Gear Review: mtnGLO Gilpin Falls Powerhouse 4

Yep, those lights are awesome.

This is one of the tents in Big Agnes' new line of tents equipped with ambient lighting.

They don't blind you in the middle of the night. They are great for my daughter's 3:00a.m. pee wake-up call. You can read by them. No straining your neck, your eyes or your headlamp batteries.

How does this thing perform in the wind and rain? I have no idea. I have only used it for two nights in Memorial Park over a mild weather weekend. It was a little cold, but I have yet to be in a tent that underperforms for cold. If I needed a tent to help keep me warm, I would use a smaller tent. But it is car camping, let's stand if we can as long as the wind won't knock the high ceiling tent down.

Night 2: Hiking with People You Don't Know

Night 2/25

I am back from my NOLS Alumni Canyoneering trip.

It is always a little anxiety inducing to spend a day traveling to a destination where you meet 11 other people with whom you will spend the next 7 days. At times your life (and sometimes your hair, more on that later) will literally be in their hands. You really don't know how you are all going to get along or if it is going to be any fun. You show up floating on hope and knowing no matter what you are about to spend some time in a beautiful place...what's the worst that can happen?

I'm happy I don't know.

On NOLS Alumni trips you gather and then are divided into groups by the instructors/leaders. Your group is sent to a pile of gear and food, and you are expected to share this load and the chores for the trip. Then drive to the trailhead. And walk. Or ski. Or...? As a group, with people you have just met, you divide the food and gear on the spot, and expect that all that gear and food make it to the trailhead.

For this trip we met in Grand Junction, CO and drove to the Gravel Crossings trailhead the first day. It's on Cedar Mesa in Utah, south of Moab. It was well into the afternoon when we got there. But we only had plans to hike about half a mile or so and then make camp for the night. We camped on a shelf of slick rock as we would do every night on this trip, but this vantage had a view of the occasional car or truck speeding down the mostly empty highway. It's a funny thing to go on a backcountry trip and spend a night hearing cars, but it also isn't that uncommon. First and last days of hikes are often spent within striking distance of a trailhead and meant to give you an easy time getting to or from whereever you need to be in the near future. I have a friend who tells me he can hear the traffic on I-5 from the slopes of Mt. Shasta. The upper slopes, the kind you sleep on when you are trying to get to the top. Of the 14,000' mountain.

It is a generous gift to have to only hike half a mile, not much up hill on a first day out. I feel like I have spent so many first days going up, and up, and up, and up. And when it seems like night will fall before you get to your destination, it sometimes does.

But, we got to our camp site, went over the particulars: how to set up our shelters, how to use the stove, ideas for that night's menu...and got down to business.

It can be difficult to sleep the first night or two, or sometimes at all outside. This night had the added problem of an almost full moon coming out a few hours into darkness. The bonus was that I did not need a headlamp for my 2:00a.m. pee. Nobody needs to fall off a ledge at 2:00a.m. The bummer was that falling back asleep at 2:03a.m. was not as easy as it had been at 10:00p.m.

As first days of hiking with people you don't know go, the hiking was great. The meal prep was problematic. But how do you put 3 women, with all their assorted and varied food issues together in a cook group and expect that to go smoothly? I think you don't. But that is part of the opportunity of trips like this: learn more about yourself and how you interact with other people, and how to handle the problems in an appropriate way that also solves the problem. This is one of those things I know I need to work on. And I got to. With success? I feel like those two women are friends, so...yes? I don't know. What did I learn? I'm still not sure. Ready to try again next time it comes up. Yes.

Fist Shaking Frustration

This is another post about food.

There are likely to be many posts about food.

I have read that backpacking is the best calorie burning activity you can participate in, minute for minute. The part where you are walking with 40-80lbs. on your back. Clearly, my history of backpacking does not involve much in the way of light, or ultra-light. I have interests in that realm of backpacking, but I am not there right now. Even ultra lighters carry packs that weigh say, 30lbs.? So, it is still a high calorie burn situation.

I wouldn't say I eat whatever I want backpacking, but I would say that I eat more high calorie foods like nuts and cheese and am not careful about carb consumption. Also, this does not cause me to gain weight when I am on the trail like it does when I am not.

So, when someone, a friend, a guide, introduces me to a new food that I love, I want to eat it again. Probably when I get home. Not just because I enjoy the food, but also because as I described in my post: Food, gear, and poop, in any order. Repeat., it can transport me back to that hike, in a good way.

Sometimes though, it's more like I can't stop thinking about that food, I like it that much. I just can't shake it. So I do a mock fist shake in frustration while I say the person's name. But I think it's more consternation. I loved hiking with Dave Shaw, so it is surprising that when eating the mint flavored chocolate bar he introduced to me, i can also feel defeated. I mean, it's not like the chocolate won, but my waistline is also not winning.

So here are three chocolate bars that I learned to love, probably instantly on the trail:

2009 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Chocolove Cherries & Almonds in Dark Chocolate.

In my comprehensive chocolate tasting endeavors I have come to know Chocolove as the best value chocolate, best bang for the buck. I love dried cherries and I am pretty sure almonds are my favorite dark chocolate covered nut. Their chocolate is smooth and makes the right sound when you break it. It is well tempered chocolate. At around three dollars for a big bar, it stands with chocolates that can cost 50-100% more and kicks Dandelion's ass every time. But who can eat that chocolate, it's like cacao flavored chalk. But I digress...

2013 Gates of the Arctic National Park
Green & Black's Organice Dark Chocolate infused with peppermint oil

Before I tasted this chocolate I would not have said I like mint flavored anything. Save for a really good mojito at the right time and place. However, I love this chocolate bar. It's just the right amount of mint flavor, never sharp, never overtaken by sweet. Almost refreshing, but not in any way that makes you think toothpaste. I have gone on to greater appreciation of York Peppermint Patties as well. The mint in that candy is sharper and the chocolate less smooth and present, but they will do in a pinch.

2014 Grand Gulch, Cedar Mesa, South East Utah
Equal Exchange Chocolates Organic & Fairly Traded Dark Chocolate Caramel Crunch with Sea Salt

Rebecca brought this on the NOLS alumni trip we participated in last year and I instantly had to keep myself from eating most of her chocolate on the spot. It has the right amount of salt, is silky smooth and the chocolate is rich. It is rich and not cloying like milk chocolate or overly chalky and bitter like the varieties with too much cacao percentage. The caramel is a little burnt, reminding me of Toscanini's Burnt Caramel Ice Cream, perhaps my favorite flavor. The caramel never pushes it over the edge, the chocolate always pulls you back.

Sometimes if it has been too long since I have been on the trail, I'll buy one of these bars of chocolate, make a hot cup of tea and sit in my backyard. I can feel the wind on my face and pierce through my clothes (it is almost always windy where I live) and have the tea help keep me warm. And then I let the chocolate melt in my mouth and the smell and flavor reminds me that I'll get back out, I just have to wait a little while.

Movie Review: Wild

I wasn't going to see this movie, or read this book. Even though I love Reese Witherspoon. And I didn't. At least until it was streaming into my living room. I liked it. I will probably watch it again, even though I wish there was more backpacking in it. More scenery. More breathing in of the outside. More zooming in on her face at the finish. But maybe finishing the PCT is like finishing your M.S., anti-climatic. You are just done, you just finished something big. Must keep going...

Like the end of the movie Big Night, when they start making breakfast. Because what else is there when you have just lost most everything and it is morning?

I have a love-hate relationship with books and movies about incompetent hikers. I am so over it. I am not an incompetent hiker. I started backpacking when I was 11 years old. I remember the first time I peed outside it was into my sock. That was a bummer. But I laughed at myself then. It was not bumbling enough to turn into anything more than an amusing short story for a writing class, which I never did. But when I go back to school...

So, this isn't a movie about hiking, and maybe that is why it was able to become a movie.

It is interesting to see how other people get through challenges in their lives. In this case the PCT is tool to work through emotional trauma, not the challenge itself. And maybe that's why I will watch it again.

Or maybe it's just the dutch guy?

The dutch guy is this actor.

His name is Michiel Huisman, and I first noticed him in Treme.

Or maybe it's just that I love Reese Witherspoon since The Man in the Moon?