Road Trip

We escaped the hot Midwest and made it to Colorado on Monday the 15th. A friend in Denver provided a place to sleep and this became our base camp for the next few days while we acclimatized.

A side trip to Rocky Mountain National Park took a few days and was worth it. Neither of us had been there before.

We then headed south to Alamosa (Hi Rocky!) and eventually to Durango where we will be leaving our truck at the end of the trail.



Trailhead at Kenosha Pass.

End of the trail in Durango. We should be back here in seven weeks!

Food for 500 miles

Food boxes, 2013.

On the AT we had food boxes mailed to ourselves along the way. There were 19 of them for the 2200 mile journey. For the CT we will be doing about the same thing, except there will only need to be 4 boxes mailed to us. Even with the boxes, as on the AT, we still need to shop at a grocery in each town we stop at for lunch foods, cheese, salami, breads, fresh fruit, etc.

We will be having a mixture of home made dehydrated meals and commercially available ones in order to try to have a varied menu. We have a dehydrator and a vacuum sealer and so with a little experimentation have can come up with some decent recipes that work. Chili and spaghetti, for example, are easy to make and turn out pretty good once re-hydrated in camp.

White chili stew.

After being dehydrated.

Vacuum sealed and ready to go.

Food boxes getting ready for the CT.
At this point I realized the boxes were
too small and had to get more.

Packs

Our AT packs in 2013.

For the AT we both used a Ray-Way backpack, which comes as a DIY kit to sew yourself. Compared to the tarp, it is quite a sewing challenge. They are basically a simple large compartment bag with three mesh outside pockets. They weigh only 11 oz, compared to some other packs in the 2+lb range. They have a capacity of 2600 cu in, or about 42L. This was our pack evolution after using the GoLite Gust for a few years. Both of our Ray-Way packs survived the AT and for the CT we will be using basically the same thing. We will have new ones, however, because like our hammocks, the old ones from the AT just smelled too bad, not because they were worn out.

Kristie's new pack for the CT.

Mark's new pack for the CT.

Thought this should go here.

Ray-Way packs #3&4 for us in progress, 2018.

Taking the new packs on a test run.

Hammocks

Typical setup on the AT.

The first hammocks we had for backpacking were Speer, which is just a simple rectangular gathered end hammock with a knot on the end for the attachment point, rather than a sewn channel. Both of our hammocks that we used on the AT were similar and had to be replaced shortly thereafter because they smelled so bad, not because they were worn out. So we both have relatively new hammocks made out of 1.9oz/yd nylon.

Our newer camo hammocks and Ray-Way tarp.

I did change the suspension on our hammocks for the CT after watching too many Jeff Myers videos. This is where the Amsteel cordage comes in. After several trials, I finally settled on this for our hammock suspension systems. This will also allow adjustment right at the end of the hammock rather than having to adjust the knot at the tree, as we had to do on the AT.

Not the final version, but close.

Soft shackles made out of Amsteel.

Tarps

In 2013, we used two Ray-Way tarps for our AT thru-hike, and they worked great in tandem with our hammocks. The materials come as a kit and you have to sew it together yourself. We had no problems with the tarps the entire 2000 miles. So, I expected to use Ray-Way tarps again for the Colorado Trail, and had purchased two kits a few years ago but had never gotten around to actually sewing them together. 

A year ago, after realizing that this CT trip was going to happen, I dug them out and began to put them together. Rearranging our backpacking kits, and trying to save weight for the CT, for these tarps I left off the beaks and made the length of the tarp 10', which is 6" shorter than our AT tarps. These tarps are made of 1.1oz/yd silnylon, and when done weighed 1.1 lbs for the tarp and 6 stakes combined. Which is not bad...

Tarp sewing complete, ready to attach guylines.

Ray-Way tarp

However, in the past 10 years the cottage industry for backpacking gear has exploded, especially in regard to hammocks and tarps. It is hard to keep track of all the different hammock brands anymore, there are so many. New materials have also been developed in the real world for practical uses, and some have been hijacked into the hammock universe. Amsteel blue cordage, developed for use in the maritime world, being one example. We use it in our hammock suspensions. The other is Dyneema fabric, originally designed for use in the sails of racing sailboats. It is still rather new and a little pricy, but it weighs 0.51oz/yd, as compared to 1.1oz/yd for silnylon. It is also 100% waterproof, while the silnylon is really only 99.9%. You notice the difference.

Zpacks hammock tarp

Although you could buy the Dyneema fabric and sew one yourself, as advertised a Zpacks hammock tarp weighs 7oz, is 11' long, and is over half the weight of our existing tarps. This was hard to pass up, so for the CT we will be using two of these made out of the Dyneema fabric. They weigh 0.5 lbs with the same 6 stakes as before included. To hold one, it is amazingly light, to the point where it makes me a little nervous about the durability. But I know other backpackers are using them without problems, so I guess time will tell.

Post AT 2013

AT, March 18 - October 5, 2013

What are you supposed to do after spending six months in the woods and walking 2000+ miles? You can go back home but the world doesn't look quite the same after all that. The problem with great backpacking trips is that they take a lot of time, which is sometimes hard to find. In the years following our AT thru-hike, we managed to go on some great trips, but always in the back of our minds was the thought of another thru-hike. As early as 2014 we had decided that the 500-mile Colorado Trail sounded pretty interesting and would be a great trail to thru-hike. The only question was, when?

In the summer of 2014 we took a trip out west to Colorado to scout out portions of the CT. We wanted to see what the trail conditions were like and at the time were thinking about trying to thru-hike it in 2015. That didn't work out, however, but the thought of thru-hiking the CT remained in our minds.

Four Pass Loop, Maroon Bells, Aspen Co, 2015

Billy with his video gear.

Wanting to return to Colorado but not having the time for a long hike, in the Fall of 2015 we hiked the 24-mile Four Pass Loop near Aspen, Colorado. This loop goes over four 12,000' passes and is a Colorado classic. We hiked this loop along with our friend Billy, also from Indiana. He carried a video camera and recorded a lot of the trip. (Someday we might get to see it!)

Arctic Circle, Grimsey Island, Iceland 2016

In the Fall of 2016 we traveled to Iceland for two weeks and drove the 800-mile Ring Road around the island. Not really a backpacking trip, but there were plenty of great day hikes to do everywhere.

AT May 2017

In May of 2017, I again partnered up with our friend Billy to introduce his sister-in-law to the world of backpacking on the AT. We started at Springer and went 70 miles to Dicks Creek Gap in 8 days. It was the third time that I hiked that section, the first being in 2005 and again in 2013. We all had a great time and completed our hike with no problem.

Sheltowee Trace, November 2017

 In 2012 we hiked the southern half of the Sheltowee Trace, which is a 300-mile long trail in Kentucky through the Daniel Boone National Forest. After the AT, we finally finished section hiking the northern half in the Fall of 2017, and consider it, along with the AT, the two long trails that we have completed.

Tecumseh Trail, December 2018

There are several local trails in Southern Indiana that we can escape to for a quick weekend trip, the relatively new Tecumseh Trail, east of Bloomington, being one of them. In the Fall of 2018 we had what I thought was our final setup for the Colorado Trail, and took several practice overnight trips close to home.

Changes

It is the first day of summer and it is raining again. In the mail today came a few last stuff sack kits made of Dyneema that I wanted to try, some elastic cord for pullouts on our new Zpacks tarps, and amsteel blue for more continuous loops for use with our hammock suspensions and ridgelines. If none of that makes sense then welcome to the world of backpacking!

All of this is in preparation for our upcoming thru-hike of the Colorado Trail. It has been six years since we thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2013, taking six months to do so. We have always wanted to do another long trail since then. The time never seemed right, however, for such a long break from normal life, until now, when I think we are once again ready to go for a walk in the woods.

We plan to start in a little over four weeks on July 21.

Today was Kristie’s last day of work, while I have three more weeks to go, with a business trip to Canada thrown in the middle just for good measure. After that we have a week to pack our truck, drive to Colorado, park the truck in Durango, fly back to Denver, meet Billy, our friend from Indiana who is flying in on the same day and will be hiking with us for the first 70 miles, meet Kim, our other friend from Indiana who is now from Denver, who is picking all three of us up at the airport, have one last night out on the town, get any last minute supplies, and then start the trail the next day. Hopefully not hungover. What could go wrong?