Hello everyone...hope I am putting this in the right place...Admins please feel free to move this if not.

I'm just saying hello to everyone, I just found this forum a little while ago, have been lurking for a bit..seems like there are some knowledgeable, cool folks posting here, and I just wanted to join the fun.

Not sure how MUCH time I'll be able to put in here, as I will most likely not be able to check in/post while NOT sitting in my office killing time (haha), but I'll try to be a part of this great community!

Little bit about me: I'm 35, and live in CT. I have been a lover of the great outdoors since I was old enough to pronounce the phrase...started distance hiking at 15 or so (well earlier with the BSA, but somehow that doesn't count for me) and started trying to lighten my load and perfect my gear about 5 minutes into that first real hike!

I have done hikes ranging from overnights to 4-6 weeks all across the country, but prefer the mountains, like the Appalachians around here, the Whites, the Rockies, the San Juans...etc...

I dunno...I guess that's all I can think of right at the moment.....

Welcome aboard!

Great to have you! What part of CT? I grew up there on the Sound.

Welcome aboard.

Thanks for the welcome!

I live up in the NW corner of CT, in the hills....closer to Mass than anything else.

Welcome to our humble environment!!!!!!

Hi,
How much climbing do you do?
Got a Dog?
Thanks for filling out the profile.
Sounds like you're pretty fit and experienced, at least with the area you Backpack in.

One of the best things about this group is the diversity. There is nothing about the place you camp in that's any less than any other place, they all have their interest, OK maybe some are better, but we got guys who camp in Arizona desert, we got guys like me who spent most of their time in the Sierra (now live in Cascades), we have people in BC, Hanoi, Scandinavia, France, Idaho, and yes even people from NY city (they're the ones who don't tell us where they live BTW. We have people of very mixed background from religion, politics, and race, like we have Native Americans and all kinds of people even at last check, a few Caucasians..

Anyway with the time you've spent out, what did you learn that you can share? Ideas are considered even more important than gear lists here. REVELATIONS are even better - you know - what were some of your early forehead slappers?
peace
Jim

Hey Jim, my early forehead slaps lead directly to my title here. I learned really fast in scouting that I did not like eating hot dogs and pringles when camping Go figure! Of course those were the days when we thought nothing of packing 10 lbs cooksets AND a cast iron dutch oven to cook in. The food sure tasted good but boy were we dumb!

hmmmm....so much to answer!

I don't do much 'real' climbing anymore, I saw some friends get pretty badly injured, and sort of lost the fire. I still scramble up some of my old familiar faces now and then, but mostly I leave that stuff to the younger, more immortal guys and gals.

I like to think I'm pretty fit, thank you! Experience, though, is something that never stops growing.

As far as early face-slappers....hmm...I'm a martial arts teacher, and I take a group of students out into the woods a couple of times a year for an 'intensive' trip (practice in the morning, hiking all day, practice in the evening, rinse and repeat) The first thing I learned from doing that is that one should never allow inexperienced hikers to pack without supervision. You would not believe the contents of some of those packs! On my first trip of that kind, one poor guy actually had his pack break under the load. The bottom just fell out and the entire contents spilled all over the trail. That's when I saw the cans of slimfast, bags of ravioli and tortellini, tomato sauce, hatchets (yes two!) and various and sundry other useless and heavy stuff. That night I had everyone empty their packs and we went through it all. Many face-slappings ensued.

I'm sure that I had a lot of that type of experience myself when I first started, but it'll take some time for that to bubble up through my memory banks.

As far as a revelation, the first one that comes to mind is this: If you are a hammock camper like myself, NEVER, and I mean NEVER set your hammock across a moose trail at night during the rutting season.

Those bruises are still with me in spirit!

Whitefoot, that sounds like an entry for Jimshaws's Animal Tales thread!

Ahh the irony.

point taken, on my way! Though I've always been a bit shy about telling that particular story because I don't want it to be seen as negative advertising for hammock camping...it isn't, It's just a reminder to not be stupid, I suppose....

What if you don't know it's a moose trail?

Saturday night, a buddy got a mouse in his gear - he found droppings in his boots and then the next day, three miles from the campsite, he opened his pack and a mouse jumped out. New trail name: Mouse Taxi.

We don't know what we don't know - I really don't think he would have put his gear near a mouse nest if he'd noticed one, but mice don't really put up little signs or mailboxes to let us know they're around.

I was glad to be in my hammock - no mice in it yet.

I will concede that mouse are notoriously hard to track, but it's really not hard at all to figure out if you are on a high-traffic moose trail. They are not usually concerned with hiding their tracks.

Couple of seconds with a flashlight will easily expose moose tracks!

The mouse story is funny, I heard a very similar one from a guy who thru-hiked the AT sometime around '98 or so....HIS pet mouse stayed in his pack for almost a week!

We had a mouse jump into our car in the Sierras one year. Trouble is that we were sleeping in the car on an extended trip and no matter what we did, the little sucker traveled all the way home with us. So I passed everything from the truck through the front door to my wife after running my hands through every sleeve and leg of all clothing. We were pretty sure it was still in the truck. ABout sunset I went out and a mouse about the size of a quarter with fur was sitting on top of my headrest. He ran when i opened the door but I left the door open and half an hour later I came out and a stray cat was sitting by the door looking for more.
Jim

Should I tell you about the time I pitched my hammock in the dark in the bottom of a river canyon and didn't look down at the leaves underneath? Well, I guess I just did. :P I got out for a midnight constitutional, dropping my stocking feet through the Hennessy slit into a bunch of poison oak.

I would probably miss the moose tracks, if it were dark. Tired Lori doesn't have much other than tunnel vision at night. But I can manage simple rules, and my new one about dusk campsite finding is "look down first."