Backpacking: The Call of the Wild and Realities of the Trail

Jacob: 

Alright. Jeff, today’s episode is a Friend Episode, so I’m very happy that we have made it to Friday and we get to record this episode today. Are you ready?

Jeffrey:

Absolutely. I’m ready.

Jacob:

Awesome.

Jeffrey:

What’s the topic today?

Jacob:

Jeff, you do something that I do not, and this is why I want to talk to you about it: You go backpacking, and you actually go out in the woods, down the trail far away, and you go camping out there in the wilderness, and I’m like, “I like air conditioning and I don’t like bears…”   

Jeffrey:

I will say that I’ve never seen a bear in all of my years of backpacking. So…

Jacob:

Wow. Okay.

Jeffrey:

They’re not super common.

Jacob:

Well for our listeners: I know that you just came back from a big hike though, and so I was hoping that you could help talk about this today. And so, to kick it off: let’s say you’re planning a trip, you’re going to go backpacking… What is your top hacks or tips for backpacking to make your trip more enjoyable? 

Jeffrey:

Okay, so first of all, I will say 1) backpacking implies camping: you’re going on a hike for multiple days, and then you’re camping the night, and then you pack up camp, and then you go hike some more… I don’t do it for the camping… Like I know people who just love camping in the wilderness: I don’t love camping in the wilderness…

Jacob:

Oh, really?

Jeffrey:

Yeah. I love hiking though, and I will put up with camping so that I can see, you know, an alpine lake, or whatever, that you can’t see in a day trip, because I mean, you can do day hiking for like, six hours…

Jacob:

Yeah, and I’ve done that.

Jeffrey:

Sure, but you can only see so much, and they tend to be more crowded, but then when you go on these multi day hikes, you get to see more stuff than you could possibly see in a day, and it tends to be less crowded in general… I’ll put an asterisk on the less crowded part of that.

But yeah, going back to the point, if you want to do backpacking, you’ve got to be committed to doing the multi-day thing… You have to be committed to pooping in the woods… As a friend of mine just said: he was talking to his advisor—he’s in his post-grad, or whatever—and he’s talking to his advisor, describing the trip that we just finished, and the advisor was like, “Oh, so you do poop-in-the-woods camping,” as opposed to like, at a campground or something where you have like an outhouse, or you’re like near your car, it’s like “no, we dig holes in the woods and we poop in them”… You have to be okay with doing that. 

But like I said: I put up with all of that so that I can go further into the woods, further up the mountain, than you could do in a day. 

Jacob:

It makes sense. I mean, it is something you have to put up with, but you do get to go places that most people don’t get to go.

Jeffrey:

Exactly. Yeah, I mean, that’s the reason I do it. But like, hacks? 1) I have a really good group of friends that I go with: So I’ve never actually been solo backpacking, and I know some people who have done the Appalachian Trail solo, or done the Pacific Crest Trail solo… I don’t think I could ever do that. 

But like me and my buddies, we all have our different strengths in the group.. Like, you know, my friend Daniel, he is like an Eagle Scout in the past…

Jacob:

This is funny. ‘Cause it’s like… it’s like you’re assembling a little superhero team…

Jeffrey:

Exactly. No, that’s exactly what it’s like! So we each have our own little strengths in the group, and so we can support each other that way. And so, I don’t think I would do it if I could not have a support system with me.

Jacob:

Oh, I never thought about having to do it that way: that’s why it always sounded very daunting, because I’d be like, “How am I going to get up there and do that?” Or…

Jeffrey:

If you have to do it all yourself, support yourself the whole way, bring all the supplies… So there’s like supplies that we’ll bring for the group, each one of us, and we’ll split that up… So like one person brings water filters, another person brings a med kit, stuff like that. And so, if you had to bring all of that stuff yourself, it’s not like that…

Yeah, it’s not that much more, but it is just like nice to be able to divvy that up. 

Jacob:

That makes a lot of sense. So that’s like tip number one: “Don’t do it alone. Go in a group.”

Jeffrey:

I would say in general, yeah. And plus, don’t do it alone, because it can be really dangerous. Like we were at Pictured Rocks was the last trip that we just did, and…

Jacob:

Where is that in the world?

Jeffrey:

So, that is on the Southern coast of Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. So, it is really beautiful, it blew, you know, all the expectations I had of its beauty…

I’ve been pitching this trip for like three years, and everyone was just like, “Nah, let’s go to Colorado. No, let’s go to Shenandoah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And finally, this year, they’re like, “Okay, let’s go to Pictured Rocks,” I was like, “yes!” And it blew my mind how beautiful it was. I knew it was beautiful, but I was like, this is way more beautiful than I thought it would be. 

But, we were listening to a podcast on the way up there about Pictured Rocks and about all…

Jacob:

You weren’t listening to our podcast?

Jeffrey:

I was not. We were listening to a podcast about Pictured Rocks, where it was like, all of the deaths that had happened at Pictured Rocks. So it’s like…

Jacob:

That’s a way to calm yourself down. 

Jeffrey:

Yeah, let’s get pumped about dying. But it is, you know… there is inherent danger going alone: those cliffs are like 200 feet, if you fall off them and hit the rocks, you’re dead.

Jacob:

Yeah, speaking of being prepared, one thing that I was always wondering—and this might just be me being a person that never camps—so like animals and wildlife, like in the night, getting in your stuff? How do you prevent that from happening? Like, I’ve heard things about like, you know, put, put, you hang it up in a tree, is that what you do?

Jeffrey:

That’s what you do. It’s a bear bag…

Jacob:

I didn’t know if that was real.

Jeffrey:

Yeah, that’s real. You put all of the things that might attract wildlife, so all of your food you put it in—they call it a bear bag, and our bear bag is also a water bag, so it’s like watertight, airtight—and then we tie it to paracord, throw the paracord over a tree, and then hoist the bag up into a tree.

Jacob:

Okay, that’s awesome! So like any specific gear or stuff you swear by, or strategies that make journeying a little smoother when you go out there with everybody?

Jeffrey:

I will say water filters. So there’s a few different…

Jacob:

What is a water filter?

Jeffrey:

So, like LifeStraw is a big brand, that’s like one that most people recognize. There’s lots of brands for them, I’m not saying that they’re the best, but that’s like the most… like Kleenex-as-tissues like LifeStraw-as-filters is sort of the same recognition.

But so, they’re basically… You can make potable water, like drinkable water, out of any water using one of these filters. You have to maintain them over time—I am not the custodian of the filters in my group, and I don’t think that my buddies maintain the filters as well as they should—but if you maintain them well over time, you know, they shouldn’t indefinitely provide you with potable water. 

Jacob:

So, how does it work with a straw or something like that? Is it like a portable Brita filter that you got in your pocket and you’re just filtering with charcoal?

Jeffrey:

Kind of. So there’s a couple versions of them. The one that we use, and the one that I would recommend using, is a gravity filter: So basically for the group of us, we have this 12 liter bag. So we, you know, we went to Lake Superior, filled it up with Lake Superior water, tied it up, and then hung it in a tree, and then at the bottom, we attached this LifeStraw filter—that one actually happened to be LifeStraw branded…

Jacob:

Looking for more sponsors of the pod, so…

Jeffrey:

Yeah, LifeStraw, if you want to hop, if you want to sponsor us… And then that would just drip into our clean water container, and we would just be like, “all right, let’s go hiking for a couple hours.” Then we come back and we would have 12 liters of clean water, or potable water. 

Jacob:

it still might have a, a smell or an odor maybe, right?

Jeffrey:

Yeah, it’s not making it necessarily clear and clean, but it’s making it so that it’s safe to drink.

Jacob:

That makes a lot of sense. Cause you’re going to need water when you’re out there. So I have a question, like another gear question, is so do you guys carry one big tent, or like a small tent, or no tent? And what about rain?

Jeffrey:

It depends. So, I personally like to use hammocks. So, I will bring my hammock. It’s really lightweight. The downside of it is that if it’s cold, it gets really cold in the hammock. But if it’s warm, it’s quite nice because you have a breeze all around you, right? So, it’s “are you hiking in the cold or are you hiking in the hot?” 

Otherwise, I can’t remember ever going camping with more than a two person tent, right? And many times I’ve doubled up in a single person tent, you know?

Jacob:

Oh, just because you just need to save on that weight of what you’re carrying?

Jeffrey:

Exactly. You want to optimize the weight that you’re packing in above anything else.

And you would only really go in the tent if it was raining? Or

Um, so if you have a, if you have a hammock, you can do a, a rain fly over the, or like a tarp. And you can be perfectly dry underneath that. . And then you’re also above the ground so you’re not getting any groundwater if it’s like a downpour, right? So like even a tent with a rain fly over it can get wet because of groundwater coming up through the bottom, you know? It’s happened to me before. 

Jacob:

Another point for me to be like, you know, if you’re not ready to go out there in the world, stay at home. It’s dry at home.

Jeffrey:

I have learned these things over many, many years, Jacob. And me and my buddies, the five of us, every single trip that we go on, we make mistakes. And then every single… we have this hypothetical podcast called Stupid ‘effing Campers, although we wouldn’t do ‘“effing,” but you know what…

Jacob:

Are you going to promote another podcast that you’re making on our podcast?

Jeffrey:

I will, we could sponsor it!

Jacob:

No, I’m too, I’m too arrogant. I’m too self centered. 

Jeffrey:

Anyway, we talk about it… we talk about it every trip because we always make mistakes. And it’s just like, “this would make a great episode of our podcast about how we read the map, but then didn’t accurately assess the scale of the map, and so what we thought was like a 2 mile hike became a 6 mile hike.”

Jacob:

You know what? Jeff on this podcast, most of my series, I’m the… you’re the newbie trying to figure things out and asking the questions that are very helpful. I could do that on your podcast and help you make that.

Jeffrey:

You could!

Jacob:

Well, anyways, I have a couple more questions I really want to hit you with, because what we didn’t talk about so far—we talked about very practical, fun, hacky things with camping—but, let’s talk about where you go: So you’ve explored, you’ve told me before this podcast, you went to Mount Bierstadt in Colorado, hopefully I said that right. You got the main- main–thing?

Jeffrey:

Manistee. 

Jacob:

Manistee National Forest. And then you just did this Painted Rocks over in…

Jeffrey:

Pictured Rocks.

Jacob:

You know, that’s what I said, Pictured Rocks. So just talk about some of these places you’ve been: where’s some of the prettiest places? How do you find these places too? Because all three of those places that we just talked about I’ve never heard of.

Jeffrey:

…You’ve never heard of. So, okay, so finding them, first of all, Mt. Bierstadt is a Fourteener, as they say, so it’s one of the few mountains in the contiguous United States that are over 14,000 feet. So the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States is Mount Whitney and it’s like 14,500, give or take.

Jacob:

I definitely knew that.

Jeffrey:

Yeah, it’s around there. So like Mount Bierstadt was like, I don’t know, 14,100, something like that. So, there’s like a thing…

Jacob:

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is it number one? I mean, number two?

Jeffrey:

No, no, no, no, no, but it’s, it’s just, there’s like a dozen 14’ers in the,  give or take, in the contiguous United States [There are 13 outside of Colorado, and 53 within Colorado]. So it’s just people are like, “Oh, I hit all the Fourteeners!” you know? It’s like a thing. So that was just like…  

Jacob:

Wow I’d never heard of that.

Jeffrey:

Yeah, well, you wouldn’t because you don’t do this. 

So that’s how we found out about that. It’s just one of the Fourteeners in Colorado. Because we were going out—my friend Daniel, his brother lives in Denver—so we were like, that was our base of operations. And then we were like, “what’s nearby Denver that we could do?” And Mount Bierstadt was one of them. So that’s how we found that. 

But it ended up being really beautiful. There were like these beautiful mountain lakes that we found. It was like one of the most beautiful rainbows that I’ve ever seen, because our day that we were hiking-in happened to be pouring down rain, but then the rain broke for a couple hours… beautiful rainbow, absolutely stunning. 

But in general you know, there’s YouTube channels, there’s AllTails—we use AllTrails a lot where we’re like, “hey, we want to go in this direction,” like, “hey, we want to go to the Smoky Mountains.” And then we’ll go on AllTrails and be like, “trails in the Smoky Mountains,” and then we’ll go through them and they rate them, you know in difficulty, they tell you the elevation. So it’s like do we want to hike up a mountain? Do we want to stay along a river or a lakeshore? So like in Pictured Rocks It was relatively level ground, right? But like Shenandoah last year, we were hiking up a Mountain, you know, and it was just like… So, it’s like, “what is it that you want?” And then you can go on AllTrails and find trails that meet that sort of thing. So that’s how we go about it. 

And then, you know, we watch YouTube videos. There’s channels of campers who review things, or review equipment, or review sites—and so just collectively, cause there’s five of us, you know, we, once a year we meet… Well, we do more than one camping trip a year, but we do one big one—and so in the spring we all meet and we’re like, “all right, let’s pitch ideas. What do you want to do?” So…

Jacob:

Oh, okay. That sounds good. I mean, it sounds like a great thing to do with some friends and keep those relationships up. Especially because you’re out there overcoming challenges as you go through these hikes, right? 

Jeffrey:

Yeah, absolutely. 

Because like, you are really out there. Yeah, but what are the like…  What are the other challenges that I would face? Well, actually, sorry, I shouldn’t say I would face cause it would be probably a very large list of challenges for me. But what are some common challenges or interesting ones that you’ve overcome when you’re out there figuring out what to do, ‘cause you’re, when you’re out there, I imagine that there’s really not a, “oops, I should go home and pick up that thing I forgot.”

Jeffrey:

Yeah, there’s, there is… Yeah, once you’re out there, you’re out there, I will say one of the trips I was on recently, we were like an hour away from Cincinnati when I realized I forgot my hiking boots, which I will say, you cannot, you cannot do trails like this without proper footwear.  That is essential.

So I was just like, “I’m sorry, guys, we have to turn around and get my hiking boots.” And they were all pissed at me. Well, and we have a system of “Camper Points,” so they’re like, “okay, you lose two Camper Points because we have to turn around.” And was just like, “that is totally fair.”

Jacob:

Oh my god, that is like what we do with our kids, we have like gold stars. So what are some real challenges though?

Jeffrey:

There were two stories I wanted to tell. So one, okay. So we went to Over Mountain Victory trail in North Carolina, that was like a birthday trip of mine, and we got there at 3 p.m., it was during COVID, so the trail was completely full. We were hiking, and my birthday’s in late September, so it’s not like you have a whole lot of daylight, you know, sunset’s at seven or six. And you know, it was just the most grueling hike of my life. 

Jacob:

Happy Birthday!

Jeffrey:

We didn’t bring enough water, there were no places to set up camp, because every spot was taken. And then we just go up, and up, and up, and up, and up, and up this mountain. And then we finally get to the top of the mountain, it’s dusk and this group of campers, like. right off the trail look at us and they’re like, “do you want to share our campsite? You guys look really like worn out,” and we were just like, “yes, please! Thank you.” And then we didn’t have any water, so then I went off into the woods, at night, with just a flashlight, trying to find water, I ended up finding a trickle of water, and I would engineer leaves to funnel it into my water container so I could take it back to camp and then filter it through our filters.

But it was just like in pitch black, like really dangerous, it was just like a complete disaster. And it’s like: planning, planning, planning, planning, planning. We didn’t really understand the trail we were going to. We didn’t have enough time. We didn’t pack in enough water. Like, we passed a stream early on, we should have just stayed there for 30 minutes filtered water through our thing, because at the top of the mountain, there was no there was no water up there. 

So, the other cautionary tale, I will say altitude.: So, when we went to Mount Bierstadt, it was supposed to be a four day trip. After day two, one member of our party—so there are four of us—one member could not handle the altitude, like was getting sick, couldn’t breathe. And so we had to pack it in, we didn’t make it to the summit, and like, he could barely even hike out. So at one point…

Jacob:

What, what does altitude sickness do to a person’s body? 

Jeffrey:

So as far as I know, it’s kind of similar heat stroke: like nausea, like dizziness… I mean, I don’t know, I didn’t personally experience it, but he, he was struggle, struggle bussing. Like he would go, you know, 100 yards and would need to catch his breath sort of thing. 

Jacob:

Wow, that’s probably makes a very slow journey back.

Jeffrey:

Well, exactly. And so we have to spend like a whole day going back. So, at one point we were like, he was carrying his pack and I was just like, “you know what, I’m going to go ahead, like real quick, get to the end of the trail, drop my bag, come back for yours, carry it to the end of the trail,” and then I just basically camped at the end of the trail, waiting for the rest of them to catch up with me. But I was like, “you, you don’t need to be carrying your, your pack. You are struggling enough, enough. So let me take it for you…” Actually. I don’t know. That was the strategy. I don’t think I actually carried his pack, but I watched the packs at the trail? Anyway, there were four of us. We all, we all split the efforts. I’m not sure who did what at this point.

Jacob:

I Know, ‘cause not now you’re gonna be on recording and one of your friends is gonna call in and…

Jeffrey:

Call in and be like, “no, you didn’t carry the packs, I carried the packs!”

Jacob:

“I Saved the day. I was the hero.”

Jeffrey:

Yeah, I watched the packs.

Jacob:

But this is, this seems to be, no matter what happened, I mean it was the team effort, and it was like back to one of your first points of go with people.

Jeffrey:

Oh, yeah, absolutely: go with people. Unless you are really confident of your abilities, go with people who can support you. 

And so, I would just say my last little, little hacking point, or like how to overcome challenges, for that trip when I knew we were going to be at high elevation. I trained all summer for it. It was an August trip, I trained starting in May…

Jacob:

What is training look like?

Jeffrey:

So obviously in Cincinnati, we can’t train for altitude, but going to the gym four times a week, and then hiking two times a week in the parks around the city with a weighted pack. So I’d bring my pack, empty it, but then put like 40 pounds in it, like 40 pound weights.

Jacob:

What would that do? I mean besides being really hard

Jeffrey:

It trains you. It trains, trains your body for that kind of thing.

Jacob:

Well, that’s another thing that maybe we should talk about is the training for this because I didn’t know that you’d have to train. I mean, I figured that you couldn’t go from couch potato status to mountain goat status within you know a hike, but like I never thought about like I never thought about the fact that you would be carrying backpacks, being all Skywalker With Yoda on his back jumping around the city…

Jeffrey:

Yeah, absolutely.

Jacob:

… trying to train for this. So, like, what, what does it take to train, to do this?

Jeffrey:

Like I said… well, okay. So I will say this past trip, the Pictured Rocks trip—which thankfully did not include a lot of elevation—but it was the worst shape that I’ve ever been in during one of our capstone, one of our big trips, and I really felt it. And that’s just because I injured my back last year, so I haven’t been to the gym at this point, probably 12 months, I haven’t been to the gym. So, I was really feeling it and it’s just like, “never again am I going to do something where I have to hike 30 miles and not be in the shape to do it.” So just like, just be in general shape.

You know, I would go to the gym, weight train, whatever. Like I said, for the Rocky Mountains thing, I would just go on hikes in like Mount Airy forest, which is one of the parks in Cincinnati, and just do like a five mile loop, but with a pack, I had 40 pounds in it, just like… And that’s, you know, it’s whatever, because it’s like, I know at the end of it I can just drive home and eat food and drink as much water as I want, so it’s like, it’s not that intense because you’re not in the middle of nowhere. But then when you are in the middle of nowhere, you have that already under your belt.

Jacob:

That’s a good point, but it does take, it does seem to be like you should be a little conditioned and get your body into some sort of shape so your body doesn’t become the challenge that you’re overcoming, you’re prepared for, you need to be, you need to be ready for the external challenges, not the ones…

Jeffrey:

The wilderness should be the thing that you’re overcoming, not your body.

Jacob:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, I was gonna say I can’t wait to try to join you guys under the backpacking trip But if I have to train that much, I don’t know. I’m just kidding, but I could do it

Well, Jeff, this was a very illustrative story, podcast, not story, but your stories were illustrated for me.

Jeffrey:

Yeah, I had a fun time with it.

Jacob:

I mean, I honestly, a lot of this stuff is totally above my head. It’s just like another world that I never really explored. So I think it sounds great. Let’s link to some of those things too.

Jeffrey:

Oh sure I’ll give some links in the bottom. But like I said, I’ve been doing this for…  since at least college, like late high school, so 10-15 years time frame. You know, when I started out in it, when they said “backpack” I thought of my school backpack, and it’s like that is not the backpack you want.

No, you need something a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger, hold a little more stuff.

And it, and it, it, it hugs your body completely differently, you know,

need something that actually isn’t trying to rip your, rip your, uh, your, your shoulders back the whole time.

I remember the first time I, I met up with my friends and they were like, I showed up with literally a school backpack and they were like, Oh no, here’s my old one.  like repack all your stuff into this. This is what you want. And I was just like, I was like, I don’t know, 17 or 18, I was like, I didn’t know my parents didn’t go camping. They didn’t bring us camping. We went boating. That’s what we did. 

Jacob:

Well, that sounds pretty nice. I could do boating.

Jacob:

Alright Jeff, this was great. I’m going to hit stop here, and thank you.

Jeffrey:

Yeah. All right. Adios.