I was supposed to take a friend for two nights backpacking in Henry Coe last week, but when she backed out because of the rainy weather, I decided not to go on my own (being cold and damp with a friend to distract me is one thing, being cold and damp on my own on a winter night is quite another for me, plus my currently traveling-out-of-town S.O. frowns on me bp’ing on my own, particularly when he’s not around). But I’d SO been looking forward to getting out and trying out a number of untested items, so this week I decided I would try something that would give me some of the benefits of an overnight out.
I loaded up my pack (with everything but extra meals) and took off on a 12-mile day hike yesterday afternoon, about 15 minutes from home in the local water utility company’s watershed. This is a place I’ve fantasized many times about stealth camping in, but have ultimately decided that I’d rather forego a night of guilty pleasure rather than potentially lose my watershed dayhiking permit privileges forever. I did take a couple of side trips off the beaten path that weren’t marked as closed areas, but upon reviewing the GPS track, I think they were (closed to public) – so I got to discover a few new places. And it was a totally gorgeous day, with the hills FINALLY (!!!) green…only 3 or 4 months behind schedule. Mine was the only car at the trailhead, so it actually felt a bit more like a backpack trip not seeing anyone on the trail.
Then I came home, pitched my MYOG rain poncho in the back yard as a tarp and set up the MYOG bivy with pad and quilt, went inside, had dinner, took a shower, made some phone calls and did computer stuff, practiced some music I needed to learn, then went back outside and slept under the tarp. HA! Not your normal backpacking evening, to be sure. I don't think I can post those activities in Delmar's thread about what to do on winter evenings in camp…
Though it wasn't a "real" backpacking day, I still was actually able to try out and find out a lot of things that should make future trips smoother – and enjoy myself in the bargain.
Firsts for me:
1) a sub-10 lb base weight of equipment I can be comfortable in camp with, at least in non-freezing temps; I’ve done 10 lbs before, but not comfortably (I am a cold wimp, possibly with borderline Raynaud’s)
2) Used Gaia GPS to track my path (yeah, I’m late getting on the GPS bandwagon)
3) Used SMD Essence pack, generously given to me by Mark Hurd (I wrote to him to ask him some construction questions and he offered to give it to me!!!! Thanks again, Mark!)
4) Slept in a bivy
5) Pitched and slept under a tarp (actually MYOG sil poncho)
6) Played with Google Sky Map app a little, and identified Jupiter and Arcturus
7) Slept in my backyard (not really relevant to BPL, but still…)
Things I learned:
1) I seem to have a problem with my expensive clip-on sunglasses; whenever I take them off to take a picture or hike in shade, I tend to misplace them. I had to go back for them twice yesterday. The third time I stuck them half-a$$edly into a shoulder strap pouch, and they apparently fell out on the trail, but I didn’t discover it till a couple of miles later, so I’ll need to go back soon to see if I can find them; I think they came out when I bent over to look at a rock with fossilized seashells in it. I need to find a solution to this, perhaps just taking cheap drugstore clip-ons when I hike. Either that, or rigidly adopting a policy of always putting them in a case in a backpack pocket, but I’m not too good about breaking bad habits.
2) I really like shoulder strap pockets! There was one on the Essence that Mark sent me, and I used the inner part for my camera and the outer part for a handkerchief (essential for me this time of year as the pollen starts to bloom)…and my ill-fated clip-ons, once.
3) I need to add loops to the zipper pulls on the hipbelt pockets of the Essence, the tabs are hard to find. One-handed opening of hipbelt pockets is more important to me than I thought, and the loops will enable that.
5) The Essence is quite comfortable, and it is VERY nice to hike with a total pack weight so low, even when I’m somewhat out of shape. 
6) My cellphone apparently needs to have data turned on in order for Gaia to work, even though the program is supposed to work “offline”…took me a while to figure that out.
7) My Golite quilt is plenty warm when I use a decently insulative pad and sleep inside a bivy sack. I used it at Coe a couple of years ago, probably identical temp and wind conditions, and froze my tush off all night (sleeping in a Duomid on a POE pad).
8) A bivy sack seems to be one good answer to my dislike of wind on my face when I’m trying to sleep; pulling my face inside was still comfortable and not at all stuffy as long as the face opening let air in.
9) I wish I’d used different color cords for the upper and lower drawstrings of the face opening of the bivy, to make it easier to know which one I want to pull. On the plus side, I found out that the propore fabric breathes quite well; there was no dampness inside the bivy as far as I could tell.
10) My new Acu-Rite thermometer is not entirely reliable; I believe that it was 48F at 5:30am when I read it, but I don’t believe that the nighttime minimum was 28F!!! There’s just no way that it dropped below the mid 40’s last night. It was windy, but thermometers don’t register wind chill, right? Anyone have any ideas how that might have happened? It doesn't seem to be inaccurate otherwise.
11) When packing for my non-trip, I realized that I STILL have not streamlined my toiletries kit. I need to do that in a way that lightens the load and makes things accessible and easily found, which may involve giving up using the small zippered toiletry bag that my mom made for me about 25 years ago (sniff), since it doesn’t hold everything I want.
12) Yeah, my arch was letting me know it was sore last night, but it doesn't seem any worse this morning than it has been on sedentary days, so apparently I didn't do my plantar fasciitis any harm.
Here's hoping my friend and I can do the trip in Coe soon, before the water and green depart!
