It sure feels good to have clean sleeping clothes. A little wash up and clean clothes sure helped me to sleep better.
It sure feels good to have clean sleeping clothes. A little wash up and clean clothes sure helped me to sleep better.
Grampie-N->2001
It is personal as you can see from the responses. Do what makes you happy is usually the best answer.
To me, one of the best parts of making camp is peeling off the trail clothes, drying off my pelt and putting on camp clothes. Thin wool shirt and fleece pants treated with permethrin and I'm protected from bugs and sun, but not salt encrusted while enjoying my bagged cuisine. Rain or sweat, wet clothes are fine on trail, but suddenly seem to suck when you stop. The dry feeling the camp clothes bring is an important part of mentally recovering just like chocolate for the legs
“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait until that other is ready...”~Henry David Thoreau
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The only dedicated town/sleeping clothes item I brought was a long-sleeve grey nylon button-down shirt from REI.
Ha! That reminds me of the laundromat owner in Kent, Connecticut who had a similar sign a few years ago. I had a chat with her while doing laundry and she told a story about being out-of-state, checking her security cam and seeing naked people running around her laundromat. She pretended to be upset but I think she actually got a kick out of it.
Clarification: I wore that long-sleeved shirt plenty of times on the trail; it wasn't just for town.
IMO, sleep/town clothes are only worth it if you are on an extended trip (backpacking/thruhiking) or if the temperatures are cold and/or wet. More so, on on the east coast USA where humidity will not allow clothing to dry overnight.
This applies to me also. Lots of ways to do it. When I stop for the night my hiking clothes are always sweaty, in the humid southeast in the summer that can be dripping wet. Always good to wipe down (if not too cold) and put on my sleeping clothes. Makes me feel like a human being again and keeps my bag much cleaner. Sometimes I rinse out my hiking shirt and shorts. In the west they probably dry out, on the AT, nothing dries out at night. The thought of putting on that wet, stinky shirt each morning is always worse than it actually is. That stuff is fine after you put your pack on, and is dry after 30 minutes. Of course it is sweaty again after 90 minutes.
I am a section hiker, so the kit may be slightly different.
-2 hiking zipoff leg pants
-2 poly sleeveless shirts
-3 hiking socks
- Rain top
- Rain pants
- 1 long sleeve poly shirt
- 1 long sleeve light wool shirt (camp warmth)
I try to keep one pants clean, 1 pr socks and the long sleeve poly clean for town/shuttle/etc
If cold at night the rain gear works also.
I am starting to fly to/from sections so they also work for the plane!
Lastly, my extra close stuff sack doubles as my pillow . . . all fits in a 65 liter Gregory pack.
Town clothes, no. Sleep clothes, yes. You want a pair of dry clothes to sleep in when you get to camp just in case you get wet. I don't wear them unless I am wet, I just sleep in my hiking clothes.
I agree. I used to sleep naked in my sleeping bag at night and hang my clothing on the clothesline in the Timberline tent. But went back to wearing something since sweat and body oils mess the bag up. A little too much info?
Capaline inner layer
100%. If you are thru hiking the AT, you will almost certainly have a string or two of wet weather. Dry sleep clothes a must.
Towards the end of my SOBO, I added a second set of sleep clothes(base layers) instead of upping my light weight quilt. Figured it would let me risk using one set during the day on a cold start. I wore both sets most nights in Oct, worked well for me.
Yes on sleep clothes. I sweat too much in the summer to not want something dry and unstinked for sleeping, and I like having a dry set of clothes in winter also.
No on town clothes
The older I get, the faster I hiked.