Backpacking with friends

It could be backpacking with groups, I suppose. But the distinction being - you're not going with a guide or a class, you're just hanging with friends. Some of the rules change - as in, no one believes there are rules...

I think the biggest challenge is the differing expectations of the group members. We think we are all on the same page sometimes and then you find out - no, Don doesn't believe in Leave No Trace after all, else why did he throw that plastic into the fire???

To decrease risk and decrease the chances of dissent (which leads to people storming off sometimes, and then the rest of the group is left to wonder - are they coming back? Should we look for him?) - there should be a discussion up front about what to do IF.

If someone gets hurt or lost - obvious topics.

If someone gets sort of hurt - those funny symptoms, are they elevation related? should we go down the pass instead of over it?

If someone INSISTS that they MUST do something. I've had people determined to go back to their car alone. Sometimes they have done so without even mentioning it to anyone. Great way to make people not enjoy a trip - leave 'em wondering.

Communication is huge - most of the time people can't seem to overcome the polite factor, and hide symptoms until it's almost too late. I've started to tell people it is more of an imposition on a wilderness trip to hide things. Give the group a chance to address the issue before it is a real issue! Don't hike for miles with no water! That would be the most frequent "sin" people are prone to... don't want to make other people stop or slow up the group, just keep hiking... and then there was a lady who did mention being out of water, I offer to filter her some, and she flat refuses to stop. After the trip she was miserable.

What gear do you have? I usually expect people to have enough gear on their person to survive if not be comfortable in the event the group vanishes. Not that we intend to. I may be doing a pack check before the four day trip I have over Memorial Day, just to be sure we're not packing anvils and omitting necessities... Making sure everyone has a trail map is useful when subgrouping per pace - the slowbies need to be able to make the right turns even if the sign vanished.

It's also distasteful (apparently) to designate someone to lead. But it might be that the group finds themselves in a deadlock over some issue, in which case, having agreed in advance to designate someone to break the stalemate would help.

Any other considerations? I've seen people left high and dry as their buddy left early with a shelter or stove or other item they agreed to share... sometimes the unspoken social contract just isn't enough.

Most of my friends have moved to other parts of the country, so I don't take nearly as many "just hanging" trips as I once did. However, I am developing some new hiking buddies as an offshoot of some organized group trips. Like my old friends, we're following a couple of general "rules" (which is way too formal a classification.)

First, we treat each trip as a solo trip taken together from the point of view of gear. Each of us brings a full complement of gear. Yes, we could lighten our loads, but most of us are already under 25 pounds for a weekend anyhow, so there's no reall suffering involved in each person carrying all the gear he/she needs to be self-sufficient. It's also a bit of insurance, in case someone does need to leave the trip early because of a last-minute change in plans, or just "hitting the wall" partway through the trip, or gets lost (hard, but not impossible, to do in the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana pocket-sized hiking areas.)

But mostly, it's that we don't get out every weekend, and so when we do, we want to play with our toys.

It also simplfies planning: we don't have to keep checking to see who has a big enough pot for 3 people, who's going to get the food, and how much, etc. It also means that, if work or family forces someone to drop out a couple of days before the trip, we don't have to start over to make sure we've got everything covered.

We also plan the trip as a group, rather than having one individual make all the decisions. The person who comes up with the original idea usually takes the lead, but we make the final decision on the specific hiking route and the intended campsites as a group consensus. We also discuss whether any of us might want to spend one night alone, at a different campsite, and if so, we plan when and where we'll separate and meet back up. We also frankly discuss our physical limitations (those of us in our 60's don't have the same hiking abilities as those in their 30's), and plan hiking routes to meet those abilities. Sometimes, this means one or two of us will take a shorter or less difficult trail than the rest - but again, we make definite, mark-on-the-map arrangements of where we'll separate and when and where we'll meet again. That kind of joint decision making seems to make the actual trip go pretty smoothly.

My own personal "thing" is making sure everybody has his own map (prefereably a topo, but a trail map is often adequate in Ohio, Indiana, or Kentucky.)

This seems to work pretty well. Of course, we're lucky: we all feel the same way about being honest with one another, not taking offense when others are honest, and we all are very willing to compromise (these are work habits for most of us, and they carry over pretty seamlessly.)