I want to share with you a story about one of my first backpacking trips with my dad, and some of the gear we used and what we learned. Some of the gear has improved vastly over the years and some of you will relate to what we did and some of you, I hope, will chuckle.
My father and I were planning a pack trip to Sitting Bull Falls, N.M.. I was 10 at the time and it was my first backpacking trip, so dad had planned an easy trek of about 5 miles from the car to the falls. we stayed up late the day before packing our gear and going over the list we had made. Now remember this is my first packing trip, and dad had not been backpacking several years but he had gone before, not a novice but not grizzly adams either. We must have loaded and unloaded the packs 4-5 times that night trying to get what we thought we would need for the 3 day weekend in the foothills of New Mexico.
We loaded up before the crack of dawn the next morning and drove the hour and a half from where we lived in Texas to the trail head. We unloaded our gear help each other put the packs on, mine felt like it wieghed 900 lbs, and began the hike in to where we were going to set up camp. The hour long hike took us about 2 hours, being 10 I need to rest every now and then. As we began to set up camp we noticed that the sun began to fade as clouds began to build overhead. This could not be good.
We started looking for firewood in hopes we could get a hot lunch before everything was to wet, not to be as soon as we we got back with an armload of wood the skyes opened up and it began to rain, well pour wold be a better description of what was happening. As for lunch, it consisted of granola bars, Summer sausage and cheese ( a staple in my pack to this day!) We eat in the tent a two man tent with absolutely no room. This was turning out to be a miserable trip.
Well it rained all day, but as night fell it stopped. Thank god, we might get a chance to dry out. Dry out we did the wind blew, must have been a 30-40 mph wind all night long. The tent did not fare well, it fell on us 3 times during the night, remember we did not get much sleep the night before packing ( a lesson well learned). With our camp in shambles (Mother Nature it seems did not want us in her woods that day) we began to clean up, build a fire, an experience as all the wood was wet. and set about getting some breakfast in our stomachs.
After breakfast we discussed our staying, as everything we had was wet or had been strewn around the mountains by the wind. Well we stayed, for a few hours. The wind returned, have you ever tried to pack a campsite in 20 to 30 mph winds?
