Posts

Keeping a cold water battle on a hot day

 So I have a trick that I have learned when it comes to having ice cold water or gatorade on the first few hours of a hike. Take you plastic water bottle, and half fill it with whatever liquid that you love to hike with. Then put that in a freezer the night before a hike. Then in the morning, you take the water bottle out of the freezer then fill it the other half with water. If you have a few hours to get to the starting location, I then put it in a cooler. When you get to the starting point, about another 1/3 of the ice will have melted and you will have very cold water. After about 3 hours on the trail most of the ice will have melted but you will have ice cold water for anywhere from 3 to 4 hours into the hike.  Since Ice really does not take up that much more room, as far as i know there is no downsides. If you want a fun thing to do take the plastic gatorade bottles and freeze them and then as you walk you bang the plastic bottle on some hard things. You will more of les...

Welcome to a backpackers Blog in there 50's

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 So, lets get this out for everyone to understand. Backpacking when you are 50'is not the same as in your 40's. Well to correct that, the physical "put one foot down then another foot" is the same, but the way I approach it is quite different ( or getting more different as time goes on ). AM I A PRO BACKPACKER? "Not a chance. I am in scouts and currently a scout master for my daughters BSA troop 2722, and I do spend around 10 to 15  days a year on the trail, but I am not a thru hiker, no do I have all the answers". I do read a lot of blogs and I love following the AT and the PT people, but in the end, so far thats just to much time, and to be really honest, I am not sure that I would like it.  What i can say, and hope to say in a few of these blogs is about what I have learned from the recent 7 of so years I been doing backpacking and how it has brought me closer to my kids and to the love of nature. So sit back, grab a diet coke, and enjoy the ride.