52 pieces of adventure advice

27. Only do one stupid thing at a time.

30. If you’re going to go ultra-light, make sure you have ultra-experience.

Great advice, but sometimes you don’t know something’s stupid unless you’ve already experienced it :-)

Drink before you feel thirsty

Drink when thirsty

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/313389.php

10. Don’t expect a great night of sleep while camping—expect a series of naps.

Reminds me of a friend who liked to say “I slept great many, many times last night.”

“Going one mile an hour with zero breaks is faster than going two miles an hour and stopping to catch your breath every five minutes.“

#27 and #43

11. When you wake up wondering if you should get out of your sleeping bag/tent to pee or if you can get back to sleep without getting up to pee … just get up and go pee.

48. If you always eat your best food first, you’ll always be eating your best food.

27 is Only do one stupid thing at a time. —Shannon Walton

43 is It’s easier to stay out than get out. —Mark Twain

it took me a bit to figure out 48

Drink when thirsty may be true if someone is inactive vs active.    I’m pretty certain I’m putting away and releasing more than 8 glasses a day if I’m hiking.  1 liter every two hours as a general rule.  If I’m home, there’s no way I’m drinking before I’m thirsty, unless it’s beer perhaps.

I’m also in drink-when-thirsty camp, no matter the weather.

If I try to “stay ahead of it” I end up pissing like the proverbial racehorse and wasting it. My thirst-meter works quite well and I take a sip when I need one.

People are different, and I know me better than anyone else. On some winter days I might drink a liter or less, but I am hyper-vigilant about not overheating…. I even made up a word for it, ‘hygro-thermostasis’

Which brings us to #53…. There is no excuse for overheating in the winter.

Hard to believe but I’ve seen it so many times it’s laughable.

I really like the advice, “Pick your goal first, then your partner.” That way you are less likely to get a mis-match with the partner/goal relationship.

Last week I backpacked the Grand Canyon, North Rim to South Rim, with a good partner who picked me after reading months of my backpacking comments on forums at his “Long Range Hunting” website.

And it worked. We balanced each other out, two experienced backpacking geezers, Len 71 and me 74. He was a bit slower on the down hill sections due to knee problems and a bit faster on the uphills due to better conditioning. But we both made accommodations to each other. So yes, a partner’s physical attributes are important but so are his/her personality traits.

#1 – except in Alaska in the summer! I don’t start carrying a headlamp until mid August.

#10 – seriously? Unless I’m in a noisy public campground I sleep soooo much better when camping. After a hard day’s hike, and a bowl of hot soup, curled up in a warm bag with a gentle breeze blowing or the patter of light rain hitting the tent, that’s the best sleep ever!

I would change—

“The best place to keep extra batteries for your headlamp is in another headlamp.” — to

The best place to keep extra batteries is in your ditty bag.

And—“Ounces equal pounds, and pounds equal pain.”

I would change to:  ” . . . and pounds equal pain . . . Unless you want to stay out without interruption for 3 weeks and know that the 40 lbs of food will give you the freedom to do so.”

The more you know, the less you need. —Yvon Chouinard

I would change to:  The more you know, the more stuff you may want to take.

you could put your spare headlamp with spare batteries in your ditty bag.

lots of combinations of batteries and headlamps you can do in case there are multiple failures

I carry a spare ditty bag because you can’t be too careful.

A variation on “only do one stupid thing at a time” that my brother always told me…

“If you’re gonna be stupid, be smart stupid.”

got to the wrong forum somehow

Re nighttime pees, probably all of us know what Russ W refers to, especially us golden-agers. In a flash of insight I lit on a solution that allows you to stand right by or even over your sleeping bag to pee. Supermarkets sell packets of polyethylene ice cube bags. They have a built-in sort-of funnel that prevents missing the target. One holds a bit over a cup of pee. Being thick they don’t tear. And the pièce de résistance: there’s a built-in tie that firmly closes it when your done. My sleeping bag has an inside pocket at about chest level and that’s where I keep the things.