Another Weekend Trip! - Durston Tent and GPS Tracker

This past weekend (April 1-2), I took a short solo trip on the Ouachita trail, this time going the opposite direction from the Highway 7 trailhead.

I will say more about this later, but it was the first time I got to use my Durston Tent (as well as some other pieces of gear) on the trail.

Durston X-Mid Pro 2 pitched just off trail

The purpose of this trip was to explore another part of the trail, to get experience setting up my tent and camping and cooking, exercise, and also time on the trail using my new pack.

My route on the map

I hiked west this time, from State Highway 7 out to Big Bear (or Big Branch) shelter.

Garmin InReach Mini 2

Let's talk briefly about the GPS tracker I use and the protocol I have adopted for starting my trips.

This was the elevation profile and GPS tracking for my trip. I haven't talked about this much, so I will mention it here. This mobile app is from Garmin and it is linked to my Garmin InReach Mini 2 device. These are not cheap, but it has some very nice features.

Most importantly, this device has an SOS signal that allows me to contact search and rescue if I get into serious trouble while I am backpacking. Not only is that feature good for my own safety and health, but it also provides my wife peace of mind. If I ever need help, I press and hold the SOS button. I am able to message with search and rescue professionals and the device gives them my GPS location so they can get to me more quickly.

Secondly, the InReach allows me to use satellite transmission to send and receive texts, even if my phone service is out. Hiking in the backcountry, frequently puts me out of range of cell service, especially when I am in valleys.

I am able to send check in messages to let selected people know that I am beginning my trip, that I am checking in and okay, or that I have reached my destination and ending my trip. These are canned messages, but I can send them as often as I want without incurring additional fees.

Finally, the device can also ping my GPS location to track my progress. I can share a link to my maps with friends and family and they can watch my progress in real time. You can choose the interval at which the device sends the signal to ping your location. The more frequent it pings, the more battery you will consume, but it will be more accurate with regard to your path. 

The InReach Mini 2 uses USB C charging. It can supposedly last for a few days without needing to be recharged.

In a previous post, I made a brief mention of the InReach. I had done a short hike at Pinnacle Mountain and tried using the InReach.  I have gotten better about remembering to start tracking at the beginning of each trip. This has now become my checklist every time before I step onto the trail.

1. Turn on the InReach
2. Send a check-in message saying I am starting my trip
3. Start the tracking feature
4. Lock my car
5. Message my wife or myself that I have locked the car

These steps have become fairly routine for me now. It helps to have a set of steps you walk through. On a previous trip, I was not sure if I had locked my car and I ended up turning around and going back.

At Camp

Tent

I had practiced setting up my Durston tent a few times before this trip, and I was glad to have done so. It's not a complicated tent to setup, but after a long day hiking, I don't need the pressure of trying to pitch a tent for the first time.

My first thought about this tent is that I don't see how 2 people can fit comfortably inside of it. You would need narrow sleeping pads and you would have no interior space for gear. I want space for gear inside my tent. I also use wide sleeping pads. At most, this is a 1.5 person tent.

I do think this tent is an awesome one person tent. There is plenty of room inside and in the vestibules for gear. It pitched quickly for me without a whole lot of adjusting. I was able to pitch it in the middle of an old road trace just off the main trail near Big Bear Shelter. I was wondering if the road is ever used by ATV riders, but there were none that night and it did not appear to have that kind of traffic as far as I could tell.

I believe the temperature dropped to the mid 40° F range that night. The tent did not have any condensation inside.

The previous version of this X-Mid Pro 2 did not have pockets inside. This one does. I used one of them to keep my headlamp and a light. I wish it also had a loop somewhere on the ceiling of the tent to hang a light from, but aside from that minor complaint, this is a fantastic tent.

Cooking

I experimented with an insulation pouch that I made using the same Reflectix insulating material I mentioned in my Cook Kit article. On this trip, I opted to not cook inside my cook pot. I boiled the water, then added it to the rice mix I had prepared in a freezer bag ziplock. I put the ziplock bag inside the insulating pouch to "simmer".

The benefit of this system is that you don't have a pot to clean. You put all your garbage from your meal in your ziplock container when you're done and that is all the cleanup you have to do.

Essentially an insulated envelop

Ziplock goes in here

Fold the top flap down to keep heat in

The downside of this system is that it is really hard to blend things well. I used a "taco rice" mix that you can buy at any grocery store. I also added a packet of cooked chicken and some other odds and ends for flavor and variety. The rice cooked fine in the pouch, but one side had almost no seasoning. The other side had too much seasoning. When I tested this system at home, I used a normal home cooking pot and I think I stirred the ingredients in the pot before transferring to the ziplock bag. The blending was done in the pot. But if I blend in the pot, I may as well let it all simmer in the pot.

I may try this system again sometime, but I think the next trip I take, I will bring my cook pot insulation setup and see how I like that.

Ignition change

A few months ago, I purchased a piezo spark lighter to ignite my stove. At the time, I figured it was light weight and wouldn't run out of fuel like a butane lighter. It worked okay, but it often took several tries (like as many as 15-20 strokes) to ignite the flame on my stove. I won't say user error wasn't an issue, but I don't know how to fix that problem and meanwhile, I'm wasting a lot of fuel that isn't cooking my food. Here is a video that shows how they work. This is the exact same brand piezo and stove that I own. I probably needed to turn the gas on higher. This person has the same issue to start. But there are other reasons I have changed beyond ignition issues.

I opted to pick up a super cheap Bic mini lighter. It weighs less than the piezo lighter. Not only does this reduce strikes to light my stove, but it also came in handy when I had to cut some cord (more on that in a bit). I was able to use the lighter to melt the end of my cord so it wouldn't fray. You can't really do that with a piezo spark.

Breakfast

The previous trip, I had planned to make a hot breakfast in the morning before I got back on the trail, but I didn't have the water I needed to cook it. I opted for an energy bar breakfast instead. My dinner was so large the previous night that I really wasn't even very hungry. I ate on the go.

Because that worked for me last time, I decided to leave myself the option this time. My dinner on Saturday night was considerably smaller than the previous trip's meal. My breakfast was good, but I think I ran out of energy on the trail. I will address that later, but I wanted to make a note about breakfast. It consisted of a package of Belvita breakfast biscuits (blueberry).

Oh! One more thing I used while I was cooking. I picked up a head net to keep bugs away.

There were tiny gnats where I was camping. This head net helped me keep them off my face and out of my nose, mouth, and ears while I cooked dinner. Here is a link. It packs into a tiny stuff sack, doesn't weigh much at all, and I was glad I had it.

Sleeping

Covers

They talk about hot sleepers versus cold sleepers. I sleep hot. My wife is always putting more blankets on and I am the opposite at home. My quilt is rated to 20° F. That night on the trail, I don't think it got as cold as 45°. The nice thing about my UGQ quilt is I can open it up all the way and turn it into a blanket. That is exactly what I did. Even so, I got pretty warm.

Another piece of gear that I carried this trip that I don't think I have mentioned previously is a sleeping bag liner. I picked up a liner a month or two ago. The one I got is the Sea to Summit CoolMax. Because I am a hot sleeper, I frequently sleep with no blanket at home. In the past, I have actually camped overnight with only a sheet. Bedsheets can be heavy though. This liner is light weight and packs small. In cold weather, you can use them to add insulation to your setup. 

Sea to Summit CoolMax Liner

The other thing about this liner is you can wrap your sleeping pad in it so you are not sleeping directly on the pad. I was glad that I brought this. It is super soft and has a good amount of stretch to it. On this occasion, I got into it like a sleeping bag. That gave me a bit of a barrier and insulation if my quilt slipped off part of my body. As warm as it was, I needed some extra ventilation. An alternative way to use it would be to insert my sleeping pad into the liner and sleep on top of the liner. I might try that sometime.

Pillows

I am still struggling to find the right pillow situation at camp. On this trip, I brought my Nemo Fillo Elite again, but I also brought a bone shaped travel pillow that we have had for years and brought on car trips. Lying on my back or stomach, the Nemo Fillo felt better than the bone pillow, but the fillo was too small for lying on my side. Tired as I was from the grinding hike in, I struggled to find a comfortable position.

Pad

This was my first time sleeping on my Nemo Tensor sleeping pad. The last time I camped, I was using the Nemo Quasar 3D. That is a thicker, heavier pad, but it has less insulation. It also packs larger than the Tensor. I got the Tensor in the wide and long version. My feet were dangling off the end of the Quasar when I layed on my stomach.

The nice thing about the Quasar 3D pad is that it is raised on the edges and under the head. That means I can use a slightly smaller pillow like the Fillo and my head is still supported. Is it worth the extra weight? I was a little cold on the Quasar that first night as well. I think the temperature dipped into the upper 30s over night. Both pads have pros and cons. I haven't made up my mind yet. Maybe if I find my ideal pillow setup, it will help resolve the issue. Right now, I am leaning toward the light weight, higher insulating, and smaller packing Tensor.

Water

Filtering

My filter worked great on this trip. No issues to report with regard to the gear. When I got to camp, I filtered enough to fill both my bottles and I filled my CNOC bag and hung it from a tree as a camp faucet with the filter below. When I needed to rinse or wash, I opened the cap on the filter and let the water dribble through the filter. This was great to use before cooking after cooking, to rinse my spoon, and after toilet business. My filter cap leaked a bit, but it wasn't a huge deal.

Accessibility

There was a creek right next to camp, so water access was easy. Camping closer to water makes life much easier.

Hygiene

I picked up some toothpaste tablets from Garage Grown Gear. They aren't amazing, but they work okay. They weigh less than toothpaste and they don't leak all over your bag if the cap isn't on right.

To use them, you put one in your mouth, crunch it up, then brush. I am apparently a slob and dribbled some on my shirt. It does not appear to have stained the shirt. I dunked the shirt in the creek and hung it to dry overnight. My first camp laundry incident. Haha. Like everything else, I did try these at home once before using them on the trail. If something goes wrong unexpectedly, I want to figure it out at home.

Securing food/bear bagging

My first time hanging my food was on my previous trip. There was an idea tree next to Brown Creek Shelter where I spent that night with an easy to reach branch. I was very proud of myself and wondered what was the big deal with hanging a food bag. People on YouTube act like it's so hard....

I got my lesson on this trip about what can make things more difficult. I'll be honest, I didn't take any photos of this because I was embarrassed. It was a debacle. LOL. There were a lot of trees around the camp, but I only found one tree anywhere nearby with a branch that came out at an angle away from the tree far enough to meet the 6 foot from the trunk recommendation. It was also much higher off the ground that the tree I had last time. It was in a grove of other small trees with low hanging branches that didn't leave me much room or clearance to throw. When I did throw, the rock I had tied to my line got caught in branches on other trees and/or smaller branches on the limb I was shooting for.

When I finally got over the top of my target limb, the line got tangled in a branch ...like really tangled. I tugged and pulled trying to just rip the branches off or snap the line. Neither one was working. It so high, and there were not branches I could use to scale up the tree to retrieve it. I did my best to hang the bag between that tree and a neighboring tree using another method of bear hanging, but I couldn't get my loop far enough up the line that was hung from the high limb to get it away from the second tree. I got so frustrated that I finally gave up and left the bag hanging within reach of a bear. A determined coyote could probably have reached it. SMH. I figured it was far enough away from my tent and the shelter that it wouldn't bring animals close to camp. And if they got into the bag, the animal would probably grab the smelliest thing and run off with it, which would have been the garbage bag.

Fortunately, nothing got into my bag and I learned a lesson. There is another way to bear bag using two trees. Here is a video that shows three ways to hang your food.

On Sunday morning, I had to cut my line. I reached up as high as I could so I was leaving the least amount of cord possible, but there is a rock dangling from a branch near Big Bear shelter now.

I stopped by Moonshine shelter on my way through. It's a little hard to see in the photo, but below is a photo of poop on the path between the trail and the shelter. It was a decent sized pile, most likely from a medium sized mammal, and it was full of fur from some other mammal. The next photo shows how far away I was from the shelter.

Moonshine Shelter

I share this only to show that the forest is full of animals. They do get close to places where we stay and pass through. It is important to do what we can not to provide them food opportunities near our campsites. In the future, I hope to do better hanging my food.

Also, I have finally caved and ordered a Dyneema food bag. The final straw was the fact that after I returned home and started unpacking, I realized that the nylon shopping bag I have been using smelled like the food I carried in it. Your food bag isn't going to do much to dissuade hungry animals from trying to get into your food if the bag your food is in smells as much as the food it contains. Dyneema should not pick up the odors of the food, it should be as light as a plastic bag, but stronger than the nylon bag I have been using.

I am almost ashamed about the cost of these, but I really think it is the best option for the job I need it to do. And this should also last for as long as I am able to do any backpacking. Here is a link. I got it from Hilltop Packs.

Stretching (that should have happened, but didn't)

I have tight calf muscles all the time. I have heel spurs and I have had plantar fasciitis pain in the past. When I am home and I have been active, I am pretty good about doing my stretch routine at night. I got lazy at camp on Saturday night. There were two groups of hikers staying at the shelter. They invited me to join them around their campfire just to talk and hang out. I really don't ever build a campfire myself, but I do enjoy them, so I went over. I left around 8:30 and I was tired. I crawled into my tent and went to sleep as fast as I could.

It is Monday as I am writing this. I am sure I would have had some muscle stiffness and soreness no matter what, but I don't think it would have been as bad. I stretched twice on Sunday night when I got home. I also used a muscle massage gun on my legs. It is Monday evening now and they are better now, but I am still walking funny when I stand up from my computer.

I need to do better about stretching. I had time to do it while my dinner was simmering in the insulation pouch. I had time to do it before going to sleep. It's important, not only to reduce discomfort the following day(s), but also to prevent injury.

First Aid

I recently added a finger nail clipper to my first aid kit. I used it at camp on Saturday night. When I got to camp, I took off my hiking shoes and socks and put on a pair of sandals. At some point in the evening, I stubbed my pinky toe on a rock and made a rough edge on that toenail that was catching on things and irritating it. A quick couple of snips and file of the rough edge helped. The clippers I got are linked above. They are compact and light weight. I was glad I had them. Here is what they look like.

On the Trail

Thoughts on the section

This wasn't the most scenic section of the Ouachita Trail I have been on. I will say that in dry season, water might be more scarce. There are two ponds near the eastern side, where I started my trip. One is close to highway 7, but before you descend, also in the section that overlaps with Hunt's Loop. Someone carried goldfish up to that pond and dumped them in. I caught a glimpse of them on Saturday. I didn't see them on Sunday. Not a great idea to introduce an invasive species into the wild like that. Anyhow, the other pond is next to Moonshine shelter. If I had to get water from either of those two ponds, I would probably opt for the one near Moonshine shelter because it is larger. But if you don't have to get water from those ponds, I would probably avoid it. There are flowing creeks near the highway 7 trailhead all the way to where the trail crosses highway 7 a half mile from there. Going the other direction, after Moonshine Shelter, most of the mountain drainage areas were dry. There were 1 or 2 creeks I crossed that had water, but I don't think they are necessarily reliable sources. The next dependable water sources is at Big Bear Shelter, where I camped.

Scooter Point overlook

There was a nice overlook. The sign there said "Scooter Point". Dogwood trees were blooming. Other than that, it was a long hard walk through the forest. Not my favorite section. Big Bear Shelter was in a very pretty spot. This leads me to another point.

Missed opportunity

I missed an opportunity to see another pretty spot near Big Bear shelter. I mentioned earlier that I set up my tent in the middle of an old road trace. Tim Ernst's guidebook suggests hiking a little further up the creek along that road trace to find a water fall and nice pool of water. When I make camp, I really need to start paying closer attention to details like that. On the previous trip, I missed out on a waterfall and water within an easy walk from Brown Creek shelter which would have made my stay there more enjoyable. This time, I had plenty of water, but I am sure I would have really enjoyed seeing a nice waterfall off trail near my camp.

I am pretty good about trying to preview things in the trail guide before I head out on a trip, but I need to pay more attention to some details like that related to campsites. I can take a photo of the section in the book so I can access it more easily. I even had the book with me on this trip. Chalk it up to laziness and memory like a goldfish I guess. Oh well. Next time.

Pacing

I set a relatively aggressive pace on this trip. In part, I think it was because I knew I would only be hiking half days. It is interesting, my time in both directions was almost identical. Saturday was 4 hours 17 minutes. Sunday was 4 hours 14 minutes. On Saturday, I did take a short detour to visit Moonshine shelter.

Hydration and refueling

Knowing that the end of the trail was not so far away and that I was going to get to my car on Sunday, I pushed further without drinking water. That was not a good idea. I also had a small breakfast, so I think my energy was lower. I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing to have a smaller breakfast, but I need to also force myself to eat some snacks as I go. I had packed snack food in my hip belt pockets. It was easy to get to, but I was more determined to keep going and didn't want to hold onto my trekking poles. Silliness.

If I was continuing on beyond the mileage I had to do on Sunday, I would have definitely stopped for lunch, and I probably would have stopped earlier than the end of the 9.6 miles I did that day. I hope so anyhow. I went too far on too few calories and with too little water. This is not smart. I know better.

Blisters

It's hard to know for sure if my blistering feet days are behind me now, but I didn't have any blisters this time. There are so many variables that changed from the 22 mile trip to this one that it is impossible to say why I got them that time but not this time, but my feet were blister free at the end of this trip.

• I wore Injinji toe sock liners
• Shorter distance
• No wet creek crossings (so my feet were dry)
• My feet may have gotten tougher

My shoe laces were not laced as tightly as they were when we hiked at Mount Magazine. They were probably laced about the way they were on the 22 mile hike. That's probably not the best for my feet or for my shoes, but that was how I did it this time. The Injinji liners are thinner than the other pair of Injinji socks I have, so that may have contributed to the looser laces. The regular Injinji socks have more cushion. The liners undoubtedly dry faster. I am not sure which I like better. I am also curious to switch back to some regular socks for a longer mileage day to compare the outcome.

No matter what, I need to do some longer distance days again through tough terrain and some wet creek crossings to know for sure if blisters are behind me, and also just to continue to prepare my body for long days on the trail.

Those are the big take-aways from this trip. Overall, I would say I had fun, got great exercise, and learned a lot. One more fun extra.

The Shack restaurant in Jessieville

On my way to the trail, I stopped at The Shack in Jessieville, right on highway 7. I have passed it many times, coming and going to hike, but it's almost always either morning, evening, or a Sunday and they have been closed. This time, I was passing through right around noontime on Saturday. I was glad I got a chance. Delicious. I got a pulled pork sandwich. Reasonable prices. It didn't take them long to make it. Make sure to bring cash because they don't accept credit cards.

Happy trails,

Gavagai