Primitive and modern outdoor skills

Minimalist footwear (5-fingers, huaraches, and boots)

2010-06-11

There has been a lot of movement in popular culture towards more minimal footwear. This has made Jess and I very happy as it's given a lot more options for us. Admittedly it's slightly annoying since it's also created a lot of things that appear minimal, but really aren't.

Here's my story:

I in highschool I ran cross-country and track, and, like so many, I a lot of shin-splint problems. I really got into backpacking around the same time, and discovered that the outside of my right foot always hurt when I walked a long distance. As it turns out my arch goes all of the way across my right foot. A little odd, but everyone has something. In college my knees started causing me enough trouble that I could barely run at all. My girlfriend at the time noticed that I walked and ran duck-footed (feet pointed outwards). I had no apparent bio-mechanical issue (I hoped), so I did some research and retrained myself to walk with my feet pointed forwards. This also involved changing my normal spine alignment and basically my entire posture. I also training myself to run toe/forefoot strike style. The toe-strike running solved my shin-splint problems, which (as I discovered after a 50-mile day and subsequent hospital visit) turned out not to be bone fractures at all, but were actually a complaining overstressed tendon.

While learning to toe-strike, I read that you should practice bearfoot running to improve your running form so it's less damaging to your joints (it hurts if you do it wrong barefoot). I started running barefoot and it felt good. I figured maybe I didn't need shoes and got up to running 2 miles or so barefoot. Then one time I hit bad rocks on a sidewalk and got blood blisters deep in my heal. At that point I realized my feet couldn't easily get tough enough for barefoot running anywhere, and I did in fact need shoes. I also realized around this time that cherts (the stone) exist in many places, and can be razor-sharp. No matter what, shoes will take that better than my foot.

I needed footware.


Okay, but what KIND of footware? By this time I had found that the higher the heal on my shoe when running toe-strike, the less well I could run. In my experimentation I had also discovered that if I ran in a non-supportive shoe and then hiked in the same shoe, my feet hurt far less than if I ran in a supportive shoe and then hiked in that same shoe. Basically, my feet were better at taking the force than the shoes were - if I gave my feet practice.

So, ever since then I've been on the hunt for thin-soled non-supportive shoes without extra "features" that add weight, and make a natural stride less comfortable. In the process I have discovered numerous other advantages. For example the lower the heal on the shoe, the harder it is to roll your ankle, and the less material in the shoe, the faster it dries.

The Shoes


Trail Racers

The first type of shoe I discovered was the trail racing shoe. Trail racing shoes, as it turns out, come in quite a wide variety. As the "minimal" thing got popular a lot of not-at-all-minimal shoes started getting marketed as minimal lightweight trail-racers. I didn't like those, I liked the ones with almost nothing - like this:

I've had a few pairs that were even more minimal, but those shoes always got more "shoe" added in the next model year, these are the best I've found that have lasted any time. I also tried road-races, but I found that they wear out a bit too fast.

Leather Boots

Jess wears mostly high-ankle leather boots, similar to older forest combat-boots (I haven't found any that fit me well yet), kind of like this:


The key is that both of these solutions have a wide sole so they are stable, little to no padding to absorb water, a flexible ankle to aid in natural stride, and NOTHING ELSE. The leather boots are heavier, but last longer and shed water better.
Either of these solutions can be used in cold weather with the addition of waterproof socks
, and warm socks.

5-fingers

Jess, myself, and several of our friends have been wearing 5-fingers regularly for a while:


Overall we find they're like being barefoot. The downsides: they stink after a while (you can wash them, and wearing toe-socks helps), and the cloth on top wears out too fast. A friend at work found that the KSOs are worse than other models and theorizes that its due to added tension of the upper. In any case, they seem to wear out, and they are not cheap. The upsides: Jess and I have both actually backpacked in these (though on shorter-distance trips) and found it to work extremely well even on rock. The only issue is that the ball of your foot has to be a little tough. They are absolutely attached to your foot, and get incredible traction. As a result 5-fingers are awesome for running, parkour, rock scrambling and hiking. I'm a pretty big fan overall, but expect to spend some moeny.

Huaraches




Recently I was talking to someone who pointed me at this website: http://www.invisibleshoe.com/ . This site describes how to make Huaraches. Well, we had some decent chap leather in the house, and some twine. So Jess and I immediatly made pairs of our own... and we love them!

I'm wearing them now. I've been wearing them to work a lot lately, and find them great for work and city use. Jess and I have also now both worn them for some miles while backpacking. Jess loved them even for backpacking. I found them to work *okay* but they picked up a lot of rocks. Our feet got sore of course, as they're still toughening up, but they protect you from bad thorns and sharp rocks. Basically, imagine a super-light teva sandal you can make at home for no money, with an ultra-flexible soul that pretty much stays perfectly on your foot through a normal step. The other downside (besides the rocks) is that when you do slide on the sole, the ropes can be a bit uncomfortable; though, this only happens when on very steep hills and in certain types of mud. We had no problems bushwhacking down river-beds (and didn't need to care about our feet getting wet).

Conclusion

So, that's what we've found to work. Your mileage may vary, and keep in mind that some people really do have bio-mechanical problems and need supportive shoes or orthotics. That said, you'd be amazed what your body can do when left to it's own devices for a while, and made to toughen up a bit. There's nothing like walking and running the way your body was meant to do it. It quickly becomes clear that foot-based locomotion is what human's are good at, one of the best in the animal kingdom in fact. It just feels good. If you can, give it a try sometime!

thoughts on ultralight backpacking

2010-06-10

So, there seems to be a lot of confusion and FUD about ultralight backpacking. So, here, I'd like to talk about why from my perspective.

What is ultralight?

This is one of the most often misunderstood things about ultralight, especially by those who don't do it. Maybe the real confusion is definitions, so let my define what I mean by ultralight. Ultralight backpacking is about understanding what you "need", and what you don't, paring down what you need, and then getting the lightest thing you can to fill that need. Most people define ultralight as below some weight range, but really... it depends on what you're doing. The numbers get picked more by where you end up with a certain mindset, then by any absolute scale. If you carry 15 lbs of gear, safely, in northern Alaska... go you! 12 lbs of gear in the whites is hot shit. 8 lbs of gear in the mid-west is quite impressive... whatever. So lets not go into any specific weight numbers, and consider the mindset instead. Unfortunately, there's no good term for the mindset :), so we'll stick with ultralight.

What do you gain?

So now the real point. Ultralight isn't so much about going without, but about knowing what you are giving up. If my base pack weight is 8 lbs, then what am I doing with the rest of my pack weight? Here are some examples.

1) On the AT, you can think of every pound as half a days food... For an AT through-hiker that is a VERY interesting thought ;-). When you consider "I could have tent... or I could eat more nutella" it really puts things in perspective.

2) Once I'm good at keeping my weight down, say I want to go on a weekend trip. That guitar will cost me 2 lbs. Well, I can still keep up with my friends and do an strenuous hike with that 2 lbs!

3) Now I'm going on a kayak trip. I've thought through what gear I need. Maybe I trade some heavier things for bulkier things, but I've already done most of the work. 10 lbs of pack weight can't take that much space. Suddenly you find your gear fits anywhere!

4) My friend gets injured while we're out, she can walk, but only with no weight. Well, her pack currently weighs 20 lbs, mine weighs 20 lbs. I can haul 40 easy. So, I combine the two and walk out.

If, on the other hand, you start dropping important gear. That is, things that will keep you warm and dry and safe in case of exceptional circumstances you haven't gotten many of the gains I discussed above. And besides nearly killing yourself, you're a drain on resources like other people's good will, and Search and Rescue. Don't simply go without something that you think you need, that won't help anyone. It's people like that that've given Ultralight the somewhat dubious reputation it has now. Practiced carefully ultralight can be SAFER than heavyweight backpacking. It's about carrying what you need - not more, and not less.

Philosophy

So, as mentioned elsewhere, Jess and I really like being outdoors. We backpack for 2 reasons, because we love being in the wilderness, and we love to walk. Walking until you're ready to sleep, and then simply laying down your bag at the first flat spot, and sleeping under the stars (likely having eaten an hour ago), is a very different experience than hauling into a preset camping spot, pitching a tarp, setting up the kitchen, pumping a couple gallons of water, pitching your tent, and crawling into it to not see the outdoors until your 4 hours of walking the next day. I'm sometimes really taken aback when I backpack with other people, I forget that not everyone wants to spend all their time wandering and playing before laying down.

Now we're actually trying to move away from "ultralight", and towards "less stuff" mindset. My goal is to not be a visitor in the woods. I want to go out without caring how long I'll be out, such that whether I'm there for 3 days, or 2 months doesn't matter. The idea is to carry even less. To become more of an animal. As jess likes to put it, we want to be ferrel humans.

It's all about what you are there to do.

emergency kit

2010-05-16

I recently lost my emergency kit.

This gave me the opportunity to rethink what exactly goes into my kit. You put stuff there, and if you're doing it right things will come out of it, but only on pretty rare occasions. As a result it's easy to forget what you actually keep there. On that note, here's what I have in my kit.

Emergency Kit


Waxed twine or floss

This is for general ad-hoc gear repair. Sometimes I'll bind something back together, most of the time I'm stitching clothing, a pack, boots, or something similar.

Steel wire

Again this is for gear repair. You can fix a lot of gear with steel wire, you'd be surprised. It can replace a cotter pin and things like that in very secure way more easily than with twine. Due to it being stiff you can re-thread a pulled out draw-string. Additionally, I once used it to attach the exhaust system of a car to the car so we could get home without it dropping off.

duct-tape

Of course! This is useful for just about everything. Duct-tape is one of my favorite blister treatments. It's great for gear repair, especially for a quick-patch to a backpack. I use this constantly. It really can't be stressed enough just how useful a bit of duct-tape is. I usually roll it on itself off of a full-sized roll. Though I've also baught the mini rolls and those work to.

Note - putting it on your nalgene drinking bottle really doesn't work well. That will get wet a LOT and the duct-tape won't come back off very well.

emergency bivy

By this I mean one of those reflective "space blanket" style ones. They're just like the blankets but sealed across an extra edge. This makes them far easier to use as a bivy, and if you want them open you can always cut that edge again, and voila! I have only used this a couple of times. The last time it's because I was trying sleeping with 2 blankets up in mendecino. That didn't work out so well, but I had my bivy! lining the bivy with the blankets I had a fine nights sleep - while my friend couldn't get to sleep and had to beg fire and more blankets off someone else. I consider this a potential/probable life-saving item.

Aluminum foil

This has a lot of uses. I admit to never having actually used it though. Some examples include a solar still, and a signaling mirror. In the past I depended on the aluminum foil I already had for my alcohol stove's windscreen. Now I'm often carrying a wood-stove instead (or in addition, but it acts as a windscreen), so I've added aluminum foil back to the kit.

medical kit

I store this in a tiny nalgene bottle (like the ones people keep peppermint soap, or spices in). This keeps everything dry. I then store in that bottle

I also carry a truly minuscule bottle (smaller than my pinky) of tincture of benzoine : This is an extremely sticky antibacterial substance. If placed under bandages it will help with healing, help keep away infection, and help the bandage stick.

Additionally I depend on having some bandanas around to use as a sling and duct-tape for closing wounds and as blister treatement. I often carry gauze, which when combined with the ducttape, can make a very large bandage if needed.

Albutoral Inhaler

I'm asthmatic. If I can breath I can deal with a heck of a lot more more problems. If you have a necessary perscription drug, it's really worth carrying an extra somewhere in your pack.

Pencil

You can always use the corner of your map. Having a pencil is useful if you get seperated from your hiking buddies for example, you can leave them a note. Additionally you'll find you want them for filing out little passes and things when getting camping spots, self-registering at a trailhead or whatever.

Non emergency kit emergency gear

Now, they always say that one way to drop weight is to make dual use of your gear. There's no reason that your non-emergency gear can't get included when thinking through what you'd do in an emergency. In particular here are some of the pieces of gear I depend on.

Miniature knife

This is a bit silly, this is my backup knife. I mostly have it so I can attach it to the lanyard, and have the lanyard stay light - so I'm not discouraged from throwing it around my neck when I drop my pack. I tend to carry an excessive number of knives.

"Light-My-Fire" sparker

This is basically a flint-and-steel, but it throws a better spark. Jess and I use these to light our alcohol stoves normally. I often carry an additional lighter, but I don't trust those. This is my "will just work" backup for general fire-starting. I've spent a while practicing starting a fire with one such that I can do it in non-ideal conditions (though still not as non-ideal as I'd like).

Photon 2

These are great. Many people use them as their *only* light source, and I have actually night-hiked with one. It works fine on-trail if you're used to night hiking. I like to have a spare light-source though. Probably 4 separate times I've been out on a trip when someone realized they left their light at home, or their light broke. In my system being able to walk is one of the most important safety measures this includes at night. A backup light is not a high-cost and it may make a trip far more pleasent when someone else forgot theirs. I also carry an additional clip for it so I can clip it to my hat, or a bandana tied to my head and use it like a headlamp. I should note that this uses the same batteries as my normal headlamp - so it also acts as a backup for batteries.

Whistle

I find that I often want it when running off to check a bit down the trail. You can set up a standardized whistle system in your group. 3 whistles is always emergency, so Jess and I set up 1 whistle as "SIN" and "ACK". Think marco-polo. This lets you query for the other person's location even at a distance. 2 whistles is "Come here", but not an emergency. This way you can signal when you've found the correct path.

Button Compass

I used to always carry a map compass. It depends a lot now, I realized a map compass is rarely what I really want anyway. I either want a sighting compass, or a button compass is good enough. I carry a button compass in my emergency gear so I just always have one and don't have to worry about it. This also gives me a backup were I to lose my large compass - as it tends to come in and out of my pockets a lot.

Lanyard

You may notice that this stuff isn't in the emergency kit.
Instead I keep the last 5 items on a lanyard in an easy to reach pocket. This way when I say... go off to fetch water a mile or 2 away, or run down a trail to see if it's the right direction, or whatever, I can just grab the lanyard and drop my backpack.

Survival Knife

This is just a folding knife or a belt knife (I have both) with a good bland and a handle large enough to easily wield the blade for things like basic woodworking. Starting a fire without a knife is much much harder. This is also useful for cutting pine boughs for a shelter, and any wood construction.

Leatherman squirt

This is a *great* tool. I have the one with the pliers. There's nothing like sewing a boot to make you wish you had a thimble or pliers. Or fixing a stove you suddenly realize you need an awl. A small screwdriver to fix who knows what, a file to modify the zipper on your sleepingbag so it will mate with your partners (yes I did this, it *almost* worked). A full-size leatherman is just larger than I find I need, and very heavy. The squirt is perfect. I never use the blade, so it's nearly sterile and very very sharp - perfect for a quick minor surgery to remove a giant splinter.

Stay tuned: I'm rebuilding my emergency kit, so this may well get updated as I realize bits of gear I'm missing :).

- mbrewer

Water treatment

2010-05-14

There are, as you may well know, many different options for water treatment while backpacking. Hopefully this will provide a good overview of the options.

Options


Bringing you own water

This is, by far the simplest approach in concept - just carry everything you'll need. The obvious advantages are that you know the water's safe and palatable, and you don't have to go find it while you're out. The disadvantages are that you it's bloody heavy, and scales with the length of the trip. Even for relatively short trips you'll find a desire to predict how much water you'll need to reduce weight. You'll almost always want to carry some amount though. Few people drink exclusively from streams. It is not uncommon to need to carry water for a full day or even multiple days even when using other treatments. Consider areas such as in deep deserts.

Pros
  • Simple, guaranteed good water
  • Can be done in areas without ground water
Cons
  • Heavy and therefore impractical for longer trips
  • Not a great situation if you run out of water

Filtering

Filters are hugely varied. Some require pumping, some are gravity fed. Some can filter raw sewage, and some don't remove much of anything. Pore size is related to what type of stuff a filter gets out of the water. The standard rule of thumb is that you want a pore size of 0.2 microns or smaller to remove bacteria, giardia and crypto. Some filters include an activated carbon or iodine stage (affectively blending filters into chemical treatments). Activated carbon grabs ions. Thus it is good at removing pollutants affecting taste as well as industrial chemicals. Note that some pollutants taste good (and are good for you), Brita filters are activated carbon. An iodine stage will kill viruses.

I started hiking with a filter, and found that it made drinking water a treat. We were always looking around to see which stream would have the best tasting water to try. As soon as the water had filtered I'd sip some up. I stopped carrying a filter after taking a nine day trip in the Alegany forest however. On that trip our gravity fed filter sprung a small leak, and became so clogged that we were spending a significant part of the day waiting for water to filter.
Brewer has used a ceramic pump filter, these can often be force backflushed by connecting up some hoses backwards and running already filtered water backwards through the pump. With the high-quality ones you can generally always make the pump work (modulo complete failure of the pump body). They can take futzing though, and are pricey, and may take a lot of back-flushing. Also a number of models (which often get good reviews) are barely functional. Note that a pump filter is far faster than a gravity filter, but you'll have to work for that speed.

Pros:
  • Delisous
  • Can drink water imediately after filtering
Cons
  • Slow
  • Can unexpectedly fail
  • Expensive
  • Is the only thing that will help with polutants

Chemically treating

Again there is a wide variety here with some chemicals working much better than others. The big advantage of chemically treating is that it's very fast to fill up, and there isn't much to break. You can also adjust the dosage based on the quality of the water. The big disadvantages are water taste, and having to wait to drink it (in which time you're probably carrying it). Chemicals won't remove any bad taste from the water itself and they tend to leave a bad taste themselves. They also don't help with polution.

Despite all those disadvantages I usually treat my water with Polar Pure. Polar Pure is a glass bottle with iodine crystals in the bottom. To use you keep it filled with water, and use this water containing dissolved iodine to treat your main water supply. Dissolving the iodine before adding it to the water means you have to use much less to achieve the same treatment, which makes it way more palatable than iodine pills. It also means that to get more solution you just fill the bottle back up and wait. They're effective as long as there are still visible iodine crystals, which is many months of continuous use. It also means you have a concentrated iodine solution for disinfecting wounds if nessiary. On the down side the iodine does impart some taste, and requires a large intake of vitamin C. (Iodine cancels vitamin C, so if you continue to intake large amounts of iodine without any vitamin C your body will eventually reject it. On the plus side adding vitamin C to water after it's finished treating neutralizes most of the taste.) It also requires you to wait ~30 minutes before drinking new water.
Don't forget that you can always run water through a bandanna before treating it. If you're pulling water from a swamp, a seep, or after pulling a rock out of a nearly dry stream bed, this trick will make you much happier.

Stupid UV wands

There exist UV wands which run off batteries. They aledgedly treat water, however there is no way to know if the UV bulb has gone out, and they break and run out of batteries in a very unpredictable way. I ran into many people on the AT who ended up without any water treatment solution because they'd only been carrying a UV wand. They also don't work as well in murky water, which is arguably what needs the most treating. On the plus side they don't affect flavor at all and you can look like you come from the future.

Boiling

Boiling works. It kills things. The disadvantage here is mostly time and inconvenience. Hiking in areas with sketchy water or in situations where I'm melting snow I'll often end up boiling my water to treat it because the stove is already set up. Boiling is also among the few treatment methods that you don't have to worry about freezing (e.g. freezing water in a filter can destroy it). Keep in mind though if you're boiling water you need to carry extra fuel and plan in the time to sit and wait for it to boil. This approach makes a lot more sense for static camping when you have a large fuel supply (such as wood). The great thing is, no flavor affect, and it works every time (modulo viruses).

Drinking straight

This is the riskest of the options, but also my favorite. I only drink water straight in situations where I'm fairly confident that it's safe. For example a 50 degree spring (50 degrees is about the temperature water is when it comes out of a true spring, due to geothermal heating) where I can get the water straight from the spring instead of from a still pool beneath it. Or if the water is fast moving, cold, near the top of a mountain, and I happen to know there isn't anything bad upstream. Bad things upstream include anything that poops (especially cows, beavers, and humans), roads, or anything else unsavory. Backpacking lite actually just ran an article about drinking water straight. I haven't gotten sick from drinking water yet, though it may always just be luck.
Something to keep in mind: a number of studies have pointed to self contamination as the primary cause of most "waterborn" diseases while backpacking. Statistically before worrying about treating your water, you should worry about washing your hands after every time you use a cat-hole.

Trip Report: Mendocino National Forest

2010-04-27

2 days 2 nights.

Jess and I wanted to go backpacking last weekend. We were planning to do the skyline-to-sea trail, but it turns out that the campgrounds simply aren't open today. We considered just going anyway, but decided against it.

Before Jess was suddenly free I'd been toying with doing a trip up to Yosemite, despite the deep snow etc. This was a questionable though awesome sounding plan, but it turned out that Jess' boots are dying. She could still wear her five-fingers though for a warm-weather trip. I'd also been toying with a trip up to Mendocino National Forest - so we decided on that.

So, on Wednesday evening we gathered all of the food we needed. On Thursday I went to REI to buy maps and pick up a new sighting compass for Jess... no maps. Okay, fine, whatever, we'll pick them up on our way up. So we reserved a mazda 3 zipcar and packed our backpacks with everything we might need.

Additionally on thursday my Bush Buddy wood stove arrived http://bushbuddy.ca/. This is a pretty cool piece of gear, and a review will be forthcoming.

Anyway, on friday I got home a bit later than intended, we grabbed our gear and jumped in the car. We'd heard that there were issues with pot-growers shooting people who stumbled on their fields in Mendocino wilderness, so we figured looking more ragpicker/travler/hippie might raise our chances of survival. As a result Jess had grabbed her external-frame pack and I was wearing my hat (also good for sun).

It took us about 3 hours to get up there - not too bad. We stopped at a gas-station and picked up a pretty so-so non-topo map with no trails marked, and continued onward. We wound our way up into the forest down a pretty small dirt-road. It had a few pot-holes, but was pretty easy driving in the mazda (I was doing some drifting around the turns).

We were poking around one area to see if a side-road was public when two guys in an old isuzu trooper pulled up alongside our car. One guy had an FBI had on and kindly advised us that locals tend not to take kindly to people pocking their noses about in that area. It turned out that we weren't in the national forest yet - and with the stories of the pot-grower shootings we were thankful and believed the advice.

So we continued down the road a ways and eventually found a nice little turnoff that looked promising. We parked the car and walked down and made camp. As it turned out we camped right next to a small stream, the area was fairly wet, but that was okay. The dew had already begun to gather. We ate a bit of gorp and went straight to sleep under the stars and moon, just laying down a groundcloth. The moon wasn't full, but it was VERY VERY bright. Later in the night when I woke up the night the sky was absolutely amazing.

The next morning we woke up in fairly wet sleepingbags, but that was fine. We stayed in them for an extra hour or so and let them dry off. We also left them out as we proceeded to cook breakfast using the new wood-stove. This went swimmingly. I used a lighter and some dry grass to get it started and it light right up. We grabbed a few loose branches and braking them into small pieces shoved wood at it as fast as we could - we had a full rolling boil of 3 cups or so in about 10 minutes in the 1-liter titanium pot designed to house the stove. We used this to make some cream of wheat with brown sugar and reconstituted blackberries. Quite tasty. We folded up our sleepingbags and the groundcloth while waiting for the stove to cool. Then we dumped the tiny bit of ash out on the ground and kicked it around a bit, then kicked the grass up a bit so it wouldn't all be totally flat and would recover faster from being slept on. Then we hopped into the car and continued down the road - looking for a good place to hike in.

After a while of drifting and beating a bit on the suspension of the mazda - the dirt road ran into a small paved one. We turned right and soon saw something that looked like a visitor area - with a parking lot. There were no trailheads, just a sign for a resort a ways off - looking around we saw some very inviting looking hills - so we took a quick sighting with the compasses and took off across the fields.

Ah yes... the hiking!

We forded a small river and walked up a green hillside, heading east. Up the hill a ways the brush looked kind of impenetrable. We walked along the hills for a bit until I decided I wanted to see what was past that brush. Eventually we saw a small ravine going up into the hills farther, and that was brush-free. Jess was so-so on this plan, but I was curious so we went up the steep ravine. Soon we pushed our way into shallow brush. This continued and every time we tried to get out we ended up in deeper brush (I was largely directing, though occasionally asking if Jess had any ideas). We were going largely south-east. At some point the bushes got large enough that we couldn't push them over anymore, and dense enough that we couldn't get through with our backpacks on, so we were pulling our packs along through the brush. As we came down a hill (hoping to hit a meadow again) the brush got so dense we could no longer get between it, but it was short enough that with a lot of brute force I could knock it over and walk on it. It was exhausting. Eventually, after another stint of going through high-brush with our packs off we turned west  and pushed our way out, finally finding the field again. This entire escapade was made far more difficult by our extranal frame packs. Mine has just a couple of posts above my shoulders head, so it's not much worse than a small internal - but Jess' had the full sack up behind her head - and it caught on everything.

We had gone less than a quarter mile south.

So, we stopped and ate. We were exhuasted, our legs and arms were covered in scratches, but for no good reason we felt oddly accomplished. After that we decided no more brush.

We continued southwards down the river, on the grassy fields. Eventually we wanted to cross the river, because the other side looked interesting too - but we had passed a dam outlet and we'd have to swim. We almost jumped in anyway, but it turned out to be too cold. So we continued walking down the river, now through fields of lupin. As that ended we began following dear trails through a sparse forest with only a little underbrush. There were a LOT of very well traveled dear trail.

The hills were steep, and each time the river bent left (we were going downriver on the right side) they got steeper. In a few spots the hill was washed out. Crossing one of this I slid a couple of feet down and caught myself on a rock. A bit later crossing a particularly dicey section Jess nearly slid and got quite nervous. Her adrenaline rush lingered for quite a while afterwards. Had we slipped it might've resulted in a broken leg, but probably not death or similar. Jess' external frame had a  far higher center of mass than mine due to the way it was packed - causing her a lot more trouble on all-fours.

Shortly after that we found a beautiful field high up overlooking the river with some nice flat spots. Earlier we'd grabbed some Spanish moss and Jess had pointed out some cattail fluff that we had then gathered. So, we lit up the stove that evening using a sparker and cattail fluff - this worked beautifully and we soon had a delicious hot meal of raman-style pasta, freeze-dried vegetables, and a thai peanut sauce. We also added some fennel Jess had seen and picked earlier that day (a fine thing to do in a national forest). It turned out to be one of the better backcountry meals I've eaten

Jess found some nice dry, dead live-oak when gathering the sticks for the stove, and she got curious about trying to make a fire-drill. I have slightly more experience than her, having done it successfully 3 or so times - all with materials someone else had gathered though. She had done it once in similar circumstances. So, we proceeded to make fire-boards and drills. I used a pine-bow to make my bow and my second drill attempt was straight enough to work pretty well. I got smoke 3 seperate times, but couldn't quite get it going long enough to build up the packed dust needed. Partly this was due to oak on oak - both of which fire-harden after a while rather than continually making the beautiful fine dust that you need to build up.

We went to sleep after putting all the food in the ursack and tying it to a tree a ways off. The dew fell again that night, even more than the night before, and again the stars were stunning. In the middle of the night I heard rattling in the woods and thought it was a couple of bucks fighting, or one sharpening it's horns. After a minute I realized our food was over there, and that I was hearing Jess' cookset being banged around (it was tied to the outside of the ursack, mine was inside). So I woke up Jess so we could go scare the bear together.

We'll the bear ran off before we got there (this is a national forest, so animals are skittish due to hunting). We found the bear had bitten the side of the ursack hard and tried to pull it off the tree. It was covered in slobber, had a small hole in it and a few other stress spots, but was intact. We went back to sleep.

In the morning it turned out the bear had shredded the bottom of our bag of rice and refried beans, and had slightly mauled the edges of a few other items including the tortillas, the corner of the cream of wheat bag, and one of Jess' cliff bars. Oh well, we still had our food! It also dented the bottom of Jess' pot a bit and had bitten the edge of mine. I bent the lid of mine back into shape though. There's no better way to have a pot dented than a bear. "How'd you get the dent in that pot?" "Well, let me tell you a story".

So, the next morning we hiked back. The entire time we saw no-one. On our way back we got even more into looking at the plants and food around us. Between the two days we'd identified a dozen or more edible plants, and several possibilities. We also saw a small shelter someone had built using sticks and branches. The top was missing, but it's purpose was unmistakable. We resolved to come back to the forest and try more of our survival techniques.

As we were nearing the car, out in the open fields again, Jess saw some elk scat (larger than deer scat). Then, over the next hill, we spotted the elk - stairing at us. I couldn't resist, and we then attempted to stalk the elk - to see how close we could get. We circled around so we woudn't be upwind and came up from behind a hillside - but when we got there they had moved to a different place than I thought.

We were back at the car fairly early, and the drive home was mostly uneventful.

We were cut to ribbons. We almost fell down steep hills several times. Our pots are dented and my ursack is chewed by a bear. It was beutiful with fields of lupin, pretty views, open fields, and lots of edible stuff. Overall it was an awesome and fullfilling trip, I can't wait to go back and practice other skills.