Jordan's Dad

I have a confession to make. Nothing terrifically earth-shattering, but it does have the potential to really monkey-wrench my upcoming AT hike: I don’t like hiking in the rain. I mean, I REALLY don’t like hiking in the rain. According to my daughter, “when it starts raining, you start hiking really fast.”

Now, I’ve been hiking in the rain. I’ve been hiking on forested ridges with thunder crashing overhead, I’ve slogged through mud, I’ve waited for a group of boy scouts to vacate the only shelter that faced away from the oncoming storms. I’ve hiked in such hard rain that the drops blasted right through the dwr coating of a brand new REI rain jacket. I’ve done it, so I am aware that it can be done; I just don’t like it. In case you haven’t heard, I’ve been led to believe that it does a bit of raining along the AT corridor during the hiking season, and this obviously poses a problem for me.

I’ve done enough hiking and camping in the wet that I’m aware of how to cope. I carry down sleeping solutions (I haven’t owned a synthetic-fill bag for going on twenty years), and I’ve never got one soaked. In fact, I’ve convinced other hikers who were hesitant to try a down bag to make the switch with the simple question, “when is the last time you soaked your synthetic bag?” I use a trash-compactor bag inside my pack to protect my “must stay dry” items. I’ve used a Tarptent Squall for years and never had a drop force its way inside during Rocky Mountain storms. In camp, I have no worries. Don’t pitch your tent in a dip or gully, lookout overhead for dead trees and limbs, and you won’t get flooded.

Walking, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. The thing is, it really shouldn’t be. I believe that I’ve mentioned that I sweat like it’s my job. My clothes are wet from 20 minutes after I hit the trail, and I’m lucky if they are drier than “damp” the next morning (one reason that I don’t do a huge amount of winter hiking and camping). So what is the difference between my normal state of being soaked with sweat without a rain shell, and the loathing that I feel for being soaked with sweat inside a rain shell? More importantly, how do I go about conditioning myself to accept the sweaty-sweltering one does inside the best of rain shells as a normal state of affairs?

In my wayward youth, I tried hiking without a rain shell. It was a pleasant spring day in southeastern Nebraska, with a chain of thunderstorms dumping continuous rain all day and all night long. As long as I was moving, I was only marginally more uncomfortable than my normal sweaty self, but the instant I stopped… Yes I can see you smiling at my youthful idiocy. This is how I became aware that hypothermia is a truly real thing. After just a few minutes of standing around waiting for the boy scouts to vacate the shelter I mentioned above, my companions and I took possession. I stripped down, dried off as best I could, wrapped up in my sleeping bag (a Western Mountaineering Ultralight 25 degree bag) and proceeded to shiver for what seemed like the next four hours. I’ve never been that cold before or since, and I have absolutely zero urge to ever repeat that experience.

So, other than taking every opportunity to hike in the rain in the coming months (which I fully intend to do, you understand), I’m curious as to how I can psyche myself out to accept the sweltering soaking with sweat in the rain sensation that will be my lot a substantial portion of the time I spend on the trail next year. Waiting it out in some sort of shelter would mean not finishing in anything like a reasonable time frame (not to mention massively expanding the necessary budget for food and hotel stays), plus the fact that the boredom monster will get me if I were to try something like that. I can’t be the only hiker that hates the rain, can I?