Planned a 2.5 day, 2 night trip along the Bristol Hills Trail in the Finger Lakes area of NY. This trail is a part of the Finger Lakes Trail system. Intended route was an out and back hike, 50 miles round trip length. Hangin' in my WBBB DL 1.0, Edge Tarp with me, and HG UQ and BPL 180 TQ for insulation. Okay, onto the funny, painful, and itchy lessons learned.
1. First time bear bagging is a LOT harder than it looks. Used the PCT method.
-Sub mistake A... Mason's line as throw line. That stuff picks up every twig, leaf, and pine cone like they were all velcro! While it's really light, and strong enough to yank my food bag up, it tangles way too easily, is so thin that it hurts to pull, and once again, vacuums up the forest floor resulting in knots galore.
-Sub mistake B... When you toss the rock over your hanging branch, and you watch the line zing past, while tempting, don't grab the line. The first branch I picked was too high, and the line went up and over, then getting tangled at the branch (cause it's mason's line and it sticks to everything). When I watched my line fly up so fast the second time (new, lower branch), I grabbed the line once the rock was over, but not all the way down. Now I'm standing there, one end of the line in my hand, the other end with a fist sized rock on it, barreling towards me like a pendulum from Hell. Before I can react, the rock drills into my upper thigh/groin area, missing my twig n' berries by only a couple inches. I now have a sizable "stupidity bruise."
-Sub mistake C... Don't hang your food off relatively small, dead branches. There, of course, was not many good hanging branches around (with most of the trees being entirely branchless for 50 feet or more), and so the one branch I did find was about 6 feet long, an inch in diameter, and as dead as can be. I figured, ehh, should be good enough, right? Wrong. Food is half-way up the branch, and CRACK, the branch whizzes down at me, striking my knuckles with my blocking hands. Ouch.
-Sub mistake D... Don't forget to clip the pulling end through the biner. You just feel dumb when it gets to the top and you go, "...Crap."
2. Mosquitoes don't care what percentage of DEET you are using, they will still eat you alive. My 100% DEET kept the small sections of my body that got sprayed with it protected temporarily. They flocked to any square inch that wasn't coated. For example, my butt has three bites. (That's through hiking pants and boxers!) I just ordered some Pemethrin, which should hopefully help alleviate that issue.
3. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Planned on 50 miles, 16 day one, 20-25 day two, and the remaining on day three. I did 12 miles day one, which isn't bad, but I was spent! (I didn't start till 3:15 pm, finished at around 8pm.) I could have kept going, but I was tired, it was going to be dark soon, and it was either stop at mile 12, or continue to 16 for the decent spots to camp. (Technically my spot wasn't really... kosher... if you catch my drift, but I did a stealth hang far from the trail.) The next day, boy was I sore. Sore enough to decide to cut it a day short, and hike back to the car. Oh well!
4. Trees marked to be cut down with spray paint, while extremely similar looking to trees marked with trail blazes, are not the same. This caused me to get off trail, leading to my bush whacking, trespassing variation. Oops!
5. Chocolately foods don't like heat.
6. (Osprey Exos related) On my Exos 34, I tightened the load lifters too much, causing my shoulder blades to press into the frame a bit. This was really uncomfortable, and I was worried I'd have to return it until I realized that it was the load lifters causing the problem. This may not pertain to the larger models, and is also dependent on your body shape and size, but if you come across the same thing, check the load lifters!
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Originally Posted by Running Feather
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