Okay, I will admit, that like many of those who seek to thru hike the Appalachian Trail each year, on my first attempt in 2015, I had not backpacked a night in my life before I went out to the trail. Personally, that was not a great move on my part, but the AT is very forgiving in certain ways. My first night on the trail, I slept in a shelter, the second I cowboy camped. Eventually I slept in someone else’s tent for the rest of the trail. That is not how this journey is going to go in 2022.
Although I now have several months of backpacking experience, that was from six and seven years ago. Life kind of got in the way, and the last backpacking trip I had planned was for May 2020, and we all know how 2020 went. So I ended up buying all of my gear from scratch within the last couple months. Fortunately, I am a very good researcher. Even so, I bought and exchanged almost every major piece of gear, including clothing, two or even three times over. before I landed on a set up I felt happy with.
I wanted to do shakedown hikes, plural, before I left, but I have been much busier than anticipated during this four week respite from work. After five years working fifty hours per week, I’ve just been doing all the things I have been putting off for so long. It has been magical, but also maybe a touch procrastinatory. I cut my shakedown short, and close, and was hoping all my gear was right, because it was going to be very hard to exchange or return this late in the game, especially to the cottage companies I had bought from.
I think that might be part of thru hiking, though. No matter how prepared you think you are going to be, there is always more you could have done. Of course, there are certainly people that spend years preparing for their hikes, making months of dehydrated food, going on much longer shakedown hikes, and I truly admire those people. However, thru hiking is also a vastly mental game, and I would say on my part, these few weeks have been more about preparing myself mentally to take on this challenge, so I can get in a good head space and leave knowing I made the best of my time before hiking.
Regardless, at least one night in the woods with my new gear was necessary, and time will tell if that was enough. There is no adventure in life without taking chances in some capacity.
Lodging
My base weight according to Lighterpack, which still might need a little tweaking, is 16.5 lbs. For the shakedown, I was carrying full bottles of sunscreen, bug spray, and wilderness wash, for example, that will be reduced before I leave. So I had 18.6 lbs in my pack, with two dinners and one breakfast in my food bag. I added on two liters of water, so I was carrying a sum in the low 20 lbs. I expect to carry three days of food when I leave, so ideally I will be hitting the trail with about 25 lbs fully packed if all goes according to plan, give or take a pound or two. My base weight when I started in 2015 was 20lbs, and most hikers that succeed in a thru carry between 15-20 lbs base weight initially on the AT.
My tent is a little heavier than a lot of people carry nowadays. When I was hiking with the person who became my partner on the AT last time, he had a trekking pole tent. Very few people used those back then, and I was always so jealous of the people with freestanding tents. It just seemed the norm, and I wanted so badly to fit in with other hikers. Trekking pole tents take a little more nuance to set up, but a good amount more people use them nowadays it seems.
Trekking pole tents are quite a bit lighter, and make use of hiking poles as two forms of gear, which is ideal on a thru hike. They do have some downsides in terms of condensation because they are single wall, can’t be set up on a platform, and there is more staking to do to set them up. They are also become quite expensive for the nicer ones.
However, because I did not get to use one before, I knew I wanted a freestanding tent this time around. On future trails, like the PCT where heavier water carries are required, if everything goes according to plan, I would switch to a trekking pole tent for the weight savings. I had an MRS Hubba Hubba NX2 I bought for my section hike in 2020 but never used, that I sold to buy a Big Agnes Copper Spur HV UL2, which is just over three pounds, plus another 5 oz for the footprint. Heavier than a trekking pole tent, but lighter than the MSR.
The Copper Spur is one of the Big Agnes’ best known and highest quality tents. I probably could have gone with a Tiger Wall instead to be a little lighter, but the Copper Spur is very highly rated, and is still technically classified as ultralight.
Hiking
My friend Malia and I hiked Peak Mountain in East Granby, CT, part of the New England Trail, to a campsite that is two miles in. I had hiked that area a few times before, and my cousin, Scott, and I had noticed a camping area there that I figured would be perfect for an overnight. It was built by Boy Scouts, and included a box with jugs of water that volunteers keep filled, since there is no real water source on that trail anywhere nearby.
We got to the trail at around 4PM, this past Saturday. The weather was perfect, and the trailhead not too crowded with cars. I had never parked at a trailhead overnight, and visions of missing catalytic converters swum in my head. When we got there, a bunch of teenagers had arrived as well, but we let them go ahead while we finished adjusting our packs. Me, with my Gossamer Gear Mariposa, and Malia sporting a 38 liter Deuter bag I had used on the AT for a little bit.
The beginning of any hike on the East Coast that is close to a road is typically very steep up, and this trail is no exception. Only a quarter mile or so at the beginning is steep, but carrying a pack makes all the hiking you do just a little bit more vigorous. I had my Black Diamond trekking poles with me, and it wasn’t very hard. It leveled off quickly, and we started walking the ridge that is characteristic of the NET.
Pretty soon, though, we came up on the group of teenagers taking a break on the trail. They had a large speaker they were playing music off of. I will admit, once upon a time, I was that person playing music along the trail, before I knew that is considered a bit of an outdoors faux-pas. Now I am apparently old and hopefully smarter, and we skirted around them and starting hiking as quick as possible to put as much distance as we could between them and us.
In a short amount of time the voices of both them and their music faded into the background, and the pace at which we were hiking was exerting, but the ground was flat and the day was beautiful. Even about a week after the last time I’d hiked there, I saw much more greenery sprouting up, and new flowers blooming everywhere.
One more steep up took us to the overlook, where we didn’t linger, as our new friends were not far behind us. There were a few other people up top as well, so we continued on another half mile or so, to find another breaking point at a ledge. We applied sunscreen and bug spray, and took a few photos.
Camp
Onward to the campsite, which arrived sooner than I anticipated, which was good. Down the ridge to the site, the sun dipped lower in the sky and it was cooler. The site was next to a small, murky pond, and we were thrilled to find a water cache in what I had thought was a bear box at first look. We didn’t end up using it, having carried two liters each, but the backup was nice to have.
The real downside to the body of water near us was the mosquitos. They were fierce. I had my Insect Shield treated clothing on, both my hiking and camp clothes, but I needed more picaridin for my exposed skin. I was feeling a lot of nerves from how imminent my hike was, and we started to set up the tent.
It was easy to set up, as I’d done it before in my apartment, but the rail fly took a little fiddling with. After about ten minutes we had the tent up, and set about putting out the sleeping pads and bags. Malia hadn’t realized she lent her tent to a friend, so we were sharing my Copper Spur for the evening. It is a two person tent, but most people on trail who are traveling alone sleep in a two person.
Malia had a heavy air mattress with a pump and a bulky sleeping bag, which are certainly nice for casual camping. I set up my NeoAir Xlite Regular Wide with the pump sack, deciding I was going to buy that little gimmicky micro pump to take with me. It’s only about three ounces, minus the 1.3 of the pump sack I would leave behind. I want to keep the humidity from my breath out of my bag, and just make my life easier.
I added my Enlightened Equipment Revelation 10 degree quilt to the tent, along with my Sea to Summit Aeros pillow. I strapped my quilt to the mat, and used the velcro I had accidentally kept from a S2S air mattress to attach my pillow to the mat. Surprisingly, the velcro held to the Thermarest mat, and the idea of my pillow not ending up anywhere but under my head for the whole night sounded wonderful.
Cooking
I was intimidated by my MSR Pocket Rocket Deluxe, I will admit. Starting the trail, I had a stove, but I was too scared to learn how to use it. I spent two or three days eating the same bag of Idahoan potatoes that I had put cold water into and carried with me. Shudder. Once I met with my ex we used his set up, which involved a stove that used denatured alcohol instead of canisters.
I’ve never used a backpacking stove with a canister, and I was always so jealous of people with Jetfoils, they just looked so adorable and self-contained. I went with the Pocket Rocket to save weight, though. I found a PDF of the instructions on my phone, and was mystified when I tried to screw on the stove to the gas canister and it started leaking and spraying fuel everywhere.
I have a weird phobia of things exploding, and stoves and gas cans are the number one. I kept trying to find Youtube videos to explain what was happening, with poor service and mosquitos buzzing all around my head. Finally, I found a Reddit thread that said, duh, just screw it on faster. So I did, and it was fine.
We boiled some water, and dumped it into a Backpacker’s Pantry Risotto with Chicken bag. We snacked on Frito’s, M&M’s, and Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups while the food cooked in the bag. When it was almost done, we walked back up to the ridge, where it was warmer and sunnier, back about a quarter mile till we found a nice overlook to eat at.
My nerves were still jangling, but feeling a little better. The food was good, if salty, which I knew I would appreciate if I had ben hiking and sweating out electrolytes all day. The sun was setting over the ridge, but we knew it would be darker at the campsite, so we left before we could see the whole show.
Sleeping
It was very tight in the tent, but we settled in, each reading a bit of a book for a while, before turning off my headlamp that I had stuck in a tent pocket to be a lantern. It was hiker midnight, only about 8:30PM, but we were both tired from the hike in and making camp.
Of course, my brain didn’t want to shut off till 10:00, and I lay there trying to fall asleep for a while, getting up to pee once. My air mattress is loud, and I have very sensitive hearing to squirrels and stuff scurrying around at night, so I brought some foam earplugs with me.
I did fall asleep, then had to get up twice more in the middle of the night to pee again. I am very much considering the pee bottle in the tent thing I have been hearing about lately. We both felt very squished in the tent, and that made it uncomfortable, as I tossed and turned in my limited space. I am used to sleeping in the very middle of a queen size bed.
BUT, I was very warm the whole night. Quilts are rated a little different than bags, and it was my first quilt. I hemmed and hawed on buying one. I originally bought a Zpacks quilt, then got scared and cancelled the order. Then I bought an REI magma 15 degree, which is highly rated, but I hate the confining feel of mummy bags, and I wanted to save weight. I had read a lot about the EE Revelation, and ended up buying that.
I had already returned the Magma, so I was hoping the quilt would work. I had watched a YouTube video previously about the straps, and I was pleasantly surprised that I did everything right and there were no drafts all night, until a tiny one in the morning when I moved around a little too much, but was already about to get up for the day.
I wore my sleeping clothes, a Smartwool set of 150 tops and bottoms, Darn Tough socks, and I had my Mountain Hardware puffy on as well. I had exchanged that for the Patagonia Nano Puff I had bought originally, so that I could have a hood on my puffy, and save weight. I also found the MH on steep clearance.
I had given Malia my hat to use for the night, so I had the hood of my jacket on all night, and the neck zipped up, and I was super comfortable with the quilt. The mat was good, too, but I might have to fiddle with the amount of air since I am a side sleeper and my hips were hurting a bit, possibly from not sinking in enough.
Morning
I had set my watch alarm for 7AM, since I had a hair appointment and family party that afternoon. After snoozing a couple times, but already awake because of the sun being up, I dutifully crawled out of the tent to start my day.
I got my quilt, pad, and everything out of the tent, and started packing my bag, and readying things for breakfast, trying to feel out a morning routine that will work on the trail. Malia got up a little bit after, and we packed up the tent, and had granola for breakfast and boiled some water for coffee.
On the hike out, we saw a good amount of people on the trail, as it was around 9AM or so by that point. There were four trail runners, and a family of five hiking, as well as a couple other people here and there. We chatted with a trail runner for a few minutes at one of the overlooks.
I love the feeling of hiking in the early morning, when the light is new and the day is full of possibility. We made it to the car around 9:45, and headed to Dunkin’. I got my hair cut, and went to my birthday party. By the end of the day it seemed impossible that I had woken up in the woods, but I had.
Onward
I realize I have kept a ton of knowledge with me from the last time I was on the trail, even though it had been so many years since I had even done a section hike. I know I like sleeping with an air mattress and a blow-up pillow. I know I like to eat hot food at the end of the day instead of cold soaking. I know what it feels like to hike hundreds of miles with a pack on, and so on.
That prior knowledge combined with being generally very good at researching, means that I am very happy with all the gear I have chosen. My pack is very comfortable, although the shoulder pads are a bit large, so I will have to see how that plays out. The good news is no piece of gear is set in stone, and I already know things will be adjusted here and there in the future.
What matters at this stage is that I know how to use all my gear, I am happy with my setup, and I am feeling more confident now that I have spent at least one night in the woods with all my stuff. May 13th and Harper’s Ferry will be here before I know it!