Dumbest thing you ever carried

[chris smead]

My first backpacking trip I hiked in:
-a dozen jumbo sized handwarmers.
-hatchet
-air soft gun
-frisbee
-tube of fire gel
-large blue tarp
-thick long rope
-hand crank flashlight
-pliers
-wool blanket
-MRE's

That same trip my brother hiked in shampoo and conditioner. Full Costco sized bottles.
And a fresh T-shirt for everyday.

For a single night I had 55lbs.
My brother had 70lbs.
I'm so ashamed…

[Nick Gatel]

When I first saw this thread, I knew everyone was going to share some heavy item they carried. I don’t have anything heavy to share. Not because I am the consummate light hiker, but well – I am too lazy to carry a bunch of heavy stuff.

Then I thought — how many of us have carried things that put us in danger?

I did that once – brought something dangerous. On a backpacking trip with my son 6 years ago I wore my wedding ring. Now as those who work around machinery know, a finger ring is dangerous. Should it catch on a piece of equipment, one could lose a finger. And during a fall while backpacking your ring could catch on a rock or shrub and separate your ring finger from your hand.

And on this trip I did slip and fall as we were traversing a steep hill off trail, painfully spraining my knee. But the wedding ring did not come into play as a threat to my well-being during the fall. that happened some time later.

I must share that the threat and danger to my well-being is my continuing struggle to understand women.

Some background about the wedding ring and how it posed a threat to my life.

You see, it started when my wife and I were about to get married; we went shopping for wedding rings. Having been married once before, I understood the irrational symbolic fixation women seem to have about rings. So while my wife-to-be was looking at multi-caret stones, none of which she was going to get; I pulled the salesman aside for a discussion. We were at Zales, because I knew they had stores in about a zillion cities. I asked the salesman to show me the basic inexpensive men’s wedding band, the one that they would always have in stock.

Yes, they had such a thing.

I knew that in case I lost the wedding band, I needed one that could be easily replaced no matter where in the US I was. And to my future wife’s protests, we purchased this inexpensive model for me.

And as I knew would eventually happen, I lost the ring. I didn’t know I had lost it. One night the wife noticed my ring finger was naked. In a panic, she raced down to Zales to get a replacement. She told me I was lucky they still had the exact model in stock. So after a few sessions of psychological amputation by my wife, we settled back into wedded bliss.

About 6 months later I found the original ring at the bottom of my computer bag. I came home and proudly showed her both rings. Now her response was completely unexpected – it took me completely by surprise.

She stared at both rings for a while, and then looking deep into my eyes asked,

“Which ring was blessed by the priest?”

Duh!

Dumbfounded, I tried, using my most sincere voice and holding up one of the rings saying, “Why of course this one! You don’t think I take these kind of things lightly, do you?” I lied.

She told me I was full of crap.

So from that day forward I was careful with the ring. And I never took it off, even when backpacking.

So back to the backpacking trip with my son…

The first night we were making camp, I was in serious pain, and while preparing dinner, I noticed my ring finger was – NAKED!!

The next day we backtracked a little bit looking for the ring, but to no avail. I knew it would be futile, so we continued on with our trip. When we got home, I rummaged through all her jewelry boxes and found the “non-blessed” ring. I have been wearing it ever since. She doesn't know I lost the blessed ring and have been wearing the "non-blessed" ring for 6 years.

Now when I go backpacking, I take the ring off and leave it in the truck and put it back on when I get back to the truck.

This thread reminded me that I need to go to Zales and get another “non-blessed” ring and put it back in the jewelry box, because sooner or later I am going to lose this blessed ring on my finger.

To the OP: Thanks for starting this thread, you may have saved my life.

[Owen McMurrey]

Guess it doesn't have to weigh much to be a heavy burden!

[Jim Milstein]

It was the smallest spinet I could find. The irony is that I can't even play the piano. I was planning to learn in my idle hours. There were no idle hours due to slow rate of travel.

I learned from this. Now I carry a balalaika. For long trips, a kazoo.

[John Higgins]

i carried smart water, water bottle, it was winter time and that sucker was frozen solid in under 30 min yea it was full and frozen solid. i carried that sucker along way to keep in leave no trace practice. i had planed to drink the litter of water before it froze, but never would have thought that would happen in under 30 min. solid. a solid brick of ice that's the dumbest thing i carried on a winter trip

[David Thomas]

John: so on a snow-camping trip, you brought your own ice?

[Hikin’ Jim]

When I first got out of the army, I bought a used North Face tent. It was a 2 person, 4 season tent. I'm sure it weighed seven pounds. I used to carry it on solo trips. I also bought a synthetic sleeping bag. It had to weigh at least 3 pounds (yipes). There's 10 pounds right there (eyes bug out). Good thing I was young and strong back then.

HJ
Adventures In Stoving
Hikin' Jim's Blog

[Clayton Black]

Can goods into the jungle. Lots and lots of can goods. Having so many can goods to give away did make a life long friend from a native to the area though. My shoulders still burn thinking about the chaffing.

[Eric Blumensaadt]

I read about a guy (NOT me) that carried a plastic pink flamingo the entire Applachian Trail and set it up by his tent or AT shelter every night. Now THAT'S class.

(Talk about "campy".) Pun intended.

[Adam Kilpatrick]

Wedding rings. Definitely dangerous things, Nick.

When I cycled to Sweden, I lost a bit of weight. I was engaged at the time, but a few months before the trip I reproposed to my fiance with a second ring for her, and a ring for me. I would wear it from then on, as far as I was concerned I was taken.

Anyway it didn't take long for me to lose enough weight (not that I was fat, but riding from sun-up to sun-down every day through Africa, well…) for the ring to easily come off my finger. So from then on I carried it around my neck on some cord. That worked well. However, it didn't help with warding off the opposite sex as a band on your finger usually does.

……

As for really stupid things carried while walking, once on a field trip I picked up and carried the leg of a dead Emu. It was awesome! Still had all the skin on the outside, kinda dehydrated in the desert sun. The Emu had broken its leg just above the ankle, compound fracture, bone sticking out, but had kept walking on it clearly for a while before it succumbed. The broken bone end was quite worn down. Rather morbid. After a few kilometres my companions made me throw it away. I don't know what they were thinking!

[Lori P]

"I read about a guy (NOT me) that carried a plastic pink flamingo the entire Applachian Trail and set it up by his tent or AT shelter every night. Now THAT'S class.

(Talk about "campy".) Pun intended."

I have read several trip reports in several locations that feature pink flamingos…

this is one more recent:http://www.adkhighpeaks.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22572

This past weekend, one of the guys who came on my overnight trip brought a huge Primus cook kit, a GSI skillet, bowls for four, enough food for ten people, and everything was neatly packed in hard sided food storage containers. Thank goodness I changed destinations – bear lockers are so much easier for newbies than bear canisters.

[Hikin’ Jim]

Didn't catch their names, but these two gentleman had an "interesting" (ahem) approach to gear selection and packing.

And I'm all for canister stoves, but…

HJ
Adventures In Stoving
Hikin' Jim's Blog

[Brian Mix]

Not dumb but I'm certainly not a stranger to carrying heavier gear. Trail maintainence…

[Grant P]

I carried a full 100oz camelbak and a steripen everyday for about a week when we were crossing streams about every mile…never again. For work, I sometimes need plant keys to identify plants I didn't know at one point in time I had a 600 page book that wasn't even for the area.

Not me but a Forest Inventory crew shared a campsite with use and they were a bunch of tricksters and had a lot of fun doing otherwise boring work. One day they got back to camp and whispered they had been sneaking rocks into their buddy's pack. When their buddy sat down he mentioned his pack seemed to get heavier throughout the day. He soon discovered rocks of all shapes and sizes in every nook and cranny of his pack.

[Mike W]

On one of my recent trips, I was setting up camp in the evening and when I reached into my pack for my much loved NeoAir Short pad I was shocked to find that I had a NeoAir Short AND a NeoAir Large in my pack. I'm very careful when I pack my gear so I am still stumped at how I managed to pack both pads (the large NeoAir is rarely used). That's an extra 18 oz.!

The irony of this was that my son was with me (we don't share gear or tent) and I didn't tell him that I had stupidly packed an extra sleep mat. Upon arising the next morning my son was growling about having a bad night and he said his pad had leaked and kept him awake all night because he had to keep blowing it up. I said, here you can use this and tossed him my extra pad. He looked at me with a puzzled look and said why do you have an extra sleep mat? I told him I thought he might have trouble with his pad and that was my only explanation, nothing more said. He got to carry the extra pad for the rest of the trip :)

[Adam Kilpatrick]

The pack in my avatar pic is worth over $100k. Now I know we are all pretty keen to blow money on our packs and contents, but that's just taking it to a whole 'nother stupid level :-)

[Jason Teckam]

Yep, every breakfast and dinner over a 4 night trip had some canned component.

Dinty Moore beef stew, corn beef hash, baked beans (to go with the hot dogs and buns)…

but hey, we divided the food up among 3 people so we were all equally stoopid ;-)

[Arla Hile]

I long ago stopped packing things like a bottle of wine or a loaf of bread, but things I saw this summer along various Sierra trails:
– plenty of chairs, some of them not even light by chair standards
– a fifth of Maker's Mark, I know because it was still in the glass bottle
– a full-size axe
– super-heavy sandals for water crossings
– a cat (carried in his arms, when I looked questioningly, he said "usually she rides on top of the pack, but she's tired today")

I think the cat was my all-time winner!

[Anonymous]

"The pack in my avatar pic is worth over $100k."

Looks suspiciously like pictures I've seen of those Soviet backpack tactical nukes that went missing right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. You sure it's only worth 100K? I'll bet there are some folks out there who would be willing to take it off your hands for a lot more than that. ;0))

[Adam Kilpatrick]

Haha, probably more complicated than a tactical nuke!

Its a spectrometer, used for collecting reflected wavelengths of light off materials (eg plants, soil, rocks, in the field) so that we can train airborne hyperspectral imagery with the spectra later on.

I used to think that carrying a flamethrower into battle WW2 style was a pretty suicidal thing to do. Tactical nuke in a backpack? Yeah, I'm guessing you weren't picked out to survive that war.

[John Almond]

It's a toss-up here. Either my ~3 lb bag of gaming dice (I do tabletop RPGs and war games with a few friends; some of 'em require quite a few dice at once) or my combo lock for my gym locker.

See, my current >32* pack is my $30 beater 35L that does around-town duty as well…so occasionally stuff gets forgotten in the bottom when I'm packing in an hurry.

Fortunately, I didn't carry either of those more'n eight miles total (easy weekenders with friends).

Duh…*off to wear my dunce cap for the rest of the day*…

[Nick Gatel]

Another dumb thing I brought was a smart phone. No cell reception, the map was too small, took crappy pictures, and had no other value. I do leave the phone in my truck to call my wife and let her know the monthly life insurance premiums are of no use either.

[Anonymous]

"Its a spectrometer, used for collecting reflected wavelengths of light off materials (eg plants, soil, rocks, in the field) so that we can train airborne hyperspectral imagery with the spectra later on."

Elegant use of technology. Sort of a calibration exercise? Probably considerably more elegant that a nuke designed some 30 or more years ago. I'll bet it weighs less, too.

"I used to think that carrying a flamethrower into battle WW2 style was a pretty suicidal thing to do."

Speaking as a lifelong member of the International Brotherhood of Confirmed Cowards, going into combat with just about any weapon is suicidal.

"Tactical nuke in a backpack? Yeah, I'm guessing you weren't picked out to survive that war."

+1 It would take a special type of person if that were the case. As I understand it they were to be carried by Soviet Spetznaz forces, placed near NATO command and control centers, air bases, munitions depots, etc, and set to detonate after the Spetznaz had exfiltrated. There was quite a bit of uneasiness in Western military circles in the early 90's when then Soviet defense minister Lebed publically admitted they could not account for about 100 of them. The fear was that they had fallen into the hands of Bin Laden's merry men, or some other group hostile to the West. They had plenty of people who did not worry about surviving, as we later found out the hard way. Apparently that was not the case, and by now the warheads have probably decayed to the point where they would not achieve critical mass if detonated. If that were the case, a terrorist who schlepped one laboriously up to a NATO base would probably agree it was the dumbest thing he ever carried while backpacking. ;0)

[Kelly G]

Regular cotton night clothes. That was before I knew about death-cotton, and before I knew how cold I run at night. I need warmer clothing than that.

A whole tube of toothpaste. Granted it was a smaller 6 ounce tube. Now I carry either dots or a tiny 1-inch tube that a friend got in Beijing.

Kelly

[Kate Moody]

@John Almond,
Funny that you mention tabletop RPGs, as I was thinking of designing a simple RPG (fewer rules, fewer dice and designed so character sheets could fit on the back sides of rite in the rain small pads) that had the RPG element as well as a real world element. The map would be the topo map of the area that was being backpacked, and to do certain things, real world discoveries had to be made the next day. Example, to do a resurrection spell, one of the players (not the "dead" one) might have to find "the" "Spring of Eternally clear water". Ie, they would have to find a clear water source before the fallen character could be revived. I would think this approach would be rather fun for the more leisurely trips, and could prove to add more creativity to gameplay.
Also, glad that this girl isn't the only person left who likes DnD or other tabletop RPGs. :)

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