After prolonged talk and little follow-through, I finally camped in the Marijuana Highlands for the first time this year. Since the lockdown, I’ve seen over 10 times more people up there than ever before, but as usual everyone is exceedingly neighborly. Hikers being almost non-existent there, people in trucks and ATVs routinely slow down to offer a ride, a bottle of water, or a beer. (The really scary thing isn’t even the people driving with an open White Claw. It’s the guy at the roadside who turned to offer me a beer while operating a chainsaw.)
On this outing, I was experimenting with food (i.e. bringing some) and a new bivvy sack, but I also got a bonus lesson about how to not fall on rocks.
Cooking and Eating
I usually do this trip with minimal food, but I was inspired to try Officer Rob’s Thanksgiving Dinner: a freezer bag with instant mashed potatoes, sausage, and some chili. Great! Next time I’ll just add some butter for calories, so I don’t have to gobble down five servings of mashed potatoes.
I forgot my beloved Esbit stove but improvised successfully with just a perforated coffee can. It’s still nice to have the stove, if only to hold up the water kettle stable (which is so small that it fits inside the coffee can), but I made do with some stones.
Because I’m paranoid about wildfires, I was terribly proud of my brilliant idea to cook on a boulder in the middle of the creek. And indeed, this worked reasonably well at dinner, but at breakfast it was a different story. When I woke up in 50 degrees (10 C), I wasn’t thrilled to get naked and wet and do my cooking waist-deep in a cold stream. And though I’m a huge fan of morning polar bear swims, it’s one thing to do it near my house before work but quite another to get shivering cold in the middle of nowhere. So maybe I’ll just face the inconvenience of meticulously grooming a large patch of earth near my sleeping bag.
Bivvy sack
Speaking of my sleeping bag, I had success with the new Gore-Tex bivvy sack. When I first tried a bivvy sack, I loved how cozy it makes me feel: it insulates me and blocks breezes. But as I noticed this winter, I was waking up with condensation in the bivvy sack. It was trapping my breath and getting my sleeping bag damp. Not good! So on this jaunt I tested a surplus Dutch bivvy sack (which seems to be a copy of the famous British one) made with something like Gore-Tex that lets moisture out, and it worked as advertised.
Furthermore, I tried leaving my tent at home and just using the bivy sack. This one has a collapsible hoop that holds the top of the bag up off your face, so that you have a sort of tiny micro-tent. That went well too.
What will happen in a light rain? Will I suddenly wish I’d brought a proper tent? We’ll try some backyard science. I’ll ask Lean Solid Girl to tuck me into the bivy sack and then hose it down. We’ll update you soon.
Pride Cometh Before the Fall
Just last week I looked at my now-battered boots and mused, “I wonder when I should replace them…” Apparently that time is now, because I lost my footing and skidded on a slope that is bad but not truly noxious. So I checked my boot soles, found them pretty worn, and did some mental math. I bought them for last year’s 50-mile Star Course, and though they don’t yet have a thousand miles on them, they’re probably getting close, with a lot of miles on scree and other nasty surfaces.
So I’ve already replaced them. I won’t risk falling with my leg folded under me the wrong way and spending six months on the couch with a knee injury.
Henceforth I’ll replace boots on a schedule, like they do with critical machine parts. For my lightweight Rockies, I’ll give them five hundred miles before I retire them to “second-string” status: still OK for ordinary training hikes on roads and other tame surfaces, but no rugged terrain and no use for SAR. And if I save my “first-string” boots for just the rough stuff, I think I can milk a year or more of use from them.
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