Okay. It's T minus 17 hours until we take off on this trip. We are leaving Missoula at 10am tomorrow and driving to Superior, then taking some forest service roads 15 miles in to the trail head in the Great Burn Wilderness. From there, we will hike along the south fork of Trout Creek into the Great Burn Wilderness for a mere 2 miles to the 32-acre Heart Lake, with a leisurely elevation gain of 1,200 feet, putting us at a campsite around 5,500 feet above sea level. So while the projected high/low temps are 86/55 respectively, we're expecting it to be about 70/35 at the lake.

By the way, if you are planning hikes in Montana, I highly recommend the book, Hiking Montana. Montana has a lot of big wilderness areas and parks, and you can buy books that concentrate on every single hike in each area if you want, but this one covers the "best of" for all the areas in the state, which is more what I'm looking for. It's very nicely laid out and sorts the hikes by area, by nearness to major towns, by easy-to-hard, by day-to-overnight-to-multiday - you name it and it's cross referenced. In addition to telling you the elevation gain over distance, there's also a visual graph, which is WAY more sensible than me trying to work it out in my head. There's terrific descriptions of the trails and sights, as well as recommended side trips along the way. Kit Recommends.

Once we get there, we plan to set up camp, then FISH! And HIKE MORE if we feel like it! There's another trail that will take you up to a smaller, more remote lake, and then another trail that will take you up to the Bitterroot Divide on the Montana/Idaho border. I definitely want to do that one.



If you click through the flickr page, I've got notes detailing what everything is.

My ultimate goal, as I've said, is to go from standard backpacking to lightweight to ultralight as I improve my skill and comfort level using less gear. But this trip is a benchmarking trip, so I'm going heavy - I'm just not willing to buy a ton of new lightweight gear for this first trip. For one thing, I might go and decide I hate this whole backpacking concept. For another, I want to keep notes on what I use and what I don't use and then pare down. And of course a lot of my gear is borrowed - so while I could trim a lot of weight by repacking my 2.35 pounds of fly fishing gear, it's not my gear, so I'm taking the heavy protective rod and reel and lure cases. I am already sure that I could leave behind some clothing and just wash what I wear in, that I could largely abandon the first aid kit entirely (anything only needing basic first aid supplies could just as easily be suffered until I hike out), and probably halve my food. But that's for next time. I'm only bringing my little point-and-shoot camera, as I worry about moisture with my big Canon (plus it weighs 3.14 pounds).



All that said, my total gear weight, including food and a full camelbak of water, is 28 pounds. Which seems ridiculous for one overnight, but like I said, there's places where I can shed weight. And 28 pounds is easily do-able for me for four miles. I have never weighed my pack before but I think I generally carry nearly 20 pounds just on day hikes. My gear does not include a water filter or cooking supplies because my hiking partner is bringing those. I will be carrying half of her three-man tent, however, in addition to what I have here. She doesn't have a solo tent and I don't want to rely on mine untested.

Here's the actual gear weights...

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I didn't weigh the camelbak of water, backpack, or the mesh stuff sacks and lashings I ended up using at the end to compartmentalize everything. When I add this list up it ends up being just over 21 pounds, so I've got 7 pounds of water and pack and sack in there.

When I get back, I will go down the list and take out the things I didn't use/need and see how much I can trim off. The hardcore guys weigh each individual piece of gear down to the gram, then keep the list in a spreadsheet and copy and paste the items they want for each trip into a new page. Let's see how long it takes me to get that obsessive about it. :)

So k9chick used to be a river guide and has tons and tons of experience fly fishing, so when she heard I was going camping and fishing this weekend, she offered me a free lesson. We made plans to meet at a local park (which has plenty of big grass fields and a pond in which to practice) today at 11:30 for the lesson. For some reason I got weird anxiety about oversleeping and missing it, so I woke up every half hour on the hour from about 6am onward today, which sucked. I even had a dream that my truck battery and cell phone battery both died so I couldn't let her know why I wasn't there. Freaky subconscious.

Anyhow, I did get there on time. She showed up with the equivalent of a stuffed-to-the-brim range bag full of fishing gear as well as rods and reels. First she talked about the "weights" of the rods (and recommended a 5 weight for me as a first timer) and the weights of the line (use one weight higher than the rod rating), then the types of line attachments - visible line, then leader, then tippet to add to the leader as it gets shortened over time. After that, she taught me how to tie on a fly, then how to tie the proper knot for adding tippet.



All the while she made little essential notes on the back of an envelope for me. Next I learned how to cast by tossing the fly into the grass over and over again. She talked about setting the hook and how to properly play the fish in, and stood out there tugging on the line so I could get a feel for how differently it works when the fish is coming toward you versus swimming away. I did learn that the reel is really pretty useless (at least with her style of fishing) except as a place to neatly keep the line coiled up.

Finally, we moved to the pond, where I learned the 'shadow cast' (flopping the line around in the air to dry out the fly so it will float again after it's been waterlogged), normal casting, roll casting, and hauling the line. I think I did okay because by the end I could semi-lightly drop the fly within a foot or three of where I wanted it, although I'd occasionally mess up and my line would smoosh up on the water.

k9chick had cut the hook off my fly to both (a) be legal in the park and (b) allay my fears of losing an eyeball. And still a couple of fish nibbled at my fly in the pond! That was neat. She briefly covered the difference between nymphs and dry flies and sent me home with a handful of each. Then she surprised me by loaning me a pack rod and reel and line for this weekend trip, woot!

The flies look REALLY cool. I plan to take some neat photos of them up close later on so y'all can see how nifty they are.

I think I enjoyed this fly fishing thing more than I expected because it requires a certain amount of skill and concentration that makes the act of the fishing itself nearly as interesting as the idea of actually catching a fish.

Now we'll just have to see if I can actually catch fish. :)

OMG NOM

I just made THESE. (thanks solcita!)

They are serious about that "two notches down from the broiler" part, btw. They mean the middle rack. Top rack for two minutes toasted my marshmelons nicely but burned the tops of the crackers and they had to be replaced. SUPER tasty yum though.

This was a good test for figuring out how much to bring for the overnight trip. I could only eat 1.5 of these things. So rich!

I spent most of the day geocaching with a co-worker, D. (he doesn't have a nickname). We work opposite ends of the week so we almost never have a day off together, but he's a nice guy and very outdoorsey. He's home on "sick" leave right now, recovering from a surgery that basically only requires that he not get wet and not get hit in the face, so we finally got the chance to go geocaching. He did most of the up front work, researching and uploading caches to his GPS. We met down by the university and basically hit caches eastward to the end of the Kim Williams trail. I think we covered about ten miles of biking and another mile or two of steep hiking off trail.

I'm getting pretty good at packing a backpack for day outings. I didn't bring any non-essential gear with the exception of probably twice as many snacks as necessary. And I guess you can't call my camera and cell phone necessities. And yet I was prepared for hot and cold, dry and wet, and didn't get any serious sunburn, bug bites, or injuries. I did promptly fall ill as soon as I got home, though. I am pretty sure it's from dehydration (I had a camelbak, I just didn't drink as much as I should and ate too many dried fruits as snacks) and we kept a pretty quick pace on the biking sections.

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We rode and rode and found several more caches, then hiked to an island in the middle of the river and back. D. found a baby sandpiper during that excursion:



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I started writing this post a week or two ago and have been hanging on to it until my tent arrived. It's here! So now I can post.

John: What are you working on?
Kit: Comparing tents.
John: What have you come up with?
Kit: Everybody lies.

When I started researching tents, I quickly figured out that they all tend to say it's a certain weight, but then you read the fine print and that doesn't include the poles or lines or what have you, you know, the stuff you can't actually put the tent up without. I hate that.

After hours and hours of research, thoughts about what size/wall/season tent I really need, reading tons of in-depth reviews, and keeping my budget in mind, I decided on the Tarptent Contrail at 24.5 ounces and $199 (sleeps 1+). (I love the entire Tarptent photo gallery, by the way). Although I kept in mind that the 24.5 ounces did not include the front tent pole, since they assume if you are buying a Tarptent, you are a lightweight or ultralight hiker and want to dual-use your trekking poles as one of the tent poles. I don't have trekking poles and don't know when I will start using them, so I opted to pay a $5 fee for an a la carte pole. Altogether, my setup weighs 27 ounces.

I had heard great things about the customer service as well as the tents themselves. The web site said they were out of stock until July 3rd, but the order comment box said "tell us when you need it by and we'll do our best." I ordered mine on June 29th, and told them I had hopes of getting it for my July 12th camping trip, but understood that might not be realistic. I got an email back immediately, and my tent shipped June 30th. It would've arrived Friday, but UPS was on holiday, so it got here today instead.

The Contrail is supposedly a 3 season tent, with single walls, bathtub floor, and a beak that extends out far enough that you can *supposedly* cook under it. I agree it extends pretty nicely, but since the tent material is flammable I'm not sure when I'll be comfy enough trying it. Packed in the (included) stuff sack, it's 14"x4".

The ultralight backpackers skip the tent entirely and just use a tarp with strings and sticks, but I'm not that brave. I want a roof and a floor and BUG PROOFness. To me, the tarptent IS ultralight. Especially relative to the tents I was looking at at REI.

So. On with the pictures. I used a 12-pack of Coke for size comparison.

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It was a LOT roomier than I thought. It's got plenty of head room, AND I can stretch my arms over my head and not touch the tent end to end with my feet or hands. A tall person would be comfy in there. Me, I've got all the room I could possibly need. It's supposed to sleep "one plus," where plus is your pack and a dog, but I think me and John could both fit so long as we didn't mind being snuggly. Although I'm sure a sleeping bag takes up more room.



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Taking the tent down was a piece of cake. I should've timed it, but it only took about a minute. And it was no hassle at all to get it rolled up and back into the stuff sack, so I bet I can get a smaller sack and compress it even more if I really want. Although someone told me they had a silnylon tent where the pieces of it would stick to one another. I don't know if that was heat or compression related or what, so we'll wait and see.

Next I will put it up again, then seam seal it and let it sit for a day, and then hope for a rain shower to test the waterproofness.

L. is bringing a three-person tent with her next weekend. I want to take mine along and test it out, and since it weighs so little I think it's feasible. I'm going to borrow one of John's sleeping bags for now (won't have the budget for my own bag for awhile) and I've decided on the Thermarest Z-lite folding crate for a sleeping pad. It's light (11oz), very inexpensive ($30), comfy (based on my try-out on the floor) and I'm wiling to trade un-stuffability for un-puncturability.

L. will bring the water filter and cooking gear, so I'm not worried about that just yet. And really, for a one-night camping trip with a total of only four miles of hiking, during the near-warmest part of summer in Montana, we could starve and sleep on the ground and still be fine. This is gonna be a fun trip, I can tell. :)

I lived in the Washington D.C. area for six years. During that time, I went to the Kennedy Center once, went to the Smithsonian twice, the Air and Space museum a couple of times, and went to see the fireworks on the mall for Independence Day once. That was pretty much the extent to which I took advantage of all the cultural things that were available to me there. I feel like I wasted so many opportunities to do fun stuff local to me.

I don't want to do that in Montana. I think I'll be here for a looooong time but you never know. So I live 2 hours from Glacier National Park, 4 hours from Yellowstone National Park, and IN TOWN with tons of blue ribbon trout streams and river activities. I need to get out there and SEE and DO stuff more than I already am. I don't want to just drive Going To The Sun Road and say I've experienced Glacier.

So I want to learn to backcountry hike/camp for three to five days at a stretch, maybe learn to packraft, definitely try out fishing.... get outside and DO stuff. Then I can head off the beaten path so to speak and feel like I have enjoyed where I live to the best of my ability. Spend a week in the lesser-known parts of Glacier, Yellowstone, and the Tetons. And feel comfortable doing it alone if I can't find a camping buddy. That's what I'm up to with all this.

Of course, the first time I have to pee in the woods could put an end to all of this. :) We'll just have to wait and see.

"Put your shoes on!" John said. "What for?" "Just put 'em on!"

Next thing I know we're walking out the door with two fishing rods. We went to the parking lot near John's shop, where he put some weight on the end of the line and gave me a little mini-lesson on how to cast. :)



John says fly fishing is a lot harder. We will see. L. (my camping buddy for next week) says she uses a redneck method of attaching a fly fishing line to the end of regular line on a regular rod. Who knows how that will end up working. But it sounds like fun. :)

John: Man, whomever invented magnets really had it going on.
Kit: I think that was God, honey.

I decided I'd try photographing some fireworks this year. One cool thing about mountain/valley towns is, if you get up high enough, you can watch EVERYBODY'S fireworks, all over town, all at one time. :) That was my goal. I knew there would be a big fireworks show at the mall, and figured I'd center on that and then just see how it went from there. I already had a great spot picked out so I drove up there about a half hour before sunset to get a good parking spot and test out some shots.



As I've mentioned before, my camera (Canon EOS 10D) is smarter than I am and despite a lot of reading and studying I am still not all that skilled with it in manual mode. But manual mode is what was required for this experiment, so I gave it a shot. I stuck to ISO 100, with shutter speeds of 0.5 to 4 seconds (mostly 2), and apertures mostly at f/4 but sometimes as high as f/8. The site I read before heading out recommended f/8 to f/16. But I think they made the assumption you'd be close to the fireworks, and I was pretty far away from them.

I got home and I am VERY impressed with the turnout, given that I figured at best I'd get one or two decent photos.

( LOTS of pictures of 'splody goodness inside! )

One of my favorite photos of the entire set came after the big fireworks show was over. People started streaming down off the mountain and I could see red taillights for miles. I decided to do a little long exposure of the mass exodus, and came away with this:



Be sure to click through to the large version to do it justice.

Now I want to try photographing overhead fireworks. Our local fair will be here soon and I think they do shows every night, so perhaps I'll be able to try it then. :)

The whole set of photos can be found here.

John is cranky because he keeps trying to take a nap and keeps getting interrupted by phone calls. I am resorting to pretending he's not here so as to avoid his Sleepy Wrath.

John: It's not your fault that you're annoying to me right now.
Kit: I know.
John: Wait - it's not my fault either!

I've had a very nice day. After running with John, we had a big lunch at Mongos. That's where I got my Roy Rogers (coke with cherry juice, mmm!). We had time to kill before the movie, so we priced out bumper plates at Play It Again Sports ($1.50 per pound, yowza) and then wandered into REI. I loooooove REI. I finally picked up a copy of Lightweight Backpacking and Camping. I was researching camping options a few months ago (back when I was fussing about needing an Adventure Partner) and spent hours at BackpackingLight.

Camping gear, especially durable, lightweight camping gear, tends to be a bit pricey, so if I'm slowly going to work up to some solo camping trips, I don't want to waste money on gear that I use once then learn it won't work for my purposes. I imagine it's probably going to happen in a few cases anyway, but I'm trying to minimize the waste. So between this book and that web site and my other intarwebs resources, hopefully I can begin assembling a decent gear collection.

Laura, a friend of mine from work, is an experienced camper - everything from RVs to camping out of a car to hiking in and tent-camping. She goes nearly every weekend. She heard about my lack of experience and has invited me along for a My First Overnight Camping Trip [tm] lesson. She's bringing most of the major essentials, like the tent and water filter and basic knowledge, and I'm to bring my own mat, sleeping bag, and provide the Mountain House (since my darling husband is a supplier and all) and a few other things.

She also instructed me to get a fishing license, as the lake we are hiking to has brook trout in it, so she said she'd also teach me to fly fish while we're at it. I am really looking forward to it.

In the meantime, I am researching the basic stuff I need (that John does not already have) for the trip. I heart research!

We're doing alright. The sad things these days are walking past the spot on top of the love seat where Fat Cat always loved to lounge around, and by the spot in the kitchen where Fat Cat's food bowls were. I keep doing double takes and then remembering why there's no food bowls there now. I told John yesterday we should put up a memorial placard there. It would read:



. . . . .

John and I slept in and then headed out to the track for a Cooper test benchmark this morning. Push-ups for a minute, sit-ups for a minute, and then a 1.5 mile run. John said "I'm not built for running! I'm a TANK!" Hah! And yet he still lapped me.


Post-workout, he usually strips down and then flops onto the floor to "air out."

I am amazed at the circumference of his rib cage. If I could put that much air into my lungs I would be thrilled.

We're spending the day together. Now that the punishment part is out of the way, we'll head out to lunch, do some shopping, and then hit up Transformers 2. Maybe later we'll go to the range for some plinking.

I remember how devastated I was when Janet died. I took a few days off work. I was living alone and between relationships, so coming home to that empty house was just horrible. I remember I had promised I would wait awhile before I got another pet, but I couldn't handle the empty house. I don't think it was more than a week before I started scanning the classifieds looking for a free adult cat. Then I brought Fat Cat home. Born in a basement, already unnaturally obese, and being given up because her owner's new infant was severely allergic.

When I moved in with John (especially what with Fat Cat having destroyed two of his mattresses in the course of two days), we agreed that when Fat Cat sloughed off her mortal coil, there would not be a replacement cat. I thought that would be hard, but I think the difference now is, I'm not going to come home to an empty house. I've got John, and he's all I really need. (You might as well just shoot me in the head should something ever happen to John, though.) There won't be any more cats in our household.

He always had standing orders that should something happen to Fat Cat, he was to quickly and quietly go through the house and remove all her things - throw away what couldn't be re-used, and donate what could. I figured I wouldn't be able to do it myself. But John has been with Fat Cat for 5 of the ten years she's been with me, and I think I underestimated his attachment to her. He's really sad too. He's been great this week - after the first day, I couldn't talk to the vet anymore, so he did all of it. He'd hear the bad news and gently but plainly relay it to me, and discuss what I wanted to do about everything. I got all the hugs and kisses and support I needed. He took on all the hard parts of today, too, going to the vet clinic and taking care of the final details.

So I decided if he could do all that, I could take care of her things. I made it though it. And it'll make me feel better that I can donate a lot of food and supplies to the shelter.

Going to work tonight will be a little rough. But if I don't go, I'll just sit home and cry, and I don't think that will do me any good.

Today is bad, but it isn't really the worst day. The worst day was Wednesday, when John told me that if there wasn't a turnaround by Friday, Friday would be the day to make "a decision." I've been crying off and on every day since Sunday. Even though the vet told us then that it was just constipation (which changed to megacolon, then that plus kidney failure, then that plus acute liver failure) I knew that she was 13 years old and that we were on borrowed time. If not this week, then next month, or next year. Fat Cat, the feline equivalent of a 400-pound human, has always walked a thin line when it comes to her health. The megacolon caused the slow kidney and liver damage to go into rapid overdrive. Her continued refusal to eat made that even worse. The results of the tests this morning showed so much scarring on her organs that she was not going to come back from it. They said they could've sent her home with us but even with 24/7 care and force feeding she'd have been dead in a few days.

My last cat, Janet, died of a brain tumor. I always felt guilty because she had been acting oddly for weeks, but I was poor back then, so it wasn't until she started having seizures that I took her to the vet. It wouldn't have mattered, but I still felt horrible about it. I learned a lesson from that. I took Fat Cat it immediately at the first sign there was something wrong, and gave her every possible chance. I know she was just an old cat. Old age sucks. But I do know we loved her and gave her a life of luxury for ten years, and I'm happy about that.

I will still miss her to pieces. :(

John stepped on a rusty nail by a garbage dumpster two days ago. He couldn't remember the last time he had a tetanus shot, but it was definitely more than 10 years ago, so I insisted he get a new one. I have too much depressing stuff going on right now to deal with him getting lockjaw and I don't think he can handle much more of me crying all the time, so he gave in and agreed to go.



Let me just say I LOVE the First Care place. You walk in, say "I need a tetanus shot," fill out two pages of info, walk into the exam room, get the shot, walk out, and pay the chick $50. Voila. No muss, no fuss, no waiting, no unnecessary bloodwork, no blood pressure, no stethoscopes - nothing but the no-frills exactly-what-you-need service for cheap.

The vet called. Fat Cat is getting worse, not better. They've discovered liver failure. They've cleared her blockage but she's still not eating and they've been force feeding her. We're going to re-assess on Friday, but Friday will likely be Hard Decision day. I knew it was bad when John, who hates cats and had me agree we'd never have another one, said "I changed my mind, you can get another cat if you want." By the way, I appreciate all the support, but I'm really devastated by all this and don't want to talk about it or hear about how she might get better, so I'm turning comments off.