When hiking I rarely meet anyone without a Camelback these days. I find them unnecessary and silly. They are difficult to clean, the hose can break or rupture, there are several parts to replace, they can tear (mine did when I had one), the twist cap where one fills the bladder can slip and leak (mine did) or slip and cause tearing around the rim for permanent leaking (mine did). And it costs $40 or more for a decent one, and is annoying to store unless in a specially designed backup. Those are all the bad. What is good about them? Well everyone assures me it is essential to get a constant and steady influx of water, which is nonsense, and counter-productive. First, studies and experimentation will show you that your body and mind attain more satisfaction from one gulp than an equal quantity of water in sips. Second, sipping a little water at a time encourages your body to sweat, as it gets the idea that you have water to spare. Third, if you are worried about hydration, then replacing what you lose is idiotic. Would you rather replace hubcaps the neighborhood punks steal, or not have them stolen to begin with? A better plan therefore, is to soak your shirt. Start wet and your body is tricked into thinking it has already sweated, or at very least, will not sweat. You sweat more as the sweat beads evaporate, so with a layer of water atop your skin, the sweat does not come out, or much slower. Last, off the top of my head, having a water bladder and sipping from it makes you weak. Either you have water nearby (a creek, rain, a waterfall) or not. If you do, then you need not carry water. It is silly too. More weight on your knees and back are bad for the body and the stamina. I suggest you lose more stamina with the weight of the water than you gain by the constant rehydrating. If you do not have water nearby, then you need to be working on wilderness skills: how to not only read, but interpret a topographic map, for one. If crossing desert or leaving a canyon or creek bed, study the map for stream crossings, and try to guess based on the terrain around you (color of leaves/bushes/brittleness of ground/recent weather if you know it, or what you can guess of it) which will be running and how deep. Or seek out springs, estimate how far you will travel until you hit water again. Then carry a little more water than you think you need. And never drink water (this is my best advice for all hikers) until you start to need it. If you baby yourself you will be a baby. I don't know when it came into fashion to coddle one's tummy while punishing the muscles, but people these days will work out like demons, all the while making sure to get a perfect influx of electrolytes and all that. Let's call this the marine principle- but I needed a new paragraph about a paragraph ago.
How marines train (if every memoir I have read was not making up the same lies; I have no direct evidence or experience): you get no gatorade and no protein bars. You get water, and food. Large meals, in a hurry, not snacks, and water only rarely, mostly at the end of the day. Snacking, and I have mentioned this on my food blog, fits into the same principles as water bladder sipping, with the nozzle right an inch from your mouth so you never take a parched step is a scam. Let us get there the Socratic way. I will ask you this: why do we keep seeing million dollar studies on vitamin C and colds? Do you think the benefit of vitamin C is yet in doubt? If so, then why are the orange juice companies promising us good health and fewer colds? Are they lying? The link is quite proven, conclusively, to put you at ease. Orange juice industry people are not lying to you. But why then the studies? Is this all the doing of scientific experts and specialists who with 25 years of vitamin C behind them are too old and settled to try a new line? Well they are abettors, but how do they get money? Begging. And by producing desired results regularly. Who would want these results regularly, in press releases, and tied to famous big name scientists at big name research labs and universities? Well in our vitamin C example, the orange juice industry. Out of sight out of mind. But every few months, particularly near the beginning of a new growing season, you will see lots of vitamin C and colds studies popping up in magazines. So back to snacking. Why would hundreds of studies prove "grazing" is better than meals? Who would want these studies? Right, the food industry. Any branch of it, but snack companies in particular. Companies are always looking for ways to get you to pay more for food (over your dead body as they find, Americans think of food as quantity only, not quality, we want more, not good, food for our money, which makes sense since Americans have bad taste in everything and pick loud and long movies over thoughtful and meaningful ones) or if not more for the same food, than to eat more food. Thus we have all these studies, funded by the food industry where nutritionists discover and prove it is better to have 6 small meals than 3 and even better still to have 12 than 6. Why? Because you eat more, stupid. People are not satiated by a snack. It does not even register in the brain, nor does it trigger much in the way of digestive hormones. It is a non-event, like a small earthquake you sleep through and have to read about in the paper. What's more, look at all the new products we have, all with sickening amounts of packaging to dispose of, though that is beside the main point: 100 calorie snack packs (a genius move by the food industry- people pay up to 10X more per calorie for these to stay thin, and the people buying them are often not thin, and these same people if served a 1/4 pound burger at a sit down restaurant rather than 1/3 pound burger would cause a scene or not come back), single serve yogurts, slim jims, and on and on.
And this allegedly to stop the spread of diabetes, which became a problem about when the "grazing" theory came out and became popular. This also did away with the family dinner (well it was a nail in a very tightly sealed coffin anyway) which is better for the various food industries, because if the kids aren't going to sit with Mom, why should she bother making something from scratch when there are TV dinners and boil in a bag dinners and all that sort of thing with much wider profit margins. I have strayed again, but I will find my way back. Would you believe I adore the book Tristram Shandy? It is a mock auto biography by an author who is barely born by the end of the book, as he keeps getting distracted and going into details about friends of his father, philosophical debates between cardinals about whether a baby trapped in the mother's womb can be baptized by "squirt" or no before both expire at the hands of the clumsy midwife, the correct pronunciation of things in Latin, and so on. At first (and here was my problem at age 12 when I first tried to read it and threw it away in disgust) one thinks, my blessed soul, I am 50 pages into this book and this clod has not gotten himself born yet! And then, poor woman, his mother has been in labor near 100 pages! But then by the 200th page, it is really just a marvel that the author could draw the thing out. I am listening to the audio version right now and I have never laughed so hard as when this comic genius reading the thing, takes a shallow breath to drawl out in fine classical british accent the single word "foot...note". And now, I need a new paragraph again or we shall never see the light.
You are told to snack to sell you 100 calorie wheat thin packs. You are told to sip water constantly to sell you a water bladder with replacable parts, that, if they are marketed as replacable on the label, you can be sure, will need replacing. There's more money to be had that way. And also to make you a week sissy weenie, there I've said it. The weenier you are, the more crap REI can convince you you need. I know how you feel. They spend the few sentences of every paragraph enticing you in these outdoor magazines. Then they tell you how prepared you must be. Which involves a staggering expense of gear. Now I learned the hard way that some gear is necessary. One cannot simply live in a fine place like Utah and throw on old beat up tennis shoes and go sally up a mountain for a day. I tried that first thing on moving here. And ran out of water on a dry trail, had to eat some dirty snow (I found two handfuls of it between some rocks in a miserable gully in late August) because all the small creeks and springs in the area were dry, sucked a pebble for three hours to keep my throat from getting too dry, resisted blowing my nose or spitting for fear of wasting the fluids, got so dehydrated I could not walk anymore, and just rolled myself down the steep gravely slope, ruining clothing and skin in the process, but recovering when I heard a creek some hundreds of feet below me, enough to drag myself to it, plunge in, cool my overheated body, gobble up water until I threw up (I knew better but you try stopping yourself sometime- torture is pure audacity, it is sexual frustration acted out. There is no need for it. Simply do not give a man water for 24 hours and keep him in the sun. There is nothing worse I promise you. If you disagree you have not been thirsty, you only think you have.) I dreamt of water for miles, I could think of nothing for an hour but the word "water, water, water." I learned a valuable lesson and went water bladder shopping the next day. Which took things too far. Only after the thing broke and I was too cheap to replace it (let me here insert that those who tell you something like a Camelback will last years do not hike much. My roomate has a tent that has lasted him 6 years and he will scold me with superiority when I find a small tear in a backpack or sleeping bag. Well, he has never used his tent. So I would hope it did not tear by being stored in a dry closet. And he hikes at most 2 days per year, so his Camelback is still in fine condition, true. But even taking care of my things, which I do, they wear out and break. This leads me to believe I must post on products very soon, in a more general blog.
Back to water bladders. Once it broke, I began to just let myself get thirsty, because the water bottles were on my back. I could not drink easily by walking. So I would just stop for a gulp every hour. Then that got tedious, day after day, so I went to every 2 hours, then 4, then I was only sipping water at noon, and rehydrating when I stopped around 4 to set up a camp. As I was not drinking, I stopped eating. Now I eat only a few handfuls to start the day and the rest when I stop. It is wonderful convenient if you want to make big miles in a day, and it is not even close to a hardship anymore. That's the thing about hardship is you get used to anything. When people sipping their waterhose (IVs will be sold in a few years) and eating a handful of trailmix or a 100 calorie craisin pack every 45 minutes by a timer meet me, and imagine what I must be going through, they cannot imagine. Well it is this: much less than they. Every 40 minutes they start to crave that snack, and every 5 steps, to want water. My body and I are in perfect concert. I demand that it endure, and when we stop, I will take the boots off, not put them back on, and pamper my body fully. I know how to rest and I know how to push. For my troubles, I get no hunger pangs. I can go a whole day without food and not even get much of a rumble. I love it. I start to notice hunger as I am eating. I have to press myself to eat at first. I get thirsty when I am drinking. There is no constant denial that the Camelback kids believe I must go through. I suffer so much less having suffered. For one gets to the other side, or over the crest, well, use your own analogy. Its better, trust me. And you can lighten your load. I am all about a light load and will blog on that soon too. The other consideration, even if you do not want to be a mighty man of blood and iron, is that when something goes wrong, such as you run out of water and are lost, if you are not used to getting water all the time, you will be able to endure without it. This summer I got myself into trouble with a friend who always sips water and politely suggested to me I was silly not to take care of my body. Well we were nowhere near water and wound up on our feet for 18 hours, covering 20 miles, going up or over 2 peaks, climbing all told 8,000 feet of elevation, much of it on broken vegetated cliffs with loose rock, debris, and with lots of exposure. It was stupid and should have been avoidable, but the difference in our staminas was rather shocking. He noticed it too, and I think I may have won in some part a convert to my method of thinking. I only wore out at the very end, when I had been without water and food for 10 or so hours, though I hid it from him, as I'd been a pillar till then and it was dark and I did not want to worry him. I ate some snow every few feet. He had more water on the day as he had his Camelback, but his bag was enough heavier for it that he dumped some expensive and nice equipment. And this is a very fit person. In ideal conditions, he can whip me: that is, running a marathon on asphault he would run circles around me. I had 1 liter of water in those 18 hours. I have also done 12 mile desert hikes in the last year on 90+ degree days with 1 liter or less of water. I usually bring a few swallows back with me and ritualistically pour them out or over my head when I reach my car. I do not ever want to be truly thirsty again.
So, carry either: a 1 liter bottle to refill, or if going more than 5 miles from road or town or car, then I suggest taking 2 bottles of that size. One should be narrow-mouthed and one wide-mouthed at the opening. Why? The narrow is easier to drink from when walking, the wide can be stuffed full of snow if you cannot find water. Try stuffing snow into a small opening sometime and you will see how frustrating it is,and time consuming. Also, eat all she snow you want I say. I have never gotten sick from it. Beware of water though. However, consider that guardia and other viruses won't get you sick for a few days to a few weeks usually. So do what you need to to make it through the day, then worry about the cramps later. When you are in your own comfortable house and have people to listen to your moans and pity you. Priorities. For purification, there are 2 good options, and one decent one. The decent is to carry an emergency filter straw by Aquamira. It costs $6, will work for 20 liters of water or so, and will kill most anything. It weighs one ounce. A better choice is a water pump. I prefer the Katadyn Hiker Pro, by far, to any other. The next best option is the Katadyn Hiker, which is the same pump but a less stylish color, and with a lower quality filter that will need replacing faster. However, if you will use the pump less than often, go with that one and save $10 or so. They weigh about 1 pound, have a fine carrying case, are an up and down easily pumped device which it would be hard to break, and offer some hose features that I lack the power of words to communicate, but which will make sense reading the instructions. Those I know with other brands are envious as the Katadyn is easier to clean, store, and use. I do not like the MSR as it has a swing hinge pump and will wear out over time, I expect. Let us say it is an established fact that a swing hinge on a single pivot is more vulnerable to physical stresses and forces than a pump that simply goes up and down, though I have no evidence that the MSR will break faster. I only know, that it should, in most cases. A hypothesis. Also I like the bottle adaptor with the Katadyn pump, as it has fit snug onto every bottle I have tried it with, to prevent spills and make for even easier pumping. The MSR would not fit a narrow-mouth Nalgene bottle and spilling was a problem. The Katadyn is a really fine product and at $79 or so, in the middle of the pack on pricing. The other option I used to prefer is Aquamira (not iodine) droplets. The trouble is, the bottles leak, though if you leave the foil seal mostly on under the cap, and press it down after using, it is better. But for each liter of water, you need to mix a few pipette drops from Bottle A with Bottle B. And scrambling around, they do leak. So you need to bag them. But they will kill anything, with even more certainty than a filter, so if going into a wilderness area where there will be cows (yes the government allows herds of non-native animals into wilderness areas to do much harm to it; the original definition of wilderness area explains that they are needed to keep jerks from overgrazing and destroying the lands, but assumes the right to graze; perhaps I will blog about the trip some of you have heard about where a herd of mother cows and I had a showdown and four of the ladies marched in line towards me snorting before I noticed I was between the herd and a wobbling little calf that had strayed off) or sheep (Uintahs, Wind Rivers), you may want to go with these to be sure you don't get infected from cowpies in the water. Also they weigh about 2 ounces and will not leak on flat terrain. And cost $15, which will last you for a hiking season, unless you are on the Appalachian Trail, and then they will last you a month to six weeks.
This has been another smug and exuberant rant where I come off as a superior know it all. I hope you enjoyed it.
No comments:
Post a Comment