rain days

[kndglv]

I am from west-central Florida. During the spring/summer months it rains here almost every day . I know every year the weather is a little bit different, but I was wanting some feed back from others' experiences on rain days.

How many should I expect?
Are there times when you're stuck in your tent for days at a time?
How do you cook in the rain?
Is a weather radio useful, or just extra weight?
Instead of packing extra clothes, use rain suit for staying warm?

[Dogwood]

I don't think you'll have a set number of rain days for say an AT thru-hike but IMO you'll experience multiple consecutive rain days for an AT thru. You could choose to stay in a tent for days at a time avoiding rain but IMHO if you hike long enough you should get used to the idea that you will get rained on and you will get wet. If on say the AT or LT they do have shelters to POSSIBLY give more opps to get out of the rain but attempting to totally avoid the rain is futile on those trails, IMHO. I know. I just had 24 days of drenching rain in 28 days of hiking in GSMNP and on the Benton Mckaye Trail/AT Loop. I have to admit I succumbed to the almost relentless rain by staying in town for stretches which were way to long for me when thru-hiking. My gear and me never dried out for anything longer than a day before I was soaked again in those 28 days. I had enough so it factored into me temporarily abandoning that loop hike. Going back to finish up next wk.

Isobutane, esbit, and some alchy stoves work in the rain well enough to cook but folks do try to somehow cook under some type of rain protection whether it be at a shelter, under a tarp, under their hammocks, in their tent vestibules. under a ledge or grove of evergreens, etc.

I typically hike with a mp3 player and much prefer for it to have an FM/AM radio feature for the exact reason that you mention - possibly getting weather reports. Some hikers do carry small hand held radios though. You have to decide if a radio is just extra wt. I'll tell you what is important - knowing the weather conditions for when and where you'll be hiking!

All kinds of potential issues and considerations that can be factored in with rain wear but you touched on my perspective. Rain wear is not just about attempting to stay reasonably dry entirely all the time. That last sentence CAN BE important when you start getting rain wear opinions! I look at my rain jacket for example as a wind jacket, pillow, for reducing exposure, and to reduce heat loss. I'll let others go into some of those rain wear issues.

[Malto]

I was in your position a year ago. I had very little rain experience and the thought of being wet just didn't cut it. I forced myself to do some rainy hikes and as Dogwood said you get used to it. Same goes for wet shoes. I have had wet shoes for weeks at a time. Would rather not but it becomes very natural.

[Dogwood]

If you do decide on hunkering down inside a tent on rainy days make sure you have lots of reading materials and a huge tent. And, ohhh, talk to Tipi Walter here on WB. He may have some suggestions for ya.:) There's a little sunshine to focus on.

Ohhh, when it rains in FL it can really come down in a very short period. Good that FL soils tend to drain so fast.

[kidchill]

Yep, rain is gonna happen...and it sux! I swear it rained on me almost every day from NY to halfway through PA. Even it was 20%, I was in that 20%! You have 2 choices, deal with it, or dip into town...

[Drybones]

You never know what to expect from one year to the next, last year was exceptionally hot and wet, this year was exceptionally cold and snowy, all you can do is be prepared. You'll probably find you'd rather hike in the rain than hold up in a tent, if you've got some good company a shelter may be okay for a while but most hikers will just pack up and hike in the rain, it's not that bad, I actually enjoy it if I'm not in ankle deep mud. You can cook in a shelter or under your vestible...be careful not to burn your tent tho.

[kndglv]

Yeah, I figured getting/staying wet was part of the deal. We are constantly having to make decisions here when it storms; did you "want" to do something, or do you "have" to do something... "The show must go on", and all that. It's easy to say I'll go on a 20 mile hike in a storm now while I'm sitting cozy.
I plan on using a Trangia- mini stove (alcohol). I have read about people cooking in their vestibules. That sounds incredibly dangerous. I thought I read something about NOT cooking at shelters (at least 200 ft away)?
I see that most people do not have gaiters on their gear list. What's up with that?

[kndglv]

P.S. Thanks for the helpful replies!

[Drybones]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QNIcHtr5MQ

[Dogwood]

AT shelters sometimes(often?) have cooking shelves or areas a bit away from where you sleep. Yes, you have to be careful when cooking in tent vestibules. Different tent vestibules are designed differently. You DO NOT want to be cooking inside an enclosed tent.

[Dogwood]

On rain days I help myself getting through them by having a more positive attitude about them. After going through GSMNP on 4 consecutive all day down pours on the AT I was getting cranky. I saw Flying Tortoise interupted my negative state by saying it's all part of hiking. He told me, 'life isn't about waiting for the rain to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain." He really helped me. I learned and conditioned my thoughts to have a REAL greater apprecition for rain by discussing the benefits of hiking in the rain with other rain positive thinking hikers rather than letting negative thinking about it rule my thoughts. We tend to get what we focus on! I took that further by programming my mp3 player with hiking in the rain songs which I crank up when I start feeling cranky about the rain. Here are some of the songs I listen to when hiking in the rain: Rain in the Summer time by The Alarm, Singin' in the Rain by Gene Kelly(watch the video too!), Here Comes the Rain Again by The Eurythmics, Unwritten by Natasha Beddingfiled, Love A Rainy Night by Ediie Rabbitt, Have You Ever Seen the Rain by CCR, Rain by Madonna, Storms in Africa by Enya, etc

[Omaha_Ace]

I'm of the "you have to practice how you play" philosophy. I intentionally go on day hikes in cold, snow, rain, heat. Practice layering setups, cooking in it, pitching my tent in it, that kind of thing. Safe way to test the limits of your gear and yourself - nothing worse than going on a trip and figuring out that your boots / jacket / tent / skills aren't up to the challenges you'll inevitably face on the trail.

[Cherokee Bill]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QNIcHtr5MQ

GREAT. This cracked me up ................ thanks for the uplift in Sprit

[Cherokee Bill]

Here in Central VA (about 40-min from the AT) it seems to have rained 5 out of 7 days for the last 5 - 6 weeks! We have had more rain in the last 30-days than in all 2012. Cannot guess how the AT hikers are holding out! What we call "frog stranglers" :mad: Local flooding has been problematic as well :eek:

[MuddyWaters]

expect it to rain about 20% of the time.
its nicer to be in a shelter if its raining usually, and you can cook under roof there too.

Rain affects what you wear, not what you do.

[Datto]

How many should I expect?

I'd say, if you're on a thru-hike of the AT
Are there times when you're stuck in your tent for days at a time?

How do you cook in the rain?

Is a weather radio useful, or just extra weight?

Instead of packing extra clothes, use rain suit for staying warm?

[Datto]

Had premature HTML above evidently.


How many should I expect?

On an AT thru-hike, the number of raid days can vary from year to year (for instance, 1998 may have been a severe rain year whereas Year 2000 could have been a normal year on the AT for thru-hiker rain days). I'd say you'll get rain on at least 1/4 of all the days of your AT thru-hike, maybe more. For an AT thru-hike that lasts 180 days, that could be 45 days of rain or more.



Are there times when you're stuck in your tent for days at a time?

I wasn't every stuck in my tent for days on my AT thru-hike. I was already acclimated to hiking in the rain so I just got up and hiked in the rain when I woke up in the morning. Eventually you don't let rain encumber your drive to get to Maine. It's just part of the "getting there" experience.



How do you cook in the rain?

I had a one-person Nomad tent that I'd carried on my AT thru-hike -- the bill of the front of the tent was enough I could lay in my Nomad and cook just outside my tent under the bill. If I was in the shelter, I just put my cook gear out on the shelter floor front side and cooked there under the roof of the shelter.



Is a weather radio useful, or just extra weight?

I very much enjoyed carrying a radio and listening to it on my AT thru-hike, particularly in the southern states. There was some Bob and Tom type radio personalities in Tennessee or thereabouts who were hilarious on the radio so I'd listen to them occasionally when I was hiking.

One night, I was listening to some teeny tiny local radio station relatively near the AT someplace -- in southern Virginia I think -- they took the radio station out on tour one night and went to parties in the area while I was listening (it was only through that broadcast did I realize it was Friday night). Well, they had people at the parties they'd visited do their impersonation of Donna Summer's "Love To Love You Baby" live on the radio. That was hilarious and I'd laughed out loud for an hour in my tent that night.

Also, in Maine when I'd gotten there late, the radio was invaluable to find out the weather coming in (Ha, much to my surprise!).



Instead of packing extra clothes, use rain suit for staying warm?

On an AT thru-hike, particularly in the beginning and at the end, you'll likely need the extra clothes plus the rain gear to keep warm. On some nights, it got cold and I had to shiver my way through the night because it was summertime and I hadn't been expecting it to be so cold (had one night in August that was 39*F native temperature and on Mt. Washington it was minus 19*F with wind chill). Froze my begonias off.


Datto

[Blissful]

I've been out working in SNP for 12 weeks, it has rained 11 of the 12 I have been out. I've seen springs running that usually run only after the winter. It' been wet wet this year. Bearfence spring was flowing well, that just proves it.

[Spirit Walker]

The average for the AT is one day in three has some kind of precipitation. Obviously that varies, both by year (i.e. 2003 and 2013 were rainier) and by season (lots of rain or snow in the south and New England, very little in the middle on the years I hiked).

Most hikers don't hole up, unless they are already in town (it's really hard to leave a hostel when it's pouring outside) or if it's snowing hard. In the cooler weather, you want to have a set of clothes to hike in and a set of clothes for camp that stay dry so you can get warm again after hiking in the rain all day. It can be very hard to put on your wet clothes in the morning, but you get used to it.

Rain pants are helpful when it's really cold, but they get much too warm to wear once it warms up. A rain jacket is, however, a good idea year around.

Many shelters have a cooking pavilion. If they don't, hikers will generally cook inside the shelter. One way to deal with all day rain is to cook your meal at noon inside a dry shelter. At the end of the day, if you aren't at a shelter, just eat a sandwich or snack food for dinner.

I've never used a radio while hiking. Generally the weather information they give is for the valleys, not the mountains, so isn't as much help as you would think. Mountain weather is generally more extreme than valley weather. On the AT, if anything big is brewing (blizzard or hurricane) you'll hear about it on the hiker grapevine.

[Dogwood]

Generally the weather information they give is for the valleys, not the mountains, so isn't as much help as you would think. Mountain weather is generally more extreme than valley weather. On the AT, if anything big is brewing (blizzard or hurricane) you'll hear about it on the hiker grapevine.

Even when the weather is only given at a lower elevation like in valleys I still find it helpful because knowing a few simple things like the elev where the weather is being reported for, the elev where you'll be hiking or camping, and that the weather is about 3.1 degrees colder for every rise in 1000 ft of elev puts the temps, and hence related snow/versus rain, exposure, etc into perspective of where I'm hiking/camping. It's taking less of the weather unknowns for WHERE I"M AT out of the dark! Radios can also tell you other lots of potentially helpful info like road closures, power outages, emergencies, hurricanes, tornados, flooding, etc And, some weather reports in some ares or states specifically tell you how the weather will be different at or above a particular elevation. It can be part of getting a clearer weather picture. I find it helpful.

[Dr. Professor]

Keep an open mind about hiking in the rain. It's my favorite time to hike. Rain provides a special kind of solitude and interaction with nature. To me, it's a more intimate hike. I love it.

With regard to your questions, I'll opine on a couple.

With regard to rain gear, rather than talk about my thoughts in this thread, I'd recommend searching through the myriad rain gear threads for a variety of thoughts. The one thing I will say is that I do use my rain gear (currently Arcteryx Visio FL top, zpacks cloud kilt bottom) as my top layer for cold and/or wind.

With regard to where to cook, my advice is to keep your eyes peeled. There is always an opportunity. Sometimes you end up using a partially fallen tree or a rock overhang (even a low one) to shield your stove. Sometimes you just eat bars, jerky, or some other low prep or no prep meal. You'll find a way, and that process is all part of the experience.

[Just Bill]

Ol' Man Willy was hiking in the rain. As he had been on and off for the last week. At some point, simple toughness had melted under the constant drip and drop of the rain. “Water, water, everywhere- and still plenty to drink.”

He was soaked, not simply wet, but purely, completely saturated by the rain. It was miserable. It was relentless. He had Gore-Tex, he had some tricks, but at some point the rain wins. There is no way around it, you might as well try to swim and stay dry, like an old lady in the pool with a shower cap after a trip to the beauty parlor, the old man continued to try to fool himself into believing there was a solution to his problem. That somehow, someway, he could hike in the rain.

But he was so wet he was beyond the point of even wearing his raincoat. It did no good anyway, and it’s failed fabric hanging listlessly on his shoulders only served to annoy him further. The rain poured down his body, poured in his butt crack and down his legs. His shoes squelched as the rain flowed down his legs and into his shoes. Thankfully he hadn’t let the salesman talk him into Gore-Tex shoes, or he’d be hiking in buckets, rather than sponges.

By the fourth day he wasn’t sure why he even went to bed. The rain pounded the roof of his shelter, a light rain seemed almost worse. A heavy rain had a rhythm to it, a background noise he could zone out too. But the light rain seemed to drip intermittently, like some Chinese torture test as huge drops formed and fell lazily at random onto the fabric of his shelter. Just as he’d drift off, PLUNK! He was an old hand at this sort of thing, but at this point what was needed was a new hand, preferably a dry one.

Finally a few hours of respite came. A six hour and counting break from the rain. The Ol’ Man was starting to dry off, starting to rejoice as he climbed a hill and thought for the first time in nearly a week that he could enjoy himself. As he crested the hill he noted that his shoes no longer made amphibious noises and his shirt was approaching a state that even a pessimistic person could call damp. Things were looking up! A small sliver of sunshine appeared off in the fog to the west.

And then he reached the top of the hill. As if on cue, the bright sun he had seen to the west was only a sun shower forming; and like his mood; things went from sunny to stormy quickly. The old man flung off his pack onto the side of the trail. “**** this.” Plain, simple, direct; the Ol’ man summed it up.

Coyote Thunder Owl picked up the Old man’s pack. “Have you injured yourself?” he calmly asked the old man. To be fair, the old fella was prone to sudden back spasms, but this looked more like a mental condition at the moment. “Injured? **** off ****er.” The Ol’ man eloquently stated, “Yeah, I’m injured, I ****ing drown to death bout two days ago and I’m too stupid to realize it.”

“The standing ones are quite happy my friend, they need the rains to grow.”
“Well you tell the Great Buddy of yours that I’m fairly sure all the plants and trees drown a few days back too. Noah is the only one who needs this flood, and I don’t see a ****ing arc so unless you brought a canoe you might as well get lost.”

Coyote Thunder Owl sat down patiently with the Ol’ Man. He had a soft spot for him, despite his manner. Coyote Thunder Owl was taught to respect his elders, even if they were occasionally “Acting like a jackass” as the Ol’ Man liked to say.

“The rain is life old friend, find that life and you will find your travels much easier.”

“How ‘bout you take the pack for a bit. How ‘bout you find the LIFE. How ‘bout you take your easy ass out of here and show me how it’s done then!”

So Coyote Thunder Owl took the pack and started down the hill. He strolled along quite freely. He jumped in each puddle he could find, speeding along to find the next. Jumping from puddle to puddle until he was thoroughly soaked. He seemed to drink in the water. The Ol’ man followed behind, his curiosity piqued by the young fellas actions.

Coyote Thunder Owl took no notice of the Ol’ Man. He was free. He walked the Earth; he knew the cycles of the rain, felt the joy the standing one’s felt at its life-giving flow. He became part of that flow, part of that joy. He skipped from puddle to puddle, drinking it in. He felt its cool flow, its wet fluidity.

As the Ol’ Man watched his young friend move down the trail he began to feel it too. He wasn’t thirsty, he wasn’t hot. He began to see the good that Coyote Thunder Owl could feel. The rain was life. And it had an energy to it. It didn’t drain, it fed. It didn’t drench, it quenched. Hell, it even smelled good. Breathing deep he could smell it; it was like the earth let out a deep breath to inhale the rains. The breath was good, the rain was clean. It was pure. He looked hard at the young man in front of him. He was wet to be sure, but he was clean, he was pure. So was, he finally realized, the Ol’ Man. For the first time in days the Ol Fella saw it for what it was; LIFE.

Ol’ Man Willy and Coyote Thunder Owl moved down the trail. Light, fast, clean, and pure. Inspired by his young friend, rejuvenated by the rain; the oldest man in the woods moved faster than a yearling buck. He jumped from puddle to puddle like a little boy skipping in the gutter. He was no longer soaked, drenched, or squelched. He was alive, flowing, clean, free, pure and faster than the fastest river. He no longer hiked in the rain, he hiked with it.

Not long after it stopped raining.

[Omaha_Ace]

Just Bill just gave us the definition of "Embrace The Suck" in a fun story - thanks!

[Theosus]

I took two rain trips this summer. One trip involved a steady rain the Entire Time. From the time we got out of the car, for 30 hours, it rained. We did have a shelter to sleep in, but otherwise it was rain rain rain. Fun but wet (since my raincoat failed and I stayed wet all day). The second trip it started raining when we hit the tents. It rained all night and the next day. Nothing to do but walk to the car! Better raincoat....
the shelters would be nice for cooking, but I couldn't see just hanging out in one all day hoping it stopped. In mid summer in the south, a little rain could be welcome.

[bobtomaskovic]

Once you get so far into a thru everything becomes about food. You have to hike in the rain to make it to the next resupply or you run out of food. If you decide to hole up it has to be in town or a hostel otherwise where do you get the extra food? Sitting in your tent waiting for the rain to stop isn't even an option.