As The Crow Flies

Start early or train late

A lot of hikers start their long hikes very early, with the thought that they will train on the trail. On the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) that means they may run into snow in the first 150 miles. Then, many of them start skipping right away, setting the tone for the rest of their hike.

You also don’t heal as well on the trail as you do at home where you can, sleep comfortably, take baths, eat good fresh food, and hydrate well. The trail has stresses that make it hard to fully rest and recover.

A smarter alternative to starting early is to stay at home for those two or three weeks and do training hikes of 20 miles every other day with a 35-40 lb pack. Get good rest, eat good food, take baths, heal and build in a stress free environment. Then when you hit the trail with your light pack, you will be ready to go.

How to load your kayak by yourself (encore)

This is a reprint of an old blog post but I don’t think it got the recognition it deserved so I’m posting it again.

When I travel around with my kayak on my roof rack and people see the wheels attached, they drive by and give me a thumbs up because right away they can see my method for loading and unloading my kayak by myself.

1. Put a bath mat on back of your vehicle where your kayak will touch it, so that it won’t scratch your car ( the rubber on the back is so it won’t slide of your roof.)

2. Put a V-shaped kayak foam block on each of your roof rack rails.

3. Attach a wheeled kayak cart to the back of your kayak.

4. Lift front of kayak up on roof.

5. Go to back of kayak, lift up letting the front of the kayak rest in the V of the foam block, and push on.

6. Leave the wheels attached so they are ready for you to unload again.

To unload:

Grab hold of the back of your kayak and pull it off and down so the back is resting on the wheels.

When the back is resting on the ground on the wheels and the front is resting on the top of the roof rack, go to the front and just lift the front down to the ground.

Now you are ready to wheel your kayak to the water.

Hobo handshake

When encountering a fellow hiker, don’t feel you need to shake hands when you introduce yourself. Just smile and nod. I read somewhere that hobo’s don’t do a lot of hand shaking. Probably because they aren’t sure about their fellow hobo’s hygiene. Same as on the trail.

Bags

Bags organize gear and make it fast to pack up. They also make it easy to know where everything is. I think they should be different colors. I like bright colors because they are less likely to get left behind. I hiked with a guy, for awhile, that thought his should not only be different colors, but different textures as well so he could reach into his pack and just by feel know what bag he was pulling out.

These are my bags.

Clear plastic pack liner: I stuff my sleeping bag into this because it’s faster and easier than stuffing it into a stuff sack. It also more evenly fills up the bottom of my pack.

Big red bag is my food bag.

Yellow bag is my clothes bag and also my pillow.

1 or 2 gallon Ziploc is my office: maps, guide book, pen, cellphone, etc.

Red zippered bag is my ditty bag

I stuff my tent without it’s stuff sack into the big stretchy outside pocket of my pack. I put the tent stakes in there too, in a little bag. That way I don’t need to open my pack to set up my tent and I can pack up everything, pop out of my tent and stuff it into it’s pocket.

When everything is in bags it makes set up and break down of camp easy. Not to brag or anything but I can set up or break camp in under 4 minutes.

Advice for hermits

If you want to be alone, it’s important to know, you can never get far enough away; humans and their noise producing machines are everywhere. One thought that helps me, is to think of myself as an alien dropped off on a planet of apes. Then I can just sit back and enjoy the show—like going to the zoo.

How I hike

I’m not one of those huffing hikers powering down the trail with their trekking poles a flying.

When I hike it’s more like I’m coasting–like I’m just resting on my legs as they move me along. I pick a nice even easy speed that I can keep up hour after hour day after day.

I don’t carry poles so my hands are free. I have a beverage in my strap pocket to drink as I go; snacks in my hip belt pocket; I fiddle with my MP3 player listening to music or finding a radio station; I look around at the scenery; I have my GPS in the other strap pocket that I can amuse myself with. Feels a lot like driving.

A lot of people power past me, especially boy scouts, then 40 minutes later I pass them resting on the side of the trail and I never see them again, but every once in awhile I get stuck with someone, or even worst a group of people, who power past me, then they take a break and I past them, then here they come powering up behind me again. I have had that go on for days—that drives me nuts. Leapfroggers are the worst.

Bad dream

This morning I woke up from a bad dream; A bear and cow had come and taken all my smoked salmon and carrots from my cooler on the porch. They each left a huge pile of poo and there was a note attached to one of the piles. I don’t remember what the note said, but it wasn’t friendly.

I woke up, hurried down from my loft, pulled my cooler inside, and ate smoked salmon for breakfast.

My winter line up

I have a bunch of food, water, and fire wood.

I bought a tarp. I’m going to lay the tarp out and harvest the snow off it until there is a good build up of snow on the ground so I don’t scoop up dirt.

I have a phone and dial up Internet.

I started up Netflix; they are offering 2 weeks free to new and past customers. I think I’ll keep it going for a while because it keeps me walking, since my mailbox is 2.5 miles away. I get 5 miles in on days I just need to pickup or send a movie but on days that I need to do both, I walk a 7 mile loop and mail the movie at a mailbox that gets later pickup.

In my quest for pain free feet, I have purchased a discounted pair of MBT shoes… They are the weirdest shoes ever. They are rocking shoes. For sure, my feet don’t hurt a bit in them but they kind of stress the rest of my body. They also weigh 3lbs.…. Jury’s still out on this one. Mine didn’t come with the instructional DVD so I might be using them wrong.

I purchased a refurbished sewing machine for 75 dollars that a reader recommended. So far I have wound the bobbin, threaded the machine and did a bomber repair job on my pants. I have rented Project Runway from Netflix to get inspired: “Okay, designers, your challenge is to make something functional, comfortable, and beautiful, using only the materials you find in this primitive cabin. You have only a limited amount of gasoline to run the generator that will power your sewing machine. You have one spool of thread and a pair of kitchen scissors. Make it work!”

I have a list of twenty good habits I’m instilling in me.

I have some books the library mailed me to read.

It really makes a more interesting winter without Internet, movies, or books but I think it’ll be a good winter.

My reptilian brain is so pleased.

A big warm wind came and blew away winter; I went to town and gathered more water and food.

I have a good variety of food this winter. Not like my “eat super oats everyday” plan of last winter. I kept encouraging myself to buy more oatmeal and soy protein powder but I think I may have over done it on oatmeal last year—might want to give that meal a rest.

There was a disproportionate amount of money spent on hot beverages this year. I should switch to sliver tea.

Trail snack:uncooked ramen

In every town along the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalachian Trail there is a hiker box. It’s where hikers put food and items they no longer want to carry so they can share them with other hikers. Most hiker boxes will have ramen noodles in them.

Even though I don’t carry a stove anymore, I often nab a package of noodles. I crumble them up into a baggie and sprinkle the flavor packet over them and eat them as a cold trail snack, like chips.

Wood splitting tools

These are my wood chopping tools: a twisty wedge and a 8 lb splitting maul. The splitting maul is made by Ludell and has a fiberglass handle so if you miss the log and hit the handle it doesn’t break. I’ve whacked it many times. You can split logs with one side and whack the wedge with the other.

The twisty wedge is made by Leborgne and will spit almost anything. It a good hard wedge that doesn’t mushroom. It’s very hard to find. The only ones online, I can find, ship from Europe. I bought mine from a chainsaw store in Canada. Here is a different brand shipped from the UK: BAHCO SPLITTING WEDGE TWISTED STEEL 8 1/2IN Once I found a more cheaply made twisted wedge at Harbor Freight tools but it doesn’t look they sell them anymore.

Most of my wood this year is Tamarack. Tamarack is so easy to split an ax would work fine, but alas, I whacked the wooden handle of my ax, one to many times and now the handle is broken.

Rest home escapee turned trail angel.

This is a story I heard on the PCT. There is this old guy in a rest home and he decides it’s too expensive. So now, he lives in his van, traveling around the trails helping hikers. I don’t know if it’s true but it’s a good story.

Resting and sleeping with elevated feet

When I rest or sleep on the trail, I try to keep my feet elevated. I think it helps them to heal.

Some hikers miss having a chair but I never do; even when there is a picnic table to sit at, I still lie on the ground with my feet on my pack, because having my feet hanging down below me doesn’t feel like a rest.

At night I put my pack under my feet or even better— find a slopped place to sleep and point my feet up hill.