After my backpacking trip to Isle Royale in May 2014, I was
very interested in doing additional trips, but with a lighter load. I had started investigating ultralight (UL)
backpacking before the IR trip, but had insufficient time for a proper
conversion or tests with lighter equipment.
My base weight on that trip was around 17 ½ pounds, and with
consumables, I was carrying up to 35 pounds in my pack. It was drastically more comfortable than the
45-50 pounds I carried years ago in the Adirondacks. And I wanted to see how much more comfortable
I could be carrying under 10 pounds base weight.
I did a lot of research, ordered lighter equipment, and did
test hikes and overnight backpacking trips in some Texas state parks. I did lots of research on
BackpackingLight.com, and finally decided to take one of their courses,
WT2-ULB. I had a few objectives
including testing out my new equipment on a longer trip, learning precautions
for grizzly country, seeing what it is like backpacking with others (I’ve
always gone solo), trying out backpacking at high altitude in the mountains, and
learning backpacking and ultralight tips from an expert.
Obviously, there’s a lot I haven’t done in backpacking, and
I was really looking forward to the course.
I signed up for the intermediate course even though I had some
reservations about my abilities. I hike
pretty slowly (~2 mph on average), had never hiked above about 3,000 feet, and
I expected to be older than most, if not all, of the other hikers.
As prep for the trip, the instructor had us take Ryan Jordan’s
boot camp online. We also posted our
gear lists and weights on a shared online spreadsheet, and emailed each other
with questions. A couple of weeks before
the trip, we were given a tentative route for the hike. It would be in the Absaroka Beartooth
Wilderness of the Custer National Forest.
The backpacking trip was to be six days and five nights, and appeared to
be pretty low mileage. We looked at the
route on Google maps and it went from about 6,500 to 11,000 feet. Some was on trails, some was not. And there was a pretty steep descent to get
out on the last day. Since I wasn’t sure
of my abilities, or actually how difficult the trail would be up close, I didn’t
question the mileage. It turned out,
that the plan was to see how we did as we climbed to the plateau, then
determine alternate routes and side trips.
So we ended up going about twice the distance shown on the draft route.
At this point, I want to point out that I won’t be providing
precise locations or people’s names for a couple of reasons. One, I don’t want to infringe on the property
rights of the course operators. And two,
I don’t want to potentially intrude on the privacy of the other attendees.
I will mention I was pretty impressed with both our
instructor and the other two attendees.
All were extremely strong hikers and very nice folks! And the gear lists of the other attendees
were UL already. For reference purposes I’ll refer to the instructor as R1, and
the other two attendees as M2 and N3.
To avoid having to add this info to the actual hiking days,
I’ll mention getting to the trailhead here.
I decided to fly rather than drive to save a couple of vacation
days. Turns out I wasn’t thrilled with
all of the TSA requirements and the small overheads on the ‘commuter’ aircraft
from United. My backpack was 23” tall
instead of the 22” that fit in the bins, so I put most everything in a nylon
duffle and paid for it as checked baggage.
I also carried a fanny pack with a few things TSA didn’t allow in checked
baggage. If I had to do it again, I
would drive.
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