In choosing my armaments for this adventure, I found reading other hikers' gear reviews VERY helpful. I don't think I'm any more of a true backpacker now than I was 2668 miles ago, but five months was definitely plenty of time to find out which bits of my gear would take a beating, which would survive if I treated 'em right, and which were a perpetual source of anxiety. I hereby bequeath to the next generation of hikers the benefit of my opinionated opinion, broken down into manageably-sized blog posts. Let's start with The Big Three.
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| Mariposa at the top of Forester Pass |
Pros: Lightweight, affordable, and a helluva lot tougher than it looks. I was very pleased by division of space--the shape and variety of pockets attest that the people at GG pay very close attention to what their customers need. Overall volume, too, was just right--a seven-day stretch between resupplies meant my pack was maxed out, as it should be. A bear canister fits snugly, but it does fit.
I liked the removable back pad, which gave the pack a bit more structure, insulated my hydration bladder from, well, me, and pulled out to make a good seat, or the extra quarter of my sleeping pad when I needed it. (I actually lost the standard-issued grey back pad at Walker Pass and replaced it with a piece of Z-rest at Kennedy Meadows.)
You can't drag the Mariposa across rough surfaces (like squeezing between barbed-wire fence posts, or scooting over deadfall)--the material isn't suited to that kind of abuse--but it's surprisingly durable, and except for a few snags, it stood up to the thousand natural shocks of a thru-hike much better than I expected.
Cons: Just ain't very comfortable when it's full. I tried really, really hard to keep my base weight down, but it didn't seem like it was enough, the food and water consistently put it over the edge. There was never a point at which my pack rode so easily that it "disappeared"--with four or five days of food and a couple liters of water it was uncomfortable, and with a bear canister and seven days of food it was frankly miserable. Maybe I'm a weenie--maybe no pack is comfortable when full--but I adjusted and tinkered every which way, and invariably felt like the one thing I wanted was more padding in the shoulder straps. The weight never seemed to distribute correctly; my shoulders screamed clear through the Sierras. And by the end of the trip, my pack was coming apart at the seams in a number of places.
Bottom line: The Mariposa got me there, but if I were ever to thru-hike again (let me go ahead and register my intention NEVER to thru-hike again), I'd get something else. The Ospreys still look like heavyweights, the GoLites have a reputation for going to pieces after the first thousand miles, and Ray Jardine is still a lunatic, but I'd be game to try out a ULA pack. Maybe the extra ounces manifest in a better fit--and in the long run, that would be worth the weight. Unfortunately, I don't know of a single on-the-ground outfitter where hikers might try a few different ultralight packs before making a selection. You pick one off the internet and hope for the best.
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| Western Mountaineering UltraLite (blue one on the left) drying out in North Bend |
Sleeping Bag - Western Mountaineering UltraLite 20* Down Bag
Pros: Unimpeachably warm, lightweight, compresses to the size of a soccer ball.
Cons: Expensive. Often too warm. A little spindrift, but no more than you might expect as a result of cramming the poor thing into a small bag every single day. And you must be vigilant about keeping your feathers immaculately dry.
Bottom line: It's down--pros and cons both stem from this fact. But it's the BEST down, so it maximizes the returns on the unavoidable inconveniences. A sleeping bag is not the place to cut corners.
Overall, it was a hot summer, and I firmly believe I would've traveled comfortably with the 35* version of my bag--simply adding wool sleeping clothes in the Sierra--up until the last two weeks of my hike. (At that point I was so cold all day that having this warm, dry ace up my sleeve was pretty essential.) I reckon it's up to the individual to gauge the trends in the weather and decide whether to brave a few slightly chilly nights, or buy a bag that's a little overkill in the name of covering all possible scenarios.
I'll probably never use this sleeping bag again, so I'm planning to get it cleaned and sell it on GearTrade.
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| TarpTent in the desert |
Pros: Lightweight, affordable, sturdy, versatile, bucks the wind, sheds the rain, keeps the bugs out, easy to set up, and very spacious.
Cons: It's not a tent, guys; it's a tarp with training wheels, so it's not freestanding--I didn't actually find this a problem, but I know a lot of people who swapped out TarpTents for Big Agnes tents because of this.
Sometimes the square footage it occupied posed a problem, particularly if I was camping with other people.
On the last day I learned that it is undeniably a three-season tent; I had to whack the snow off the roof a few times in the night, since the accumulation was causing the ceiling to sag alarmingly.
Bottom line: This was the one piece of gear that I felt I got absolutely right. I love my TarpTent. During my traverse of the Mojave, a hurricane-force windstorm descended on the desert, and I carefully pitched it very low and taut, but grimly expecting to find it crashing around my ears in the middle of the night. It did not. It stood. That day I named my tent Elton--still standing. (PFffffffftttt, ha ha ha ha ha ha!)
A lot of hikers were content to cowboy camp unless weather threatened--I pitched my tent nearly every night. Call me crazy, but I just enjoyed sleeping in a tent, away from the biting ants. So I got pretty good at pitching it, and I'd have thought this was a no-brainer, but I saw an awful lot of feebly flapping Contrails, Hexamids, and Lunar Solos out there. Then the owners had the temerity to complain that their shelters were poorly designed. I figure if you can't be bothered to learn how stake out one of these creations properly--which means sometimes taking it down and doing it over, boo hoo--you might want to go ahead and get a freestanding tent.
I do suggest getting more stakes than Henry Shires provides--I carried four titanium shepherd-crook stakes from Gossamer Gear--one for each side, one for the drain-line at the foot (to keep rain from pooling in the center), and one extra.
Elton suffered a few puncture wounds along the way, probably a result of draping it over any handy tree to dry. A little tenacious tape took care of them.
My one quibble with the design is the velcro door, which was tricky to close from the inside, and loudly alerted everyone in camp when I had to climb out of my tent to pee in the middle of the night.
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