Embrace the Suck! - It's Your Perspective the Counts

Something you hear a lot in the backpacking community is 'embrace the suck' or 'become comfortable being uncomfortable'. When we first heard these sayings, Roslyn and I figured that it was all about having a large amount of will power and overcoming difficult situations. That we would be able to power through the truly miserable moments and come out successful on the other side having suffered through it. And that is partially true. Over the last couple weeks though we have realized it's more than that.

For some background, we have been trying to plan out a trip for some of the weekends over the summer. One of the most consistent comments we've heard when talking about the weather is that it looks like we shouldn't go, or that its pretty poor weather to be outdoors. Roslyn and I were very confused about this at first. To us the weather looked okay, not good but more than reasonable for going outdoors in. The only thing that we would've wanted changed was the light rain that was in the forecast, about 3-5 mm per day.

It honestly took us 5-6 times to realize that to others, that level of rain made the trips we were planning cancellable. And looking back on it, we might have avoided doing some of our trips if the weather had come up like that in the past as well.

Roslyn and I talked about it a bit and we realized that to us 3-5 mm a day was not a big deal. We figured we were also willing to hike through small amounts of snow and sleet without really caring. It's not so much that we could bear down and will our way through the bad parts of a trip, but that those parts didn't seem all that bad anymore due to our accumulated experiences. Now we could easily get through the 5 mm of rain or sleet days and use our will power on the even worse days.

Anyone can do this. It will take time and practice, but you can slowly ease yourself into building up more confidence and a different perspective if you want to. We have realized that it's not much different than physical conditioning, you just need to go at your own pace and you can slowly expand your comfort zone.

Carry Your Weight - Shelter Systems

As one of the Big 3 items, your shelter system will be a significant portion of the weight you carry. The main shelter systems that you will come across are tents, hammocks, bivys, tarps, and cowboy camping. Each of these systems comes with a number of trade offs, but trying to keep them as light as possible is always one of the goals you should be trying for. This article is about a process you can use to help figure out which shelter system to use, and goes through how Roslyn and I went about deciding to use a tent.

The first thing you need to pick a shelter system is the following information about your backpacking habits: expected weather conditions, expected camping terrain, ease of setup required, and space requirements

The above pieces of information will drive what type of shelter you choose in the first place, the types of materials you will choose from, and help guide you when deciding between small differences in shelters. Here is how Roslyn and I addressed needing that information.

Expected weather conditions - Anything except for snow/sleet

Expected camping terrain - Anything from grassy fields, to thick forests, to beaches

Ease of setup required - We want something easy to use and setup.

Space requirements - We need room for two people and their gear. Gear can go in vestibules

Once you have the answers, you need to figure out which shelter types will not let you meet those expectations so that you can rule them out:

Expected weather conditions - With pretty poor weather conditions expected combined with the desire to always be able to dry out, tarps and cowboy camping were not possible as potential shelters.

Ease of setup - Given that trees are not a guarantee, hammocks were out.

Expected camping terrain - Due to expecting to use the shelter in varied and potentially damaging terrain we need something that can avoid damage (hammock, tarp, cowboy camping) or is strong enough to not care (thick floored tents, bivy's).

Space requirements - since we need room for two people and gear, hammocks and bivy's were out. We wanted to share the shelter weight so having individual shelters was not an option.

From the above hammock's, bivys, tarps, and cowboy camping were out, leaving us with just a tent as a possibility. We did revisit this a couple times, but in the end we always leaned back towards a tent. Once you've settled on a type of shelter system, you then need to research the different sub-types. In general though you will be comparing four criteria: cost, weight, durability, and comfort.

Knowing where you sit with each of the above four criteria is important, and you should figure it out before sitting down to compare different shelter systems (you can even figure it out before picking a type of shelter system if it helps). Here is how Roslyn and I viewed each of the criteria.

Cost - we were willing to spend more money for a better product

Weight - we wanted the tent to be as light as possible

Durability - It needed to be fairly durable, but we were willing to be more careful with the tent if it meant either a lower cost or lighter weight

Comfort - we wanted a tent that would keep us dry no matter what, had plenty of space, didn't have condensation issues, and where the fly would be able to flip up to expose more of the mesh for either airflow or star gazing.

This gave us the following hierarchy: Comfort > Weight > Durability > Cost

We then compared a few dozen tents, looked at hammocks and bivys, decided we still wanted a tent, and then looked at more tents. You should definitely take all the time you need to figure out what you are comfortable with buying, and going back and reevaluating your needs is always a good idea if you find yourself stumped after looking at a lot of options.

That's how Roslyn and I went about picking a tent, specifically the Marmot Tungsten Ultralight 2 Person, and hopefully the process will help you with figuring out what you want to buy as well.

Lessons Learned - Wind and Water Safety

Last weekend Roslyn and I went on a canoe trip. We saw that there was going to be some rain and heard that it was going to be windy, but decided that we had endured much worse while hiking and it wasn't going to be a big deal. The first day of our canoe trip was a blast, we dealt with the wind and waves, but it wasn't too bad and the challenge was enjoyable on the few 1.5 to 2 km stretches across open water. We had heard the wind was going to be worse on our second day, but didn't think it would be all that bad.

Day 2 of the trip we experienced 30 km (18.75 mile) per hour winds with gusts up to around 40 km (25 mile) per hour. We started out going into 2-3 foot waves, which were doable, but left us worried for the large open stretches of water. When we hit the open stretches the waves grew to 3-4 feet. The waves were at the very upper end of manageable, but the wind in the canoe was something we had never experienced before.

What we found out, and honestly what shouldn't have been a surprise, is that our bodies and the canoe act like a giant sail. When the wind catches the canoe it pivots the canoe, making it move so that the length of the canoe is perpendicular to the wind direction. This also makes the canoe perpendicular to the wave direction and the combination of the two makes it very difficult to keep your canoe properly pointed into the waves so that it does not roll.

We also had waves crest the top of our canoe a few times. As we were dropping down the backside of a wave, the next wave came along faster than our canoe could rise up and the wave washed over Roslyn in the front. The waves were still small enough that not a lot of water got in and there wasn't enough power to push Roslyn at all.

With all of the above in mind, here are the key Lessons Learned that we took away from the weekend:

1 - We do NOT know enough about safe canoe recovery. We do not know how to unflip a canoe, how to get back in a canoe after having fallen out, and we have never practiced anything like it.

2 - Wind is a separate issue from waves. Even in areas with manageable waves, the wind pushed us around an uncomfortable amount, at one point we could not maintain our course simply because the wind was pushing us sideways along otherwise manageable waves.

3 - Route planning is critical. While we did okay with this, we still learned that proper route planning can make or break canoeing across a lake.

From the above points we have formulated an action plan to make sure we are never in a situation where we are out of our depth. The following steps/rules will help us, and anyone else who is new to canoeing, avoid these types of situations.

1 - We are going to take a white water canoe safety course. We had already planned on doing this, but we are now 200% making sure it happens.

2 - We are putting strict limits on the amount of wind we will canoe in. For us, we have decided that if the wind speed is above 18 km (11.25 miles) per hour we won't go out on large bodies of water. We will still go out on either narrow lakes or rivers that don't have enough space for large waves to form,

3 - All route planning will be done with the wind direction in mind. We are going to make sure that if the wind is close to our 18 kph limit (about 12 mph) there will be a way for us to travel our entire route within 200-300 feet of the shore line/an island that will block the wind.

4 - We are going to plan an extra day into every trip. We can canoe about 25 km per day without many issues in decent weather. For a 100 km trip we would plan for 5 days instead of 4 days and then still stick to going about 25 km per day. This gives us some extra breathing room in case we need to stop due to the weather.

5 - For 2 day trips we are going to limit ourselves to about 10-15 km distances. Having a shorter distance means we can either take lots of breaks, take a longer shore line route, or get the riskier parts of a route done during breaks in the weather.

6 - We are going to be more willing to call off a trip. Having gotten used to hiking in pretty much all conditions we rarely want to cancel a trip, but being out on the water is still new to us and potentially a lot more dangerous.

We are going to try out the above rules for the rest of the summer and then adjust them as we become more comfortable and competent.

Rockwall Trail - Helmet Falls Loop

Date: June 28, 29, 30, 2019

Length: 11.9 km, 13.7 km, 15.2 km - 40.8 km total

Time: 6 hours, 9 hours, 7 hours

Elevation: 758m, 620 m, 438m

River near Paint Pots Trailhead

July long weekend 2019 we took advantage of the extra time off work and headed out to Kootenay National Park for a three day trip. Roslyn and I hiked the Tumbling Creek-Helmet Falls-Ochre River loop, which contains a portion of the Rockwall Trail. To get to the trail, we flew into Calgary with our gear, rented a car, and stayed at an AirBnB for the night. The next day we drove into Banff to pick up ice axes and bear spray, which you can rent there for a reasonable price from the outfitters. Finally, we drove off to the Paint Pots trailhead to start our hike.

Map of the Route, at the junction we went counter clockwise around the loop

Starting out at the Paint Pots Trailhead, we started hiking up the main valley. The Paint Pots is an area full of different clays used for pottery, and the bright colors shown in many of the soils was pretty interesting to see. The trail between the parking lot and the Paint Pots was pretty busy with people out for the day, but as we moved into the forest past the Paint Pots other people disappeared until we reached camp for the night.

Creek tumbling down the clay at the Paint Pots

One of the ponds at the Paint Pots

After getting into the forest past the Paint Pots, we had a wonderful morning climbing the mountain. A few mountain side glades opened up for us to get a great view through the trees, and there were a lot of different flowers to looks at in them as well.

Further up the mountain side, the trail started following a river. At times we were right beside it and then we would climb a couple hundred feet above it before it rose up to meet us again. The further up the mountain we ascended, the more waterfalls we could see as well. Most of them were only a couple feet across, with their streams flowing down into the larger river, but a few of the waterfalls were part of the river itself and were quite large and powerful.

One of the more powerful waterfalls we saw on the hike

Looking down on another waterfall from a bridge over it

About halfway through the first day it began to hail on us while we tried to eat lunch, and then hailed on and off for the rest of the day. During our second attempt at lunch, we also realized that we had forgotten our camp fuel... So cold food for three days for us!

We arrived at the campsite a bit before 5 pm and setup our sent and set about making supper. The camping pads along the trail are very well maintained, and the bear boxes, cooking area, and outhouses are well laid out. After supper we talked to a couple of other people around camp, and pretty much everyone was headed in the same direction as us; over Helmet Pass.

Day 2 we were up early to give ourselves as much time as possible to get through the snow we were expecting. We started up the mountain side early, starting to hit snow about halfway up. Once we arrived at the top, we stopped for a look out over the valley we had slept in and it was an amazing view. By the time we finished ascending near the approach to Wolverine Pass (which we didn't go through) we had been above the tree line on and off for a half hour and it was a crazy feeling to be up there.

View from halfway up the mountain side

Near the base of Wolverine Pass, we had our only moment of uncertainty. The trail went across a sheer snow slope with a fifty or so foot drop to a creek. We had seen another group forge the trail ahead of us, but it was still a bit nerve-wracking crossing the section. Making it across felt like a pretty big accomplishment though and the experience was pretty awesome.

The rest of Day 2 was basically spent grinding through a snowfield. For about half the day it snowed or hailed on and off while we walked. Fortunately a couple groups had gone before us, so the trail was easy to follow and we didn't post-hole too much.

Roslyn looking out at the Rockwall

Crossing one of the nicer bridges

Looking back on our travels of the day

Our favorite picture from the trip is the one just above. We stopped near the top of Helmet Pass to look back over what we had traversed through out the day. Our day started a few hundred meters below where the snow makes a white 'V' far off in the distance. We then walked through all the snow in the middle of the picture before entering the trees on the left and making our way down to a lake that is obscured by the trees in the center.

After taking the picture above, we finished out ascent of Helmet Pass and then began climbing down the mountain to the campground. The top of the pass was full of snow, but it was a great feeling to keep looking ahead as seeing less snow, then some clear patches of trail, and then all of a sudden there was no snow left at all and it was easy going from then on.

We arrived at camp at a decent time again, setup our tent, then walked over closer to the base of Helmet Falls. Watching the water fall 1000 ft to the base of the rock wall and just relaxing to the sound of it was one of the best moments of the trip.

Most of the way down Helmet Pass we could see Helmet Falls and took a picture

Day 3 we woke up bright and early to try and get to the car as soon as possible so we could spend some time in Banff before driving to our AirBnB in Calgary. Unfortunately, bright and early in the mountains means cold. It likely dropped to at least -3C overnight and when we woke up our tent poles were frozen together. Roslyn gathered our food and put most of our stuff away while I did my best to thaw everything out so we could actually take the tent down.

Once we were all packed up the day went pretty quickly from there. Descending was definitely faster than the climb up, and just as enjoyable. A couple hours into the day we started looking back more and more as the trees started obscuring our view of the snow capped peaks behind us. Around lunch we got our last glimpse of the glorious snow covered mountains before the trees cut our view off for good.

One of the many beautiful streams we came across

Roslyn looking out at whats ahead of us

The weather was great all day, no snow or rain, and it became steadily warmer as we approached the parking lot. The trip down along Ochre River was very nice and we met quite a few people going in and out around the Ochre Junction campsite.

Once we arrived back at the parking lot, we quickly put our gear away and headed into Banff. Once we arrived we got to experience walking through a packed townsite with tourists everywhere while carried out bear spray and ice axes. We received a lot of weird looks. After dropping the rentals off we went to the hot springs, spent some time walking around, and ate supper before starting the trip home.

If you want to see more of this trip, check out our videos about it on YouTube: Banff and Kootenay Hike - July Long 2019, Part 1