Spring 2017 Backpacking Cautionary Thread

[Jimr]

Driving home from Dinkey Creek tonight, I was thinking about whether, like SCUBA diving in the 1990's, if backpacking is becoming an in-vogue sport that is becoming gear dependent rather than skill oriented.

[mrphil]

Now that's a great topic for its own thread. No shortage of opinions that would be enlightening and brutal. Probably good for at least 100 pages of comments. The sport is changing...not necessarily for the better.

To be fair, we all love new gear, but with the upsurge in public interest and profits to be made equipping all the new adventurers, you can not only see it in the difficulty of getting permits and numbers of people on the trails, but in the buyouts and consolidations of online gear retailers by everything from Walmart to hedge funds. Pick a gear brand or source you've probably known and trusted for years, and chances are they're now a subsidiary of some major mass retailer.

"i've got a nice compass. The best money can buy. I have no idea how to use it, but I got it." You can have no idea what you're doing, but still look good doing it. Try to limit your flailing to the times when nobody is looking. Can I interest you in the new nano-stove to replace that 10 year old model you have that can't even interface with your phone's app for optimizing fuel use and alerting you by text when your pasta is perfectly al dente?

[AlmostThere]

Backpacking is literally accessible to anyone -- it's the "just throw junk in a sack and go" sport of thousands. My roots in it came out of watching dad stick a cast iron griddle down the frame of an external frame -- not even a Kelty, just a generic cheap orange thing from Sears -- throw in a dozen eggs and a package of bacon, some extra jeans and a couple t shirts, and go out into the Emigrant for five days with us kids.

Decades later now, and just having that bacon laying around in camp would be a siren song to bears for miles... And I'm still seeing people with crazy stuff in their packs. Guy whipped out a compass still in the package once. To add insult to injury he tried to burn the plastic clamshell so he wouldn't have to carry it out... People with lawn chairs strapped to their packs, on Ten Lakes pass. People with musical instruments. People with this crazy idea that they needed the portable shower stall (they make them for car camping).

The thing is, if you go out for one night, anything really can go. It's when the folks with the griddle try to do ten days that the flaws in the plan really start to show through.

There are a lot of different kinds of backpackers, but the ones I see a lot are the ones who either want to know how to do things better, or the ones who insist they know what they are doing. Sometimes they do know enough to keep themselves out of trouble. Sometimes they have to learn the hard way. I'm still learning the hard way. Not the least because my body is continually changing (age is a b*tch) and I have to continually redefine how I do things. But I try to be open to change, where so many refuse to do anything but hang food and brag about it, or to insist on having a fire, or insist on wearing jeans.

I wore jeans for years myself. Trying to wear them hiking now, after having worn comfy stretchable and breathable pants, is unbearable. So uncomfortable. Especially trying to step up or down off granite steps. Can't imagine carrying a dozen eggs.... And I just sprang for a 12.5 oz insulated Exped mat that cuts a pound off the pack weight without sacrificing comfort for the aching hip. Alpine reaches of the Sierra, here I come.

In September....

[Hobbes]

We, as a species, have been experimenting with limits since the first biped stood up on the savanna. (Actually, way earlier when the first tree-dweller let go of a branch before firmly having the next in hand.)

Ask yourself this question: why do people instinctively react to spiders & snakes, fear the dark, and are cautious around heights? It certainly isn't cultural (taught) behavior, which means generations of non-breeding ancestors won the Darwin award for our benefit.

The survivors were either those who possessed some unique skill/ability to survive, which traits were then passed down, or they taught and instructed others from experience aka "near misses", including their children.

The tendency to launch into the unknown, and then subsequently learn - both mistakes & techniques - is what makes us, us. There's no reason to feel superior or become dismayed at human nature. People will continue to take chances, sometimes very stupid chances. The trick is to recover & learn in order to survive to live another day.

[rlown]

"Can I interest you in the new nano-stove to replace that 10 year old model you have that can't even interface with your phone's app for optimizing fuel use and alerting you by text when your pasta is perfectly al dente?"

That was funny!

There aren't any excuses anymore for not doing the research, other than one has no clue at all and doesn't try to obtain the right information. This isn't the year to learn things in the early season, unless accompanied by someone who knows and can call the ball on the exercise.

Now.. Where can I get that nano stove you mentioned and is it a wireless connection or do I need a special cable?

PS: Hobbes, I agree that some will never learn, and Its ok.

[AlmostThere]

Plenty of them move on to other hobbies and never go again. Others blame the gear, or the friend who took them, for whatever happened. Plenty of them don't even know where to start to look for information. Plenty of them get wrong information... there are good books out there, but there's also plenty of bad advice and bad intel. And lots of people using old information, like the endless stream of folks still using iodine, I keep sharing the link to the CDC page that talks about how there are more effective things that you won't develop a hideous reaction to....

You know there's a stove that charges your phone? It's a wood burner tho.

[mrphil]

I forgot about the phone charging stove. Do you get faster boiling times from melting the cord?...which was the problem in Beta testing on our Nano-stove. The world would be a better place with an egg container that doubles as a floatation device. But I digress...badly!

I'm no les guilty of stupid people tricks than anyone else. I bought a new Baltoro pack with a solar panel because it was the same price as the regular one. Cool feature, heavy as hell...but a real techy gadget that makes me feel better on a superficial basis. It wasn't that I had to have it, it was purely an impulse purchase, but, in my own semi-lame defense, the greatest selling point was that I could remove it for like 95% of my trips and still have a functional lid.

We're getting really philosophical here, which now begs the question; do people learn better from good experiences and positive reinforcement (even when it comes to engaging in what are generally regarded as negative or dangerous activities that should entail consequences), or do they learn better from failure and pain?

[rlown]

We're getting really philosophical here, which now begs the question; do people learn better from good experiences and positive reinforcement (even when it comes to engaging in generally regarded as negative or dangerous activities), or do they learn better from failure and pain?

That is a mixed bag. Go prepared, and if something happens that wasn't expected learn from it. I've seen both sides. I learned in boy scouts that our scout master wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. I took a friend to Virginia Lk in Yose, and we were past Glen Aulin, and he asks "where is the lake?" I say, up there after the 600' climb we spiral down on the lake about 3 miles later. Umm, He literally threw his pack against the rocks. He knew the map beforehand so I didn't see the problem. It ended in a learning experience for him, and a teaching experience for me. He knew the effort after that experience and did many more trips with me, with one coming in Sept. I learned to ask better questions and show them explicitly where the work is (uphill.)

The mix of negative and positive work, but hopefully more positive.

[AlmostThere]

I've learned also that when you are being real, people will sometimes take it as negative -- I have "divorced" a number of people who absolutely refuse to acknowledge there is any risk inherent in hiking, because it's not "positive" enough to say "let's do something everyone in the group can do instead of pretending we can all safely do this thing, Sue is having a literal panic attack."

There is being positive or optimistic, and then there is being mean to people because they simply don't want to suffer so you can do something you want to.

[mrphil]

There is being positive or optimistic, and then there is being mean to people because they simply don't want to suffer so you can do something you want to.

I'll use that to dovetail into my sort of intro for "lurkers".

I'm about to turn 56, and I started backpacking when I was about 13 or 14. Mom didn't want me hanging out all summer with nothing to do so she signed me up for various backpacking trips around the west with the local YMCA. I did it for a couple years and did well, eventually earning the unofficial title of "Jr Counselor". I could kick butt and outpace almost everyone, but my job eventually became to round up any stragglers and get them moving. I was an arrogant little Nazi douche that had no sympathy for people that I thought were being weak and making excuses. On one trip to the Trinities we had another kid my age that sat down, so I yelled at him to get going. Almost in tears from what I now know was altitude sickness and exhaustion, he walked about 100 feet, tripped, staggered, dropped about 3 feet off a rock and came down hard. He then cried and screamed. I yelled at him to get his butt in gear...right up until the time that I noticed that his pants and right boot were soaked in blood and that his fibula was sticking out of his skin about an inch. I had no idea or care about what the extent of his injuries and suffering were until that moment. We stopped for an extra day waiting for the trip leader to hike out to call in the helicopter, rushing became pointless, I ended up carrying his share of the group's food and gear load, and I understood that everyone has their limits, and if you're going to question or challenge them, you better put yourself in their shoes if you want their respect and any empathy at all in return when you hit your own personal wall.

Now I'm just old, everything hurts, and I'm the one that needs accomodating most of the time.