So maybe.
Maybe I might be doing some backpacking this year.
The year 2016 was OK. It was OK.
I'm living outside the US, and I had a 90-day window then, when I could be out of here, while my residency was gelling, and so I went north, and backpacked. It worked.
I got in, I did stuff, and playing it safe, I got back within 88 days, and it was all good.
The year 2018 was not OK. It was not OK. It was hot.
I thought I'd get back early, in April, to get a good choice of used cars, and then noodle around, and then do a bunch of backpacking, and then come back to my secret place and resume my official secret quiet life.
Yeah, right. As they say.
April 2018 was the wettest on record in western Washington state.
Then May arrived.
May was either the driest May on record and the second hottest, or the hottest May on record an the second driest. They both hurt. Temperatures were in the 80sF, say between 27C and 32C. Every day. Not good.
I tried some stuff but my heart and soul weren't in it. It hurt to be awake. It hurt to sleep. It hurt to try to sleep. It was too hot to sleep.
It was too hot to do anything in the daytime, and the nights were too hot to sleep, so I spent a lot of time at the library, and then I gave up.
June and July were consistently in the 90sF, up around the 35C range. All pain all the time. Sometimes in August there is hot weather like this, but not in May, in June, in July, so I left.
In 2019 I was going to spend a year in the US, wintering in the Southwest, exploring, and then finishing with summer in the Northwest, doing the backpacking that didn't happen in 2018.
Sure. Fine and dandy. One thing and another, and after four months I decided that that wasn't working in a bunch of ways, and gave up again, but in a lucky way, because Covid came along a few weeks later.
Sort of blew everything out of the water, didn't it?
Anyway, by then I was holed up for close to half a year in the hotel where I have an apartment, along with another guy who also rents an apartment here. His wife was in Canada, looking after her father, but she couldn't have returned here if she'd wanted to.
The streets were vacant. Army patrols, even.
We could get out for medical reasons, or to buy food, between 7 a.m. and noon. Everything was locked up after that.
Other than going out to buy food once a week, it was look out the window and run laps up and down the hotel stairs to stay in shape, at least for me, but eventually that crisis also passed into memory.
Now I'm thinking again, thinking that maybe I need to make another try before I get too old to do anything but go back to looking out the window again and waiting to die, so I'm making plans. Something that passes for plans. Early plans.
Thinking about things. Like equipment. What to buy, what to make, what to do without.
Maybe this year I'll try a bit of tarp camping. Get a hammock, use that, and use the tarp and bug net by themselves a few times if I'm in a barren place, or just want to try the ground under a plain tarp.
One thing that I read about in the late 1950s has stuck with me. I don't see it used or even talked about, which is surprising. It's immensely useful for backpacking.
What I read about was how to moor a boat using a real rope and a piece of rubber rope.
Rubber rope is a thing I've never seen, but it's the idea that counts. The same idea in the world of backpacking shelters works out to be what's called "shock cord", which is just an elastic core wrapped in fabric.
You tie some of this into the middle of a guyline for a tent, or a tarp, or a hammock tarp, and leave a little slack in the real guy line, and this lets the tent or tarp move a little, give a little in the wind, like a flexible tree bending a little, but not snapping off.
The thing is, it's hard to fasten a length of plain shock cord so it stays tied. All knots in the stuff eventually work loose.
Well, you can run this stuff through a little soft metal tube and then crimp the tube, but where do you get super lightweight metal tubing about 1/8" in diameter, in like 1" segments? (3mm by 25mm) There are things like this made for exactly this purpose, but you don't see them just sitting around in every store, and it's baffling what a guy could use as a substitute, so I've been stumped.
Yeah, so today while buying groceries and letting myself be open for ideas about whatever, and also to kill time, I blithely wandered through the women's doodad section at the supermarket and had a nice bingo moment.
Goody. Goody Ouchless Hair Elastics and Goody Ponytail Holders. Yep. Them's things, and they were there. Just about what I wanted, and all ready-made. Cheap too.
Goody.com doesn't have details. You have to follow the links from there to Walmart or Target and check them, and that's where I stole the images you see here. Too good not to steal.
I made a dumb graphic (right below) showing how to use elastic with guylines and it shows way too much slack, but I'm not going to do it over, so use your imagination. And what looks like a knot on each side should be in red. Or something. The graphic should be clearer, but I'm not a pro, hey. (Another D'Oh! moment, brought to you by me.) But it's the idea that counts, and this is one idea that is really fine. Think about it. I believe you've even caught on already. The elastic stretches just so far under heavy stress, and then the actual guyline takes over. Brilliant, as they say.
Guy line with elastic tensioner, showing way too much slack.
Ouchless hair elastics.
Ouchless hair elastics showing thickness.
Ponytail holders.
One ponytail holder, showing "welded" ends — no knots, no crimping, etc. Woot!
Updated tensioner graphic. More schematic but possibly no clearer. At least I tried, eh?
Thoughts from our reader...
Matt 1:06 AM (8 hours ago)
to me
I've had tarps among my tents for years. Decades. Among the more notable tarp trips: my first Mt Rainer summit. 3 guys, under my Walrus Aero Tarp in the mid-day sun. Crashed. Zonked. Hard asleep from the hike up to camp Schurman. Sleeping like babies, before waking at 10 pm to start our summit bid.
Same tarp, 20 years later served 3 guys, a dog, and occasionally a couple goats during a long week on the Boundary Trail in the Pasayten wilderness. The ladies referred to our luxurious amount of space (when the wind wasn't driving rain or snow, forcing us to drop the edges into the wind), complete with pine scented air fresheners, as the Hikers Hilton.
Or the week in the Hoh rain forest, where the extra space under it (vs tent), and out of the never ending wet 🌧️ each night was so so welcome. You can cook under the tarp. And savor the heat to dry out soggy stuff because it's the Hoh and that's just how the Hoh rolls.
I also have a 2-person MSR tarp tent (with optional but often left at home bug net) and it works pretty well too. I've used it on short overnights, honey hikes, as well as shorter multi-day trips like into Goat Rocks Wilderness last year. Opening up one side to the sunset, or just to sit under after a long day on the trail, and cooking dinner out of the wind and rain but not "inside the tent" is sure nice.
This year I picked up a Black Diamond Beta Light 2, which is lighter still (but not as light as the $700+ tarp tents favored by the thru hikers), but haven't put it to use. Yet.
Last year we backpacked Section J with only a 2-person hammock and rain fly. Early season, we still had snow crossings. It was wonderful. Enforced cuddling. The colder it was outside, the nicer it was to snuggle into the hammock. We carried foam (Z-rest) pads for insulation under us (lighter than hammock quilts) which was quite fiddly (with 2) and very necessary.
With a hammock, it is occasionally necessary to hike a few extra miles to find an area with suitable trees. It also means that you can get some amazing camping spots, dramatically better than can be done with a tent.
In mid summer we hiked PCT section K with the same plus a bug net to hang over the hammock. The bug net was good, but less than perfect. You can't let the fabric lay on any skin else the skeeters 🦟 can bite through the mesh. The net reduces the feeble summer breezes. With it being MUCH warmer, being pressed against another warm body when it's still hot out didn't help me sleep. At all. I mostly layed awake until 1AM when it was finally cool enough I could drop off.
If you're interested in hiking some longer PNW trails, it could be an option to drive each others cars to opposite ends. Then we hike, crossing paths on our way to our own cars. Or some such.
Best regards,
Matt
And the reply of the Doofus...
So hello.
You has experience! Thanks for the thoughts.
I did a fair amount of backpacking with a hammock.
For a while, Hennessey was selling the "Adventure Racer", which came in under 16 ounces, complete with built-in bug netting. I used it for seven or eight seasons before it started to show any wear, but that was about the time I moved out of the US anyway. Miss it. ( https://hennessyhammock.com/pages/adventure-racing )
I also used a MYOG underquilt a bit over four feet long, much lighter and more compact than any of the commercial stuff available, and put my pack under my feet to take care of that end.
For me, I found that it was whenever I didn't use a hammock that I had to hunt for camping spots. I'd tank up on water and just keep hiking along until I found a nice place, usually on a slope well above the trail, and string up the hammock, free from cold damp air and bugs, since most ground camping spots are near water, and they also have trash and spilled food too, which a 45-degree slope never had. I'd have to watch that my stuff didn't get loose and roll away, but it was an OK tradeoff.
So far the closest I've come to real tarp camping is using the MLD Cricket. Fantastic little shelter. Last time I was out, I spent my final night on Mt Adams on its west side, and a huge howling dry wind storm arrived overnight, coming in from the east. Might have been near 50mph. Whatever, it was scary. The Cricket didn't even flap once. ( https://mountainlaureldesigns.com/product/cricket-pyramid-tarp/ )
If I'm back this year, I'll probably keep equipment to a minimum, so no real shelters, just a cheap hammock and a tarp, and I might try the tarp once or twice, using the hammock as a bivy sack.
I've taken a peek or two at the Black Diamond stuff before. Appealing. A lot of the colors are off these days though. I like dull gray. MSR makes a nice tarp ("Thru-Hiker 70 Wing"), but they dropped gray and now it's all "amber". Looks as bad as orange to me. I prefer to hide.
Might go for the "Oware Flat 2.5 (9x9')" if it's still available by the time I make up my mind. Had one before. Something like 13 feet on the diagonal, awkward on a hammock, so I cut that down to 8x8, but better too big than too small, and it'll work. $50 on sale, compared to the $350-$400+ DCF stuff. ( https://bivysack.com/shop/ols/products/flattarp2-5-9x9 )
PopUpBackpacker has some interesting thoughts on DCF. ( https://popupbackpacker.com/im-done-with-dcf-aka-cuben-fiber/ )
Etc: Adventure Racer hammock, Mt Adams, near Ridge of Wonders: https://t.ly/jbcJH and https://t.ly/h4rmb
Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff@gmail.com
Me? Still trying after all these years.
Etc...
so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals
