to 30F, so I figured that once I was in it, I'd be warm enough, but I wasn't --- it got chilly enough in the early morning that I woke up often and found it hard to fall back asleep.  Yet somehow, when I finally woke up for good at around 0830, I was fairly well rested, if just slightly woozy, and didn't have any problems staying up or keeping up for the rest of the day.  Breakfast was a couple of packets of oatmeal and half a bagel with cream cheese.  Bear-bags down, tents collapsed, packs packed, and troop was under way again at 1000.  

We made pretty good time, and reached the midway point of the hike (Hiner Spring) by lunchtime, where I got to use my nifty little Steripen UV-zapper water purifier.  The spring itself was a tiny little thing, less than a foot wide, emerging suddenly from the mud and trickling through a few pebbly pools, between larger, moss-encrusted rocks, before spreading out into a soggy, muddy mini-floodplain.  (Further down, though, it collected itself again, and grew into the Right Prong of Ramsey's Draft.)  If I hadn't been with more experienced backpackers, I'd never have known that this puny little trickle could be a source of drinking water (after purification, of course) --- I had imagined something larger!  Now I know, though.  And that's what this trip was all about for me, really --- to get the experience and learn all these things.  I'd have preferred a slightly slower hiking pace, so that I could look around me and enjoy the sights and sounds of being out in the wilderness, and stop to take photographs, but I didn't mind --- when the time comes that I go out on my own, I'll be able to set my own pace.

The Steripen worked like a charm.  Because of its two-stage approach (first pre-filter the water to remove particulates, then insert the UV bulb for a minute and a half and zap all the wicked microbes), and because I had to use a cup to collect a few tablespoons of water at a time from the shallow puddles, it took longer to purify the water than did the pump-action filters that the others were using, but it took a *lot* less effort!  Of course, I couldn't tell right then whether or not it had really worked or not, but it's now two weeks later, and I haven't fallen in the slightest bit ill, so it does seem that it does!  I did, though, forget to take a backup means of purifying water, in case the Steripen doesn't work, so that's something else I need to acquire.  I won't get a filter --- those are just about as expensive as the Steripen, and are bulky, and don't kill/remove viruses like the Steripen does.  Iodine tablets kill everything except giardia, so chlorine tablets seem to be the best bet.  I did read somewhere that regular household bleach can also be used ---- heavily diluted, of course.

Other things to remember to take, for future backpacking trips: better insulation for chilly weather; bug-repellent spray; a stronger rope for bear-bagging (the one I had taken was little more than a clothes-line); a trowel, for digging the LNT-regulated 5-inch deep holes for when you need to go potty in the backcountry.

The Hiner Spring area is the perfect place to set up camp, with lots of flat ground and a source of water, and, being at the midway point on the loop, is usually where hikers doing this trail spend the night.   But since we were making such good time, and preferred to get back home as soon as possible on Sunday, we continued on down the Draft, having decided to go as far as we could that day.  There were plenty of viable campsites along the way, and we finally settled down at a spot just a little north/upstream of the confluence of the Right and Left Prongs.  While we set up the tents and purified more water (much faster for me now, because the Draft was deep enough that I could submerge my entire bottle in it to fill it up, instead of having to pour in a tenth of a cup at a time), Dave started to get dinner ready: mac-and-cheese, tuna, and fruit cups.  I had brought along a couple of packets of Taco Bell hot sauce, expecting the food to be really bland, but I didn't need it at all ---- the food was delicious!  However, one other personal indulgence that I had brought along with me really did turn out to be worth bringing: tea-bags (and coffee-bags), some dessicated milk in a zip-loc bag, and packets of sugar.  At the end of the day, after a long hike, after all the non-stop work has been completed, the tents pitched, dinner prepared and eaten, the cooking and eating utensils washed and put away, the bear-bags hoisted, and nothing left to do but crawl into your sleeping bag and fall asleep under the trees and stars, nothing seals the day more perfectly than a hot cup of tea.  

And similarly, nothing starts the day better than a hot cup of coffee.  I slept much better that night, too --- I was warmer, having worn my UA shirt, and the ground was level this time, so I didn't keep rolling over and waking up.  My only concern for this night was that I may have pitched my tent right on top of an outcropping of poison ivy --- I kept finding three-leaved plants everywhere as I was setting it up, and so, just to be on the safe side, I had coated my arms liberally with a poison-ivy-blocking lotion that I had brought along.  Either I needn't have worried, or it worked, because I never itched.  Oh, and I left my shoes outside the tent that night, to dry off, because they had gotten wet from the couple of stream-crossings that we had done, and I was afraid I'd wake up and find that spiders had made their home in them.  Happily, that did not happen.

FYI, I don't like spiders.  They bite.  And they're venomous.  Some of them, dangerously venomous.  And frighteningly fast.  Heck, they're carnivorous predators!  Hence, my extreme wariness where they are concerned.

We broke camp just as quickly that morning, and headed out at the same brisk pace.  Crossed through Ramsey's Draft a couple of dozen more times, and I don't think any of us was left with dry feet at the end of it all.  A couple of times, there were handy tree-trunks that had fallen across the stream and which provided natural bridges, and sometimes the rocks in the stream were large enough that they protruded above the water level, but most often, we had to just plunge into the slightly-higher-than-ankle-deep (at these fording points, at least) water and wade through.  My hiking boots were Gore-Tex lined, and therefore waterproof, but they only extended as high as my ankles, so I had bought a pair of gaiters to extend the protection higher.  The gaiters worked beautifully.  It was my boots that failed!  I'm not sure how the hull breach occurred, but I think it happened somewhere near the toe box, so I need to check that out before my next hiking trip.  The wool socks that I was wearing saved me from any water-induced discomfort, though --- I could _feel_ the wetness between my toes, and around my foot, but it didn't bother me in the least.  I did not at all feel like I was walking around in soggy, water-logged shoes.  I wonder if that's what diving wet-suits feel like...  Most, if not all, of the others changed into dry socks/shoes when we reached the cars, almost exactly at noon, but I felt no need to, not being uncomfortable at all, and I stayed in those same socks and shoes all the way back home (a 4-hour drive, including a stop for lunch), and even for a little while after, while Dave and I unpacked all the TTC gear to air out.

The one uncomfortable/painful outcome of the trip was my hips:  they were covered in bruises from the chafing of the backpack's waistbelt.  A couple of weeks before this trip, I had loaded up all my gear into my backpack and gone for a short day-hike in Gunpowder Falls State Park, to see how the pack felt, and I did notice then that the pack cut into my hip bones not a little.  Unfathomably, even though it's a well-known fact that at least 70--75% of the weight of the pack is *meant* to be supported by the pelvic bones rather than by the shoulders, I noticed that my pack had substantial padding in the shoulder straps, and almost none in the waistbelt!  Sure enough, after a couple of miles into this weekend trip, my hips started to hurt again.  After a while, I was able to ignore the pain for the most part, but it was always there as a background nuisance.  I was pretty sure I was wearing the pack correctly, so I didn't know if I simply needed to grow calluses on my hips or not.  Anyway, since then, I've bought another backpack, a Gregory Z65, which seems to fit me like a dream!  I'll load it up tomorrow with all my gear and walk around to try it out and find out for sure which pack is better, but I have a feeling that it may end up being the Gregory that I keep.  I'm not entirely happy about the "upgrade", though, because the REI Flash 65 has a few features that the Gregory doesn't, though, like an emergency whistle built into the chest strap, a few extra pockets to help organize the contents of the pack, and a big catch-all "shove-it" pocket on the outside of the pack, good for things like gaiters and rain shells.  And it looks a little nicer too, I think, with its orange accents (the Gregory is just uniformly gray.  Bo-ring!).

So that's it!  My first ever backpacking trip!  May there be many, many more!

Renaissance Man

I have a love-hate relationship with libraries. I love them, because they are so full of such a wide variety of books that are so full of the most interesting things, and I hate them, because they depress me, because they always remind me of all the information and knowledge that is out there that I will never know --- that I *can* never know. (Bookstores have a similar effect on me, but libraries are worse, because in libraries I can read all those books for *free*! (Relatively speaking.) There's no cost-benefit, guilt-flavoured argument to overcome.) When, oh when, will I have the time to read all that I want to read, to learn all that I want to learn? The printed word is my "Ooh, shiny!" --- if there's writing on it, I have to read it, and if there's the remotest chance that I may enjoy reading it or need to read/refer to it again, I will hoard it. My own bookshelves at home are full of books that I have picked up over the years (mostly for free or at bargain prices) but which I haven't yet read. To say nothing of the steadily growing stacks of newspapers and magazines. I can't wait to retire, and finally have time to read them all!

PS: Okay, fine, I don't really hate libraries. They are wonderful entities, and not at all deserving of such intense negative regard. Rather, it's the way they make me feel that I hate.

Life is skittles, and life is beer!

Spring is here, suh-puh-ring is here! And, as much as I haven't gotten in all the snowboarding that I wanted this winter (yes, I have been *several* times this season, and I did venture onto the black diamonds, still, I haven't completely mastered the blues yet, and I haven't yet gotten any air --- while my skiing friend Brandon has! --- and that bothers me no little amount), I'm happy for the arrival of warm weather. The birds are singing in the trees, squirrels are bounding about, Bagheera is going hyper in the windows and chafing at being confined indoors (I so would love to take him out and let him run free, but I have little enthusiasm for the prospect of chasing him myself over hill and dale and up a tree to bring him back. I could put him on an extended leash, as I did when I gave him his first taste of The Great Outdoors a few weeks ago, but he'd probably choke himself to death in a mad dash to the end of the clothesline.), the women-folk are shedding their winter coats for skirts, shorts and spaghetti-strap tops... ahh, life is good.

Post-doctoral perks

As much as I consider my current employment situation as a post-doctoral Research Associate as simply something temporary, to last only until I find myself a `real' job, there do exist certain perks to the position, an example of which I experienced about a week ago. I was driving onto campus for some late-night work in the lab, and slowed down at the entrance to campus for the usual ID-card check --- when the semester is in session, and [undergrad] students are occupying the residence halls, the campus police close off all entrances to campus, except three, between roughly the hours of 10 pm and 4 am, and check the identities of the drivers of all vehicles entering campus through those remaining three entrances. Only those vehicles that have an occupant affiliated with the university --- student, faculty, or staff --- are allowed in. And, unless you have a university/campus parking permit, your name, vehicle license number and on-campus destination are logged. I don't have a permit (I typically cycle to campus); consequently, my entrances are always logged. So, that night, expecting the usual 30--40-second wait while my particulars are noted down, I approached the single-file checkpoint as I always do: headlights switched off (`dimmed'), window rolled down, left arm out the window holding out my ID card ready for the police auxiliary to inspect. My new ID card. My new ID card, which now says "Faculty/Staff" instead of "Graduate Student". And the young undergrad police auxiliary kid looked briefly at my card, and without skipping a beat waved me on, with a very respectful "You're good, sir."

I couldn't stop chuckling, all the rest of the way to my lab.