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NOTE:Below is a machine transcription. I am traveling off grid when this podcast episode is released and I didn’t have time to do the webpage before I left. If you email me, I can write you back when this page is up. Otherwise, please check back. Thanks for your patience and understanding! Kit
00:04 Welcome to the venture travel show podcast. I’m your host Keith Parks. About 10 years ago, I was wandering the stacks in my local library, one of my favorite restful things to do, and I’m one of the end caps. There’s a book on the history of the Appalachian trail. Now mind you, this is before the release of the movies, a walk in the woods and wild and I’d heard of the Appalachian trail, but I didn’t really know a whole lot about it. So I checked out the book and brought it home to read and I discovered that the Appalachian trail runs right through my home state in North Carolina. And not only that, that some of the people actually hiked the entire 2000 plus miles all at one time. I couldn’t believe it. I was fascinated by this and I decided that while I didn’t want to spend several months in my life walking the trail at one time, that I would like to do what they call section hiking, the Appalachian trail.
00:53 And so over the last oh 10 years or so, I’ve been doing little chunks as I have time. But I figured if I want to learn how to backpack first, I’m going to have to learn how to hike. This is before I did any of these outdoors with vendors at all. But this is what actually got me into this whole path of adventure travel. So happily with the help of the Internet, I googled hiking clubs and that’s when I discovered meetup. Another key find that also opened tremendous doors for me because I was relatively new to the triangle area and really hadn’t met anybody. So that not only helped me meet hiking friends, I met friends that have become lifelong friends. Just do that one clicking, try to find a hiking club. So that was a, a really key thing that actually really changed my life. So on the meetups, I found a group called [inaudible], which stands for triangle hiking and outdoor club. So I signed up for t hawk and at my first event, which was a multi mile hike in Umstead state park in Raleigh, I told the leader, Casey, what I wanted to do, that I wanted to do a little section Hank of the Appalachian trail. And gratefully he didn’t laugh at me and he was very encouraging and in many ways took me under his wing
01:59 Yet another t hog leader, Sherry was running a backpack conditioning series of hikes. So I signed up for that as well. We were instructed to bring our backpack and at this time I still had no idea what a backpack even was. I’d knew nothing, absolutely nothing like totally 100% clueless. And the only thing I could rustle up was I borrowed a book bag from somebody and I showed up with some books in this bag. I am sure that Sherry was inwardly rolling her eyes, but she was very sweet but she had to be wondering what on earth is this little princess doing here?
02:32 Okay.
02:32 And happily enough, I have to report later. Cher and I are also very good friends cause gratefully once Sherry found out that have a serious that I just was ignorant. She was very, very helpful and very encouraging of helping me figuring out this whole hiking and backpacking thing. And one really important thing that I’m really grateful for is the sound gear backpacking gear advice I got from the folks in this group. They saved me hundreds of dollars in potential bad purchases and this is something I’m really trying to help you with myself on this podcast is my way of paying it forward to all the helpful things that my t hog friends did for me because a t heart I was able to pull all the more experienced hikers and all the pros and cons of all the different gear and people are big gearheads. Everybody’s got their opinions and so this way I was able to make some wise decisions because the year can get really expensive.
03:26 So after my initial meeting with Casey, hanging out with Sherry and doing the conditioning things, we fast forward about three months and I set up my very first backpacking weekend with t hog and we went to Grayson highlands on the Appalachian trail in Virginia. It was absolutely gorgeous and Sherry planned it pretty well because this was a pretty easy backpacking trip, not an overly ambitious hike. I think we only did like six miles in the day before we set up camp. It was a challenging, but also encouraging in that we’re like, oh yeah, we could, we got this, we got it, we can do this. So that was a really smart thing that she did when she set that up.
04:01 Okay.
04:01 The next, I don’t know, maybe it was a weekend or two after that, I went out with Casey and four others really experienced backpackers and he let me just kind of tag along with them. And we went to Lynnville gorge now that was a hard backpacking hike and that last day, I swear don’t remember the name of the trail, but it was straight up, totally exposed, no trees. And it was hot, so I earned my stripes on that trip and then I think it was the following month after that that I did my very first long distance backpacking trip with my girlfriends, Jane and Jerry, and we went out for two weeks on the Appalachian trail and that was quite the backpacking adventure. I was so proud of myself. That was a really tough thing to do. It was a really tough hike. I think we did maybe 170 miles. The distance escapes me now and my body because I was doing the things I’m going to teach you today. I was super trained, I was super prepared. My gear was exactly right and I plan my food pretty well.
04:57 Yeah.
04:58 After that trip I was like, I could really call myself a backpacker. So what I’m going to hope to help you with today is to teach you via this podcast what my t hog hiking buddies taught me. We’re going to look at choosing your destination conditioning, your body planning, getting and testing your gear.
05:17 Okay.
05:18 How to plan your food. We’re going to deal with the logistics and the things that are encompassing along that as far as making sure you know how to use your map and your compass and leave no trace, all that kind of good stuff. So to begin with, you’ve got to choose your destination and what’s your adventure going to be about? What are you going to do? So for your first backpacking adventure, I’m going to suggest that you choose a place like Sherry did for us where we backpacked integration highlands only about six miles. So it wasn’t, we’re not trying to do the Bataan death march. All right. You’re gonna test your gear in that true adventure situation. Different than like when you’re practicing at home.
05:52 Yeah.
05:53 So at Grayson highlands, we had the ranger station was nearby. There’s lots of people. So it was a good way for us to, to get our feet wet in this whole backpack and experience. And we’re just doing it in baby steps. So for your first actual backpacking adventure, pick a relatively easy weekend trip, but you don’t want to do the actual backpack until after you conditioned yourself. We’re going to get to that in just a little bit. So if your easy destination goes well, then you step it up. Remember all, we’re always trying to plus one. So you do easy ones. Now you do a little harder one or maybe a little longer, one or multiple days because the body changes over a couple of days. So adding more days might be the way it did plus one. And then each time you go out, keep building on your experience, build the duration, build the difficulty until you feel fully comfortable that you’ve got your groove on. So let’s get our growth and how are we going to condition our bodies?
06:48 Okay?
06:49 Most people can teach their body to safely carry about 20% more weight than they are on their backs. My base weight of my pack of my gear, and that’s not including food and water, is about 18 pounds. My Hiking Buddy John, however likes to go, super lightweight and his base weight is down to about 10 pounds. But you’re gonna find it’s a trade off between comfort at night and comfort during the day, carrying all that weight. So if you want to be really comfortable at night, you’re going to be carrying a lot of weight during the day for that comfort.
07:19 Okay.
07:19 There’s also a monetary trade-off as it costs usually about at least a hundred bucks. I think even more these days. For every pound you want to try to reduce your pack weight. So if you want to get more high tech gear, every pound that you shave off is going to cost you about a hundred bucks. When I get my pack fully loaded up with food and water, it can weigh as much as 30 pounds. So let’s do a little bit of the math. Oh, a little under 150 pounds. Let’s use a 150 so 20% of 150 pounds is 30 pounds. Now, since I live in such a flat area, I generally try to train to about 35 36 pounds in hopes of trying to make up the difference of the fact that I don’t have the elevation practice as much as that as you might where you live.
08:02 Okay?
08:03 And they’ll also add in some practice on steps at the, at my local hospital just so I can stretch out those muscles and get them used to going up and down, up and down. But in any regards, you should try to never, never carry more than 25% of your body weight. There’s going to be times that you might have to start the trip off more if there’s no resupply stops on a lengthy trip. And at least on those, it’s the food weight and gradually that will go down. So how are you going to get your body used to carrying all this weight
08:32 If possible? You want to try to begin your training at least 12 weeks in advance. My friend Casey stays in condition constantly by carrying his backpack every single time he walks her hikes. So he never needs to retrain. I keep saying I want to do that, but in the current training, I’m turning for a trip that I’m gonna be taking next month. I’ve been training on the pavement around where I live now and it’s just brutal on my knees and my hips. So I’ve abandoned that. And now have to do a longer hike at the beach on the weekends so that way I can take my time, I’ll do like three hours with my pack and I’m not just killing my joints.
09:08 So when you beginning to condition your body, you just simply start out with a low weight and then you’re gradually each week working your way up to your target backpack weight and you’re going to add no more than 10% new weight each week. So we’re going to use me as an example. If I put on my pack and I put some weight in there, I can barely feel about 15 pounds cause my back is somewhat conditioned and all the time anyway, you might find that you need to start out lighter if you’ve never carried any way to new back before. So you put on a pack and then just take some water bottles and keep adding a water bottle until you say, okay, I feel like I’ve got weight on it. But you don’t want it to feel heavy. You just want to feel like you’ve got some weight on there. That’s your starting weight. And so again, I just to add my weight, I just, I saved some Gatorade bottles, which are nice and sturdy or you can use milk jugs or regular water bottles and just add a little bit each time until you’re adding your 10% each week.
10:02 So you start with your starting weight whenever you figured out where it just feels like you’ve got weight but it’s not too heavy. You feel like a piece of cake, you know, I noticed it, but it’s not a big deal. So for me, that’s around 15 pounds. So if I want to add 10% each week, that means it can be adding in the beginning about a pound and a half getting up to two pounds and eventually up to three pounds as that 10% kind of accumulates, Kinda like compound interest. So for me to train, I need at least 10 weeks to do this at the right pace of the 10% dish in each week. So the first week I’m 15 pounds. If I add 10% that’s one and a half pounds. So week two I’m 16 and a half pounds and I’m 18 pounds, 20 pounds, 22242720930 two finally ending at week number 10 at 35 pounds.
10:47 I’ve also found that putting a bath towel in my pack helps kind of keep the water bottles from banging into me and hit me a little bit in the back. So play around with that. Or you may find just putting heavier things in their bags, a little sand bags or whatever. It might be helpful as well. Whatever works for you. I also encourage you to listen to episode 46 of the act of travel adventures podcast where I interviewed Marcus Shapiro from fit for trips. He’s a personal trainer and one of my affiliates and he offers a custom online training company. So this episode will go into more details on how to prepare your body for all kinds of adventures and he’ll teach you about the balance and flexibility and strength and conditioning your muscles, et cetera. And he’s able to even custom design a program for you.
11:28 And if you decide to use him, make sure you use the coupon code at Tech Kit 10 88 kit 10 and you’ll get a 10% discount and you’ll also be helping to support the show as you do anytime you use any of my links on either this podcast website or actor travel adventures website does. I appreciate that. So anyhow, so over the next couple of months you’re going to be conditioning your body to get ready to backpack. So during this time, what else do you need to be doing? Really important. Number three, you gotta plan your gear. The first thing I want to tell you is you do not, you do not need all the junk that the outfitters save. You have to have this that’s garbage. When it comes to carrying urine, you’re back less is definitely more and it’s a lot cheaper too. I get it that you want to make sure you have everything you need.
12:14 I get that, I get that. But you’ve got to remember that trade off of being comfortable during the day or comfortable at night. So what I mean, what does this mean to you? Okay, do you want to have this elegant sleeping, really fat, lush sleeping pad, really big sleeping bag, a pillow, the more comfort you want at night. Do you want a camp chair? All those things weigh and you’re going to be feeling that weight all the way during the day. So you’ve got to make that trade off. And frankly for me, at the end of the day, I’m so tired I could probably sleep on a rock. So as much as possible, I choose comfort during the day. I have put together what I think is for me the perfect packing list. That’s, you’ll find that on episode number four of this podcast, I find it’s not too much and not too little.
13:02 I use every single thing in that pack virtually every day except for hopefully not the emergency kit. But remember my packing list, I’m in warm season, temperate climate. I don’t expect to be dealing with any freezes. I can get down to like 40 degrees Fahrenheit and be fine, but I don’t, I, I’m not set up for freezing temperatures and all that. So if you do more rugged things, you’re gonna need more gear than my list. But just for basic backpacking, this summer, temperate weather, my list is a pretty darn good list. I’m going to put the list on this page as well. So you’ll have that checklist on both webpages. And remember too, you don’t have to buy gear all the time. Sometimes you can rent gear and often you can borrow gear from your friends. Remember, usually at least once a year, all gear goes on sale.
13:52 If you’ve got the time to wait, wait for the sales at the Rei, 20% off coupons or wherever it is that you’re shopping. That way you can get the best possible quality, lightweight gear at the least possible price. And to me, your most important gear purchases are your hiking boots or shoes. Check out episode 16 for some advice on that. Your tent or your tarp, whatever your sleeping cover, your you’re backpacking home. See episode 11 for that. And then I haven’t put it out yet, but I’m going to do an episode on choosing the proper sleepy bag and pad. Hopefully I’ll have that out and it’s gotta be awhile, but be on the lookout for that. When that does come out, those three items are your three most important purchases in my mind and there also tend to be the most expensive, but they’re gonna make the most difference in the comfort that you have on your trip. So if you don’t want to make a buying booboo, you want to take your time when you’re picking your footwear, your attend to your tarp and your sleeping and pad. I’ve got a couple other episodes that might be helpful for you that’ll help you figure out what goes in your pack and that is the all important emergency kit, episode number two, and how to treat your water episode number three. You need both, but the brands of what you choose aren’t as critical as other three items we just discussed.
15:14 Hey, you want to pick up some cheap use gear, make a road trip down to Neil’s gap in Georgia. That’s the first real trail town heading northbound on the Appalachian trail. So many of the backpackers that are doing the 80 through hiking, the 80 after trekking, just that first challenging 30 or so miles, they realize that maybe they didn’t need that camp chair. Maybe these boots are a little heavy and I can get away with hiking shoes and maybe I get rid of the pillow. I mean their ship of backstop, they’re depositing stuff. They realize, ah, I didn’t really need it after all. Now did it make an exception? In my age, I take this little small baby down pillow as my luxury item, but literally there’s nothing else in my pack that I don’t need. Like I said, with the hurtful exception of my emergency kit.
16:02 Yeah.
16:02 Once you have assembled all your gear, it’s really important that you test it out and know how to use it. You do not want to be beat tired. At the end of the day it’s dark and now you’re trying to set up your 10 for the first time and you can’t figure out how to do it. You’re going to be exhausted, frustrated and in tears. So you want to practice this at home and ideally even sleep in it. That way you can learn some patterns. Before my very first backpacking trip, every Tuesday night, I think it was for like six weeks, rain or shine, hot or cold. I set up my tarp in my backyard and slept in it this way. I knew where I stored my headlamp. I knew where I kept the toilet paper. I knew where all my little house, my chapstick, really important to me. I’m chapstick addict, but I knew in the dark I could reach out to know exactly where the things were cause I developed habits and that made all my future decision making about what goes where. When I set up camp, so simple, you also wanna make sure you know how to use your stove, Cook some meals on it and if you think you’re just going to eat oatmeal for breakfast every morning, I’m going to suggest that you try this at home first for a week and see how quickly you get sick of that same food. Particularly if you don’t have the luxury of adding tasty but heavy fresh fruits to your oatmeal.
17:15 I personally don’t even use a stove. I use a little plan card size. Well I guess I call it a stove is the EBIT pocket stove. It looks like a metal deck of cards that opens up in the middle and then there’s a little fuel cube that I liked that on fire and that takes about 15 minutes for it to burn out. But that’s enough time for me to boil some water to heat up my dinner, make some tea or hot chocolate. So that works great for me. There’s nothing to break. All I have to do is light the little cube. So I like that. I don’t think I’m the only one I know that uses that most everybody I know uses a gas sto, so check those out and see what works for you. But make sure you know whatever you’re using, you know how to use it and if it’s something that can break in, how to fix it.
17:55 I also want to refer you to Lucy and episode number eight where she shares some tips on nutrition in outdoor adventures. I recommend taking a re listen to that and you’re going to need some nutritious food to shore up your body for all the demands that you’re making of it, but you also want to add some fluff foods like candy corn in Lucy’s case, those are going to give you that little burst of energy. Let’s say you have a steep climb and you’ve got to get up there. Having some simple carbs are going to just fuel your energy levels just to help you get up to the top of the hill and let’s face it, if you’re going to be out for a long time backpacking, you’re going to need a lot of calories and junk food packs the most calories for the least amount of weight and it’s all about the weight baby.
18:34 When it comes to backpacking, the first few days you’re out, your appetite is not gonna change that much over normal. I made that mistake on that first section hike of the 80 I brought way too much food for that first section because I hadn’t developed my appetite yet. It takes usually for me about three days before I start getting that ravenous where I’m really churning through the calories and really burning the calories and my metabolism just goes into high gear. I find even when I’m backpacking that are not really that hungry during the day it says dinner time and get ravenous, but during the day I have to almost force myself to snack a little, just a little bit during the day just to keep my energy levels up.
19:13 The general rule of thumb is about two pounds of food per day. I said the first couple of days for me, I can usually get away with around a pound and a half and then after three or four days I need that two pounds. So your goal is going to be to take what you actually need hopefully with variety and then maybe bring an emergency days worth of food just to be on the safe side. Here’s a typical menu for me for a day breakfast. I like instant mashed potatoes and I chop up some pieces of beef jerky and a cup of tea lunch. I’ll spread a whole wheat tortilla with peanut butter sprinkled with raisins and roll that up. That can last for days without going bad on you for snacks, trail mix, but at least for me, I’ve got to bring different flavors because that two week trip, that first two week trip I had the same kind I got so sick of trail mix. I’ll bet you it was five years before I could eat it again. For breaks, I like some powdered hot chocolate or tea, maybe a snickers bar or some peanut butter crackers and dinner. I like to eat a good quality freeze dried meal, so I will splurge a little bit on that.
20:19 And again, I want to emphasize you want to give yourself as much variety as possible even though you think, oh, it’s easy, I’ll just pack the same thing. You’re going to get so sick of it. Give yourself a righty, do yourself a favor there and bring spices. They don’t weigh a whole lot and they could make the same thing tastes differently.
20:35 And there’s one great thing about backpacking your dinner, no matter how crummy looking it is, is going to be the best tasting meal that you can remember. I don’t know what it is about backpacking, but dinner tastes fabulous, so we’ve got our gear or food or planned, everything’s good. Now we’ve got to deal with the logistics and what do I mean by that? All right, you’re training, you’re preparing and all that, but you’ve got to lay out and plan all the things that go into the hike. There’s few questions you need to ask yourself. Number one, are you doing an out and back loop or do you need to figure out how to get back to your car? How are you going to do it? Is there a shuttle service available? Can you take a bus or do you have to backtrack? Number two, have you checked the weather to make sure a, you should still go and B, you had the proper gear for this adventure. If the weather is as forecasted and allow for the worst on the downside. Three. Have you notified your loved ones for your plans and I mean detailed plans like the trail names? Do they know when to expect you back and if they don’t hear from you by a certain time, when do they need to sound the alarm and to whom?
21:45 Four have you learned how to read your map and properly use a compass in case you get lost? I want you to listen to episode number six of what to do if you do get lost in the woods. My friend Jerry, the one I mentioned earlier in the story, she happened to get lost on the Appalachian trail and unfortunately she didn’t know what to do and it cost her her life. I don’t want that happening to you.
22:06 Okay?
22:06 The time to learn all these skills is before you actually head out into the wild.
22:11 Yeah.
22:11 Number five, do you know outdoor etiquette? What are you supposed to do with your use toilet paper? What are the campfire rules? How do you store your food? Be sure to listen to episode number 10 for refresher and leave no trace and other important matters that we all need to be practicing when we’re out enjoying the wild, it’s getting really crowded and so we all need to do our part.
22:32 Okay,
22:33 And finally number six, have you checked with the Rangers or whoever’s in charge of wherever it is that you’re going to see if you need any permits? What are the current fire restrictions? Are there any wildlife issues or other issues you need to be aware of? If bears are a concern, you want to check out episode number five on how to hike safely and bear country and before you head out, make sure you check in with the rangers or whomever to let the local people know what your plans are.
23:03 So now you’ve got your body ready and I’m sure you’re excited about your trip, but you need to make sure you’re also mentally ready. Remember that at some parts of many of the days you’re going to experiencing what we refer to as type two fun. If you’re not familiar with this phrase, type two fun is when it’s quite miserable at the time. But when you’re nice and safe and warm, talk back at home, reminiscing about it becomes one of your favorite memories and one of your favorite stories to tell. It could be something like climbing a brutal assent or some kind of a mishap. You know the saying the adventure really begins when something goes wrong. Are you mentally prepared to deal with the things that might go wrong? Do you know? Basic first aid. And I know you learned how to use your compass, right? So when you set out on a backpack and adventure, it’s often a fun mix of type one fun, meaning that you’re loving it that whole time. But there’s also going to be a sprinkling of type two fun, which for many of us is that last slug at the end of the day until you find that good campsite tear. Are you listing right? Remember those last three miles that come down? Shitty pole and Costa Rica, that was type two fun, right? But we were so proud of ourselves when we finally made it down that mountain.
24:18 If you follow these guidelines and have chosen inappropriate destination for your skill level, you get your body and your mind ready, your gear’s ready. It’s all tested. Your food is planned out, you’ve organized all the logistics. You were finally ready to go out in the woods and backpack and I’m so excited for you. I do believe that unplugging and spending several days in the wild is one of my favorite mental therapies and does wonders for my figure too. Once you learned to backpack, you’re going to have access to some views that you can only see if you backpack and they can be extraordinary. You’ll go to places that few people get to see in this world because it will take a new days to get there with no motor support. If you ever considered backpacking but weren’t sure that you could do it, I promise you, if you follow these steps, little by little, you’re going to be able to do it and you’re going to feel so rewarded for your efforts.
25:12 Okay?
25:12 Please share this episode with your friends that you think might want to expand their hiking repertoire by adding backpack into the mix. And as always, let me know what you think. You can always reach me@kittatactivetraveladventures.com. Next up on the companion active travel adventures podcast or destination podcast. We’re going to Bolivia, and this is a really cool episode. We were having so much fun. We went long, so I actually turned into two episodes. Can’t wait to share that one with you. And then the following week we’ll be back on the show, the adventure travel show podcast. I’m going to talk about the different ways to start a fire, another key skill that you need to know whenever you’re in the outdoors. So until then, thanks again for listening. This is kit parks adventure on.