Just thought I'd share some notes from my weekend trip on the AT in PA. I went with a buddy of mine who is also getting into hammock camping and hiking.
To give you a frame of reference for this trip, this time a year ago I totally out of shape. I did a weekend trip with some friends where we hiked up the hill about a half mile at Port Clinton to stay for the night to test out our emergency ATV gear. The mylar blanket and rock for a pillow didn't make for a fun night, but it was the hike that was the tough part. That's when I realized it's time to do something. Did couch-to-5k, did some dieting, and started strength training in January. Also did some short backpacking trips in the fall and a winter car camping trip.
That brings us to last weekend. My buddy and I decided to get some serious miles in this summer and the Appalachian Trail in PA is the most convenient place for us to do that. Last weekend we headed out Friday night, camped by the lot at 309, and made the 11.5mi trip to Eckville and stayed in the woods behind the shelter. That was a personal record for distance for me so I was pretty excited about that. I was also anxious to get out again and beat it.
Which brings us to this weekend. We decided to pick up where we left off. A friend dropped us off at the trail in Eckville (we decided to skip the shelter this time since the caretaker seemed cranky) on Friday night and planned to pick us up in Port Clinton on Sunday. We got up and hit the trail southbound first thing in the morning. The hill was challenging, but nothing I couldn't get through with a couple of breaks along the way. We made it to the Pinnacle and it was, indeed, the spectacular view everyone says it is. The only issue people started pouring in. First it was the scouts, then the people with small children. That's when we decided to bounce.
It was a pretty rocky trip heading over to The Pulpit taking about an hour, and while the view wasn't as nice, it was much more enjoyable as there was only a couple people there. We stayed for a little and headed out towards Windsor Furnace shelter. The shelter was a lean-to and (full) privy. It was simple and nice, but we wanted to get some more miles under out belts. To have a shorter hike out on Sunday. We ended up hiking all but a half mile of the 15.1 trip (pretty happy about that mileage.)
The last mile or so I noticed the sky growing dark. I knew thunderstorms had been predicted for the day but we had been lucky to have dry skies all day. It seemed our luck was running out, so I started paying attention to the wind direction so I could make some intelligent choices about where to hang for the evening. We found the same spot we had stayed in last year and started to set up on what I thought was the leeward side of the mountain. The problem is the wind had shifted 180 degrees so that put us on the windward side of the mountain. By the time I noticed the shift, I was already mostly set up and rain drops started. I battened down the hatches on the Kelty Noah 9 as the wind continued to increase and crawled under to rest my weary legs.
The rain was coming down hard but my tarp was keeping me dry. The temperature dropped quickly over the next hour so I decided to climb into my hammock to get under the protection of my sleeping bag (REI Zephyr 20deg.) The problem was when I pitched my tarp and hammock, I decided to try something new. I noticed my buddy's Hennessy was pitched almost horizontally so I thought I'd try the same thing. I have a fancy new polyester tree straps/MSH/amsteel whoopie sling setup (courtesy Arrowhead) so I thought that while it wasn't ideal from a load transfer point of view, it'd be manageable for the night so I could get my tarp super close to the hammock. Well, it doesn't work (and even the Hennessy's don't stay that way when you get in them) and my butt was dragging on the ground. It definitely took a few minutes for me to decide to crawl back out, don my rain coat, and step out into the rather heavy downpour to raise my tree straps (did I really need to be off the ground? I mean, look at that rain!) I finally decided to get out and take care of the issue, went and did so, then returned to my hammock. Raising the straps helped, but I didn't raise them enough as my butt still just touched the ground. Problem was they were up against my tarp ridge line, which I haven't pitched in the V config (yet.) I decided to resolve this issue by lengthening my whoopie sling SRL (also by Arrowhead) by just enough to reduce the sag to get me off the ground. This left me a bit less comfy, but finally off the ground.
My next problem was that the wind was blowing so hard at the time that I didn't pitch my tarp in a tidy inverted V. Instead the windward side was bowed in a bit...right onto the side of my hammock. Not a huge deal, I thought. It was a little annoying to have my head against the tarp, but not a deal breaker. As I tried to get to sleep, I noticed my hammock near my head starting to get wet, as well as my sleeping bag. I'm still not entirely sure how this happened as I imagine touching the Noah shouldn't cause water to come through, but it definitely did happen. I ended up grabbing my GI poncho, draping it over my SRL, and putting the other end between my tarp and my hammock. Problem solved! I fell asleep after a little while and woke up in the morning dry-ish and rested enough.
We hiked out to meet our friend the next morning and stopped by Cabella's and Dietrichs on the way home. Great Trip!
Looking at the weather history now, it seems that the highest sustained windspeed for the evening was 25mph with gusts up to 35mph. My Kelty Noah 9 performed admirably!
Some take-aways for me:
1. Storms happen and getting wet happens. If I had a down bag I'd probably be in for a miserable night. I think I'd rather have slightly larger pack size to handle the synthetic insulation then worry about my warmth being compromised because of rain. I could've hiked into town if I was in danger of hypothermia, but doing that in the middle of the storm would've been dangerous and terrible.
2. Paracord gets a bad wrap for being stretchy and for soaking up water. I used it for my entire tarp set up (TRL and guys) and had no issues, even in that ridiculous wind. It should be pretty low priority to replace if you're currently using it. (That being said, I have a spool of Lash It at home waiting to be attached...)
3. Being on top of a mountain during a lightning storm is scary and stupid. Try not to do that again.
4. I need to rethink my tarp/hammock pitching setup for storm mode. I'm tossing around a couple ideas and if any turns out to be interesting I'll make sure to post it.
5. Waterproof/DWR all the things.
Looking forward to the next time I'm out on the trail!
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Originally Posted by xollox
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