Day 37: yay hiking

Miles:9.x
Water 2.5l
Angry dogs: 1

Did part 2 of guest hikers today. Leaving the crazy elaborate shelter, for a ten mile hike to the more normal shelter.

Phil brought his bear canister with him, and he likes the convenience of it quite a bit. When it come to protecting your food from bears, you can either hang it from a tree. Or use a bear canister. Which is a sturdy plastic bucket with a locking top you can keep your food in. Bears can smash it around but can't get in. So he normally just walks his food well out of camp and leaves the canister. The canisters also make neat chairs.

I'm always up for trying new things, you never know what piece of gear will work for you until you try it. So today I packed his canister in my pack, and he packed my bag. I was surprised that I was able to pack my normal stuff, with the bulky can in the middle of my pack. It didn't take much work at all. The pack even felt a bit more stiff as well.

The draw back of of the can was more immediate when I picked up my pack. Between the can with some food in it, and the extra water I was bringing because water was going to be scarce today, I think this was the heaviest my pack has been all hike. It wasn't too bad but I felt it in my knees pretty early today, and a little in my back right now.

I don't know how much it weighs but it has to be at least a pound more than my bag and paracord. I would say that I'd be happy to use it for short hikes, but through hiking it seems really hard to justify the weight.

I just talked a ton about a piece of plastic and nothing about my friends.

Once again, it's fun to have hiking partners, it's fun to have people who you know well enough to have back and forth conversations with instead of one way info dumps. It was fun to hear stories about things I missed. Made me a bit homesick, but not too bad.  The day goes by much faster, and I wasn't relentlessly refreshing the blog looking for comments. This probably hurt my page views.

We played some games, even an improvised rpg, we ate a bunch of did food. Mike started a fire. We had the shelter to ourselves most of the time we were there. Tomorrow they head home, I'm gonna inconvenience them a bit, and get them to take me on a resupply. I need snacks and breakfast food.

So! If anyone wants to guest hike, I'm up for it. Any time or section of the trail works for me. Can you walk 10 miles? We know that Mike and Phil have the gear, just borrow it from them.