My Dumbest Backpacking Mistakes (2018) [video]

1) Didn't get familiar with hiking / camping on broken / rough terrain.

2) Didn't plan on how to deal with hypothermia inducing temperatures.

3) Didn't replace shoes quickly enough

4) Not taking black bears seriously enough.

5) Careless / casual with river crossings

She doesn't give great rules of thumb on each point. Here are some based on my experience:

1) Go out with your pack at night and practice moving quickly up and down some stairs. If it rains, even better.

2) Have a layer (usually a wind/rain shell) at the top of your pack. When you stop that layer automatically goes on. When you start walking again that layer goes back in the pack.

3) Replace your shoes when mileage equals 500 - your loaded weight (bodyweight + pack). Do not risk your foot health for a hundred bucks.

4) No RoTs. Bears aren't inherently hostile (usually) but they're not inherently friendly either. Self-education required.

5) No RoTs here, water crossing are dangerous. If you are going to cross you have to have a plan for what happens if you lose your pack or get swept downstream. The force of water can be shocking.

EDIT: If you plan to do any kind of movement over long distance _please_ invest in the book "Fixing Your Feet". Foot problems end more adventures than anything else. Foot care and foot health is the primary predictor IMO of how successful and how non-miserable a movement will be. https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Your-Feet-Prevention-Treatment...

I now have a checklist that I carefully check against and actually tick stuff off with a pen (usually do this about 5:30 so needs to be easy to do!).

Edit: I also completely panicked once after a large noisy animal blundered into my tent in the middle of the night - was convinced it was a bear. Of course, there haven't been bears here in Scotland for a long time.... (I realised this in the morning when sanity returned - it was a red deer).

[1] http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hun...

When I woke up my shoulders was very sunburned. Spent the first week or two of the 6 weeks long trip lifting my heavy backpack off my painful shoulders.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrail

Is there a TLDW for this video?

I know you can't have campfires out west, but I live in the Ozarks where forest fires are not an issue most of the time and it's easy to check the fire risk at https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/fire_wx/fwdy1.html

So, the reason I bring this up is it's pretty easy to fashion a UL clothes dryer if you carry one of those blankets, a bit of clear plastic, and some tape.

Here's a link to a very short video of the tent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdekfNtx65c

* Running out of food is lame

* Carrying way more food than you really needed is lame

* Forgetting means to light a stove is really lame

* Little critters will chew through whatever to get to your food, so keep it outside your tent (hang it high off a tree)

* (Mountaineering) Exposed skin will be scorched by sun reflected off the snow

* Separate your "keep me dry" layer from your "keep me warm" layer, don't go cheap

* You need to drink more water than you think you do

* Unless you have guaranteed means/opportunity to dry yourself/clothing, avoid getting wet (avoid cotton, jeans)

* Everyone should know the route, if there's a fork or ambiguity in the trail, everyone needs to be together

* Have a backup means of filtering/purifying water

* Always tell someone where you're going and when they should expect you back

* Check the weather and recent trip reports

I'd be interested in hearing about the dumb things you've seen crews do.