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runt13
08-28-2014, 10:53
First off, hello everyone, RUNT here.

Planning on starting to section hike the AT starting next year, some sections will be with a good friend, some with my wife, some with my granddaughter, and combinations of.

We are avid outdoors people, we hunt, fish, camp, hike, canoe, etc. We really enjoy the fall and winter seasons, and have the gear for it. Knowing we will need to adjust our gear for long distance hiking we always look to the experienced for real world information. our first section will be NJ.

1. Has anyone exclusively hiked the AT in the fall winter seasons? Any info is welcome.
2. Best stove for winter cooking, not just boiling water.
3. Suggested footwear.
4. Hammock vs. tent, we are leaning heavy towards hammocks.

ok there's a start

RUNT ''13''

HooKooDooKu
08-28-2014, 11:11
Hiking the AT isn't really that much of a long distance hike so much as it is instead a series of short hikes.
As such, the only things you need to adjust in your gear is to have enough supplies to last the most number of days you plan to go without resupplying.
Otherwise, the only reason I've heard to adjust your gear is just to try to go lighter... but that's general wisdom, not a long-distance requirement.

As you get farther north, parts of the AT may become inaccessible during the winter.
The MSR Wisperlite is a good winter stove. I first bought one 20 years ago and still use it when I think the temperatures are going to be a little low to try to use a canister stove.

2Ply
08-28-2014, 11:34
Be sure to check out hammockforums.net (https://www.hammockforums.net/forum/content.php) for all your hammock camping info. NJ has a very active group of hanger who love the winter time group hangs.

rafe
08-28-2014, 11:44
Best stove for winter is most likely a white gas stove, eg. MSR Whisperlite. For winter hikes I wear Sorels. If there's snow or ice and you're breaking fresh trail, you're likely to need traction devices of one kind or another: microSpikes, crampons, or snowshoes. That's one of the down-sides of hiking in winter; you never know exactly which of these devices you'll need, so you end up having to carry them all. In the worst case you're switching between the various types several times per day, and that gets tiresome.

Theosus
08-28-2014, 20:53
The hammock issue (I hammock - never used a tent) is heat retention. You can get under quilts that will keep you warm down to 0 or below, and if you use a sleeping bag rated for below 0 you're probably going to do okay. The wind blowing under your hammock and maybe through it will sap some heat from you quick, if you don't have a good under quilt or pad, used right. An "over cover" may help, basically like a tarp but pulled in pretty tight around you, to help retain heat. Tenters can get out from under trees - which in the winter may have snow or even ice on them, neither of which you really want plummeting onto your tarp (along with branches?) in the middle of the night. BUT - tents have to deal with snow on the ground, and you don't in a hammock. I'd still choose the hammock, if it were me.
I would worry more around NC and TN about unexpected snowstorms. If you get snowed in there won't be many cars along icy roads, so if you are trying to find a ride to a town, it may be hard. A friend of mine went hiking on the AT a year ago, for a short section. They were told they might get up to an inch or two but nothing major. He woke up to over a foot of snow the next day, and wasn't really prepared for the slog through fresh snow. They finally made it out, but he was definitely worried about it for a while.

bangorme
08-29-2014, 09:00
The worst thing about winter backpacking is the short days and LONG nights. Spending 12-14 hours a day in your sleeping bag isn't fun.

saltysack
08-29-2014, 10:35
The worst thing about winter backpacking is the short days and LONG nights. Spending 12-14 hours a day in your sleeping bag isn't fun.

Night hiking with my zebra light....only if not icy....I can't sit at camp long..I'd rather hike til dark or after if conditions permit..


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

runt13
08-29-2014, 12:25
Haven't even thought of the shorter days. However I'm usually into the woods by 4:30 hunting season and never back to camp much earlier then 7:00 pm. So I comfortable in low light conditions. and inclement weather.

RUNT ''13''

Another Kevin
08-29-2014, 14:26
Night hiking with my zebra light....only if not icy....I can't sit at camp long..I'd rather hike til dark or after if conditions permit..

Not icy? Oh wait, you're a Floridian.... Here Up North, I live in microspikes (when not using more aggressive traction gear) from late October to early May. It's never "not icy" here in the winter. Just the variations of snowcrete, packed snow, powder, slush, and hard ice.

To the original poster:

The A-T in northern New England really isn't passable for long-distance hiking in winter. We Northerners still get out, but we mostly switch to peak-bagging mode and don't attempt long-distance hiking. It's just too grueling to have to carry all your winter gear on a long trip. Moreover, the daylight is short, and the cold eats headlamp batteries. You also spend a lot more time navigating and route-finding, since the snow turns trails into approximate routes. All of these conspire to make the mileage short.

As Rafe points out, in that part of the world you need snowshoes or skis, crampons, poles, ice axe, and microspikes, because you don't know from one moment to the next what the snow conditions are going to be. (Make sure that you can do up the bindings on all your gear with gloves on, in the dark!) And slushy soft ice that's parting company with the rock can make a steep trail unsafe no matter what gear you're using. That's why Katahdin closes in mid-October. (It opens again to winter climbing once the ice is sound, something most A-T hikers are unaware of.) Several sections of the New England A-T (Mahoosuc Arm, the Wildcats, Kinsman and Beaver Brook particularly come to mind) are technical ice climbs in the winter. They're steep enough that most climbers want to rope up to do them.

Farther south, you can get feet of snow on the trail, but it doesn't stick around all winter. The long-distance hikers on the southern two-thirds of the trail typically plan to hole up in a town if the weather gets really bad until it improves. Tipi Walter is an exception to all this. He goes out for several weeks at a time. In bad weather he holes up in his Hilleberg tent and reads. I'm not sure I could lift his pack, much less hike with it.

New Jersey isn't all that bad if you watch the weather. You don't have the high elevations, and don't see the deep snow. Freezing rain can be a serious hazard. It's not only classic hypothermia weather, but also makes things slippery as hell. Bring microspikes if you're hiking the New Jersey A-T in the winter. If you're prepared to wait out a storm, you won't need snowshoes or crampons. Make sure that you can stay warm and dry somehow if it's windy, subfreezing and rainy for several days straight.

As far as a stove goes, I'll carry my alcohol burner in quite cold weather for short trips if I'm reasonably sure of finding water that isn't frozen. Once I have to start melting snow, I'll switch to an MSR Whisperlite. You really need a gasoline-fired stove if you're melting water - you'll go through ten times the amount of fuel that you'd use just for cooking. In New Jersey, there are lots of streams that run fast enough to be liquid throughout the winter. But be prepared to thaw your water containers in the morning. Keep a cookpot full of water just in case (you might have to thaw it in the morning, but at least it's in the pot already). I made Reflectix jackets for my water bottles because that keeps them liquid longer. Carry them head downward so that you don't get ice across the mouths. Canister stoves are the worst of the options in the winter unless they're remote feed and the kind that operate with the canister upside down. The isobutane liquefies in the winter and won't feed properly, and then the canister stops working once the propane is burnt off. (The head-down remote-feed designs avoid this by feeding fuel in the liquid state and vaporizing it in the stove.)

In 'shoulder season' in the north, I'll still wear my trail runners, with OR gaiters over them, and possibly microspikes. That's what I'm planning to bring on my late-October trip in the Adirondacks. Once it gets into real snow, I'll switch to pac boots because my trail runners' soles are simply not stiff enough to provide a secure platform for my crampons or snowshoes. Under the boots, I wear thin nylon or polyester dress socks as liners, then doubled newspaper or bread bags (two bags per foot) as a vapor barrier, then my Darn Tough wool socks. You want to keep your insulating layers (the sock and the felt inner boot) dry from both the inside and the outside. If you don't have a vapor barrier, you'll start to get condensation freezing in your inner boots or socks. Serious winter mountaineers - I'm not one, I just do the occasional winter peak-bag - usually wind up getting hard-shelled plastic mountaineering boots eventually, if only for the convenience of being able to use step-in bindings.

I hear that a hammock can work in quite cold weather if you have the right tarp and quilts. I haven't tried. I use my usual tent. Most three-season tents will work in winter if you know the tricks (banking snow as a windbreak, pitching halfway up a hill, on the lee side, and so on) for keeping it warm. If it gets nasty, you might have to get out once or twice in the night to shovel the snow load off it. I bring two sleeping pads in the winter. One of them is my usual Therm-a-Rest, the other is a cheap closed-cell foam from XYZ-Mart. The foam is fairly light, and it's not only extra insulation (my Therm-a-Rest just isn't warm enough in the winter) but provides a measure of safety in case the Therm-A-Rest deflates. Sometimes I also bring a sheet of Reflectix insulation to lay between them.

The gentlemen in the party might want to bring wide-mouthed bottles for use in the tent on a cold night. I have a Vitamin Water bottle for the purpose, which is a distinctly different shape from all my other containers to avoid confusion and accidents. Unfortunately, I have no suggestions for offering a similar convenience to the ladies.

Snowleopard
08-29-2014, 19:27
I'll second Another Kevin's and Rafe's advice. If you use Sorel/pac boots, carry a second felt liner for when the first gets wet and freezes.

For really cold weather:
keep your water bottle in one of these (or similar):
http://www.outdoorresearch.com/en/water-bottle-parka-1.html Fill it in the morning with boiling water.
Since you're in NJ, take an AMC or ADK winter camping course; some AMC chapters have good cheap courses and more expensive courses at Pinkham Notch. One of these courses would make it a lot safer. Lots of good info at http://www.winterschool.org/

NH and Maine can be somewhere between really really difficult and impossible/dangerous in mid winter. Vermont can be really tough also.

NJ and further south is a lot easier than Conn and north.
Finding the trail in the less traveled parts can be impossible in deep snow and you'll be breaking trail (tough work). As AK says, most people are peak bagging in winter, so popular peaks have the trails broken out, other trails might have 6' of soft snow.

Short sections south of Vermont are certainly doable by just picking good weather windows.

Warmer weather can be deadly, rain followed by cold is hypothermia weather, and travel through slush can be very slow. Read up on hypothermia and frost bite.

10-K
08-29-2014, 19:41
If you're going to be hiking when the trail is covered with snow and hard to find consider a smartphone with Guthook's AT app for that section of trail.

At least you'll know where the trail (and everything else) is.

Deacon
08-29-2014, 20:59
If you're going to be hiking when the trail is covered with snow and hard to find consider a smartphone with Guthook's AT app for that section of trail.

At least you'll know where the trail (and everything else) is.

I'll second that. His app saved me twice this year on the AT when I took a wrong turn and missed a switchback.

runt13
09-03-2014, 07:06
thanks for the info..keep it coming. a plan is formulating my brain!

RUNT''13'