Heading into Winter
Post date: Nov 5, 2013 10:33:52 PM
It's that time of year again. The nights are longer. The days are shorter. It's getting colder. In the high country, the lakes are now frozen over.
It's time to put away those backpacks and find joy in other ways. How many ways?
It's a great time to pull out all of your backpacking equipment and clean it up, dry it out, air it out, and put it away. You don't want those smells to stay in the tent until next summer!
If you're a fly fisherman, it's a great time to tie a few flies to fill in the spots of the ones you lost over the course of the summer.
And maybe try a few new ones.
We always like trying a few new recipes over the winter for our dehydrated meals, so that we can start next year with an even better menu of choices. Besides, by the time we pull them out of the freezer and take them on the trail next summer, we will have forgotten what the original version tasted like. That's probably a good thing.
Remember all those maps you bought? Now you can spend hours poring over them to find new routes, new trails and new lakes to explore. Or you can just go on-line and surf the on-line topo maps for hours.
When you find something you like, or have a question, stop in at some of the on-line backpacking discussion boards and say hello. There are some truly nice communities out there, and we backpackers need to stick together.
And it is always better when you post a few photos to go along with your message. Why not go through all of your photos and get them organized once and for all? It will bring back many memories of spectacular views, great hikes, and wonderful times
You could also read a few books over the snowy season. We've had all sorts of fun reading some of the journals of the early explorers in California...and the adventures they had.
Of course, the best place to find those books is on-line---very few libraries have a large selection of these. We've found nice copies on ebay and Barnes & Noble.
Which brings us to shopping on-line in general. Now you can spend a few hours checking out the latest equipment and dreaming about how you would use it next summer....
And by the way, those snowshoes look like a pretty good deal...
With those we could go hiking right now....