I spent a fair bit of time in the first 2-3 days after my return reflecting on what hadn’t been working well on trail, and figuring out whether I wanted to go back and if so how to solve those problems.
There were a few basic issues I needed to deal with
- Cold nights – I don’t want to spend another night like that last one, where I hardly slept from about 2am to 6am because I couldn’t stay warm. There were two really cold nights in the forecast when I was in Franklin, and as it turns out a winter storm swept through the area shortly after I left
- Tent setup problems – the tent just wasn’t setting up the way I thought it should, causing the roof to sag and touch both the head and foot of my sleeping bag.
- Tent condensation, which probably made the cold nights colder (and got moisture on the sleeping bag where it touched)
- Social isolation – I was finding people weren’t very talkative at camp. On the trail people are sociable but interactions there tend to be brief (stopping to talk to someone who is resting or getting water or setting up camp, passing or being passed). In camp people seemed to be focused on getting fed and to bed.
- Frustration at the technical complexity of charging my hearing aids
- Pack weight. At the start of the trip, and after my resupply in Franklin, the pack weighed in around 41 lbs when you include two liters of water. That is uncomfortably heavy for 15-20 miles of daily walking.
The first three problems are all kind of related. After watching several videos on how to set up my tent (the Durston X-Mid Pro 2) I realized I had been doing it wrong all along. You are supposed to start by making a rectangle from the four corners, but I misunderstood what the four corners were. I thought it was the four corners of the floor of the tent. I should have known better, since I know the tent floor isn’t even a rectangle, it’s a parallelogram. No, it was the four corners of the FLY of the tent. I tried setting up the tent in my basement with this new technique, using furniture legs as a replacement for tent pegs, and found that it set up perfectly, exactly as I had expected. This will make a big difference as it means the tent will have the roominess and rigidity it needs, and will have better ventilation since one of the main challenges I had was that the downard facing vents at the head and foot of the tent were touching the ground instead of being four inches off the ground.
I am also switching out my thin fleece for a puffy, which hopefully won’t weigh that much more, but will provide more warmth. I can wear the puffy in the tent on cold nights to keep my core warm.
I learned that having a fatty snack right before bed can also keep you warmer because your body heats up during digestion. I may keep a handful of cashews double-bagged in the tent to snack on if I wake up cold. Food in the tent is kind of a no-no but a small amount of raw cashews has little odor and if double-bagged will probably not do too much to attract bears. (In one Reddit discussion, several people claimed they hiked the entire AT keeping their food in their tents overnight and had no problem with bears – we keep the food in heavy duty zip-lock type bags that are odor proof, so in theory the bears don’t smell it.)
The other condensation problem I was having was because I assumed that on cold nights, keeping the fly completely closed would keep me warmer, but in fact, keeping it closed keeps the humid air from my breathing inside the tent By opening the fly zippers at least part way and encouraging air flow, I should be able to reduce condensation, and that should prevent my sleeping bag from getting damp, which reduces its efficiency.
The final solution for the cold is just to WAIT a couple of weeks and let things get warmer. The Smokies, which I would have been entering right about now if I had stayed on the original schedule, are some of the highest peaks on the trail (Kuwohi, previously known as Clingman’s Dome, the highest peak you go over anywhere on the trail, is 6643 feet and is around mile 200). Looking at the weather forecast for Clingman’s Dome (on yr.no, the handy Norwegian weather site) I see it is -12C right now, a high of -3C today, then a high of 4C tomorrow, 9C Friday, 14C Saturday, and 15C on the following Friday). Of course it’s still possible to get snowstorms in the Smokies as late as late April, but waiting a couple of weeks reduces the odds that I get multiple really cold nights or have to hike through a foot of snowfall.
On the social isolation, I realized the main problem I had was that I would go to bed late, partly because I had to stay up for 45 minutes after getting in the tent just to wait for my hearing aids to charge. I had to babysit the charging because the slightest movement on my part might disconnect the phone from charging, which would cause the hearing aids to stop charging. Going to bed late (around 9pm) meant I would sleep in until 7:30 or 8, so I wouldn’t hit the trail until 9 or 9:30, and to walk 16 miles at ~2 miles an hour meant I wouldn’t get into camp until 5:30 pm, by which time many people have already arrived, set up camp, eaten dinner, and gotten ready for bed. (It wasn’t unusual to see, at 6pm, people sleeping in the shelters). So the obvious solution is to force myself to get up earlier, setting my alarm for 6:45 or thereabouts, and try to move quickly in the morning so I arrive in camp around 4pm when people are more sociable.
On the hearing aid front, Sheila has a power bank that DOES charge my hearing aids, so I know there are some out there. I ordered a small one off Amazon, that according to the manufacturer supports trickle charging. Assuming it works, I’ll take that; if not, I’ll order a new one for Sheila and borrow hers. This will also give me probably one extra day of overall charge. The current power bank seems to last about four to five days, so adding this one will give me five to six days between town visits.
Finally on the weight front, I’ve decided that I will resupply more often and carry less food. I had 10 days of dinners and lunch wraps at the start (but only five days of breakfast, as it turned out). I need to bring about 5-6 days worth of food only, which should bring my pack weight down from 41 lbs to around 35 lbs at the start, dropping to around 18 lbs right before a resupply. That’s a much more comfortable, manageable weight.
With these changes I’m confident I can get back on the trail, stay warm, and have fun. So I’ve booked my return flight to Asheville for Friday March 27, and have arranged for Sherpa Shuttles to drive me back to Wayah Gap, where I’ll resume my hike. I lost a couple of weeks of hiking, but I am hoping the resumed hike will be more comfortable and fun than the last couple of cold days of the original one, and hopefully I can keep on my schedule of finishing the hike before the end of August.