Tully Trail - central MA

Gear list:  (*new)

Primary clothing:

 Patagonia capilene t-shirt

 Patagonia RPS rock pants

 Uv buff *

 Injinji wool socks

 Altra superior 2 shoes

Pack

 Gossamer gear gorilla 40L

 2x medium stuff sacks

 Cuben fiber zipper pouch

Extra clothing

 Patagonia super alpine shell

 EMS hiker rain pants

 Patagonia R3 fleece

 Darn tough wool socks

Shelter/sleep

 Tarptent notch + footprint *

 Ems velocity 35 degree bag

 Bag liner

 Gossamer gear inflatable pillow

 Sea to summit comfort light pad *

Water

 2l hydration pack

 Sawyer mini filter

 16oz sawyer bag

 Straw for filter

 Syringe for filter

General gear

 GSI soloist cook set

 GSI spice missile

 Pot coozy

 Emberlit fireant

 Firesteel with striker

 Petroleum cotton balls

 Gear repair tape

 Trowel

 Tp

Goal zero guide 10 adventure set

Sawyer bug repellent *

Ambit3 vertical

Small fixed blade knife

Suunto clipper compass

Sea to summit map case *

Trash bag

Medical kit-backpacking loadout

Book

BD spot headlamp with extra batteries

BD Alpine carbon Z trekking poles

Pencil and logbook

Food:

 1.5 cups trail mix

 2x munk pack apple oatmeal

 1 instant coffee

 1 mre instant cappuccino

 Homemade unstuffed peppers

 2x maple waffles

 Mountain house breakfast

 Mesh sack and cordage for bear bag

   

Weight without water: ~18 lb

I decided that I needed to get away for a while on a backpacking trip over the weekend.  It was first solo trip, and actually just my second backpacking trip ever.  I just got some new gear, like a tent for solo backpacking and some new trekking poles (mostly for winter use).  So I was eager to get out and try them, and also take a weekend off from my training routine for my upcoming ultra.

This was a good time testing out some gear and trying new things. I loaded a bit heavier than if I were doing a longer trip since I knew it was a fairly short loop. This gave me the chance to try things and see what worked and what didn't. For the most part I am happy with what I brought, even though there is much room for optimizing such as lighter rain gear. The thing that I didn't like however what how I loaded the pack.

Day one was a late start, getting on trail a bit before noon. I checked in at the ranger station at the Tully Lake Campground and then was off. I took time early in the trip to make the side trip over to the ledge lookout, about 1.5 miles into the trip. The view was nice and is worth checking out. After about 2 miles in I had the trail to myself. Even in the first couple miles I only saw a few other people, which was nice. For the majority of the day I was alone. The only section a significant number of people is around the Royalston falls shelter. There is a parking lot nearby, and a significant number of people made the short trip while I was cooking dinner.

As to cooking dinner, I used the fireant as a biomass stove. The last time I used it didn't go all that great, however this time the available deadfall worked well. It was easy to get going and stayed lit throughout cooking dinner. For dinner I brought a home made dehydrated meal. This is my first time making one, and it mostly turned out well. I added a touch too much tomato sauce and also brought too much. I think the 'regular' size version would be fine, with some sort of side or desert added.

I got to try setting up camp with the new tent. It was a bit tempting to stay in the shelter since I have never done that, but that will be a different trip, with a bug net. The new tent is my first non free standing tent, and uses two trekking poles as support. It wasn't hard to setup, though it did take some fiddling with to get right. I probably should read through the instructions yet again before the next time I go go out. Even so it was setup fairly quickly.

After dinner and setting up camp I had plenty of time to read. This was weight that was very much worth it. This leg of the trip was really short, and even after setting up camp and eating there was plenty of daylight to kill. I got plenty of reading in, and it helped me settle into bed. I think light books might need to become a regular on my trips.

That night I got to try out the new sleeping pad. It was really comfy as I was laying down reading. However, it did slide a good deal in the tent, so I will have to put a few lines of sealgrip on the floor of the tent to prevent this in the future. It was still a major upgrade over my z-fold pad, though also heavier.

After a long nights sleep I woke up a bit late Monday morning. I had figured that I would naturally get up when I do to go to work, which is around 5, however I slept in until after 730. There went the idea of an early start. Breaking down camp was quick, and took maybe 10 minutes to get everything down and repacked. I then had an MRE cappuccino with cold water. This tasted surprisingly great. I think I prefer it to the normal instant coffee that I bring in winter.

After packing up and having my morning caffeine I hit the trail. I decided that instead of making the dehydrated breakfast that I brought that instead I would eat the snacks from the day before that I hadn't finished. This saved a good amount of time in the morning, though a full meal would have been better if I had woken up on time.

The second day of hiking was nice and I had the trail to myself. The trail is generally well marked, except for a few sections of road. I always hate those areas since I am a bit paranoid about missing the turn off, and wanting to be off the road ASAP. At the end of the trip I missed the turn where the Tully Trail does into the parking lot for the park before following the lake back to the campground. There is another trail, the Tully Lake Loop, which is also yellow blazed and follows the other way around the lake back to the campground. I ended up taking that, crossing the bridge and entering the woods by the disk golf course. This side trip had some nice views, and is worth doing but I wasn't expecting to tack on another ~5 miles to the day. Between that and a late start to the day I got out about 2 hours later than I had planned on.

This trip was a good bit of experience trying new things and seeing what works and doesn’t work for me.  For the most part my gear is lighter weight, although I don’t strive for crazy light weight like some people.  Personally I won’t sacrifice some things like a reasonable medical kit or a real knife just to hit some pack weight.  That being said my pack was heavier than ideal for this trip, though I tolerated it given the short distance and last minute planning.  This lead to a number of things that worked well and a number that didn’t

The first big annoyance for me was the choice to take the 16oz soft bottle that came with my Sawyer mini water filter.  On the trail I use a 2L bladder with the filter inline, however this isn’t ideal in camp.  The last trip I did, as well as when camping at Baxter I had a 1L soft bottle that the filter can screw onto.  This is much better around camp while cooking and hydrating.  I think it makes sense to be a standard setup since the 1L platy weighs just 35g. Not very heavy for much more convenience.  It also gives me the option for more water in situations where that makes sense.  

I took my solar charging kit on this trip, which I don’t normally while hiking.  It usually comes on car camping trips where I am setting up camp to go climbing or hiking in a specific area.  It is a reasonably heavy bit of kit at about 1 lb.  The reason I brought it was that it was my first time using my gps watch for a long hike, and I wasn’t sure if it would need a charge or not.  It turned out that it did, however I think if I had just charged up the battery pack I have that would have been sufficient for this trip.  In the future I will probably just bring a battery pack by itself pre charged instead of also bringing the solar cells.  For longer trips (>3 days?) I might consider bringing the panel.  I think that one of their new battery packs like the flip 20 and changing some settings on my watch will be sufficient.  Also turning off my phone at night and putting it into airplane mode during the day will be useful.  I tend to use my phone as my camera, so it would be a pain to leave it off all the time.  

One thing that worked very well this trip was my stove and cook kit.  I used the emberlit fireant for the second time, and it worked out great.  I fueled it with small deadfall that I found around the shelter.  This was all that was needed to bring my dinner to a rolling boil reasonably quickly.  I then used my insulating coozy to finish cooking.  I have used the pot and coozy combo a few times now, and it is really a great way to make dehydrated meals, or anything that has to simmer.  

Overall this was a wonderful trip, and I learned a lot.  I will be making some tweaks to my setup for the next trip.  I am happy though that for the most part my gear selection seems to work well, even if it will slowly evolve over time towards more efficiency.  

Medical Kits

Last weekend I took the Wilderness First Aid class from WMI/NOLS.  This is the first medical class I have taken since finishing paramedic school in 2009 and deciding to move back into research.  The class was great, and I picked up a few tricks even with the thousands of hours of training and years of experience in emergency medicine.

This class was good motivation to restructure my wilderness medical kit into three.  I had one kit that was used for a wide variety of activities, ranging from backpacking to rock climbing.  This lead to a kit that was overbuilt for some activities like lightweight backpacking, and not enough for cragging with a bunch of friends.  I have been thinking for a while of restructuring into two kits but it hasn't been a real priority until recently.

So I want to talk about kits, and why I think it is a really important item, and my thoughts on being prepared in the woods.  First off, if you don't have any training, or it lacked hands on time, or it has been a while, get some training.  While I have a high level of training I haven't practiced in a long time, and I felt rusty at the class.  Take a class, and make sure it has a hands on component.

Through work I had to take an AHA first aid class which lacked hands on.  This was not helpful in my opinion.  For anyone to actually do something useful, especially where EMS is not readily available, you have to have some hands on time with skills.  This is how EMT classes work, you spend hours doing patient assessments, splinting, back boarding, and setting up oxygen in addition to learning the medicine.  I liked how the NOLS WFA class followed idea this with a heavy focus on assessment and scenarios.

Through this training you will better appreciate what to put in a kit.  However, I feel like a medical kit for wilderness adventure will always change.  You will learn new things, especially if you take more classes, or through experience you will figure out some things work better for you than others.  Even so I would recommend making a gear list, and keeping it up to date with how you want a kit setup.  I use github as a way of tracking versions so I can easily go back and see previous setups if I want.  However you do it though, this list is important.  It allows you to periodically restock your kit, because hopefully you aren't using the big items in it often.

As to the contents themselves you need to evaluate the activities you do, what types of groups you travel with, your level of skill, and also what you feel comfortable providing to a stranger in distress. These are all personal questions so there is no one size fits all kit.  Though many of the kits available through NOLS or adventure medical can be a good starting place.

I know some people skip carrying medical supplies, or carry just a few bandaids and pain killers.  To me this seems irresponsible in the wilderness.  While major things are uncommon, when they do happen having the right items can make a difference in outcomes.  Everything is a tradeoff however.  More medical supplies that may never get used means more weight.  On a long backpacking trip that is an issue.  So optimizing for light weight matters a lot.  But day hiking you can think of it as training weight, especially if it isn't a major objective.  The way I broke it down is into 3 kits, one for trail running and fast packing, another for general backpacking, and a third as my general use kit.  The general backpacking is a fairly comprehensive kit, though it is still reasonably light, whereas my general kit is suitable in situations where I might have a number of people in my group.  This gives me three options based on the activity. You might find that more than 3 kits suits you, or maybe 2.

My kit lists are available for viewing at https://github.com/spowers42/gear-lists  I hope they prove useful as an idea on how to put together a kit.