-J.R.R. Tolkien

In the late 1940s, a literature professor named Joseph Campbell working in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion took a look at the world’s collective myths and identified some common narrative threads. He codified his observations in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a work positing that every myth across the planet’s varied cultures is linked to deeply held human impulses, explaining why they are all so similar. According to Campbell, most of the stories you’ve read—going back to Gilgamesh and beyond into the unlettered mists of the past—follow this ingrained human pattern. Campbell called it the monomyth. And because you can’t study mythology for a living and keep a name as dry as that, he also called it the Hero’s Journey.

The book made a big splash, especially with storyteller types. And so whether you know it or not (or even if you agree with it or not; not everyone does) most of the entertainment you’ve consumed since 1949—books, movies, TV, podcasts, etc—is built on Campbell’s mythological common ground.

The Lord of the Rings is a Hero’s Journey in perhaps the purist pop-culture rendering (Star Wars is famously a close second). LOTR was written before The Hero with a Thousand Faces, but all the same mythological story beats and structure are there. Indeed Tolkien—a professor of medieval literature and a translator of both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf—very much meant the story to read as mythology, or at least proto-mythology. Ever wonder why LOTR is hard to scan sometimes? That’s why. It’s supposed to be a little dry and weighty. This knowledge is cold comfort when you are struggling through page ten of The Silmarillion, but now at least you can turn to people at cocktail parties and say, “Hey, did you know that the Lord of the Rings stuff is supposed to be kinda boring*?”

What is an outdoor adventure if not a Campbellian journey, a leaving of hearth and home, an enduring of the elements, a goal striven for? Thus the inescapable reality that any group of hikers of a sufficiently nerdy mindset will find themselves choosing a Fellowship character that best defines them. I wish I was an Aragorn, but the sad reality is I’m a perpetual Gimli ^†. In any case, I dare you to take a walk on the Appalachian Trail without bumping into someone calling themselves Proudfoot (Proudfeet!).

But for all the Tolkien obsession in the outdoor community, very little attention is paid to the final third of Campbell’s monomyth—or Tolkien’s saga—the return.

Ah, the return—the crossing of the threshold from the wild and back to the hearth. The leaving behind of trees and mountains and the re-embracing of regular life with all the not-very-great things contained therein. Roads and strip malls. $60 brunches. Having to choose between more than one shirt. Not being able to pee whenever the mood strikes you. The inescapable reality that Law and Order SVU has been on the air for 23 seasons. Everything on TikTok, with the extremely notable exception of cat collaboration videos ^‡. Those are, in fact, very great and they make the world a better place.

Strong reasons why adventurers have a hard time adjusting to home. Strong reasons to wish a dragon invasion upon the Shire—all those silly hobbits with no trail dust on their fuzzy feet. All those silly humans shit-posting on Nextdoor and chasing Instagram likes and obsessing over digital watches. It’s enough to give anyone taking the finishing steps of an adventure the creeping heebies.

I call it return anxiety because having a fancy name for it makes me feel like a smarty pants.

Many observers have concluded that return anxiety happens because our technology and the pace of our culture have outraced our evolution. In the wild, life is hard but simple. In the world, living is easy but complex. To put it another way, we have ice-age brains and ice-age bodies living in a society that, for our sins, contains the extremely un-ice-age Mark Zuckerberg.

I think this take is absolutely true and also incomplete because return anxiety shows up in mythology all the time and the ancient sources are pretty clear on the general lack of smartphones^§ .

Consider this passage from Campbell’s book:

“The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities, and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes.”

Yes, our first-world society is an emotionally and spiritually—if not physically—difficult place to live, and our brains turn into cottage cheese trying to cope with it. But adventurers have been dealing with this since there were adventures to be had. If we lived in a world perfectly attuned to our needs—a society where everyone was valued, where bigotry and intolerance didn’t exist, where computer printers just worked like they were supposed to, where root beer floats were free and everybody who wanted abs could have abs and nobody’s tattoos had spelling errors—I believe that adventurers would still face return anxiety.

I believe this because any adventure worthy of the name has fundamentally changed the adventurer—and with change comes work—both in understanding and embracing that change and in determining how the changed self now fits back into society.

Nobody wants to do it, least of all many of the mythological figures. It’s hard and messy work, being a human in society on this planet. And it’s no wonder that upon reaching the end of a long adventure many choose to simply keep going, be it by embracing #vanlife or turning around and walking in the direction from which they just came.

This impulse is understandable but, I fear, ultimately flawed. The monomyth is quite clear: the changed adventurer has a debt to society. The debt springs from a boon gifted to the adventurer. Sometimes the boon is the change wrought on the adventurer herself, sometimes it is an actual gift that also functions as a metaphor. Either way, the adventurer has a responsibility to share the boon with her home. This responsibility is tied either to human nature or a storytelling trope so deeply embedded within us that there’s no real difference between the two. We ignore such powerful impulses—such ubiquitous mythological conventions—at our own peril. The return is not just about oneself. It is, at least in part, about what you owe the people around you.

What exactly is owed by the returning adventurer is devilishly hard to pin down, and of course, depends upon the adventurer, the nature of the change, the nature of the boon, and the nature of home. Making the determination is part of the adventurer’s work. Merry and Pippin utilized their newfound bravery and warrior skills to cleanse the Shire of Saruman’s brigands. Samwise uses the gifts he received from Galadriel to heal the Shire once the final battle was won^‖. Frodo mines his trauma to become a writer, in the fine tradition of writers everywhere. But the book he finishes is for Bilbo and Sam, not for himself.

I don’t know what boons you receive on your adventures. But I wonder if thinking of how to share your boon, rather than existing in a perpetual state of mourning for your finished adventure, might not be a better way to approach return anxiety. What I receive from my time in the woods, and I don’t think I’m alone here, is often a sense of relief—like a spring released, a knot untied. My adventures bring me Wendell Berry’s Peace of Wild Things. Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese.

And so I have begun to think of my returns from the wild as opportunities to carry the sense of peace I find there forward into the so-called real world for as long as possible. This is what I feel I owe. Not to grasp at serenity with a clawed fist and so to watch it stream through my fingers, but to extend it open-handed to those around me. I try to hold the peace of wild things not as a balm for my all-too-often irritated psyche but as a way to better the lives of anyone who comes into contact with me.

I’m not very good at it. Possibly I never will be. But as in meditation, the point is not to be good at it. The point is to try. To try to remember that as I return from an adventure, it isn’t just about me and how I feel, but what has been given to me, and what I can give in return. That owing implies society, and society means we are not alone. To remember that each step in the woods changes me, that the change is the point and not a byproduct of an escape that should not—cannot—will not—continue indefinitely.

All adventures end. This is what allows new ones to begin.

FOOTNOTES

*I’m a lot of fun at cocktail parties.

†Perpetual Gimli. Not the name of a designer watch, but probably should be.

‡You’re welcome.

§“What’s up ya’ll? Just rolled back into Ithaca, took a little longer to get home than I thought, LOL. Here are some pics from my trip! **Shots of Odysseus blinding the cyclops set to “Can we skip to the good part? Whooooooaaaaaaaooaaaoaoaaaaaa”**

^‖ Don’t know what I’m talking about? Hello, you’ve only watched the movies! Again, I’m a lot of fun at cocktail parties. In this series of sub-footnotes, I will elucidate the differences between the book and film versions of Lord of the Rings and discuss the relative merits of each. To start with, hobbits are…(1/796)

The post Adventure’s End appeared first on Backpacking Routes.

Despite the huge gap in our shared experiences, I know one thing for certain. Within minutes of our hero inventing and successfully using the bow to kill a giant sloth, some other ancient person wandered by and opined–loudly–that the newfangled bow and arrow system was detracting from the elegance and simplicity of the throwing spear.  The bow, the argument almost certainly went, isn’t as ideologically pure as the spear or–even better!–the rock tied to the end of a club. Don’t we go sloth hunting to get away from all the innovations that have been complicating our life for the last few years? Fire? Clothes? Drums, for Gog’s sake? Sure, this new bow thing is more effective and safer–cause you don’t have to get within swiping distance of the sloth–but a real hunter shouldn’t need to rely on such gadgets. And what happens when we become too reliant on the bow, huh? What if we forget how to use spears?

Perhaps you see where I’m going with this. In my capacity as an outdoor journalist, I occasionally write or publish gear reviews about electronics–messaging devices, cameras, rechargeable headlamps, and so on. Inevitably somebody chimes in with some variation of “I go backpacking to get away from technology.” Is this huffy commenter inevitably a middle-aged white guy who clearly hasn’t actually read the article? Look, you said it, not me. I wouldn’t make generalizations like that.

He is though.

And so I’ve written this letter to you, Internet Commenter Guy, in the hopes that you will read it and ponder it in your heart. Hopefully before commenting, but I realize that may be too much to ask.

I Go Backpacking to Get Away from Technology

Let’s start with the use of the word technology here. You keep using that word, and I don’t think it means what you think it means. That 3-layer waterproof breathable rain jacket? Technology. Your titanium cooking pot? Technology. Your freeze-dried meal? Technology (Incan technology!). So unless you like to go backpacking barefoot and naked and freeze your nibbly bits off while fighting pikas barehanded for the last of the season’s huckleberries, I’d cool it on the blanket statements about technology. Oh yeah, and no backpack either because–well, technology.

What do you call backpacking when instead of a backpack you just have to hold all the huckleberries in your hands while shielding your private parts from the prying eyes of judgmental marmots?

This isn’t a joke, I’m honestly asking.

Perhaps what you really mean instead of technology is electronics–and that takes us to my next point.

I Go Backpacking to Get Away from Electronics

Cool story, bro. Do you leave your watch at home? Did you drive your car to the trailhead? Are you bringing a camera? Maybe it’s a film camera. If so, make sure you take out the battery that allows the light meter to work. Also, don’t bring a headlamp.

Maybe you are super-hardcore and you rode your bike to the trailhead and you aren’t bringing a camera and you always know what time it is and how long it is until sunset and you always get your tent set up before dark and when you have to pee in the middle of the night you stumble around blindly and stab yourself on tree branches as God and John Muir clearly intended.

Or maybe what you really mean is you backpack to escape the connectivity that certain electronics allow or foster.

I Go Backpacking To Escape the Connectivity that Certain Electronics Allow or Foster

OK, now we can talk. I do that as well. Like most modern Americans, I use my phone a lot, both for work and recreation. I relish the chance to step away from the overstimulation, media saturation, and blue light blasted into the back of my skull that is my day-to-day life. But I also recognize that my phone is an incredibly powerful backcountry multipurpose tool that provides me with navigation, emergency communication, photography, journaling, and–yes–sometimes even entertainment.

Do I watch movies on my phone in my tent? Do I turn my phone on at every summit to check for service? Do I post to Instagram or Facebook from my campsite? I do not. Some people do. And yes, I find those uses of technology in the backcountry aesthetically distasteful. But I don’t say that to people either online or in real life because aesthetically distasteful isn’t the same thing as dangerous, and by and large, those choices don’t affect me at all. And chances are some people find my uses of electronics aesthetically distasteful as well, and I appreciate it when they don’t say so and just let me live my life.

I’ve found a middle path that works for me. I use certain electronic tools (like satellite messengers) to stay connected to a certain extent in order to ease the anxiety that my family feels when I disappear into the woods for weeks at a time. I use other electronic tools (like my phone) because it’s essentially five tools in one, and I like the ethos of bringing less to do more even if the less that I bring is battery-powered. And I use my Kindle Paperwhite because unlike a paperback it holds thousands of books, is waterproof, and I don’t have to use my headlamp battery to read it. I think that’s astounding. It also weighs less than most books.

Everyone has their own path, and as long as that path doesn’t hurt or inconvenience other human beings, or detract from their enjoyment of the wilderness (i.e., Bluetooth speakers!) it’s all good, baby.

That Isn’t Real Backpacking (i.e., You are Missing the Point)

Look, this could be an entirely separate essay (and in fact, it is). All I’ll say is this: Who made you the arbiter of the hallowed Point? How about less gatekeeping and more being excited that our fellow humans are exploring the outdoors with us in a lot of different and cool ways? We could apply this to all kinds of concepts–crowds in national parks, E-bikes, mountain bikers vs. hikers, FKT attempts, on and on and on.

We don’t own our playgrounds–as much as we like to think we do. How other people use them is utterly beyond our scope–aside from obvious stuff like Leave No Trace ethics, fire safety, and noise. If it’s causing trash, making a lot of noise, or is unsafe to the point that it’s endangering others, you are allowed to be grumpy about it. (But first, try doing some friendly outdoor ethics education!)

If it’s not doing any of those things, I’m sorry to say you really have no trekking pole to lean on. So maybe cool it in the comments section and just, I dunno, take a hike or something. No, I really mean it. Get outside and go for a walk in the woods. And if you want to listen to an audiobook while you do it, I won’t judge you.

As long as you are using earbuds.

The post Yes, Real Backpackers Use Electronics (An Open Letter to Internet Commenter Guy) appeared first on Backpacking Routes.

The USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region announced today that it would be closing nine more national forests, effective August 22 at 11:59 p.m. The order brings the total number of closed forests in northern California up to 10: El Dorado National Forest, Klamath National Forest, Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, Lassen National Forest, Modoc National Forest, Plumas National Forest, Shasta-Trinity National Forest, Six Rivers National Forest, and Tahoe National Forest.

This is bad news for thru-hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail, a path that runs pretty much directly through many of these forests. It’s also not great for people who live in and around these forests (you can still get to your house, you just can’t recreate on the land).

These closures are designed to make evacuations and fire management easier, so do us a favor and don’t ignore them, OK? There’s a nice $5,000 fine designed to encourage you to take them seriously. Also, maybe don’t be that guy out running in 400 AQI air? Your daily 10K isn’t worth permanently damaging your lungs.

You can find the official press release, as well as more details on the order, here.

The post USDA Forest Service Temporarily Closes 10 National Forests in Northern California appeared first on Backpacking Routes.

I started my walk in Denver and ambled southwest across the Rockies, following the Colorado Trail all the way to Durango some 500 trail miles away. On my back, I carried a pack, a tent, and a sleeping bag. In my intestines, I carried exactly zero parasites. But, by the time I left Colorado a month later, this was no longer the case.

***

After a lifetime of camping and backpacking, I’m familiar with the ailments that crop up after spending extended periods of time in the woods. One common distress is what happens when food eaten by hand (like granola bars or trail mix) meets a lack of soap and infrequent handwashing. Hikers of a poetic mindset sometimes refer to this as Ass to Mouth Disease. AMD can also occur in non-hikers: people with poor hygiene, parents of young children, or anyone who even thinks about swimming in a water park wave pool.

There are other ways to trouble your digestion, of course. Often, there are nasty little bugs already living in the food we eat. The toxins released by these organisms send our bodies into full-on flush-the-system mode, and I think we all know what that looks and feels like.

Once, I found myself squatting on an exposed cliff in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with my pants down around my ankles, holding on to a shrub several feet shorter than I was. This shrub was the tallest plant in sight, making me the tallest object in sight. Normally not a problem unless you happen to be in a thunderstorm, which I was.

Two hours earlier, a stranger at the Mount Washington visitor center had offered to buy me lunch, and I gratefully accepted. The random kindness of strangers is one of the nicer things about long-distance backpacking. Two bowls of clam chowder later, I was back on the trail, and the trouble started shortly thereafter.

A quick image filtered through my nausea-addled brain. Two men in dark suits, dark shades, no-nonsense ties, lurking on the stoop of my parents’ house. They ring the doorbell, and my mother opens the door, immediate and terrible understanding blossoms across her face.

“Your son is dead,” the first one says.

“Struck by lightning,” says the second. Mom gasps and presses a hand to her mouth.

“At least it was quick,” she says, weeping.

“Not really,” says the first. Mom looks up at this. The second man takes off his glasses, inspects them, wipes away some imaginary smear, and replaces them on his narrow face.

“It appears as though he was literally shitting his brains out when it happened,” he says. The first man nods. “We found his brains, along with most of his internal organs, and every single thing he has ever eaten in his entire life heaped into a steaming pile next to his charred corpse.”

At this, Mom collapses into a quivering heap.

Mourning ensues. 

The funeral is closed-casket.

That image was the only thing that gave me the strength to halt, if only for a moment, the incredible mass evacuation that my digestive system was undergoing. I staggered, pinch-cheeked and bowlegged, down to marginally safer ground and once there uncorked, so to speak. As I hunched, bare-cheeked to the storm and to any passing tourist who happened to be trekking up to the top of Mount Washington, I gave serious reconsideration to the wisdom of accepting free clam chowder from a stranger on a mountain located over 100 miles from the nearest living clam.

All of which is to say that when I started having some issues in Colorado, I didn’t immediately think I had an intestinal parasite. Lots of things can happen to your stomach in the woods, but, by the time my hike was over, and I was monopolizing the chemical toilet on the bus from Durango back to Denver, I was beginning to suspect the truth.

***

Spend enough time in the company of outdoors enthusiasts, and you eventually build up a lexicon of ailments, horror stories, and embarrassing biological happenings.

Lyme disease, spread by deer ticks in the eastern woods of the United States, is particularly nasty and causes severe nervous system damage if left untreated. The tricky thing about Lyme is that its early symptoms include fatigue, aches, swollen joints, and shortness of breath. If you’ve ever been backpacking, you’ll recognize this list. It’s the same exact symptoms that occur when walking up and down mountains with a pack on your back. You can see the problem. Often has the long-distance hiker quietly contemplated an impending hospital stay simply because he was tired at the end of a 20-mile day.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s usually the people who don’t even know what Lyme disease is, and certainly aren’t spending hours a day worried about it, who end up contracting it. Deer ticks can be real jerks that way.

Giardia lamblia often comes up in the same backpacker horror stories as Lyme. Although not as damaging in the long term, Giardia is a more creative bug. Lyme seems to be content with hanging out locally. Giardia, by contrast, is much more cosmopolitan―a real world traveler. It achieves this by choosing as its preferred host organism an animal scientifically proven to be 20 times more of a jerk than the deer tick: those always entertaining monkeys, Homo sapiens.

Oh boy, does Giardia love us.

Scientists find it in every major human population on the planet. Some health organizations estimate that Giardia lamblia exists in 30 percent of the undeveloped world, and that it lives in anywhere from 3 to 7 percent of the population of the United States. It was first formally described in Europe in 1681, and it’s been around for a lot longer than that. Giardia was hanging out with human beings before it was cool, know what I mean? Looking at you, syphilis.

To Giardia, the intestines of a human being are a turnkey property, fully furnished and move-in ready. After taking up residence, Giardia wastes no time making itself at home—reproducing asexually, forming organisms called cysts, and flushing itself out of your digestive system in the favored way of creepy crawlies everywhere—spectacular and highly pressured diarrhea.

Once out in the wild, the cysts are resilient and quasi-indestructible. Cold doesn’t bother them. Neither does heat. Chemical treatments such as chlorine and iodine are mostly effective but mostly are not always. If left to their own devices, the cysts can remain dormant but viable for up to three months, waiting on someone to ingest them, and then the whole explosive process starts all over again.

And that’s the life cycle of the Giardia lamblia organism in human beings. But as much as it loves us, Giardia will make do with less lucrative properties. Cats and dogs work just fine for it. So do birds and cattle, sheep and rats. Beavers are a very common vector, which is why in North America Giardiasis (the set of symptoms caused by the Giardia organism) is commonly called Beaver Fever. Beavers spread Giardia easily because they spend a lot of time swimming around in beavery lake water. You can imagine where beavers use the bathroom.

Most people in the developed world don’t have to worry about Giardia lamblia causing all kinds of merry hell in their intestines because most people have the incredible luxury of drinking water that is free of rat diarrhea, and, with very few exceptions, they refrain from eating the feces of the family pet. However, should you happen to be backpacking through the wilderness of North America, chances are you will find yourself, at some point, drinking water that a beaver has shat in. It’s simply statistically likely. No human feels very good about this, but, short of hauling trailers full of bottled water around behind you any time you go camping, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Nobody knows for sure how the beavers feel about it. Possibly, they think of it as karma for centuries of being used as hats.

***

Giardia has a variable gestation period, so it’s hard to know precisely where and when I contracted it. Somewhere along the 500-mile path in Colorado, I saw a sparkling, pristine-looking font of mountain water, stopped to fill my bottle, treated the water with fancy chemicals, and drank deeply. Let me reiterate: I chemically treated my water.

I’ve spent decades in the woods and mountains: backpacking, hiking, paddling, mountain biking, and climbing. By the time I got to Colorado, I had already completed a solo hike of the Appalachian Trail. I treated my water with chemicals on that hike as well, using a ubiquitous product aimed specifically at backpackers and other outdoor enthusiasts—Aquamira. On the bottle this product clearly states that it is effective against Giardia. But, and here is the really important part, not always. Maybe there was a cyst hiding in the lip of my water bottle that didn’t get fully exposed to the chemicals. It only takes one (though it usually takes more). Maybe I lost track of time and didn’t allow the chemicals the full 20 minutes they needed to kill the organism. Maybe one of the cysts was just especially tough.

Who knows? At some point, spending extended time in the outdoors always becomes about risk management as opposed to risk avoidance. With water, you choose your source carefully, try to find something flowing, don’t drink anything near human or livestock habitation, chemically treat it, filter it, or boil it, and hope for the best. Sometimes, you draw the short straw. Shit, as they say, happens. Sometimes it happens a lot.

***

By the time my wife, Rachael, picked me up from the airport, I was in rough shape and determined to ignore it.

The symptoms of Giardiasis are inspiring in their breadth and variety. As I said, this is a creative bug. There’s diarrhea, of course: pretty predictable. But constant diarrhea is boring, so the Giardia organism likes to toss in occasional bouts of constipation just to liven things up. Then, it sprinkles in some sharp, throbbing cramps. All very well, but my personal favorite symptom on a cross-country plane journey has to be the constant and odiferous flatulence. Had there been an air marshal on that flight, I’m sure I would have been arrested and removed from the plane. We were all lucky that the caustic atmosphere I produced didn’t disintegrate the rubber seals around the windows. On the other hand, we were flying Spirit, so maybe that’s just the experience the other passengers were expecting.

But why stop there? Like an overachieving high school senior giving up an hour a week at a soup kitchen, Giardia seems determined to be as well-rounded as possible.

So, burps. Really sulfurous, burning burps. Burps from the ulcerated stomach of the devil himself. Like the flatulence, the belches occurred on a more or less constant basis. At the height of my symptoms, I was producing more poisonous gasses than a tire fire in the parking lot of a West Virginia coal plant.

This is the state in which my wife found me leaning on my luggage at the airport. It didn’t take her long to realize I was ill; it was an hourlong car ride back to our house. I can’t even hide Christmas presents from my wife—trying to act like my internal organs weren’t dissolving while sharing a closed environment was a futile exercise.

“It’s possible I picked up a bug in Colorado,” I belched.

“You should go to the doctor tomorrow,” she said. She had just kissed me with an enthusiastic “I haven’t seen you in a month” kind of kiss, and now, as she rolled the windows down and stuck her head out into the fresh night air, I suspected she was regretting it.

“I think I’ll just wait a few days and see if it clears up on its own,” I said, clutching my stomach and squeezing my hindquarters together as tightly as possible.

***

Over the next few days, Rachael continued to encourage me to seek medical help, and I continued to refuse, insisting that my symptoms would clear up given some rest. This line of thinking objectively made no sense. It made no sense then, and it makes no sense now, as Rachael, to her credit, has only pointed out every couple of weeks for the last few years.

I have no defense for my idiocy other than to say that, according to WebMD, exhaustion, loss of clear thinking, and irritability are yet more bonus symptoms of Giardiasis. I have no idea if this is medically accurate, but I do know that after walking 500 miles in a month and carrying a parasitic hitchhiker for an unknown length of time along that distance, I was definitely experiencing all three. The day after arriving home, I fell asleep standing up in the shower and only woke up when the hot water ran out. It was two o’clock in the afternoon.

I picked pointless fights. I napped a lot. I oozed unspeakable things from every orifice. I stumbled from room to room, woozy, forgetting what I was searching for. Things kept getting worse.

And then we went to the beach with my in-laws.

The trip had been planned for over a year, the beach house booked, the plane tickets purchased. We left for Florida only a few days after I arrived home from Colorado, flying down on a budget airline. They lost my luggage and found it at the Florida airport a week after I was already home, two weeks after it vanished on a direct flight. Only the most valuable things had been stolen, but the thief was careful to make sure my clothes remained folded, so that was nice.

Every romantic partner has a breaking point. My wife, more saintly than most, reached hers about three days into sharing a beach house with her parents and a husband who, when he wasn’t napping, spent his time belching, farting, groaning, aching, moaning, curling up on the toilet, picking fights, vomiting popcorn shrimp into a shared beach house bathroom, and tossing and turning all night long (did I mention the anxiety and racing heart, particularly at night? Bonus symptoms!).

Words were had. I was told that my symptoms were not getting better. I was told that I had had a chance to get better and blew it by being stubborn and idiotic. I was told to keep my mouth shut, to paste a smile upon my face, and to join the family at the beach at any and all times I wasn’t sequestered in the bathroom. I was told to book a doctor’s appointment for the day we returned home. I was told that, although our marriage would remain intact regardless, any and all future marital bliss was absolutely dependent upon all of these conditions being met.

Something in her tone of voice finally made it sink in. I needed medical help. I made a doctor’s appointment and tottered out to the beach to play bocce ball.

I smiled as I did it. I just made sure to stand downwind.

***

“Guess what? I have Giardiosis!” I announced merrily after getting my lab results some weeks later. “The Doc says with the antibiotic he prescribed it should clear up in a few weeks.”

We won’t speak of the noxious plane ride home or the difficulty of obtaining a stool sample while suffering from alternating constipation and diarrhea. We won’t speak of the fact that yet another bonus symptom of Giardia is lactose intolerance, therefore ruining ice cream for me. And we certainly won’t speak of the fact that I had to explain Giardia lamblia to a northern Ohio doctor and insist upon lab tests. He kept saying I had “a little case of traveler’s stomach.”

Turns out I’m not the only idiot in this story.

Rachael looked up from her corner of our tiny apartment, where she had retreated in a vain attempt to breathe air that I hadn’t befouled. She fixed me with an even gaze, then looked back down at her paperwork.

“If you had gone to the doctor when I first asked you to, you’d already be better,” she said. “But your bullheadedness and masculine stubbornness is what I love about you, you sexy specimen of a man! Now go get well so I can ravage you!”

My memory is pretty hazy but I’m pretty sure that’s how it went down.

***

At the pharmacy, the tech found my order, bagged it, and started running my card.

“Did you know this medicine reacts violently with alcohol?” he asked. “Did the doctor tell you that when he prescribed it?”

“Nooooo,” I said, thinking it was really time to get a new doctor.

“Yeah. You can’t even use mouthwash. And especially no drinking. No wine, no beer, no liquor.” He eyed me for a second and then, making what I felt to be an entirely unfair judgment, asked, “Is that going to be a problem for you?”

“No!” I said, maybe a little bit defensively. “Does this medicine have any other symptoms?”

“Yeah,” he said. He finished running my card and handed it back to me then slid my cure across the counter.

“Diarrhea.”

This story originally appeared in Offbeat Magazine in 2018

The post Beaver Fever appeared first on Backpacking Routes.

So if you are a beginning hiker (or planning a trip with one) give these trails some consideration. Not what you are looking for? Use our searchable database on the homepage to find the perfect route, and check our collection of trails with easier terrain and easier logistics.

*hiker famous is different from regular famous

1) Foothills Trail, South Carolina
76 miles
Average Elevation ~1,000 feet

South Carolina’s Foothills Trail offers abundant water, easy camping, and a moderate grade. On top of all that, the trail is well-marked and you don’t need permits to hike it. You can use local shuttles to handle your start/end logistics. The elevation never rises above 3,553 feet, and you can hike it in fall, winter, or spring. Like most southern trails, you’ll run into heat, humidity, and bugs in the summer months, but none of these problems are insurmountable. The small-but-bustling city of Greenville is always within an hour’s car ride if you have to bail in case of emergency. If you are in the Southeast, give this trail some serious consideration for your first backpacking trip. Check out the full Foothills Trail profile for more info.

2) Florida Trail, Florida
1,500 miles
Average Elevation ~500 feet

1,500 miles may seem like a long way to a beginner’s eyes. But consider that the so-called Big Three (Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide Trail, and Pacific Crest Trail) are all over 2,000 miles, and the Florida Trail starts to seem like a beginner-friendly alternative. Add to that the Florida Trail’s relative ease-of-resupply and lack of wilderness areas, plus the fact that you won’t be dealing with altitude and all the challenges that come with it. But Florida’s increasing urbanization doesn’t mean this trail is a city walk. You’ll encounter plenty of beautiful environments, and wildlife (including gators and snakes) are ever-present. Check out the full Florida Trail profile for more info.

3) Greenstone Ridge Trail, Michigan
41 miles
Average Elevation ~1,000 feet

This 41-mile trail is probably the most physically challenging option in this round-up because of the trail conditions, variable weather, and insect presence. You also need permits, and resupply is hard. But it has low elevation and very little climbing, and the lush vegetation and island location are hard to beat. Plus, such a short trail offers the opportunity for a beginner to push herself under relatively low-stakes conditions. Check out the full Greenstone Ridge Trail profile for more info.

4) Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway Trail, New Hampshire
48 miles
Average Elevation ~2,000 feet

We love it when trails run right through town. It offers not only a chance for resupply, but an opportunity to grab a beer, a burger, a candy bar, or (ideally) all three. The Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway trail runs through Washington, New Hampshire, is well-marked with white blazes, and boasts moderate elevation gain. Water is frequent as well! A beginner could do worse than tackle this three-to-four-day New England trail as an introduction to backpacking. Heads up: you’ll need a permit to park your car at one of the trailheads. Check out the full profile on the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway Trail for more info.

The post Four Beginner-Friendly Thru-Hikes appeared first on Backpacking Routes.

“We should never have taught our parents to use computers,” one wit opined in the comments section of a conspiracy-theory-laden Facebook post that came to my attention the other day. I pretty much agree, but I also think that my generation (geriatric millennials, because yes, that’s a thing now) and the younger generations that inhabit the online hiker-trash world need to take a hard look at how we are using our social media platform of choice–Instagram.

If the outdoor industry had set out to create a social media platform from scratch, they’d have a hard time coming up with something better suited to their needs than Instagram–although it should go without saying that if the outdoor industry had invented Instagram, it would cost $250 and you’d have to replace it every 300 miles or so.

In any case, Instagram is a perfect way to sell expensive things to reasonably fit and attractive people by showing them pictures of reasonably fit and attractive people wearing expensive things in beautiful places. So-called lifestyle shoots are the bread and butter of outdoor brands on Instagram, though lately, savvy social-media marketers have taken to using Instagram’s Stories function to repost gear layouts and other user-generated content. Why spend money on shoots when users will give you content in exchange for a squirt of dopamine when their follower count goes up? The incentive to tag brands in posts is high on Instagram, because you will likely get reposted or mentioned by accounts with thousands, if not millions, of followers.

Then the users repost that reposted story to their own story, thus giving the brand a little more free advertising. Some brands even leverage their supply chain issues into motivation to follow their accounts–you have to follow them to get an inside scoop on when the next round of sleeping bag liners are going to drop.

The upshot of all this is that you might start out on Instagram following your hiker friends and end up swimming in a sea of brand content fairly quickly. This is, after all, how social media makes money. Instagram is not the product–people are the product that Instagram is selling to brands to help them sell things to people.

Influencers and brand ambassadors are an arguably even seedier side of Insta. I don’t think either of these categories of people actively sets out to be disingenuous or misleading–at least at first. These are often folks who have discovered a way to make some money from a thing they love (in this case, hiking and backpacking) and it’s hard to begrudge them that. But they are being used by brands in a very real sense, and most of them know it, and most of them are OK with it because it allows them to go backpacking more without having to worry about having a real job.

Influencers and brand ambassadors tend to repeat dubious brand and product claims verbatim, lending a veneer of respectability to an industry already rife with overblown performance claims. Legally these accounts and the people behind them are required to disclose their relationships with brands and indicate when content is sponsored, but it doesn’t always happen and can be hard to notice when it does (and sometimes the relationships are unofficial, which is even ickier). As a final nail in the coffin, influencers often don’t have anything interesting to say. Aldo Leopold, Henry David Thoreau, Edward Abbey, and Terry Tempest Williams they are most certainly not. Hell, they aren’t even Cheryl Strayed or Bill Bryson. You’re lucky if you get a semi-coherent rambling about how nice it is to be in the woods, which, yeah, we get it.

All of which is to say, if you are a heavy user of Instagram and you follow a lot of hiker accounts and brands, you are being sold things you likely don’t need more or less constantly–and often not even by professional salespeople. And chances are you are OK with that, because as we pretty much all know that’s sometimes the cost of being on the internet and/or the price of living in society where capitalism has advanced to the point that characters in car insurance commercials have deep, well-fleshed out backstories.

But I’d ask you to consider if other niche corners of Instagram have the same problem (hint: some of them, a lot of them even, don’t). I’m an artist, and I’m here to tell you that the artsy folks on Instagram mostly don’t feel the need to create free content for paint and paper manufacturers by constantly tagging brands when showing off a new painting. I’d ask you to think about why that is, and if giving brands (many of whom are huge, relatively evil corporations) free advertising is really worth the extra followers or happy-juice-feelings you’ll get out of it.

There’s a final and more hard-to-pin-down side of all this that I feel like I should mention–at the risk of treading in grumpy old man territory (I’m 36). Hiker Instagram certainly creates the fear of missing out that we’ve all been warned about in social-media-related think-pieces. But it also creates a sense that the only thing one should care about is hiking or backpacking. Influencers and brand ambassadors tailor their accounts with razor sharp precision. It’s Influencing 101–focus your content.

It’s all hiking, all the time, and that just isn’t how most of us can (or should, or want to) live our lives. Writing and thinking about backpacking is my profession, but it’s also my hobby, of which I have roughly a dozen–on purpose– because I believe that human beings should have a variety of experiences. I don’t want to be hiking or backpacking all the time–nor do I find it particularly fun to hang out with people who only think and talk about backpacking. Sometimes I want to paint, sometimes I want to read on the sofa, sometimes I want to chill with my cat on the front porch, sometimes I want to paddle around on a lake, sometimes I want to ride my mountain bike. And yet I find myself feeling guilty for not always being on a hike or backpacking trip–usually, after I’ve just finished a scroll on the ‘gram.

Maybe it’s different for you. Maybe you can follow a bunch of brands, hiking celebrities, content creators, brand ambassadors, and your trail family from your 2013 thru-hike and not feel overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, fear of missing out, and boredom from looking at some version of the same 10 photographs over and over again (my favorite is the “blond woman wrapped in heavy blanket drinks coffee and looks out over a canyon at sunrise” photo).

Maybe you can read poorly punctuated, phone-typed paragraphs of semi-philosophical ramblings on “the importance of like, just being out here in my happy place, you know?” without feeling a creeping blend of depression, boredom, and rage seeping in around the corners of your eyeballs.

But I’ve realized I can’t, and I’m here to say that I’m much happier now that I’ve cut all those accounts out of my internet life. Despite the fact that keeping a finger on the pulse of backpacking culture is part of my job, I follow exactly one outdoor account, that of Gary the Adventure Cat, because Gary wears goggles to protect his sensitive little cat eyes and takes naps pretty much wherever he feels like it–on top of mountains, in kayaks, and on his owner’s shoulders as both of them participate in downhill skiing. Gary, being a cat, doesn’t give a damn about if I’m following him or not. Gary doesn’t sell me stuff. Gary isn’t interested in compromising himself for the promise of free gear or free publicity.

That’s the kind of internet content I’m here for.

The post Backpacking Instagram Sucks. It’s Time to Talk About It. appeared first on Backpacking Routes.

So if you live in the Southeast, consider giving one of these routes a try. And make sure to grab some BBQ afterward. We’re the only ones doing it right, no matter what they say in Texas or Kansas City. And can I talk you into giving boiled peanuts a try? I promise, you won’t regret it. 

Find all of our trails sorted by region here, and a roundup of our favorite overnight loops here.

1) The Florida Trail

• 1,500 miles, easy terrain 
• 60-90 days 
• Best in winter and early spring

If you are looking for a long hiking experience that isn’t especially overtaxing on the calves and ankles, consider the Florida Trail. The 1,500-mile length is considerably less than the Appalachian, Continental Divide, or Pacific Crest Trails. That means you can get an immersive, multiweek adventure without having to quit or lose your job. 

The Florida Trail offers mostly flat walking with plenty of resupply, but watch out for heat, snakes, and gators. Give serious consideration to a January or February departure date, and you’ll encounter mostly mild temperatures the whole way. 

Florida is, of course, famously flat, which means finding a level spot for your shelter will be a snap. Challenges include shorter daylight walking hours in the winter and agricultural runoff polluting the water sources. 

Learn more about hiking the Florida Trail here. 

2) The Foothills Trail 

• 76 miles, moderate terrain 
• 5-8 days
• Best in fall, winter, and early spring 

Don’t have the time or inclination for 1,500 miles of Florida walking? How about 76 miles in western South Carolina? If that’s more your speed, read on!

The Foothills Trail boasts secluded, quiet dispersed campsites, decent views, and a plethora of swimming opportunities in some of the South’s most famous rivers, waterfalls, and swimming holes. You’ll also go over the high point of South Carolina!  

Make sure to spend some time in the terminus town of Greenville, a lovely but much underappreciated city with a thriving arts scene and plenty of microbreweries. 

Learn more about hiking the Foothills Trail here.

3) The Benton MacKaye Trail

• 287 miles, moderate to difficult terrain 
• 15-30 days
• Best in spring and fall, but winter is doable 

You may never have heard of Benton MacKaye, but you’ve certainly heard of his most well-known contribution to American hiking culture: the Appalachian Trail. 

The trail that bears his name runs roughly parallel to the AT for around 300 miles, but is much less traveled. You can knock it out in 15 to 30 days depending on your pace, but be prepared for all the stream crossings, steep verticals, and green vegetation tunnels that the southern Appalachians are known for. 

If you can go 100 miles without resupply, you can restock your food via mail drop from 2 different walkable locations. I love the elegance of that—walking 300 miles without having to hitch into town. 

Learn more about hiking the Benton MacKaye Trail here.

4) The Pinhoti Trail

• 335 miles, moderate terrain 
• 30 days 
• Best in spring and fall. Winter can be rainy but is doable 

You could think of the Pinhoti Trail as another alternative to the busy season on the Appalachian Trail. Backpacking Routes cofounder Jeff Garmire reports that the 335-mile Pinhoti Trail (which runs east to west across Alabama and Georgia) has over 75 well-maintained, fairly new shelters that offer an all-around nicer experience than those found on the AT. Bonus points: the outhouses and composting toilets don’t stink as bad either. 

Like all of the trails on this list, you may want to avoid tackling the Pinhoti Trail in the high summer because of the heat, humidity, and bugs. Water is generally plentiful, it’s well-signed, and navigation is easy. 

The terrain on the Pinhoti Trail is about what you’d expect from mountainous southern terrain—steep, short climbs and descents with lots of rocks, roots, and mud.

Learn more about hiking the Pinhoti Trail here.

5) Great Smoky Mountains National Park 127-Mile Loop

• 127 miles, difficult terrain 
• 8-10 days 
• Best in spring and fall, winter could be snowy

This misty, squelchy loop route was put together by Backpacking Routes cofounder Andrew Marshall (hey, that’s me!). I needed a roughly 100-mile loop around the park that began and ended at Fontana Dam, so I drew up this route that includes 20miles of lakeshore walking, steep climbs up and over Clingmans Dome, some Appalachian Trail hiking, sections of the Benton MacKaye trail (see above) and plenty of stream crossings. 

If you’ve never been to the Smokies, you owe yourself a visit. It’s technically a temperate rainforest, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more tangled, lush, green stretch of land outside the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. 

You can tackle this route any time of year, really, but each season has its hazards. Summer has bugs and humidity, you could get snow and freezing temperatures in the winter, and the shoulder seasons have rain, rain, rain. Look out for salamanders—the Smokies have a few species that live nowhere else in the world. 

Learn more about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park 127-mile loop here.

The post 5 Southern Long-Distance Backpacking Trails appeared first on Backpacking Routes.

Conifer (mile 17): 15 miles off trail 

We don’t recommend hitching 15 miles to town after only walking 17 on trail, but if you must, Conifer offers shopping, accommodations, and a walk-in medical clinic capable of servicing minor injuries. 

Buffalo Creek (mile 26.9): 3 miles off trail 

With limited resupply options (post office and a tiny general store) and only 27 miles into the hike, Buffalo Creek is probably a better emergency bailout spot than it is a resupply point. But at only 3 miles off trail, the promise of a candy bar might be just attractive enough to warrant a 6-mile round trip road walk (or hitch if you are lucky). 

Baily (mile 40.5): 8 miles off trail  

This tiny town is 40 miles into the hike, and so might be attractive as a first stop. It offers a few expensive-ish lodging options, a post office, and a few restaurants. At 8 miles off trail, it isn’t a bad spot for a first mail drop, but don’t plan on doing a full grocery store resupply here. 

Jefferson (mile 71): 5 miles off trail

Jefferson doesn’t have a lot going for it (post office, convenience-store style market, and church) but it has the advantage of being an easy hitch that’s only 5 miles off trail. If you are in a hurry, hit it up for a candy bar and a beer. If you have some time, consider Fairplay (below), which you can reach by hitching from the same spot. 

Fairplay (mile 71.7): 20 miles off trail 

Fairplay might be 20 miles off trail, but the Colorado Trail Association says it’s an easy hitch, and we believe them (they’ve never steered us wrong). You can get here from the same point on the trail as Jefferson, and we’d recommend it (because of the range of amenities) even though Fairplay is 15 miles farther off trail. You might consider resupplying at Fairplay and skipping the touristy bustle of Breckenridge – Fairplay is easily walkable and has all the amenities any hiker could ask for. 

Breckenridge/Frisco (mile 104.4): 4 miles off trail 

The best thing about these classic Colorado resort towns is their ease of access from the trail. Simply catch a free bus at the Goldhill Trailhead and 4 bus miles later you are enjoying hostels, restaurants, post offices, grocery stores, and whatever else you need. These are western resort towns, so get ready to pay 15 bucks for a breakfast burrito before you hit the trail in the morning. All told, Breck and Frisco are nice – but expensive – places to take a zero should you feel the need at mile 100. 

Copper Mountain Resort (mile 119): basically on trail 

Only 15 trail miles from Breck, you might be tempted to blow through Copper Mountain Resort without stopping for a burger or pizza at one of its restaurants. Don’t do this. Life is too short, and the trail too dusty, to ever pass up a chance for food and beer, especially if it’s on the trail. They have accommodations, and you can catch a free bus into Frisco or Breckenridge if you realize you forgot something. 

Leadville: (mile 143): 8 to 11 miles off trail 

You can get to Leadville from segments 8, 9, 10, and 11 of the Colorado Trail. There are plenty of places to stay, food to eat, and things to do, so you may be tempted to hitch there more than once! It’s a long-ish hitch no matter which direction you come from, but the plethora of affordable hostels and the Leadville Outdoors and Mountain Market might be attractive if you or your gear needs a rest and a refresh. 

Twin Lakes Village (mile 177): 1 mile off trail

Twin Lakes Village is basically just a general store (hiker owned) and some lodging at Twin Lakes Roadhouse Lodge and Cabins. But it’s only a mile off trail, which is more than reasonable for a soda, candy bar, and maybe a burger if they have the grill going. The store will hold hiker boxes, but the lodge only has 5 rooms, so you should probably plan in advance if you want to stay the night. 

Buena Vista (mile 216): 10 miles off trail

At 10 miles off trail, Buena Vista isn’t the easiest hitch on the CT, but it isn’t the hardest either. It has All the Things, and plenty of lodging to boot. Grab some coffee at the Brown Dog Coffee Company or a beer at the Eddyline Restaurant Brew Pub. The downside is that there’s no hostel (the cheapest lodging is probably the Super 8, but you should check for yourself as prices are always fluctuating). 

Mount Princeton Hot Springs (mile 230): on trail 

The Mount Princeton Hot Springs resort has three things going for it. 1) It’s right on the trail. 2) It has maildrop availability and a tiny general store for resupply. 3) Did we mention hot springs? They’ve also got swimming pools, a lazy river, internet access, and restaurants. If you choose to stay the night, it will be one of your pricier Colorado Trail decisions. But it might be one of your most worthwhile. 

Salida/Poncha Springs (mile 253): 15 miles off trail 

Salida is about as close to the halfway point on the Colorado Trail as you can get and features a plethora of lodging options (at a range of prices), including the Salida Hostel and Woodland Motel on the lower end. There’s a post office, laundromat, Walmart, Safeway, and pretty much anything else you could ask for. It’s an excellent spot for a zero day because of its range of restaurants and amenities, but can sometimes be a tough hitch (it isn’t a straight shot into town). 

Saguache (mile 302): 31 miles off trail 

Saguache has a post office, lodging at the Orchard House and Big Valley Motel, and two restaurants (Mexican and pizza). Not a good spot to resupply if you are buying as you go (the Conoco offers standard gas-station fare), and a hard hitch. Perhaps only worth it if you need an unexpected zero, or don’t feel like walking around Gunnison (the hitch is from the same spot on the trail). 

Gunnison (mile 302): 39 miles off trail

At 39 miles off the trail, Gunnison has the dubious distinction of being the longest hitch in our resupply guide. Unlike Saguache, it’s a big town with lots of breweries, bars, coffee shops, and all the normal hiker musts (laundry/post-office/grocery store). The Wanderlust Hostel provides reasonable accommodation, and there’s also a Holiday Inn, Quality Inn, and Days Inn and Suites if you want something a little more posh to wash off the trail dirt. Gunnison is fairly spread out, so it will take you a little more time and energy to walk around. 

Creede (mile 343): 10 miles off trail 

Creede has all the services you need, but getting there might be more trouble than it’s worth (especially with Molas Lake Campground only 60 miles away). You have to take a side trail from San Luis Pass down to Forest Service Road 503 and then follow the road into town (and remember you have to gain all that elevation back again). Both the Colorado Trail Databook and the Colorado Trail Association website indicate that finding a hitch along the forest service road will be easier on the weekends. 

Lake City (mile 357): 17 miles off trail

This can be a tough hitch, but the trailhead parking lot is large, and finding a day-hiker leaving from the parking lot on a weekend might be pretty easy. Lake City is compact and easy to walk around, and features a full range of amenities, including a post office, laundromat, outfitter, and the Raven’s Rest Hostel. 

Molas Lake Campground (mile 409): on trail 

The Molas Lake campground offers an easy chance to resupply without adding extra miles to your trip, provided you don’t need a soft bed (the only accommodations are campgrounds) and are willing to ship your resupply box UPS as opposed to USPS. Grocery items are limited (the stuff you tend to find in campground stores), but they do have a shower. 

Silverton (mile 411): 6 miles off trail 

Silverton is the last good resupply point before you get to Durango, so make sure you stock up on 80 miles worth of food. It is a popular tourist town with an Old West flair. There are a few burger places, a grocery store, a post office, a laundromat, and the Silverton Inn and Hostel. It’s an easy 6-mile hitch into town, or you can flag down the Durango and Silverton narrow-gauge train in segment 24 and get into town that way. It’s the coolest hitch you’ll ever make, we promise. 

The post Colorado Trail Resupply Guide appeared first on Backpacking Routes.

As far as I’m concerned, Pop-Tarts innovation (and, indeed, human cultural innovation) peaked with s’mores flavor. I’ll die on this switchback-less hill, despite what you say about the classic goodness of blueberry flavor.  As for those of you who enjoy un-iced Pop-Tarts, well, I can do nothing for you. You are a lost cause.

I bring this up because Pop-Tarts, Nutella, Top Ramen, and Fig Newtons once made up roughly 90% of my caloric intake on long-distance hikes. Lately, I’ve been thinking about those good old days with a mix of nostalgia and horror. 

I have a few excuses for my old diet. I was in my mid-20s, single, and living in an area of the country that wouldn’t embrace farm-to-table eating for another five years. I hadn’t read any Michael Pollan. I was also quite poor, and eating healthy can be expensive, especially while backpacking, and double-especially while on a thru-hike.  

But excuses only go so far, and the truth is I love junk food. Even when I wasn’t hiking, salads tended to be decorative items at fancy restaurants, not something I actually, you know, ate. From time to time I encountered celery and carrots swimming in a sea of grease and buffalo sauce beneath a layer of chicken wings. If I crunched a few of them after dipping them in blue cheese, I considered it a major health victory.

As you probably know, it is entirely possible to walk 2,000 miles or more on the diet of a recently divorced middle-aged car salesman. You’ll probably even lose some weight in the process. And indeed, this exactly what happened to me. But losing weight is not the same thing as being healthy, and it’s certainly not the same thing as fueling your body effectively. As my energetic off-the-lot 20-year-old body transitioned into a hard-used 30-year-old body with higher-than-average mileage, it became apparent to me that maybe I’d be a better athlete if I started putting premium unleaded in the tank instead of frosted chemicals.

Bacon Days

My first experiment was with high-fat/low-carb eating. I went Keto in my daily life and carried it over into my long-distance endurance activities and had an absolute blast. For one thing, if you have to cut Pop-Tarts out of your life, you can do worse (enjoyment-wise) than replacing them with pork. From an ounce-counting perspective, it’s pretty efficient to fuel long trips with cheese, olive oil, and bacon–and satisfying to boot. And the much-lauded anti-bonking properties of Keto seemed to work for me. Not only did I shed about 20 pounds from my perpetually chubby 5-foot, 6-inch frame, but I found myself knocking out huge mile days with little to no drop in energy between meals and snacks.

But all good things, especially bacon-related things, must come to an end. I have enough heart disease in my family to cause a riot at a cardiologist convention, and after my father suffered a major heart attack in his mid-50s I went to get some bloodwork. The results revealed what anyone with even a passing familiarity with kale already knows—you can’t transition from a diet of pizza rolls and Hot Pockets to a diet of bacon and bulletproof coffee without some negative consequences, no matter what the scale says.  

My doctor, a pragmatic and not-easily-shocked woman, said that she’d “…never seen someone of your age and activity level with numbers this bad. Your resting heart rate is 50 beats-per-minute but you have the triglycerides of an 80-year-old obese man at high risk of a cardiac event.”

That’s not the kind of thing you can come home and tell your wife and still expect there to be butter in the fridge the next morning, and so my short-lived but delicious experiment with fat-fueled athleticism came to an abrupt end. I’d have to be a vegetarian moving forward—and not even the fun kind that lives solely on chips, Oreos, and moral superiority. For the sake of my ticker, I’d have to eat vegetables. 

The Tyranny of Beans

So I shifted my hiking diet (and normal diet) once again. Where once there were Fig Newtons, now there was black bean paste. Where once there was Top Ramen, now there were lentils and quinoa. Where once there was Nutella, now there were energy bars made of dates, cashews, and seemingly, sawdust. I told myself that mountain goats eat plants too, and I learned to make a damn good butternut squash soup. 

I don’t find a vegetable-centric eating strategy as effective from a non-bonking , body-fat burning, mile-crushing standpoint as Keto. And to me at least it can be vastly more boring and less satisfying than either junk food or healthy but high-fat options while on trail. 

But it does have the benefit of not turning my blood into buttery sludge, and my colon wakes me up every morning at 5 a.m. on-the-dot for a sunrise poop sesh, so I’m always getting in early miles. My bloodwork looks great, and the three most important women in my life (wife, mother, and cardiologist, in that order) are all happy. If black beans, Swiss chard, and steel-cut oats are the cross I have to bear to ensure 50 more years of living, so be it. I find the sunrises and the company generally worthwhile. 

And I mostly don’t miss my old junk food habits while solo backpacking. If you open your food bag at the end of a long day on the trail, and all you see is some version of freeze-dried legumes, you might be slightly disappointed but by god you will eat those legumes. Most of the time. 

We’re living in somewhat of a packaged backpacking meal renaissance, and small cottage companies are releasing tasty and healthy options all the time (I like Outdoor Herbivore). But I’ve come across some real duds. One kale and lentil soup meal (from a brand I won’t name here) was so unpalatable that I couldn’t choke it down even after a 36-mile day on the trail. On that occasion, I lay in my tent and cursed my cardiologist with the creativity and vitriol available only to the chronically Pop-Tart-less, and I think I can be forgiven for that.  

The only other time I struggle is around other hikers. On a recent trip to the Smokies, I watched with barely disguised lust for 7 days as my hiking partner Nick consumed 5,000 calories-a-day of whatever he felt like eating, including, I kid you not, powdered instant cheesecake. 

A Murder Deferred 

I’d used spreadsheets and algorithms to calculate my body fat percentage, daily energy miles, calories per ounce of food, and nutritional needs and ended up with an efficient, light, nutritionally balanced, utterly boring meal plan. I considered a little light murder somewhere around day 5 as Nick slurped down his second helping of cheesecake while I spooned another under-salted portion of lentils down my gullet. He offered me a spare Honey Stinger waffle moments later, an act of generosity that unbeknownst to him saved his life. The sugar flooded into my brain and convinced me that leaving his wife and children bereft for the sake of his cheesecake wouldn’t be very nice. At the very least it would be hard to explain at the funeral. 

But as the Buddhists say, there is a middle path, in this case, one between murdering my best friend for his dessert and slowly murdering myself with cholesterol and sugar. My experience in the Smokies changed my strategy a final time. I’m now convinced that I can and should mostly hike on heart-healthy, high-fiber, nutritionally dense, slow-burning carbs with plenty of lean protein, but still partake in the occasional Pop-Tart and Snickers bar. I do not turn up my nose at trail-magic offerings of soda and ice cream, and I can and will kill a large pepperoni pizza on a town day—after eating a salad and a few oranges. 

There’s a nice parallel here to backpacking gear–a lot of people flirt with the extreme ends of ultralight, minimalist philosophy before ultimately realizing they have more fun with a few luxury items in their pack. The same goes for training and body image. A reasonable, sustainable routine is probably better in the long-term than either gluttonous sloth or 5-hour days at the gym. 

The middle path rarely has the moral purity or satisfying abandon of the extremes, but it has the advantage of being sustainable and satisfying in roughly equal measure. And so I always toss a few boxes of S’mores Pop-Tarts into my pack when I head for the woods, knowing that they will be a delightful addition to my fuel rather than the entirety of that fuel. And if a jar of Nutella happens to fall into my pack on the way out the door, well—accidents happen. 

The post Pop-Tarts on the Middle Path appeared first on Backpacking Routes.

The Great Smoky Mountains 127-mile loop is a challenging route in the popular Great Smoky Mountains National Park that can be completed in 8-10 days.

Region: Middle South / Deep South (Great Smoky Mountains National Park)
Length: 127 miles (10-15 days)

Physical Difficulty: Difficult

• Steep terrain
• Daily drastic elevation change combined with lots of rainfall
• Roots/rocks/mud/frequent stream crossings

Logistical Difficulty: Moderate

• Permits required
• Loop trail
• No opportunity for food caching or resupply

Season: Spring, Summer, Fall

Elevation (average): 3,954
Total Elevation Gain: 34,725

Days to Complete

Hiking the Great Smoky Mountains National Park 127-Mile Loop 

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park 127-mile loop is a moderately ambitious route made of seven or eight different trails through Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s not a formal route. Rather, it is a sample route we designed to showcase a variety of Smokies terrain and elevations while being completed in 8-10 days. We encourage you to view this loop as a jumping-off point in designing your own route through the Smokies. Or, you know, just hike ours! We’d be flattered (and we think it’s fun). 

Hikers unfamiliar with the Southern Appalachians might find this route surprisingly challenging despite its relatively low elevation. Steep ascents and descents (and almost no switchbacks) challenge the knees, while large amounts of rainfall, high humidity, and lots of stream crossings keep you and your gear wet almost continuously. Hiking east from the car, you’ll hug Fontana Lake for a few days before swinging northeast into the mountains proper, and from there you’ll ascend and descend over the central spine of the park several times before taking the Appalachian Trail back down to the trailhead. 

Higher elevations in the Southern Appalachians (such as Clingmans Dome, which you’ll hike over on day five of this itinerary) are technically temperate rainforests. In short, you can count on getting rained on, no matter what time of year you do this hike. 

Another thing to keep in mind when hiking this route is that views are few and far between—and likely to be obscured by clouds and mist even when you find them. It’s best to focus on the small gems of this landscape. Time-lapse photographers will love the gushing streams, deeply shaded hollows, and dripping moss. The Southern Appalachians have the most varieties of salamanders of any ecosystem in the world, and you are sure to see a few on your hike. In the spring, the mountain laurel and rhododendron burst into bloom, while smaller, less-ostentatious (but no less beautiful) wildflowers decorate the trailside in the summer and early fall.

A final small pleasure is the variety of bridges that cross the various larger streams. These bridges range from old trail trestles to single logs to everything in between. And as you might expect from an area with such rainfall, you’ll be fording a lot. 

How to Get to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park 127-Mile Loop 

Closest Major City: Knoxville, Tennessee (55 miles)

We designed this loop to be accessed from the southern end of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Bryson City and Fontana Dam.

Lakeshore Trailhead West (where you’ll begin and end your hike) is only 90 minutes southeast of downtown Knoxville. Asheville, North Carolina, is about twice as far away (101 miles), while Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (just south of Atlanta) is a 2.5-hour drive (185 miles).

Parking is somewhat limited at Lakeshore Trailhead West, especially if you arrive at the trailhead in the afternoon when day hikers are accessing the trails. Best to get here first thing to make sure parking isn’t complicated. This parking area is monitored daily by rangers. Don’t leave any food in your car to tempt the bears, and you should be fine. 

When approaching the trailhead, your best chance for a variety of food and beverage before embarking is definitely Bryson City, North Carolina, although the Wildwood Grill in the Fontana Village Resort and Marina serves a mean burger and an inexpensive glass of beer. The restaurant is open to the public, even if you don’t have a room at the resort.

When to Hike the Great Smoky Mountains National Park 127-Mile Loop

Fall is a lovely time to hike in the Smokies, especially if you are a leaf peeper. The deciduous forests of the lower elevations display a variety of golds, ambers, and scarlets difficult to find elsewhere in the South. Fall also happens to be the season of lowest precipitation in the Smokies. Every other time of year, including the late spring (our other recommended hiking window), you can count on 10 to 15 days of precipitation a month, meaning you’ll get rained on about once every 48 hours or so (or more). 

You can count on almost six inches of rain in July, with similar numbers in the surrounding months, especially looking backward into the spring and winter. That’s quite a lot of moisture, considering that the average annual precipitation in the US in 2017 was 32.21 inches.  

We certainly aren’t saying you can’t hike this loop in the summer. But just know what you’ll be getting into: heavier crowds (this is a national park, after all), muggy, chafing-inducing air quality, frequent thunderstorms, and (probably) a near-constant drizzle.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Terrain

This loop traverses a well-traveled and popular national park, even if most of those visitors never get out of their cars. The upshot is a well-maintained trail system that is remarkably free of crowds, especially once you get deep into the park and away from tourist attractions like the Clingmans Dome overlook and gift shop. The park rangers do a great job of keeping the worst blowdowns sawed away and overhanging bushes and rhododendron from overtaking the trail, but with over 800 miles of trails in the park, they’ve got their work cut out for them. Expect to push past some nettles and branches, and navigating over, under, or around large blowdowns is not uncommon. 

When it rains (which, as we’ve said, it most absolutely will) much of the trail will be indistinguishable from creek beds. Rocks, logs, and roots are plentiful and slippery. The many bridges in the park are also extremely slippery. Use particular caution when fording creeks, especially during the spring and early summer. 

Some of the trails in this loop have a steep grade, yet another reason to use caution when walking in the rain or just after a rain.

Logistics: Camping, Resupply, Permits, Water, Bear Cables, Land Designation

Camping: Camping along this loop (and in every part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park) is only permitted at established sites. See our permit section below for more info on reserving a camping site. We spaced the campsites on the route according to our own pace and desires. Feel free to do the same, or deviate from our route as needed depending on your hiking style. 

When camping at a campsite with shelters (similar to what you’d find on the Appalachian Trail), you must stay in the shelter. Our loop avoids shelter campsites, but if you modify it you may end up staying at some. Each campsite has a max number of campers allowed, capped during the permitting process. 

Resupply: We completed this route without resupply, though it did make for fairly heavy packs in the first few days. On this route, there are no areas to cache food or buy a meaningful supply of dinners or breakfasts. There is a small gift shop half a mile of road walking down from where the route crosses over Clingmans Dome. They might have some candy bars for sale, depending on how COVID-19 affects their hours of operation. When the route crosses through the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont (an educational facility that runs residential programs for school-aged children) a sharp-eyed hiker might spot some vending machines that are open to the public. Come prepared with dollar bills, because these machines don’t take soggy tens or twenties. Trust us, we tried. 

Permits: In order to backcountry camp in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, you’ll need both a reservation and a permit for each campsite. The system is calendar-based and fairly easy to navigate—we had no problem figuring it out, though you’ll want to have identified your desired campsites prior to beginning your reservation using this map. If you run into trouble, call the backcountry office at 865-436-1297. We found them to be friendly and responsive as we were planning our route. 

Backcountry reservation fees will cost you $4 per person, per night, and cap at $20 per person. You can make reservations up to 30 days in advance, or as late as the day your hike begins (though this could severely limit your options). You can only book seven nights at a time; after that, you must check out, pay, and begin a new reservation. You can stay up to 30 nights in the park. You can’t stay at any one campsite for more than three nights, and you can’t stay at any shelter for more than one night. When you are ready to book your sites and obtain your permit, click here.

Water: Water is extraordinarily plentiful along this route, with the exception of the few times the route follows the Appalachian Trail. Because the AT mostly sticks to the ridge leading up to and away from Clingmans Dome, water sources are more sparse in this section. Still, we comfortably completed this route with only two liters of water storage capacity.

As always, we recommend treating your water via chemicals, UV light, or filtration. That goes double for the water in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which is hemmed by densely populated areas and sees a lot of yearly visitors. Water in the park is cold, so keep that in mind if you are using something like Aquamira to treat your water (cold water needs to be treated for longer). 

Something else to note about water: Great Smoky Mountains National Park forbids the use of camp soaps to wash dishes—even the biodegradable kind (and this restriction also includes castile soaps like Dr. Bronner’s). This is a small price to pay for protecting the salamanders. 

Bear Cables: Every campsite along our route has functional bear cables. The black bear population in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is dense, and you can certainly expect to have a negative bear encounter if you don’t store your food and other smellables properly at night. This system is great news for those who hate carrying bear canisters (and, really, don’t we all?).  Click here to see proper use of Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s bear hanging system. 

Land Designation  Our route is entirely enveloped by Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  National parks have some of the strongest protections of any land designation. Note that dogs, drones, and mountain bikes are all prohibited inside the park. Find out more here.

Know Before You Go 

Moisture and Humidity: We’ve talked at length about the rainfall you’ll likely encounter on this route. It’s also worth noting that dense vegetation and constant moisture make for a very humid environment. Don’t expect wet socks to dry out, even if you put them on the back of your pack for a day. Once your gear is wet, chances are it will stay that way, more or less. For this reason, we recommend using synthetic insulation bags and outwear on this loop. We’re also fans of non-waterproof, highly drainable trail runners instead of heavier Gore-Tex “waterproof” footwear on this route.

Hypothermia: In the spring and fall (and occasionally during the summer) it won’t be unusual to encounter constant rain paired with temperatures in the 40s and 50s. This is classic hypothermia weather, so use caution, and bring well-tested rain gear. We also recommend bringing along a separate tarp for this trip so that you have room to stage your gear, cook, and lounge outside your tent when it is raining. 

Because of the hypothermia danger, we recommend bringing a classic canister stove that can heat liquids quickly and reliably (and that can function in the rain). This is no place for an ultralight wood-fired stove. 

Wildlife: You are likely to see bear sign (footprints, scat) on the trails, and don’t be surprised if you catch a glimpse of a black bear staring at you through the dense understory.  Use common sense black bear precautions (make noise every now and then, remove all food and toiletry items from your shelter at night, never approach one, and stand your ground if one charges) and you’ll be fine. 

In recent decades elk have been reintroduced to the Smokies. Keep your eyes open, though you are much more likely to hear one bugling than you are to see one! 

Clouds and Mist: A little research of the Smoky Mountains will turn up the classic Southern Appalachian view—layer upon layer of soft, low hills vanishing into the horizon. And indeed, it’s possible you might see that view on this route. But it’s much more likely that your view will be obscured by clouds and mist. You should embrace this—it’s just the way it goes in the Smokies!

Smoky Mountains Resources

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Backcountry Regulations

Smokies Backcountry Permits

Smokies Backcountry Camping Map

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