Weight is a huge thing in backpacking. If you’ve ever been car-camping, you probably filled your trunk up with whatever you needed (a cooler, a campstove, a tent, sleeping bags) and didn’t have to think much about weight. In backpacking, it is the opposite. There’s an art of packing for a backpacking trip, and you have to be critical about every item you bring and every ounce it weighs.
I had a degree of understanding about this before I left for my trip. I bought a new tent, one that was much lighter than the two-person tent I take car camping. I was very careful about the clothing I brought (one long sleeve half-zip, one long sleeve shirt, one short sleeve shirt, two sports bras, two pairs of shorts, two pairs of socks, my trail runners) and certain pieces of gear (my very thin sleeping pad, my tiny backpacking camp stove.) In packing though, there were things that I was afraid of and unsure about and I severely overpacked on those items.
First, I was worried about running out of food. I knew that people went into town to resupply, but I wasn’t sure how I would manage getting a ride and going into town to resupply, or what the options would be to resupply in town, and how all of that would work out on the trail. I was extremely overpacked on food – I brought more than enough food with me from the beginning of the trip to make it all the way to Hot Springs, which meant that I was carrying at least six pounds of food that I didn’t need to be carrying, up and down through the Smokies.
Second, I was worried about running out of water. I knew that there were water sources along the trail, and I knew to bring water purification tablets with me, but I did not have a good sense of how much water I would drink during the day, and I didn’t have a sense of how far apart each water source would be. In retrospect, this is ridiculous, but I brought five one-liter bottles of water, and I had 1.5 liters of water in my Camelbak bladder. This is about 14 lbs of water, which was entirely unnecessary. Yes, you do need to carry water when you’re hiking, but I really only needed to bring one, maybe two one-liter bottles.
Third, I was worried about running out of fuel. Most of the food I had planned to bring was dependent on me being able to boil water – I brought oatmeal and instant coffee for breakfast every morning, and ramen or other pasta for dinner. I brought (again, this is ridiculous in retrospect, but I really just didn’t know) two large containers of fuel for the hike. I left one of them in Tricorner shelter for the next hiker who comes along, and I carried the other one with me.
In the morning, I woke up at Davenport Gap shelter and packed up my things. I was one of the last people to get out of the shelter – the group of friends who I’d been hiking alongside had made plans to get up early and go celebrate the end of their hike together. The night before, hikers in the shelter had been talking about how they were going to stay in hostels the next night – most of them were going to Standing Bear, which was right on the trail, and Critter was talking about how she was probably going to The Discerning Hiker, another hostel in town. I texted The Discerning Hiker and asked them if they could come pick me up by the Pidgeon River Bridge at 9:30. It was only a mile and a half away, so I started hiking in the rain. It wasn’t anything too difficult, I hiked past this glorious little waterfall, and felt like I was hiking through this fantasy Ferngully forest.
I got to the bridge and met Jeff, in his pickup truck with Critter waiting for me. We went back to the hostel, which was incredibly nice – it was a log cabin-type house that Jeff built himself, with a loft upstairs where Critter and I stayed for the night. I took an excellent shower and washed my clothes, then we went into town – we went out to eat and went to Walmart to do a small resupply.
Since I packed so much food, I didn’t need to buy any food, but there were a few pieces of gear I had failed to pack – I bough a rain jacket and a headlamp, and some bandaids and neosporin to manage my scraped knee.
That evening, Critter and I went through my pack to cut weight – I left a lot of ramen and RX bars in the hiker box, and I threw away three of my water bottles – still carrying more water than some people might, but much less than I originally was.
We stayed up late talking and went to bed, ready to get back on trail in the morning.
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You rock.