This was a two night backpacking trip. I spent much of Thursday finishing the sewing on something I wanted to take on the trip -- a Tyvek bivy sack. I used the stiff Tyvek for the bottom and some garment style Tyvek for the top side. Roomy and dirt cheap. I finished the sewing, gathered my gear and food and jumped into the old Camry. I chatted with a fellow at the trailhead and probably didn't start hiking until 6:00 PM. This was fine though in June heat. My pack weighed about 27 pounds. More on gear and pack weight at the end of this write-up. I am out of shape (and getting old) and the trail seems steeper than I remember it. I am of course hiking the "Old Baldy trail".
I get to Josephine Saddle in fading light. There is a lone hiker there, but he does not respond to my wave and greeting and I keep hiking. No sense hanging around near a wierdo. A quick snack gets me up to the top of the switchbacks below Bellows Spring where there is a little campsite I have eyed many times. It is 9:00 PM and just getting completely dark. The word is that there is no water at Bellows Spring, but I am fairly confident I can bushwack a short distance uphill from the spring and find water. I drop my gear at the camp spot and make a water run. I am correct, there are pools of water and I filter one liter for drinking and collect another two for cooking. Back to camp and to bed.
Parking Lot 5321 Josephine Saddle 6900 First campsite 7800 Bellows Spring 8061 Baldy Saddle 8711 Mt. Wrightson 9350What is curious about these is that they are 100 to 200 feet lower than what you get from the topo map. The topo shows Wrightson at 9453 and Josephine Saddle looks like 7100. Mt Hopkins is 8550 on the topo which is exactly right based on data from the telescope there. I am not sure what to say about all of this. My phone may well be in error.
Foot traffic nearby convinces me to get up and make coffee. I skip breakfast, figuring that I will hike up to Baldy Saddle and cook my oatmeal there while waiting for my son and some friends to show up. I pack up and do just this. Just as I get a cup of tea brewed up, they appear! They started around 7:00 AM and arrive about 10:00, which is decent time. We sit and chat, and my wife Ingrid shows up as well and the five of us head up to the summit. I cook my oatmeal at the summit. A clear sunny day with a depressing view of the fire burning in the Catalinas.
NOTE: there are 33 switchbacks between Bellows Spring and Baldy Saddle.
The three young men disappear, never to be seen again (until days later in Tucson). Ingrid and I hike down together. We stop at Bellows Spring for me to load up on water again, then split up at Josephine Saddle. It is around 4 PM and getting noticeably warm. I hike up the Agua Caliente Trail and find a place to camp. Soon the breezes become cool and after a Ramen dinner I am asleep early. Wind above me in the trees, but not much down where I am sleeping.
My next agenda item is to check on Sprung Spring, which is 0.2 miles below Josephine Saddle on the super trail. I am usually curious but too lazy to look at it, but early in the morning when it is cool, it is more than I can resist. It has water! This is saying something for mid-June, which is the hottest and dryest month in southern Arizona. However, we had a wet winter which is probably more the deciding factor than the current temperatures.
After this it is down the trail to the car, and I get there around 11:00. Ingrid says she ran it (2.2 miles) in 36 minutes yesterday.
Saturday is quite a contrast to Thursday or Friday. Lots of people on the trail. Nice people though, all that I met at any rate.
When I got home, I weighed my pack -- 25 pounds!
Now that isn't bad, but I know I had several heavy and frankly unnecessary items:
2 books large heavy binoculars large knife USB power brick extra flashlightWhen I pull these out, they are 6.5 pounds and without them my pack is 18.5 pounds
More can be eliminated, as follows:
Extra uneaten food half of a Z-rest pad (extra) Extra 8 ounce fuel can 1/2 liter of water I carried outThese total to 5 pounds, so without them my pack is 13.5 pounds.
The punch line is that I could have left nearly half of my pack weight behind and been carrying 13.5 pounds instead of 25.
Two things can be learned from this. One is to always, always weigh my food. I always take too much on short trips. My standard guide is 1.3 pounds per day and I should stick with it, with perhaps a few select luxury additions. The other lesson is that packing in a hurry at the last minute always leads to throwing unnecessary things in the pack without thinking about them (or weighing them). There was some sense in the books, since I expected to be loafing around for hours waiting for people -- but this never happened.
And here is a final thought. I own a luxury sleeping pad -- the Exped megamat. It weight 92 ounces (5.75 pounds), round it up to 6 pounds. I could have carried it and brought my pack weight up to 19.5 pounds. But it gets better than that. The pad I did carry (my Exped downmat) weighs 1.5 pounds and I would have then pulled this out. So my pack weight with the megamat would have been a completely reasonable 18 pounds. Imagine what a nice nights sleep I would have had -- next time!
A final note about my fuel can. I carried a partly used 8 ounce can. It's weight before the trip was 8.3 and after was 6.8. Empty it will be 5.5. So I used 1.5 ounces of fuel (with my MSR windburner stove) and had 1.3 ounces "in reserve". This cooked (boiled water) for 2 breakfasts and 2 dinners. So I am using 0.75 ounces per day. I could figure 1 ounce per day as a nice round number, and could easily have carried a small can and saved a bit more weight. I am just never quite sure, but need to start trusting these figures.
Tom's hiking pages / tom@mmto.org