The Catwalk

It was raining at the Catwalk, and the narrow canyon was not a friend of the GPS. But I have pictures!



The trail marker at the end of the trail said 1.1 miles. We hiked around a little extra, so all together it was probably 2.4 miles for the round trip.

More Gear Thoughts

There are still a few things I look forward to upgrading. I'm not doing it now because they are things for cold weather, and now is not the cold time of year.

I have three pairs of long underwear. One is a set of black REI branded polypro. I think they are at least 15 years old. They have seen a tremendous amount of usage, and are in poor shape. The second is a set of grey Patagonia Capillene. They are probably around 10 years old and aside from some serious sweat stains are still in good shape. The third pair is a set of very heavy military long underwear that has only been worn minimally and is in no need of replacement.

What I want is a set of Smartwool microweight long underwear, and possibly a set of Smartwool midweight long underwear. Book-reading tells me that the Smartwool will outperform the synthetics in every way.

I want a new OR bivouac sack. My OR Advanced Bivy is still in fine shape, but a smaller and lighter sack would be a bit more pleasant to carry around. The cheapest OR bivy is $129, and seems like it would work well for what I would use it for. Actually, this might be a Summer sort of purchase.

I have fantastic memories of just car camping with SAR. Sleeping out in the cold, and getting up to make breakfast. Through a SAR midnight hike I lost my Coleman big green box white gas stove. I've never replaced it, but I'm thinking I should. Another great item for camp is a Coleman white gas dual mantel lantern. Those are warm and bright. For the summer I plan to avoid any cooking due to fire hazards, so these can wait until the Fall.

Overall, things seem squared away on the gear front. I don't feel like I'll be at a disadvantage from a lack of equipment. I need to reacquire a lot of skill again I'm sure. And endurance. I'm not in good enough shape to just trek off on a ten mile hike at a moments notice.

Cheap Stuff

I have some items that I don't think I need anymore. They shall not be free, but not extravagantly priced.

• Petzl Duo 4-AA headlamp with 3 extra halogen bulbs and 1 extra normal bulb. $10
  
• Princeton Tec Quest 2-AA headlamp with extra bulb and bulb holder. $5
  
• Mesh hammock big enough to fix two overfed Americans or 3 to 4 Europeans. $10
  
• Leki Tour Light trekking poles, well used. $10
  

Mandy is supposed to try the poles out soon to see if she likes them. If she does, she will have priority on them if she wants to buy them from me.

Road Hike And Hammock Report

We went 7.87km this evening, with 353m of elevation change. I also tried out my new hammock.

From 20090625

We left Socorro at 19:00, so it was still light. I achieved my distance goal, but I didn't feel good doing it. I had hoped I would be able to easily achieve, and surpass, the goal, but that didn't happen.

We went up the "trail" that departs from the campground. It isn't marked or official, but it's there. The rock pools and waterfall used to be my favorite place to go as a child, but the stream hardly ever flows now. Brad remembered there was catnip there, and there still is catnip there.

There were a lot of glow in the dark bugs out this evening. Far more than we saw on Tuesday night.

The trip down wasn't nearly as hard on me as it was Tuesday, which is a nice improvement. I think I've strengthened up my knees enough to go down easily.

The hammock is nice, but has one easily noticeable drawback. The old hammock was mesh, the new one is solid cloth. If I tarped over the old hammock it didn't matter if rain hit part of the hammock since it didn't collect. This new hammock looks like it will easily collect water so I can't use my tiny 8 by 5 foot tarp with it in the rain. Other than that, it is easily as big or bigger than my old hammock. Rated to 400 pounds, so it will easily hold me. Overall, this is a nice hammock.

Also, laying in the hammock in the dark looking up at the stars through the trees was very nice. Far more pleasant than the hike up the Mountain.

Adjusting Gear

I bought new tent stakes. I really liked my old ones, but I wanted to try something new. The old ones are hollow aluminum, the new ones are solid titanium. The old ones didn't bend or break nearly as often as previous tent pegs I'd owned, but they still bent and broke on me. I haven't tried the new ones yet, so I don't know how durable they are. The new ones are much smaller than the old ones, and I'm hard pressed to decide if that is good or bad. I think most of the dirt here is so hard that it won't matter. The new ones weigh 2g more than the old ones. That surprised me. I didn't succeed in reducing weight, but I reduced size and I might have increased reliability.

My new guycable weighs 38g for 15m. My old parachute cord weighs 42g for about 6m. My old parachute cord could be cut with a knife. My new cord is surprisingly knife-proof. I succeeded in reducing weight by quite a bit, and I now have easy to see orange guycables instead of olive drab and hard to see parachute cord.

My old hammock weighs 810g in the stuff sack I kept it in. My new hammock weighs 610 grams in its attached stuff sack. The carabiners on my old hammock weigh 64g each. The carabiners on my new hammock weigh 62g each. But the new ones suck, so I'm swapping them. The new hammock is significantly smaller in terms of pack-size, but appears to be about as big hammock-wise. My old hammock was bought as a replacement for my original hammock. My original hammock was a well made hammocking machine that eventually gave up the ghost after a decade or more of use. The replacement was poorly made junk. I lost 200g of weight, and hopefully I have upgraded quality.

My 9.5 foot by 12 foot Outdoor Products traditional tarp weighs 1024g. My 5 foot by 8 foot silnylon tarp weighs 200g. The traditional tarp has size as an advantage, and costs $350 less than the closest sized silnylon tarp I could buy. Big is nice, but so is light. I have an OR Advanced Bivy, so I really don't need either tarp. They are comfort dwellings. People say that silnylon is durable. I'll find out eventually. My previous Outdoor Products tarp held up for years.


I haven't done much outdoors yet, but I'm feeling very prepared for when I do start doing stuff outdoors!

The surgery is next week. Once I'm cleared for hot springing, I'm headed to Turkey Creek. I need to get in good enough shape to make the hike between now and then. I should make it.

Oh What A Brave New World This Is

I was at REI today to pick up my new shelter, a large Outdoor Products tarp. Tarps are great. I use my trekking poles to hold it up, and I can tie it off to random trees. I'd already discovered that there have been major advances in guylines. Instead of buying multi-strand parachute cord sheathed in more nylon, I bought some very light reflective cord. Today, however, I learned that similar advances have led to more modern tarps. My Outdoor Products tarp is heavy, and thick. At REI I found a 5'x8' siltarp. It's razor thin, waterproof, and weighs nearly nothing. It probably isn't as durable and it costs more than the bigger heavier tarp, but the size and weight made it very attractive. I bought one. It's been less than ten years, and so much has changed.

Water Canyon Road Hike

I forgot to reset the GPS odometer at the start. It recorded 2.41 km from the turn around point, so 4.82km total.

From 20090623

There was a nice light rain that fell on us as we hiked down, and a pool of vocal frogs on the side of the road.