And Down the Stretch We Come

After a week at the beach, eating everything in sight and 75 days till Big Bend, it is now time to get back to work. Back in the spring the Big Bend trip just seemed to be a dream. It was fun to talk and think about but it was always so far away. In addition, I knew that getting in shape was paramount to getting to go so everything seemed to not be real.

Well, reality is now starting to set in. I have taken the necessary steps to get ready to go. I have gotten into one of the best conditions I have ever obtained. I have lost about 60 pounds, added a good deal of muscle and my cardio-vascular conditioning is above average. Best of all, I have not had a cigarette in over a year. I still want one but I have not come close to smoking one.

I am now entering the last phase of the program. I will be fine tuning my conditioning by concentrating my efforts on cardio-vascular work at an incline to get ready for the tough up-hills and down-hills that await me. In addition, I will work on my core strength to help with balance and pack weight. Working on the core can be very boring but in the long run pays dividends. You cannot see much outward difference in your body but you can sure tell the difference on the trail. You are much more confident in your balance and steady with your burden.

The new thing in backpacking is called lightweight or ultralight backpacking. This is simply reducing the amount of weight you carry on your back to enjoy the experience more than just feeling like a pack mule. At first I was sort of put off by the idea. Many of the anonymous souls on the message boards were trying to make it a contest as to who could carry the least amount of weight and still survive in the wild. But the more I studied the concept the more I understood what the underlying idea was: Carry enough gear to be safe but make as many things in your pack multi-functional.

With the new silnylon material that is on the market you can really reduce the amount of weight that you have to carry. Instead of taking a 5+ pound tent, I will be taking a 8 x 10 tarp out of silnylon that only weights a pound. I have reduced the amount of first aid gear and repair gear down to a more manageable level. I am bringing a grease pot from WalMart rather that a whole mess kit and saving almost a half a pound. Rather than bringing a heavy ground cover I am bringing a piece of Tyvec that is used in the housing industry. The list keeps on going but I will not bore you with it anymore.

Suffice it to say that I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. When I start writing those kind of cliche's you know that I am ready to go.

A Break From the Routine

I will not be backpacking or hiking this weekend as I will be moving my office to the beach for a week. When I return I am planning a multi-day trip up on the Pinhoti Trail in Eastern Alabama. The Pinhoti Trail is now a feeder to the Appalachian Trail. The beginning point is in the Sylacauga area and continues to the Georgia border in the Piedmont area. The trail then continues on to the Benton/McCaye trail that ties into the Appalachian Trail at Springer Mountain.

I am going to section hike the whole of the Pinhoti Trail (in excess of 300 miles) over time. My start will be the Adams Gap, Chinnabbee and Skyline trail loop on the side of Mt. Cheaha. I am going to try this loop as a light-weight backpacker, meaning sans tent. Instead I will be using a hammock and tarp combination. I am interested to seeing how this works out. If all goes well I will not be taking a tent to Big Bend but instead will take a tarp.

The hammock could be utilized in the Chisos Mountains of Big Bend but would be of no good down in the desert. The main reason is there are very few trees in the desert to hang the hammock between. That is a real shame because the hammock is a lot more comfortable to sleep in versus the hard ground. The trade-off is that when sleeping on the ground you get an insulating effect from the ground. In a hammock you get air flow from below and my big tush compacts my down bag. The obvious effect of that is a cold butt. I will counter that with my poncho liner from VietNam.

Well, more on that later, for now enjoy the week and I will be back soon.

Wild South

I took the time this morning to look at the website for Wild South. org. I met some of these guys on the trail this weekend on my overnight trip. They are surveying all the habitation along the trails and waterways of the Sipsey Wilderness. I copied a piece of their site addressing the surveying of the plant life on the Sipsey.

In a grant proposal submitted to NFF earlier this year, Wild South proposed to conduct a walking survey of all marked and maintained trails and year-round streams in the Sipsey Wilderness and record all NNIPS populations within a reasonably observable corridor. The grant was awarded, and since early May, Wild South staff members, interns and volunteers have been walking the trails and streams, collecting data with handheld GPS units, cameras, voice recorders and field survey forms. All data is collected and digitized according to the USFS’s Data Recording Protocols for Invasive Species Management and stored in the Terra module of the National Resource Information Systems (NRIS) database.

Trails, stream corridors and old roadbeds are some of the common entry points and conduits for the spread of NNIPS, so it is no surprise that our inventory so far has shown the most diverse and numerous NNIPS populations occurring along the major waterways and trails that follow historical roads. For example, Nepalese browntop (Microstegium vimineum) occurs in an almost unbroken strip along the banks of Sipsey Fork itself, as well as along Wilderness Trail 208, which follows the Old Northwest Road.

As noted in the article, they all had GPS's hanging around their necks. I asked them about the reception from the sats in the canyons and they thought the Garmin's did a great job. They thought they were getting down to about 20 feet. They also told me about a shortcut to the Big Tree through White Oak Hollow which I need to find on another trip.

What a beautiful weekend up in the Sipsey Wilderness. There was not a cloud in the sky and very low humidity. Curbie and I arrived Friday afternoon at the Thompson Creek Trail head with no other vehicles there except a group readying their horses for a trip to Breazelle. After getting my boots on and loading the pack we headed out for your adventure.

We spent the next 3 hours hiking the six miles to the campsite at the intersection of East Bee Trail and the Sipsey River Trail. As we were hiking along the Sipsey River I noticed Curbie stopping and trying to see something. Since I could not see anything I hurried her along. We then came around a big tree and in the bushes was a man looking right at me. I admit that I was startled but I tried not to show it. It turned out that he was with Wild South surveying all the plants in the Sipsey Wilderness. He asked me if I had seen his other two partners down the trail. Curbie could smell them but I never saw them. I need to pay closer attention to her. They told me that I could go see some of their work at www.wildsouth.org.

After that we had an uneventful walk to the campsite. What a beautiful area of the Wilderness. The river just below the campsite is filled with boulders and there is a small little drop in the riverbed that makes for the serene sound of gurgling water the entire time you are there. Some boulders were at the end of a small path to the river which made for a great view in both directions. Sitting on the boulders filtering water was a very nice experience.

I got camp set up as soon as we got there. My Marmot tent is always easy to set up especially with the ground being so soft. I set up the hammock, fixed a run rope for Curbie and then got the cook stove and other gear ready. Then it was just time to sit back, relax, but your worries aside and enjoy the surroundings.

The night would up being nice and cool but not as cold as I thought. I was expecting temperatures in the mid-40’s but I do not think it got that cold. Once it got dark Curbie would not leave my side. I think she was missing the other dogs. She spent the night in the tent sleeping at my feet. I got up at around 4 to make some coffee and everytime I turned on my flashlight she came out of the tent. As soon as I would turn off my flashlight she would get back into the tent. I have no clue what that was all about.

After breaking camp the next morning we headed up East Bee Branch headed to the Big Tree. The Big Tree is thought to be the largest Poplar in the State of Alabama and sits in a beautiful canyon with a beautiful waterfall when there is water. It is very dry in Alabama (could not make a fire in the Sipsey which was a bummer) so I knew the falls would not be there. What I was not prepared for was the amount of dead fall in the trail to the Big Tree. All of this dead fall was an aftermath of Hurricane Ivan a few years ago. For an old man with a backpack on this was tough trucking. I am not the most graceful person in the world but going over and under fallen trees was very taxing. Since I was going to out and back the trail I was having to do it twice. The tree was a large tree and the canyon quite nice and peaceful. I would love to spend some time there during the rainy season.

We got back to the truck around 1:30 and I was very tired. That was 9 miles of hiking today with some of it being in rough terrain and a 35 pound pack on my back. I made a decision in embrace light-weight packing from now on. I need to reduce my backpack weight by at least 10 pounds. I can still carry the weight but sometimes it is not as enjoyable when your knees and hips are killing you.

It was a great trip and the good news was that the bugger bear did not get me.