The Things They Carried

I’ve been home now for almost as long as I was out on the trail last year, and it still feels like I just walked in the door. But in less than ten days I’ll board an Amtrak train back down to Virginia to start hiking again. Am I ready? I don’t know! Instead of dealing with that question on the level it deserves I have sublimated it into thinking about gear, as is the way of so many hikers.

Mica is off in New Zealand, perpetually a day and a half in the future, so he won’t be there on this last leg. But my friend the Verge writer Liz Lopatto will be joining me for the first ten days of the hike south from Waynesboro, and she wanted a good gear list for planning purposes, which prompted me to finally dig up the pictures I took when I unpacked everything in November.

So for Liz, and for anyone else who’s curious about what’s in a thru-hiker’s pack, here’s everything I had with me at the 1,333 mile mark of the Appalachian Trail. Most of this will be coming back out to finish the trail, but I’ll be swapping out a few things. I’ll try to do another post about gear changes. It should be a lot shorter than this one!

Until then here’s all the stuff, with opinions where I felt they were warranted (i.e. everywhere):

Pack and Poles

Backpack: My trusty Hyperlite Porter 3400 (now known as the Porter 55L). I bought this pack in 2016, before the first real overnight hike I ever did with Mica and his younger brother, back when it was the only model of backpack Hyperlite made. I’ve tried other packs but I kept coming back to this one, and ultimately decided it was the only one I trusted for this hike. I’ve added the Hyperlite Porter Stuff Pocket on the front here, and two side water bottle pockets from Zimmerbuilt, because the Porter didn’t really come with any pockets. They’re not visible here but I also added shoulder strap pouches from Mountain Laurel Designs.

This guy has served without any failures for eight years of hard use, and I think this hike was the end of its useable life. The roll top is crepe-paper thin on the edges, and it leaks water like a sieve in the rain. I have nothing bad to say about any Hyperlite product I’ve ever used, but this pack in particular is my favorite pack I’ve ever owned by a wide margin. When I head back out in March I’ll be carrying a new Hyperlite Unbound 55L, mostly because I can configure and pack it exactly the same way I packed the Porter. I hope it lives up to the high standard set by its predecessor.

The main pocket on the front carried my tent, stakes, fuel canister, cook kit, cup, and poop kit (see below for more on all those). The right side pocket held the Smartwater bottle I was actively drinking from, and the left held my water scoop, an extra Smartwater bottle (usually empty or only partly full), my water filter, and bug spray. The right shoulder strap pocket held my snacks for the day, and the left one held my glasses and, regrettably, a lighter that I didn’t realize was scratching the hell out of my glasses until it was too late.

Poles: Black Diamond Alpine Carbon Cork. I’ve also had these for years, and use them in every season. I broke the tip of one somewhere in Northern VA, and the incredible staff at Mountain Trails in Front Royal fixed them for me for the price of a $17 pair of replacement tips, rather than sell me a new $150 set of poles. I also lost a big hunk of cork from the handle of one of them in an embarrassing fall in New York, and repaired it as best I could with some purple duct tape I found in a shelter. I’ll probably keep using them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sleeping, Shelter, and Technology

A: This gray tube is a 1/8” thick Thinlite foam pad from Gossamer Gear, that I carried strapped into the bungee loops you can see on my pack to the right of the front pocket. It’s about 4 feet long, unrolled, and I used it under my inflatable pad for a little extra protection, and as a sit pad during the day when I sat down to have a snack or whatever. You can see some more of that purple duct tape repairing various rips it got over the course of the hike. I wasn’t sure how well duct tape would work but it sticks to this foam really well. I have a couple more of these in various states of repair but I’ll probably take the same one back out, duct tape and all.

B: Thermarest Airhead inflatable pillow. It was fine. I like that you can take the cover off and throw it in the wash. It’s not the most comfortable pillow I’ve ever slept on, but it’s also not the least comfortable. I got used to it.

C: The orange bottle is Ben’s 100% DEET bug spray. They used to package this in a dropper bottle that actually closed tightly. I hate this little pump sprayer, I’m done trying to use it. Every bottle I’ve had of this stuff eventually leaked, and it dissolves synthetic fabrics. I’m a picaridin girlie from now on. Below that is a titanium poop trowel, for digging catholes in the woods when necessary. I used it as little as possible, but not never. And below that is a ziplock with toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

D: My quilt, a down Enlightened Equipment 20 degree Convert. Mixed reviews for this quilt. It opens up all the way flat but also has a full-length zipper, and I mostly used it like a traditional sleeping bag because I’m a restless sleeper and I find quilts drafty. It’s light and durable enough, but I would consider 20 degrees the lowest imaginable temp you’d want to see in this, not any kind of a comfort rating. Granted I sleep very cold, but I was cold in it at around 30 degrees. The full-length baffles let the down shift around a lot and tend to leave empty spots scattered around no matter how much I try to fluff it, and the zipper always catches. If I wanted to spend another $400+ and replace it I’d probably go with a Katabatic gear Alsek instead. But it works fine. I’m not gonna replace it just yet.

E: A Hyperlite roll-top dyneema stuff sack that I stuffed my quilt and pillow in. This went in the bottom of my backpack and formed a nice cushion for my lower back for the waist belt to brace against. Then sleeping pad on top of that, then my clothes bag, then my food bag and ditty sack.

F: The little rainbow pouch is my wallet. The coil of gold wire below the “F” is a string of LED fairy lights I got at REI in Vermont and used to illuminate various bunks and my tent in the fall months, when I was often eating dinner and breakfast in the dark. They weigh about an ounce and were incredibly worth it. Next to that are a couple of short USB-C wires, an Anker 65W wall charger, and a micro carabiner with various adapters to turn USB-C into micro USB, Apple Lightning, and USB-A. Below that is a Garmin InReach 2 (I loved it, it was great, very strong upgrade from the InReach 1), my Beats earbuds, and a 20,000 mAh battery also from Anker (feat. a Tabybara sticker from Michelle in the Tabs discord, which got a lot of comments). All the tech stuff lived in that gray zipper pouch, and the skinny black pouch to its right is my tent stakes, although I’d have sworn they were in a different stuff sack so it goes to show what you can forget in just a couple months.

G: My sleeping pad, a Therm-a-rest Neoair XTherm. I love this pad, it’s so warm, and as I’ve said I sleep very cold. I started the hike with a Therm-a-rest Uberlite, which I guess is discontinued now? I have two of those and I’ve never had any trouble with them, and for the same weight as the XTherm I could carry a large/wide, which is nice for a broad-shouldered lad such as myself. But I was persistently cold through New Hampshire so in Vermont I swapped it out for the warmer XTherm, and did not regret it.

H: This is a cheap vinyl poncho that I picked up at a gear shop in Connecticut or Massachusetts. Mica had been selling me on the virtues of poncho life, and this was light and cheap so I thought I’d give it a try, but then it hardly ever rained again and I was never unhappy with my rain jacket again either. However, I did notice the poncho opened flat to almost exactly the footprint of my tent, so I used it as a groundsheet to keep the tent itself a little cleaner. If I ever found myself needing a poncho it would also do the job I guess.

I: My tent, all rolled up. This is a ZPacks Duplex Lite, and it took me a while to learn how to use it, with a couple disasters along the way. But by the the time I got to Shenandoah and then north through Pennsylvania and the rest of the mid-Atlantic I really got the hang of it and ultimately it won me over. By the end of the hike I could set the tent up, toss my whole pack inside, then get in and do all my evening chores in the tent, and in the morning I could make breakfast and pack everything up before I got out of the tent, which made some very cold mornings a lot more bearable. It has the usual Dyneema tent condensation issues, and it can be a little fussy about setup and campsite selection. But with time and practice I gained some affection for it.

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