Backpacking
Went backpacking with some peeps these last 3 days. We went up to Savage Gulf in middle Tennessee. We hiked in 6 miles the first night and I wowed everyone with a trick to start a fire i learned from "Backpacker" the magazine. The crew consisted of myself and another very experienced backpacker and somewhat novice outdoorsman and the rest of the bunch were noobies (robert, taylor, max, kelly, leah, and emily who wasn't a noob), otherwise known as noobz from here on out. The first night I decided to sleep outside in my sleeping bag by the fire. It's an amazing thing to sleep in the woods under the stars without any roof over your head. It is quite possibly one of my favorite things to do backpacking :-) Then one of my least favorite things happened: it started to get rained on in the early morning. I had setup my tent the night before just in case and quickly got all my stuff in the tent before anything got really wet. I decided while it wasn't raining hard that I'd fertilize a plant or two before the storm got really bad. Right in the middle lightning struck and the flash practically blinded me. At first I thought it had been close so I stopped and ran to my tent. After getting into the tent I realized that the thunder was late and that the lightning strike had occurred many miles away. Turns out that the clouds seemed to have acted like fiber-optic cable with the light from the strike making it seem like the strike was right next to me. Pretty swanky if you ask me.
The next day we got up VERY late. We didn't get on the trail until 10:30. Usually on my trips that I take with experienced peeps we are taking our first or second break at 10:30. The reason for getting up so late was the rain. It rained on us all day Friday. We had a pretty rigorous last mile and a half or so up this hill. We had to go up hill whilst scampering across wet rocks right next to cliff edges. Cool stuff :-D Anywho, we got to our campsite and we started to setup. I saw a dead tree and had a bit of a survivor-man moment. I ran over and started cutting away wet bark and sure enough the core of the tree was dead DRY wood! Robert asked if I had been through survival training. I took it as a compliment and told him that I had read a lot about survival. Later that night it took us an hour to build a fire. An hour of blowing on embers, feeding wet wood, getting smoke into our eyes and lungs, and then starting over with the blowing. It was the hardest fire I've ever had a hand in starting but it was the best and most appreciated fire I've ever had a hand in too. Later that night I went to the privy (read outdoor hole in the ground) with the 3 girls. I told them about how concerned I was that morning with it being rainy and how I wasn't sure how they would hold up. I then told them that they had done a great job and proceeded to teach them how to find spiders in the dark with a flashlight.
The next day we got up late again. Taylor and I got up early and drank all of my hot chocolate (2 packs each). I would have offered some to anyone else up... but no one was up so our second cups were our rewards for being the early birds of the group. We left and hiked the 8 miles over relatively flat terrain compared to the day before. After that we ate at Ryan's buffett. AMAZING after 3 days in the sticks. Then we drove home.
I forgot to mention that I possibly recruited Robert to come raft with Hi-C next summer. He's an awesome dude and the company would be better with him on staff provided he makes it through training.
It was an awesome 3 days for old friends, new friends, and the strangers we met on the trail. We toughed out a day of rain to have a beautiful third day on the trail. All the noobz said that they would do it again given time to recover and I told them that they were no longer noobz. It's [backpacking] a narcotic I need to get a hit of more than once a year!!!!!
The next day we got up VERY late. We didn't get on the trail until 10:30. Usually on my trips that I take with experienced peeps we are taking our first or second break at 10:30. The reason for getting up so late was the rain. It rained on us all day Friday. We had a pretty rigorous last mile and a half or so up this hill. We had to go up hill whilst scampering across wet rocks right next to cliff edges. Cool stuff :-D Anywho, we got to our campsite and we started to setup. I saw a dead tree and had a bit of a survivor-man moment. I ran over and started cutting away wet bark and sure enough the core of the tree was dead DRY wood! Robert asked if I had been through survival training. I took it as a compliment and told him that I had read a lot about survival. Later that night it took us an hour to build a fire. An hour of blowing on embers, feeding wet wood, getting smoke into our eyes and lungs, and then starting over with the blowing. It was the hardest fire I've ever had a hand in starting but it was the best and most appreciated fire I've ever had a hand in too. Later that night I went to the privy (read outdoor hole in the ground) with the 3 girls. I told them about how concerned I was that morning with it being rainy and how I wasn't sure how they would hold up. I then told them that they had done a great job and proceeded to teach them how to find spiders in the dark with a flashlight.
The next day we got up late again. Taylor and I got up early and drank all of my hot chocolate (2 packs each). I would have offered some to anyone else up... but no one was up so our second cups were our rewards for being the early birds of the group. We left and hiked the 8 miles over relatively flat terrain compared to the day before. After that we ate at Ryan's buffett. AMAZING after 3 days in the sticks. Then we drove home.
I forgot to mention that I possibly recruited Robert to come raft with Hi-C next summer. He's an awesome dude and the company would be better with him on staff provided he makes it through training.
It was an awesome 3 days for old friends, new friends, and the strangers we met on the trail. We toughed out a day of rain to have a beautiful third day on the trail. All the noobz said that they would do it again given time to recover and I told them that they were no longer noobz. It's [backpacking] a narcotic I need to get a hit of more than once a year!!!!!
posted by 13ismyluckynumber at 7:33 PM
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