* * Hiking with new and old gear

Last week, I went backpacking in West Virginia with my friend Jim Kline. We were blessed with terrific weather and beautiful fall colors during the trip. Monday was cool and overcast and there was a sprinkling of rain on our tent overnight. However, each of the following days brought us clearer skies and warmer temperatures. By the time we finished, it was 70° and the sun was shining brightly.

We walked on the Allegheny Trail. Our local Appalachian Trail is over 2100 miles long and it stretches from Maine to Georgia. The Allegheny Trail is about 300 miles long and it starts on the border of West Virginia and Pennsylvania and goes south to the border with Virginia. Most of the former is a well marked trail with a beaten path. The Allegheny Trail, however, is often poorly marked and an unbeaten path through the woods. It is marked by a painted yellow patch on the trees but we had to keep a steady eye for each successive painted patch.

Because our food, clothing, and shelter are all contained in our backpacks, these became a topic of much conversation and debate. My things are a bit more modern than what Jim carries. I have an internal frame backpack which was only designed a few years ago. Jim’s is an old-style external frame backpack whose design dates back perhaps 50 years. I consider my pack to be one of the better modern designs, but at the end of the day, you have still had to carry it.

Several other pieces of gear deserve special mention because of their advancement over designs from decades ago when I first started backpacking.

First, my shoes are of a new, lightweight design that is vastly more comfortable and lighter in weight than the heavy, leather hiking boots of years ago. Weight carried on a walker’s feet rather than on his or her back makes each ounce much more pronounced.

Something as simple as wool socks have been radically upgraded. In the old days, I wore a thin, typically linen or silk liner stock underneath a thick wool sock. The wool sock had a course feel that was often uncomfortable under all the pounding. New socks are made with a much finer material that does not create hot spots.

My tent is a dome design with a separate entrance on both sides, convenient for two people in that neither person can enter or exit without disturbing the other. It has a lightweight mesh inner skin that is covered by a waterproof outer layer. It is simple to pitch and weighs only a few pounds.

My cook kit uses a self-contained fuel canister which cannot tip over or spill. It has an integral igniter, so no matches are necessary. It will boil 2 cups of water in only two or three minutes. Its cooking container has a nonstick inner surface making cleaning easy and fast, and a neoprene stocking around it meaning that no clamp or potholder is necessary to pick it up.

My flashlight straps to my forehead to provide light anywhere I look. It is powered by three small batteries and it has tiny LED bulbs which are powerful and efficient.

Underneath my sleeping bag, I use an inflatable mattress that is about one and a half inches thick. It is light weight and it compresses to a small and manageable size.

In spite of all these advancements, backpacking is still an intensely strenuous activity. Climbing hundreds or even thousands of vertical feet with weight on my back is very taxing on the body. Even moderately level walking is jarring.

Still, Jim is good company and we both enjoy the solitude of the wilderness. Other than at the road crossings, we only saw one other person on the trail, a thin, 14-year old kid wandering around with a bow and two arrows, looking for something to shoot.