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My Dumbest Backpacking Mistakes (2018) [video]

28 points by curtis 8y ago

js2 8y ago
My dumbest backpacking mistake was that time I was walking over a footbridge and I decided for fun to use my arms to lift myself on the guardrails forgetting my center of gravity was behind me with my pack on. It wasn’t long before I was flat on my back staring at the sky. Is there a TLDW for this video?
adrianN 8y ago
The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans [1] is full of interesting information about hiking in dangerous terrain [1] http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/ http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hun...
- mvexel 8y ago
  Okay, there goes my morning... Fascinating. This would have been a fantastic podcast!
- scriptkiddy 8y ago
  Oh man! I love this guy's site! Tom has some amazing stories on there. The one you linked is one of my favorites as is the one about the missing hiker in Joshua Tree. It's really fun to have Google Earth open while reading the stories so you can find the places he is writing about.
crikli 8y ago
TLDW version: 1) Didn't get familiar with hiking / camping on broken / rough terrain. 2) Didn't plan on how to deal with hypothermia inducing temperatures. 3) Didn't replace shoes quickly enough 4) Not taking black bears seriously enough. 5) Careless / casual with river crossings She doesn't give great rules of thumb on each point. Here are some based on my experience: 1) Go out with your pack at night and practice moving quickly up and down some stairs. If it rains, even better. 2) Have a layer (usually a wind/rain shell) at the top of your pack. When you stop that layer automatically goes on. When you start walking again that layer goes back in the pack. 3) Replace your shoes when mileage equals 500 - your loaded weight (bodyweight + pack). Do not risk your foot health for a hundred bucks. 4) No RoTs. Bears aren't inherently hostile (usually) but they're not inherently friendly either. Self-education required. 5) No RoTs here, water crossing are dangerous. If you are going to cross you have to have a plan for what happens if you lose your pack or get swept downstream. The force of water can be shocking. EDIT: If you plan to do any kind of movement over long distance _please_ invest in the book "Fixing Your Feet". Foot problems end more adventures than anything else. Foot care and foot health is the primary predictor IMO of how successful and how non-miserable a movement will be. https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Your-Feet-Prevention-Treatments-ebook/dp/B01I8S7U44 https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Your-Feet-Prevention-Treatment...
- harveywi 8y ago
  Nice mountainmansplain.
  - crikli 8y ago
    Huh? Someone below asked for a TLDW.
    - harveywi 8y ago
      > "She doesn't give great rules of thumb on each point." Runs fingers through thicket of chest hair "Guess it's time for yours truly to 'splain the right way to do it."
      - n4r9 8y ago
        Some of the HN guidelines that you've broken here: > Be civil. > Don't be snarky. > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. > Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. > Please don't post shallow dismissals.
        harveywi 8y ago
        Thank you for the correction. I now see the error of my ways: The proper way to handle it would have been to passive-aggressively downvote his comment.
      - scatters 8y ago
        I didn't see a female expert being shut out of the conversation?
- jeremy0x4a 8y ago
  > No RoTs here, water crossing are dangerous. If you are going to cross you have to have a plan for what happens if you lose your pack or get swept downstream. The force of water can be shocking. Just as importantly, consider in advance how being wet is going to affect you. Wet clothes are heavy and fail to insulate, while wet feet inside wet shoes is a very bad combination for a number of reasons.
flurdy 8y ago
My dumbest backpacking mistake was on day 2 of my interrail [1] trip across Europe and North Africa. Exhausted I fell asleep on a Marseille beach in the afternoon without any suncream on. When I woke up my shoulders was very sunburned. Spent the first week or two of the 6 weeks long trip lifting my heavy backpack off my painful shoulders. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrail
- 13of40 8y ago
  Not strictly backpacking, but I went on a car-free trip to Italy a few years back and thought it would be a great idea to buy new shoes for the occasion. After two weeks of walking eight hours a day, the blisters finally healed.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- flurdy 8y ago
  2nd mistake was packing too much stuff. Fixed a week into my trip in a Post office in San Sebastian by stuffing 2/3 of my backpack into a cardboard parcel and posting it home.
  - CaptainZapp 8y ago
    My packing rule, slightly tongue in cheek, but not really: Pack light and then throw out half. Seriously, I just came back from 3 1/2 weeks in Asia with a backpack with a weight of 11KGs (15, when I returned). I was never short on anything. This may be slightly different when you have a weighty hobby (scuba diving, or so), kids or go to colder places. But in general my experience is that most people pack far too much.
    - mvexel 8y ago
      It's surprising how little you actually need, and as you point out, how little more you need for a 3 week trip than you do for an overnight trip. I don't backpack much but my bikepacking checklist is pretty much the same regardless of the length of the trip. The main (and heavy) variable is the amount of water to bring, and that's more dependent on weather and available water sources than on length of the trip.
RandomBacon 8y ago
Any (former) Philmont Rangers here? I'd be interested in hearing about the dumb things you've seen crews do.
arethuza 8y ago
My mistakes are usually that I forgot gloves|hat|crampons|lunch|drink|<vital thing> I now have a checklist that I carefully check against and actually tick stuff off with a pen (usually do this about 5:30 so needs to be easy to do!). Edit: I also completely panicked once after a large noisy animal blundered into my tent in the middle of the night - was convinced it was a bear. Of course, there haven't been bears here in Scotland for a long time.... (I realised this in the morning when sanity returned - it was a red deer).
joevandyk 8y ago
Any recommendations for how to start backpacking? Books, stores, guides, etc.
- oblib 8y ago
  Go to https://backpacking.net https://backpacking.net and check out their "Tips" page and other content and I highly recommend you go to https://backpacking.net/bbs.html https://backpacking.net/bbs.html and sign up for their forums. That site has a lot of top notch info and the forum members collective experience is a great resource for those looking to get started and those who've been backpacking for years. Go there before you start buying gear and you'll save a ton of money and have better gear. And you'll be lugging a lot less weight.
oblib 8y ago
I made a tent out of those plastic "SOL" emergency blankets that heats up inside via solar or a small campfire. You can dry out clothes pretty fast with it. I know you can't have campfires out west, but I live in the Ozarks where forest fires are not an issue most of the time and it's easy to check the fire risk at https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/fire_wx/fwdy1.html https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/fire_wx/fwdy1.html So, the reason I bring this up is it's pretty easy to fashion a UL clothes dryer if you carry one of those blankets, a bit of clear plastic, and some tape. Here's a link to a very short video of the tent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdekfNtx65c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdekfNtx65c
pseudobry 8y ago
Couple things off the top of my head from experience: * Running out of food is lame * Carrying way more food than you really needed is lame * Forgetting means to light a stove is really lame * Little critters will chew through whatever to get to your food, so keep it outside your tent (hang it high off a tree) * (Mountaineering) Exposed skin will be scorched by sun reflected off the snow * Separate your "keep me dry" layer from your "keep me warm" layer, don't go cheap * You need to drink more water than you think you do * Unless you have guaranteed means/opportunity to dry yourself/clothing, avoid getting wet (avoid cotton, jeans) * Everyone should know the route, if there's a fork or ambiguity in the trail, everyone needs to be together * Have a backup means of filtering/purifying water * Always tell someone where you're going and when they should expect you back * Check the weather and recent trip reports

28 points by curtis 8y ago

js2 8y ago

My dumbest backpacking mistake was that time I was walking over a footbridge and I decided for fun to use my arms to lift myself on the guardrails forgetting my center of gravity was behind me with my pack on. It wasn’t long before I was flat on my back staring at the sky. Is there a TLDW for this video?

adrianN 8y ago

The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans [1] is full of interesting information about hiking in dangerous terrain [1] http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/ http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hun...

mvexel 8y ago
Okay, there goes my morning... Fascinating. This would have been a fantastic podcast!
scriptkiddy 8y ago
Oh man! I love this guy's site! Tom has some amazing stories on there. The one you linked is one of my favorites as is the one about the missing hiker in Joshua Tree. It's really fun to have Google Earth open while reading the stories so you can find the places he is writing about.

crikli 8y ago

TLDW version: 1) Didn't get familiar with hiking / camping on broken / rough terrain. 2) Didn't plan on how to deal with hypothermia inducing temperatures. 3) Didn't replace shoes quickly enough 4) Not taking black bears seriously enough. 5) Careless / casual with river crossings She doesn't give great rules of thumb on each point. Here are some based on my experience: 1) Go out with your pack at night and practice moving quickly up and down some stairs. If it rains, even better. 2) Have a layer (usually a wind/rain shell) at the top of your pack. When you stop that layer automatically goes on. When you start walking again that layer goes back in the pack. 3) Replace your shoes when mileage equals 500 - your loaded weight (bodyweight + pack). Do not risk your foot health for a hundred bucks. 4) No RoTs. Bears aren't inherently hostile (usually) but they're not inherently friendly either. Self-education required. 5) No RoTs here, water crossing are dangerous. If you are going to cross you have to have a plan for what happens if you lose your pack or get swept downstream. The force of water can be shocking. EDIT: If you plan to do any kind of movement over long distance _please_ invest in the book "Fixing Your Feet". Foot problems end more adventures than anything else. Foot care and foot health is the primary predictor IMO of how successful and how non-miserable a movement will be. https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Your-Feet-Prevention-Treatments-ebook/dp/B01I8S7U44 https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Your-Feet-Prevention-Treatment...

harveywi 8y ago
Nice mountainmansplain.
- crikli 8y ago
  Huh? Someone below asked for a TLDW.
  - harveywi 8y ago
    > "She doesn't give great rules of thumb on each point." Runs fingers through thicket of chest hair "Guess it's time for yours truly to 'splain the right way to do it."
    - n4r9 8y ago
      Some of the HN guidelines that you've broken here: > Be civil. > Don't be snarky. > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. > Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. > Please don't post shallow dismissals.
      - harveywi 8y ago
        Thank you for the correction. I now see the error of my ways: The proper way to handle it would have been to passive-aggressively downvote his comment.
    - scatters 8y ago
      I didn't see a female expert being shut out of the conversation?
jeremy0x4a 8y ago
> No RoTs here, water crossing are dangerous. If you are going to cross you have to have a plan for what happens if you lose your pack or get swept downstream. The force of water can be shocking. Just as importantly, consider in advance how being wet is going to affect you. Wet clothes are heavy and fail to insulate, while wet feet inside wet shoes is a very bad combination for a number of reasons.

flurdy 8y ago

My dumbest backpacking mistake was on day 2 of my interrail [1] trip across Europe and North Africa. Exhausted I fell asleep on a Marseille beach in the afternoon without any suncream on. When I woke up my shoulders was very sunburned. Spent the first week or two of the 6 weeks long trip lifting my heavy backpack off my painful shoulders. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrail

13of40 8y ago
Not strictly backpacking, but I went on a car-free trip to Italy a few years back and thought it would be a great idea to buy new shoes for the occasion. After two weeks of walking eight hours a day, the blisters finally healed.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
flurdy 8y ago
2nd mistake was packing too much stuff. Fixed a week into my trip in a Post office in San Sebastian by stuffing 2/3 of my backpack into a cardboard parcel and posting it home.
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  My packing rule, slightly tongue in cheek, but not really: Pack light and then throw out half. Seriously, I just came back from 3 1/2 weeks in Asia with a backpack with a weight of 11KGs (15, when I returned). I was never short on anything. This may be slightly different when you have a weighty hobby (scuba diving, or so), kids or go to colder places. But in general my experience is that most people pack far too much.
  - mvexel 8y ago
    It's surprising how little you actually need, and as you point out, how little more you need for a 3 week trip than you do for an overnight trip. I don't backpack much but my bikepacking checklist is pretty much the same regardless of the length of the trip. The main (and heavy) variable is the amount of water to bring, and that's more dependent on weather and available water sources than on length of the trip.

RandomBacon 8y ago

Any (former) Philmont Rangers here? I'd be interested in hearing about the dumb things you've seen crews do.

arethuza 8y ago

My mistakes are usually that I forgot gloves|hat|crampons|lunch|drink|<vital thing> I now have a checklist that I carefully check against and actually tick stuff off with a pen (usually do this about 5:30 so needs to be easy to do!). Edit: I also completely panicked once after a large noisy animal blundered into my tent in the middle of the night - was convinced it was a bear. Of course, there haven't been bears here in Scotland for a long time.... (I realised this in the morning when sanity returned - it was a red deer).

joevandyk 8y ago

Any recommendations for how to start backpacking? Books, stores, guides, etc.

oblib 8y ago
Go to https://backpacking.net https://backpacking.net and check out their "Tips" page and other content and I highly recommend you go to https://backpacking.net/bbs.html https://backpacking.net/bbs.html and sign up for their forums. That site has a lot of top notch info and the forum members collective experience is a great resource for those looking to get started and those who've been backpacking for years. Go there before you start buying gear and you'll save a ton of money and have better gear. And you'll be lugging a lot less weight.

oblib 8y ago

I made a tent out of those plastic "SOL" emergency blankets that heats up inside via solar or a small campfire. You can dry out clothes pretty fast with it. I know you can't have campfires out west, but I live in the Ozarks where forest fires are not an issue most of the time and it's easy to check the fire risk at https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/fire_wx/fwdy1.html https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/fire_wx/fwdy1.html So, the reason I bring this up is it's pretty easy to fashion a UL clothes dryer if you carry one of those blankets, a bit of clear plastic, and some tape. Here's a link to a very short video of the tent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdekfNtx65c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdekfNtx65c

pseudobry 8y ago

Couple things off the top of my head from experience: * Running out of food is lame * Carrying way more food than you really needed is lame * Forgetting means to light a stove is really lame * Little critters will chew through whatever to get to your food, so keep it outside your tent (hang it high off a tree) * (Mountaineering) Exposed skin will be scorched by sun reflected off the snow * Separate your "keep me dry" layer from your "keep me warm" layer, don't go cheap * You need to drink more water than you think you do * Unless you have guaranteed means/opportunity to dry yourself/clothing, avoid getting wet (avoid cotton, jeans) * Everyone should know the route, if there's a fork or ambiguity in the trail, everyone needs to be together * Have a backup means of filtering/purifying water * Always tell someone where you're going and when they should expect you back * Check the weather and recent trip reports