What's On My Back

Gear is quite the subject among hikers. There's a culture built up around finding that perfect kit. Especially among thru-hikers, many of whom fall under the ultralight category, reducing your base pack weight can seem almost as strenuous as the hiking itself. And it doesn't help that for every piece of gear you find, there are most likely twenty off brand slightly different alternatives you could buy, each with their own zealous supporters. Screw having a guide for the trail, I've spent the last few months wishing I could just have a guide for my gear.

The worst part is that living in the woods is an incredibly expensive affair. The true scope of the money you have to spend is not immediately apparent. Your pack, shelter, and sleeping bag are all going to be multi-hundred dollar items, sure, but it stops there, right? Browsing through REI or its ilk you find your cook sets, bear bags, gadgets, ponchos, water filtration, and what have you reasonably priced. I quickly sat down with a piece of paper and a blue marker and started writing down everything I needed, then the brand I wanted to buy and how much it would cost me. At the end I tallied up the expense. Sure the "big 3" would knock me out a few hundred, but the rest were all below 30 dollars a piece! I hit enter, and my jaw hit the floor. I don't like calculating total expenses anymore (and that was before I started buying clothes).

As much as a set out to be an ultralight hiker, I don't really fall under that category anymore. My disgust for ultralight pricing (sleeping bags shouldn't be $500, come on), and my desire to bring entertainment with me has been steadily increasing my base weight. So what I've listed here is by no means an ideal, but just what I've cobbled together these past few months. Chances are high I discard and replace some in disgust within the first week.

Backpack

Here I think I hit the jackpot though. I'm rocking the GoLite Jam 50, an amazingly light, amazingly cheap pack that's garish blue color should stand out from miles away. Seriously, that picture in no way does it justice. This pack is blue. At just under 2 pounds and just over 100 dollars this is by far the best deal I've seen on an ultralight bag, and was immediately added to my list. Having worn it around town for the past few weeks I've found it comfy, and equipped with lots of easy to reach pockets for snacks, which is obviously the most important quality in a bag.

Weight: 1 lbs 14 oz

Shelter

This was actually the first piece of gear I selected, way back around November. My lab partner camped, and told me how much he loved the Hennessy Hammock. I cannot agree more. This thing is like sleeping on a...well...a hammock. Which I think is high praise. It's light, quick and easy to set up, and did I mention comfortable? Drawbacks include "cold butt syndrome," where due to the fact that it's off the ground it lacks the insulating warmth you get from a tent, and in lower temperatures your backside gets chilly. This I can attest to, having taken it out in sub freezing temperatures, something I hope not to have to do again (but I will be coming prepared with foot warmers). Once you get used to lashing this thing up it works like a dream.

Weight: 2 lbs 4 oz

Sleeping Bag

Picking a bag was a nightmare. There's too many, and they're all the gosh darn same. And the lightest ones are so expensive it's aggressive. Add to the list of problems the variable temperature on the trail and it can be hard to pin point a temperature rating you want. Some people switch out their bags as they go north, but I'll be aiming not to do that. I ended up with the Marmot Cloudbreak 30. It's cozy, pretty warm, and it packs up alarmingly small. The only issue is that the outside material and my jacket feel exactly the same, which is very confusing when trying to pull the hood up over your head while wearing the jacket. I spent a few awkward minutes tugging at my back and not understanding the problem.

Weight: 2 lbs

Water

Drinking, it turns out, is important. I'll be using a Sawyer Mini filter for the trip. It's essentially a large straw that filters water drawn through it, or squeezed through it via a supplied bag. Because I'm a worrywart, I also have a little bottle of pills in case the filter goes to hell. I then also have a bladder to store said water.

Weight: 9 oz



Cooking

I love to eat. I especially love to eat after a long day of hiking. See, I'm not the best cook. But after a day of strenuous hiking literally everything tastes good. So on the trail, I am my own master chef. I'm packing a Trangia Mini Stove Kit. It's a basic alcohol stove, windscreen, and pot, but a feature I like is that the pot lid doubles as a frying pan. Most light weight cooking kits forgo the ability to fry, and if I go four months without bacon I will without a doubt snap and do something dangerous. Stuffed in there I also have a lighter and a box of matches, and my fuel is carried in a blue Powerade bottle. Very high tech, I know.

Weight: 12 oz

Clothes

This is the real kicker. Just when you thought you had it all, you realize that your wardrobe is woefully prepared. Thru-hikers make do with a very small amount of clothes. I'll be bringing a t-shirt, long sleeved Under Armor shirt, some zip off pants, two pairs of Smartwool socks, and two pairs of underwear for my normal clothes. On top of that I have my favorite hoody (which I was tempted not to bring but I'm a sucker for nostalgia), a lightweight jacket, a hat, fingerless gloves, and a poncho. I'm really skimping when it comes to clothing. High tech light weight rain gear is very cool, very useful, and costs a fortune. I'll be making due with what I have, and my sunny disposition.

Weight: 2 lbs 10 oz (of course a good deal of that is worn per day)

Gadgets

Some people go hike the AT to get away from the modern world. To leave their phones behind. I am not one of those people. I intend to jam my way to Katahdin to the tunes coming out of my earbuds. To this end I am taking a pair of MP3 players that run off of a single AAA battery. One for music, the other for podcasts and audiobooks. To keep my phone charged I have a Bear Grylls Solar Wrap. People call the AT the "green tunnel," but at the very least it's a nice external battery. I also have a SPOT Locator. Every night I hit a button and it sends my location to friends and family so they know I'm alive. And if I'm in danger of not being alive for much longer, I can call for SOS. Finally I have my Kindle, which my friend Paul graciously let me borrow. I intend to have it loaded with 50 books by the time I leave, as I read voraciously when hiking.

Weight: 1 lbs 2 oz (including cables and extra batteries)

Everything Else

I've also got first aid, a pack cover, my AT guide book, a headlamp, rope, a bag for food, toiletries, and a small towel that dries very quickly. As well as a whole bunch of plastic bags that everything goes in. And of course, my knock off Aviators I bought for a dollar.

Weight: 13 oz (...ish)

So all told I'm carrying about 12 pounds, give what I've forgotten and take what I'm wearing or carrying. This is 3 or 4 pounds above what I wanted when I set out, but most of this extra weight is from me being stingy, and from the non essentials that I want to carry, like my electronics. Although sometimes stressful, it's been a fun exercise fitting the next few months of my life into a 50 liter pack.

My next post should be on Sunday night, my first from the trail. Thanks to everyone who has given me their support so far, it's meant a lot to me. Starting on Sunday I'll be doing my best to make daily posts, reception allowing. Until then, thanks for reading!

Start From Somewhere

On April 13th I will wake up a few hours before the sun rises to catch a plane to Georgia. Why am I doing this? Because somewhere along the line I thought it would be an excellent idea to hike the Appalachian Trail this year.

To backtrack for a moment, my name is Ben Cort and I'm a born and raised Bostonian. My catalogue of travels is from Florida to Quebec, but constrained to the Eastern Time Zone. When I was 10 I went to Camp Tohkomeupog (Tohko) in New Hampshire where I got my first taste of the great outdoors. I want to say that my first mountain was Mt. Madison, but regardless, I got hooked on trying to hike all of the New Hampshire 4000 Footers. I've even got an old camp T-Shirt from that first year with all of them on the back.

Hiking and I have an odd relationship. Thinking back on all my hikes, I'm good at smiling and looking wistfully off into the distance as I reminisce on all the good times. It's undeniable that a good hike leaves you with good stories, and it's even more undeniable for those who know me that I love nothing more than hunting down a good story. But there's a lot out there in the wilderness, and most of it terrifies me. Especially bears, despite how objectively cute I think they look.

For my 4 years at Tohko, from the Dear Clan to the Wolf Clan, hiking became the thing I did every summer. My trail name was Bort (Ben plus Cort...get it?), and my friend from school Rando and I would push each other to harder trips and higher peaks. I remember summiting Mt. Washington in a storm and finding Lake in the Clouds wreathed in beautiful mist. I remember having a snowball fight in Mahoosuc Notch and being terrified by the dead moose in a ravine and the hiker who put it out of its misery. And I remember the joy of sitting down at the end of the day to a pot full of chicken Montanna (chicken, rice, cheese, and all the hot sauce you could carry), or frying up buttered raisin bagels in bacon grease as the sun rose. And just as quickly as this became a part of my life, it stopped being one.

When I arrived in high school my priorities changed. Not only did I become busy with a whole new school, I lost touch with my old friends. Rando and I had at most a pair of conversations over Facebook, where we both expressed our lack of desire to return to Tohko. So when summer rolled around, I stayed in Boston.

Hiking stayed far back in my mind for the next four years. I would occasionally mention it, and even more rarely muse on the possibility of a trip up to the Whites, but I never acted on it. Until my senior year, where I got a nasty bug and missed a chunk of school, losing credit for a yoga extracurricular I was taking. Which meant losing half of an athletic credit I needed to graduate. So I could take another course, or do something a little more unorthodox. I met with the Athletic Director and convinced him to let me do a weekend of hiking for my half credit, and then roped in a few friends.

A few weeks later I found myself hauling my old frame pack out of the attic for the first time in years. Inside was half a mess kit (crusted with something foul that took awhile to wash off) and my old sleeping pad. On the outside a few yards of ratty yellow rope had been lashed. As I collected my old hiking gear and deposited it inside, fitting everything into familiar pockets, all those memories of camp came flooding back. I went to bed early, eagerly anticipating the weekend.

And what a weekend. We hiked the Osceolas the first day and the Hancocks the next. Being back in the woods was absolutely wonderful. I hit the trail running and didn't slow down. Halfway up the second peak a blizzard hit, catching me unawares in shorts and a hoody. Reaching the second peak I huddled amongst some rocks and waited for the rest of the group. One friend arrived after a half hour, and the two of us waited for another two for the others. Finally sick of sitting in the freezing cold, we set back down the mountain. When we reached the parking lot we found our car missing. Just as we were planning how to walk back to town, on the last of our food and water, it rolled back into the parking lot. Mistaking the first peak for the last, they had turned around early and, assuming us lost, gone to alert the police. We rectified the mistake and returned to the campsite. The next day was just as snowy, with a solid foot or so at the peaks. My copy of Jane Eyre I had brought for class became completely soaked through as I sat at the bottom of the loop waiting for the rest of them to finish the mountains. An objectively miserable experience, but I was grinning like a fool the whole time. I hadn't realized how much I had missed this.

Though my friends will probably never hike again, I was energized to keep it going. But then I received my letter of deferred admission off the wait list to my dream school, and upgraded my part time job to full time over the summer. Hiking was pushed aside again. I started taking classes at the local extension school and working to fill my gap year. I was content to wait out life until the next fall.

I can't for the life of me remember what it was, but one night, surfing the web, I saw a reference to the Appalachian Trail. Since I was 11 and saw the AT sign tattooed on my counselor's ankle I knew that a thru hike was something I would do in my life. But suddenly I realized that there would never be a better time to do it. And subsequently that I was completely wasting my gift of a year by sitting around my home town pretending to be a student.

I spent all night reading, and emerged even more certain. I would hike the Appalachian Trail this year. I announced my decision to my father, who laughed. I don't blame him. It sounded pretty crazy. But as the months went by and I started assembling gear, it became more and more real. To all of us. Telling people my intent cemented it for me. Now it wasn't just an idea (albeit a crazy one), I really was going to hike the Appalachian Trail.

Or at least try. I've got to get back by the time school starts, which means I'm going to aim to complete the trail in around 110 days. Which means knocking off an average of 20 miles per day. Has it been done? Sure. Can I do it? Hopefully. Is this a terrible idea? Probably. But nevertheless, on April 13th in the wee hours of the morning a plane is waiting to take me to the southern terminus of the trail. And I couldn't be more excited.

(Gosh that was long! Next up I'll chatter aimlessly some more about my gear choices (read: my completely uninformed opinion) and the trial run I took with them)