ET's Info-Stew

My first backpacking trip was in 1997 to Buck Island in Desolation Wilderness with Jenny (my girlfriend at the time) and her dad, Bill. I've enjoyed backpacking ever since even though Jenny doesn't go with us any more. After my second trip (to Rockbound Lake in Desolation Wilderness, 1999) I had learned enough to start making changes to my gear. I was no longer interested in carrying a 55 pound backpack. I also started to keep a trail journal.

The next year (2000) we went to the Lost Coast Trail, my first through hike. It was a week-long 24 mile trek right along the beach from the Mattole River to Shelter Cove. At that point I began to get serious about Ultralight Backpacking. I read and used many ideas for Ray Jardine's Beyond Backpacking book. I sewed a rucksack backpack that used a slot to put in my camp chair for support, but it was poorly constructed. Essentially, all the weight shifted to the bottom of the back and it was uncomfortable. So I decided to make another pack for my next trip. The next pack was much better designed with two compartments that seperated (so the top could be a day pack). This minimized shifting. It used straps to hold in the camp chair for structure support. It worked okay and I ended up using it again.

In 2001 Bill and I went to the John Muir Wilderness for a through hike from North Lake to Pine Creek, a 26-mile trek in the high country. I had my new pack and another hand-made item: my sleeping quilt. The quilt was wide enough to cover my body, but did not surround it like a sleeping bag. It was made of two layers of 1" Primaloft inside a 0.8 oz. sil-nylon shell. It was the worst sleep I ever had. The next year I decided to upgrade my sleeping bag.

After the nightmare with extreme ultralight backpacking I began to balance things back out by adding a little more weight. In 2002 Jenny joined us on a trip into Chewing Gum Lake in Emigrant Wilderness. It was an enjoyable trip in a nice area that I would gladly do again. But I still wasn't happy with my gear. I decided to go a little further and move slightly more toward comfort.

In 2004 Bill and I went on two trips. The first was to Rockbound Lake in Desolation Wilderness, where I had the single most tiring day in my life. We went to look for a geocache on the Wilderness boundary and did about 5 miles of bushwacking through brush and steep slopes to get there. I was dead tired by the time we got there. On the way back, I was doing everything I could to keep my legs from collapsing from exhaustion. Later that year we went to the Trinity-Alps Wilderness up to East Boulder Lake. That was a much easier trip, but we left a day early because I got bored and because the day before we left was windy, very cold, and uncomfortable. The one word that would come to Bill's mind on that trip is cows. I had added a lot of my gear for the trips that year. I got a new backpack, a daypack, a new stove, an inflatable sleeping pad and some other things.

In 2005 I planned on taking three backpacking trips. In May I went with Carl on his first trip to Lake Eleanor just inside Yosemite Wilderness. We planned another trip, this time with Bill, hoping to go up around Lassen Volcanic National Park. Unfortunately, it had suffered major fire damage last year and would have been really ugly. We looked for other places to go, but apparently this year the snow pack stayed for much longer than normal. Lakes at 6,500 feet were still closed due to snow in the beginning of July. This means we had to far fewer choices for our second trip. We ended up going back to Lake Eleanor for a scheduled four nights, which eventually went down to three. Bill and I also planned on a third trip in September, possibly to Oregon. But I was running low on vacation time for the year, so I couldn't go.

In 2006, we planned on two trips. The first was an over-nighter to Rancheria Falls in Yosemite, and it was Mike's first trip. It was a very tough hike in for Mike and Carl, compounded by the fact that I made a wrong turn and sent us uphill for nearly a mile before I realized the error. This was a chance to test out new gear, introduce Mike to Backpacking, get into some better shape, and visit an area I wanted to visit before leaving California. The second trip was a return to Emigrant Wilderness and Chewing Gum Lake for three nights. Overall this trip was absolutely remarkable, aside from the ridiculous swarms of mosquitoes.