The backpacking experience

[Cross Country]

My experiences backpacking have had a profound effect on my life. It helped me appreciate my life in general, and learn about myself. I think about my BP experiences most days. In my kitchen hang 7 enlarged fotos of cross country places. I went with my wife "saint" Diane over 100 days. I went with my son Jim about 40 days and my son Mike more than 100 days. I took trips with friends about 200 days and by myself about 100 days. Each of these 4 kinds of trips were quite different from the onther ones.
I first backpacked with the Boy Scouts in 1954. From that first trip I knew I had discovered somthing i loved to do. I loved being in the wilderness. I didn't go again until 1968 although in 1965, 66 and 67 I (we) went on lots of hikes in Glacier Park, Yellowstone Park, but mostly in the San Jacinto Mountains. I (we) went camping for 3 weeks on our honeymoon In Yellowstone, Glacier and the Pacific Northwest. By 1971 I knew that I needed somthing to do on a BP trip more that sight seeing and I found that for me, climbing peaks (3) to be to tedious and too much work for the minimal reward. I like to do fun things. Seeing things is a distant 2nd for me. Also I won too many literal trophies and trophies in my mind for one lifetime.
In 1971 I went to a fishing show in the sports arena in LA. From that point on catching fish was my goal on maybe every trip. I love eating fresh trout and have eaten more that 1000 fish while backpacking.
I've a pretty normal person. I was a school teacher, played thousands of game of slo pitch softball (the most popular participation sport in the US), skiing over 500 days, and surfing for 20 years. I'm an avid bike rider and play golf 2-3 times a week play cards and pool every week. I liked all the normal stuff, and lots of it.
But the thing that stands out in my mind is backpacking.
I'm VERY introspective. I'm a gregarious person so I always prefered backpacking with another person (other people), but if I didn't have someone to go with me I went alone. I prefer bike riding alone. I believe that the vast majority of people who are mentally well balanced like company. Solitude is good for a short time. The longest time I was alone in the wildernes was 5 straight days (on more than on occasion). On my solitary trips I felt very lonely but my memories of those trips stand out in my mind in a positive way just like all the other trips.
I remember every trip clearly and each and every day except for the places to which I went on various different trips. I went 6 places at least 5 times each.
On HST I've posted pics from maybe most of the places I've been.
What does backpacking mean to you?

[Tom_H]

Health issues have retired me from what once was an integral part of my life. I always felt far more at peace and in harmony with everything when out in unspoiled nature, away from all things manmade. It was like living in the environment for which we were intended as opposed to the either sterile or dirty environs of civilization.

There are so many trips and places I could mention, but the one that engendered the most introspection was a winter trip in the Roan area of NC and VA the end of '77 into New Years '78. We took dual 3-season bags. It hit -40 one night when a really cold front came through. We hiked on glazed ice and the trees were glazed into eerie icicle forms. Everything was totally white and still. There was literally no sound of any kind. The hiking, as well as all the tasks of setting up camp, were all very hard. We used snow rather than TP because there was no way to bury anything. I got some nerve damage in my feet (went to bed one night mildly hypothermic-enough so that I didn't think to put on dry socks) and that gave me great pain in the balls of the feet the whole trip.

There was an incredible clarity about how little is necessary to survive in the world. Even in such extremes, you can still carry every last thing you need on your back. All the other junk we accumulate in life is extraneous and not really necessary. The experience seemed to give my a hyperawareness and calmness that I'd never really experienced before.

[SSSdave]

We little grade school kids living about the northeastern foothills of the Sacramento urban area, played endless sports majoring in recess, thus I was very active physically growing up unlike many kids today. And away from school, especially during summers, we spent endless time roaming about riparian oak woodlands of our many creeks (wonderful areas that have since been utterly destroyed by track housing). If it moved I've probably caught it with my bare hands or hoisted it out of a creek on the end of a line with a fishing pole so became keenly connected to our hunter gatherer human roots. And we endlessly climbed oak trees that developed a key sense of balance and coordination, valuable in later adult years out in our mountain off trail backcountry. Otherwise I grew up in a large family that just car camped very occasionally. The Viet Nam War killed this peons chance of going into college as the year I graduated from high school, there were no longer college deferments as we were all fair game for the draft.

I never backpacked till after getting out of the USAF during the Viet Nam War at age 21 in the early 70s when backpacking was exploding in the San Francisco Bay Area with we counterculture twentysomethings. Lots of us were getting out into nature where we were free to do our thing without having to worry about getting busted that in that era was a serious felony. I read a stack of familiar books, bought disgusting stacks of 15 minute topographic maps directly from the USGS center in Menlo Park, joined the Sierra Club, and began backpacking solo that for a decade was all about trout fishing. Ate countless rainbow, eastern brook, German brown, and golden trout. A few trips with others however most of my trips were major solo adventures with lots of mileage often off trails into ugly remote places. Thus am painting a picture of someone that was already at home with being out in nature so the transition to backpacking was trivial without profound philosophical meanings. I was proud of being a hard core outdoor enthusiast. But over that first decade I had gradually evolved a greater awareness of the amazingly deep intricacy of nature and grandeur of those mountains.

The late 70s saw the rise of the first 35mm single lens reflex film cameras AKA SLR (all were still manual then), and it was then I bought my first real camera, an OM-1N. I took off 18 months between my electronic hardware work in Silicon Valley to adventure in the Sierra and my primary focus for being out in wilderness gradually changed from trout fishing to photography. During the 80s as someone that was already a voracious reader of science and technical books, I also began reading lots of natural science and Sierra Nevada history books that gave me a greater appreciation of our natural world and what I experience on backpacking trips. Over the years and decades it has all evolved though unlike most people by time I reached 30, I had committed to an adult life where both backpacking, landscape and nature photography, and snow skiing would be continuing key leisure activities in my adult life between the endless monotony and struggle of 8-5 m-f corporate employment.

[Scouter9]

Holy Smokes, fellas!

Since 1954? Is that back when the Sierras were still black & white like in that Ansel guy's digital photos? Was he nice?

Ho ho.

I started in the seventies, also as a Boy Scout, and as a hunter with my Dad. Most hunting with dad was "hiking with rifles"... and, although we took deer several years, the combined backpacking throughout the eastern Sierra, San Bernardinos and the Sespe made me a lifer. Life, however, has limitations and so my backpacking in the Sierra is now generally limited to annual treks with my own Boy Scouts. This summer will be our youngest son's last as a Scout and I am happy to report that he's got the bug, and the ethos, too. .

[kpeter]

My father started backpacking during the Colin Fletcher era and took me on my first trip in 1971. For years, backpacking meant heading into the wilderness with my father, an artist with a keen eye for natural beauty who gave me the priceless gift of appreciation of nature. This was primarily in Idaho, but also Oregon and Washington. I won't recite my long subsequent history with the wilderness, but it is a spiritual experience for me.

It is also where I feel closest to other people, whether it is the closeness and sense of sharing I experience when I take my daughter or friend along on the trip, or when I am so solo the feeling of connection and longing for my wife who is at home, or whether I am remembering my father who I sometimes feel is a ghostwalker keeping me company and approving of the view. I feel the enormous sweep of time and the smallness of my life. Nature is enormous is space and time and I am a spec floating through both. I drink in the spectacular vistas and the gorgeous intimate still lifes that are everywhere, and feel a sense of serenity and peace that I can never experience at home.

And there is the time to think. To really think. No computer screens, TV sets, cell phones. There are long hours of inactivity. It is hard to imagine taking 10 uninterrupted minutes to think about anything at home. But in the wilderness, I can take an hour off before dinner to stare at the lake and think deep thoughts.

There there is what backpacking means to me when I am not backpacking. It gives me something to look forward to all year long, and helps keep me going through low stretch during the rest of the year. This is a great motivator for getting into shape and for keeping spirits high.

[giantbrookie]

kpeter's view of backpacking is very similar to mine, including his introduction to it. My dad introduced the family to dayhiking at first, with our first trip to the Sierra in the summer of 1966, I believe. I think my dad may have gone backpacking as a part of a Sierra Club trip before he took another family member on their first backpacking trip which was me to Pear Lake (to climb Alta Peak) in the fall of 1967 (I had just turned 8). The trips to the mountains were the highlight of my entire year as kid. For some years the family would do two levels of trips: somewhat easier backpacking trips and dayhikes for the entire family (mom and younger brother included), and, starting with my 10th birthday trip in 1969, increasingly difficult trips with me. Eventually backpacking came to be more of a me and my dad thing and this persisted into my young adult years as we did some pretty crazy surgical strike trips with the main focus on peak bagging.

How much backpacking meant to me crept into my dreams of romance. The experience of High Sierra backpacking was so special to me I wanted to share it with a special girl. After two false starts, I got it right and met my no. 1 backpacking partner, Judy, in 1986 (see parallel thread on backpacking romance stuff). Now it's about involving the kids in it. They've both gone on multiple backpacking trips by now. Lee (son) is a superb fisherman and loves fishing, but he really doesn't like hiking very much. Dawn (daughter) is the one who really enjoys the backpacking experience, which is how she ended up being the only family member to go backpacking with me last summer (my only backpacking trip of 2017 and as a result of her request).

I enjoy so many aspects of being up there as kpeter does. I actually enjoy the hustle and bustle of city life and being an academic, but I still find it healthy to push that reset button and escape to a whole different world. I still very much look forward to the "season" and I spend time during off season daydreaming, gazing at maps.

[creekfeet]

I backpack simply because I like exploring. I don't look at it like it's something I need to do to "find myself", although my mind definitely wanders to strange places on a long solo trip. Really I just think it's satisfying to find some oddly named lake on the map, or some route that looks crazy, and trying to see if I can make it happen. When I wind up in some part of the mountains that's totally new to me, it feels like I've unlocked a whole other part of the map, and I'd like to unlock as much as I can in this lifetime.

When I reflect upon my backpacking trips, which is frequent, what strikes me is that I tend to look back most fondly on the trips where everything went to hell. The trips that were pleasant in the moment, the ones where I didn't get lost, do anything stupid, stray far from my itinerary, or catch any bad weather don't hold up quite as well in my memories. There's something to be said for that feeling of adventure, and a good adventure doesn't really start until something goes wrong.

[oldhikerQ]

Backpacking has had a profound impact on my life as well. I started in the late 60's in Boy Scouts, doing weekend trips in the local (SoCal) mountains. Family camping trips to the sierra morphed into backpacking trips starting in 1972. All of my trips have been with a group of some type (often just two of us). Still, I spend most of the time on the trail hiking intentionally alone. These times offer a space for self reflection that I cna't seem to find in the noise of "civilization". Memories are most often triggered by smells when I'm backpacking. The chill air in an early morning meadows brings back a flood of memories from trips long past. Smell of pine or juniper as the day warms up bring back additional memories. So does sitting by the fire at night (dreaming the fire).
All of these experiences have enriched my life in ways that can not be measured.
These days, I'm trying to come to grip with the fact that my trail days are nearing the end. I still don't know how I will handle that time that the door is finally shut.

[oldranger]

Not quite as old as Cross Country but did start backpacking in the 50s as well. But before that my earliest memories as a kid was visiting Yosemite in the early 50s. My dad was pretty cool when he understood that I really liked backpacking and fishing. Even before I entered my teens I planned all the trips, assembled the gear, planned the meals. We would usually leave in the evening after dad got off work and I would have everything ready to go. Sometime in the early 60s I planned our first off trail adventure, from the n. fork of the San Joaquin up Bench Canyon and over the ridge to long Creek and eventually on to the old cattle trail between Long Creek and Chetwood Meadow. From then on almost all my trips had a component of off trail travel. Like old hiker I know the end of my backpacking is much closer than the start. Counting on 2 more years to return to my favorite fishing spots and a couple of new ones. At some point I visualize getting packed into one location and getting picked up later if carrying a pack becomes a bit much. Maybe before that sticking to trails and less demanding off trail routes.

[jeremiahkim]

Though I spent a significant amount of time in natural settings in my early years, I did not start backpacking until just a few years ago so I feel as though I'm making up for lost time.

I deeply resonate with what has already been shared, with kpeter in particular. Being in open spaces is a deeply spiritual experience for me. Backpacking both invites and demands being fully in the present while also opening one up to sights and sounds not usually found in the routine of life. The simple things—morning coffee at sunrise, sitting by a still lake, preparing food, encountering wildlife—remind me that the essence of life lies deeper than the distractions and social norms that dictate much of my day to day. All of this, of course, is made more meaningful with people to share it with.

I also have found that it shapes my off-season by planning, sharing experiences with others, and giving me a goal to keep me going through the M-F.

Having this personal approach to backpacking is one reason why I am so grateful for a community like this of like-minded individuals who are so willing to share their passion and knowledge with others. Cheers.