One thing that is interesting to ponder is that while packs are getting ever lighter, people are taking ever longer to hike the AT.
Ithingies eat up a lot of time as do shuttles, restaurant meals, bar hopping, etc.Originally Posted by rickb
Precisely.
If you go fast uphill and tire yourself out, while you are resting on top, the slower hikers you passed on the way up will pass you up. At the end of a day, you are much more worn out as well, and will want to stop sooner.
On long uphills, I sometimes almost walk in slow motion, using the rest-step. Can go 2 hrs that way without pausing for a break. Breaks kill your mileage.
Demonstrates that, uhh gear(kit) weight isn't the ONLY factor in determining mileage per day or pace. Kinda, uhh possibly, points to uhh some fallacies about what is sometimes advertised or believed.
Maybe, that 40 lbs added.... around the waistline..... has something to do with it? Or something like adopting a different hiking philosophy, the type of trails you're hiking, seasons, that hip replacement, etc etc etc
Mr Jardine is not only wonderfully helpful and insightful but sometimes stubborn, eccentric, etc. Oh, and fiercely self reliant and independent. What else does he have? A deep understanding of what works for him.
Remember Rick, the trails 50ish miles longer than when we thru'd. Those must be real tuff miles.
I backpacked some when I was young and then dropped out. My interest was re-kindled when I read articles on UL trends. For myself (and I suspect also for many middle-aged and older hikers), UL was never about speed, unless you consider slow hiking to be fast when compared to not hiking.
+1.
ul doesnt necessarily mean speed.
Many external packs were lighter than their equivalents in the mid-late 90's when everyone was carrying 90 litre Terraplanes and Gregory Massifs. Those packs were nearly 8lbs, and a Camp Trails McKinely was 5lbs, and $300 cheaper.
Oh marketing : )
Loved my camp trails external. Mine was the camo one with the hauler frame which I removed the horizontal section. A place for everything. My pack was light then because I didn't know I "needed" all this stuff so I didn't bring it.
I went through a phase later where I "knew" what to bring and I brought it in my heavy internal frame pack.
Now I know better
Ditto this. About the time I turned 40, I dropped out of traditional backpacking with debilitating knee and Achilles pain. The UL revolution got me back on the trail. So my increase in speed was infinite--went from zero to something.
"Throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence." John Muir on expedition planning
Perhaps its because lighter packs make doing a thru hike possible for people who don't want to or can't carry a heavy pack, and that these people are just naturally slower because of their physical limitations or their mindset. As someone who spent 4 months to go 850 miles I can understand that. I'm not sure I'd want to do a 4, 5 or even 6 month thru hike. And the more I think about it, the more I think that maybe there are parts of the trail that you'd rather see in the winter or spring or fall than the summer. In some ways seeing the whole trail in one shot is not the ideal way to do it. I'm starting to think the people who do long sections of 200 to 500 miles might be doing it the ideal way.
As the big 4 0 is around the corner, I am thankful I did most of my backpacking with lighter weight gear. I can put in 20-25 MPD in non-thru hiker shape reasonably well. If I had done most of my hiking using traditional-style gear, my knees would be a mess today.
Paul "Mags" Magnanti
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The true harvest of my life is intangible...a little stardust caught,a portion of the rainbow I have clutched -Thoreau
Every time I see this thread I think: "Lone Wolf doesn't care about speed. It's just walking."Lone Wolf travels at his own pace
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