TrailCast - Podcasting on foot

Thoughtfully transcribed by Eric West

 

You’re listening to TrailCast, I’m Robert Butler.

Thanks for tuning in to and downloading Program #5.

If you’ve ever been on the Appalachian Trail, whether as a section-hiker or if you’re fortunate enough to be a thru-hiker, chances are good that you have had some or all of Dan "Wingfoot" Bruce’s Thru-Hiker’s Handbook with you. It’s been with me on every AT section-hike I’ve ever been on, and from what I’ve read, seen, and heard, it’s the most popular data guide for the trail. The guidebook, currently in its 16th edition, is organized as a blow-by-blow account of what you can expect to see on the trail as you’re walking it. Everything from water sources, shelters, road crossings, and special scenic areas, it also has extensive information about the towns that the trail passes through or nearby, from the perspective of a thru-hiker looking to resupply or find a bed, shower, and a meal. In my conversation with Wingfoot, he talks about his guidebook, his thru-hikes, how he got his trailname, and some of the other projects he’s working on. Here’s my conversation with Dan "Wingfoot" Bruce.

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ROBERT BUTLER: I assume a lot of people who are familiar with the Appalachian Trail know of you, more specifically, know about your Thru-Hiker’s Handbook, which is arguably the definitive data guide for the Appalachian Trail. A lot of people probably don’t know how many times you’ve hiked the trail, though…how many times have you thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail?

DAN "WINGFOOT" BRUCE: Well, if you count end-to-end hikes, I’ve done at least seven. But I stopped counting somewhere in there, and I really don’t like to focus on that. I like to think of it as one continuous journey, because anytime you have an opportunity to do one thru-hike, it’s really a wonderful thing. And after that, I’ve always had projects to do, such as collecting information for books or for the website. So I kind of look at it as a continuous journey. I never have really gotten off the trail.

RB: According to your website, it says that you have hiked about 25,000 miles. Are there any other long-distance trails other than the Appalachian Trail that you’ve been on?

DWB: No, I’ve basically done…the Appalachian Trail is the longest trail I’ve done. I’ve done a number of side trails, of course, on the Appalachian Trail, and other trails. But the Appalachian Trail is the only one…I purposely decided after my first thru-hike in 1985 to concentrate on the Appalachian Trail and get really good at knowing about the Appalachian Trail.

RB: I guess you’re pretty good at it by now! 1985, that had to be a significantly different hike than it is today.

DWB: It is and it isn’t. Some things are the same…the trail itself, even though it’s been rerouted and there’ve been shelters added and so on, the trail itself is essentially the same. And in many cases, it’s been rerouted off of roads, so that it’s even more of a woods trail than it was in ‘85. And it’s also about 30 miles longer.

RB: Oh really?

DWB: Yes, it grows…every year, it seems to grow a mile or so on average. I think that’s probably going to level out now that some of the major reroutes that have been in the works for years have been accomplished. But we always grow a few tenths, anyway, so it’s constantly growing.

RB: Do you know anything about if they are really going to connect the Benton Mackaye part of the Pinhoti Trail to the Appalachian Trail? Have you heard anything about that?

DWB: Well, in fact, the Appalachian Trail was originally meant to be what’s called a trunk trail. It was set up to go…first Mount Oglethorpe, Georgia, and to Katahdin, and it was later modified from Mount Oglethorpe to Springer Mountain. And Congress officially set the termini at Springer and Ka tahdin. So that is the extent of the Appalachian Trail. However, there will be many trails connecting in to it, and the Pinhoti syste
m and the Benton Mackaye and a number of other trails will connect into the Appalachian Trail. And in some cases allow continuous hiking, such as the International Appalachian Trail will allow you to hike on up into Canada. But they’re not part of the Appalachian Trail, they’re just spur trails, or side trails in a sense, off of the main trunk trail. And I would be surprised if there’s any addition to the Appalachian Trail, it’s pretty set. In fact, Congress would have to change the termini.

RB: I see.

DWB: But here again, I think there is an advantage to having many trails rather than one big trail. We have the Appalachian Trail and I think it’s really great, we have the Pinhoti system developing, and I’m sure the people that are doing that are very proud of their system and they should be. And it needs to have an identity of its own, as part of our eastern trail system. But I would hate to see it incorporated into the Appalachian Trail.

RB: I see. How much further does the International Appalachian Trail extend?

DWB: I’ll be honest with you, I’m not sure of the exact mileage. I think it’s around 600 miles that it adds to it, but I don’t know the exact mileage.

RB: OK, it goes up somewhere near New Brunswick, I think.

DWB: It doesn’t start at the end of the Appalachian Trail, it starts near the end. It starts at a place called Abol Bridge in Maine, which is about 15 miles before the end of the Appalachian Trail at Katahdin. And then it extends all the way up to the Gaspe Peninsula. So it’s about as far as you can go east without walking on water [laughs].

RB: Well let’s talk about your 1985 thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. What got you in the woods in the first place in 1985?

DWB: I’d always been…growing up I’d always been in the outdoors. Back when I grew up, there was plenty of vacant land around Atlanta where I lived, and I spent a lot of time outdoors. But I kind of got away from it, like many people as we got through college, and military, and all of that. And then I just got back into it, I just wanted a little simplicity. And I actually got back into car camping first, and then I ran into some people that had hiked the Appalachian Trail and it reawakened memories that went back to my childhood. When I was 10 years old, my Sunday school teacher wrote for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution magazine back then, and he wrote an article about the three young men who had thru-hiked the trail that year, it was 1952. And he came in and talked about it, and that’s my earliest memory, and that had kind of lain dormant. At the time I thought that was a wonderful thing, as a 10 year old. Then later on I ran into someone in the course of a workday, who had actually hiked the trail. And by that time, I’d gotten interested in backpacking, so of course that idea was rekindled and I set my sights to hiking the trail. And then ended up doing it in 1985.

RB: When I think of hiking in the mid-’80s, I conjure images of large, external frame packs, huge synthetic sleeping bags, five pound tents, maybe even canvas tents. So when I think about different the hike is…obviously from a gear perspective, it would seem that hikers were carrying a lot more and most potentially probably hiking even less.

DWB: That’s true to some extent. A lot of people were doing it that way. You’ll probably still see some today, in fact I know you do, I see some today doing the same thing. However, when I started my 1985 hike, my total pack weight including my food, fuel, water, and everything, was less than 28 pounds.

RB: That’s extremely light for back then!

DWB: Well, it basically would be considered ultralight back then. It rea lly was not anything extraordinary, it was just picking gear carefully, and then paying attention to what I put in my pack. And I have a lot of things…that 28 pounds included an electric shaver and a base support which I got rid of very quickly. But you don’t have to carry heavy weight.

RB: Your thru-hikes, were they consecutive?

DWB: I did my first hike in 1985, and I came back knowin
g that I wanted to do another hike. And at the end of the ‘85 hike, I happened to be in a hostel up in Rangeley, Maine, and the people that owned it at that time were voice teachers. And I came out of the shower with a towel around me and stepped on a little lapel pin, and when I dug it out of my foot [laughs], I looked at it and it said "What do you do for an encore?". And it’d been left over from one of their little events of some sort. But I just stuck it on the back of my backpack, and hiked on north because I realized by then that I had at most a month left in my hike.

RB: That is beautifully symbolic, the fact that you stepped on it!

DWB: That kind of set the tone for what I was doing at the end of my hike, not only enjoying the end of the hike, but thinking "What do I do for an encore?".

RB: And what was your immediate encore?

DWB: And when I got back, I realized that the Appalachian Trail would be celebrating its 50th anniversary of completion in 1987. So I decided that I would do a hike that would try to touch base with what I assumed would be a lot of celebration for that year. And when I came back and started checking into it and writing people, to my surprise, no one had planned anything. And they all kept saying, well when are you going to be here, we’ll do something. And the next thing I know, the 50th anniversary celebration for the Appalachian Trail was built around the schedule of my 1987 hike. And when I saw that happening I said well, this is a great opportunity to get publicity for the Appalachian Trail in a way that will help build support for it. And to make a long story short, I put together a series of celebrations that were tied in with my hike, in towns. And I did a lot of media stuff, we had all three evening network news, and On the Road with Charles Kuralt, that kind of bigtime stuff. And we had a number of celebrations, of which Trail Days is one that started as a result of that effort. And that’s the only one that’s continued, but there were actually 14 big events and 11 smaller events that year that were similar to Trail Days. And it raised about a million dollars for the Appalachian Trail.

RB: I see you’ve got some bigger names attached to that anniversary hike. As I’m looking at a letter that you have posted on your website…and who signed that?

DWB: That was signed by the President.

RB: That’s right, Ronald Reagan!

DWB: Ronald Reagan, right. And I got that letter in Harper’s Ferry, when I got there on my 1987 hike, which was the hike, that served as the centerpiece of the Appalachian Trail’s 50th anniversary celebration.

RB: That’s great press for the trail, for back then!

DWB: Well, I had a friend from Associated Press. And he estimated that year that about a 157 million Americans saw, read, or heard something about the Appalachian Trail that summer.

RB: That’s why it’s gotten so crowded!

DWB: Actually it did increase a little bit. But the main thing was that we had a big increase in the number of memberships to the Appalachian Trail Conference. We had, like I say, about a million extra dollars come in that year if you count the grants and the sales of such things as guidebooks and cups and calendars and all those things from the ATC. Then the ATC had a 60% membership jump that year as a result of that publicity. So there was some increase after the ‘87 hike, but the mai n benefits were in the awareness of the trail project, because that’s where our publicity was focused. The theme of the 1987 hike was "the Appalachian Trail, it’s a national treasure worthy of public support".

RB: From your perspective, has there been a peak of interest at one particular time, or has it been steadily rising, or has it flagged a little bit since then?

DWB: We’ve had two peaks. There were two different types of peaks. We had a peak in the mid-’80s that started in the mid-’70s, and it was kind of the old hippies, some of those who had kind of gotten over the hippie era, but had not gotten over their love of the outdoors and the envir
onment. And they came to the trail, and they were looking to relate and live in nature. Then we’ve had a more recent peak that happened around the year 2000. And it goes along with what’s happening, that the trail’s become a more social activity than an environmental nature activity in recent years.

RB: Well, as an online administrator, somebody that operates a fairly active message board and popular website about hiking, what’s your opinion about the Internet, online forums, communities have had as far as populating the trail?

DWB: I’m not sure that the actual online forums and things really have much effect on trail usage. And I know that probably sounds funny and I don’t know how we’d prove it one way or the other, but my experience is that other things…when I’ve done surveys, other things are more important, such as newspaper articles, the Bill Bryson book in the late 1990s that had an effect. So other types of publicity generally stimulate people to come thru-hike. And I find that once they are stimulated, then they come to the Internet to find information, for more importance there. Even the economy, for instance…when the economy’s bad, we have more hikers generally.

RB: Huh, I wouldn’t have thought that.

DWB: You’d think it would be just the opposite. But people get laid off, and they decide "I’ve got six months that I can take now…".

RB: Was there one particular thru-hike that stands out for you?

DWB: Yeah, obviously the first one is one that I remember in detail. I’ve enjoyed all of my hikes, and they all have been different, and each had its own rewards. But the first hike was like the first of anything, I think, it’s always more vivid and the memory is always sweeter.

RB: When we spoke a couple weeks ago, when I first contacted you, you mentioned "traditional" thru-hiking?

DWB: Well, essentially "traditional" thru-hiking is really, originally "thru-hiking". It’s basically putting on your pack, starting from one terminus of the trail and hiking essentially unassisted to the other terminus.

RB: When you mean unassisted, what would you consider…

DWB: No support vans, or that type of thing. It was basically hiking under your own power, hiking the entire trail, and just doing standard backpacking. It’s nothing really exotic.

RB: No, not at all.

DWB: It’s now, because so many people are doing so many different things and calling it thru-hiking, I’ve taken to calling what was originally thru-hiking, traditional thru-hiking, just as a way of separating it from all of the other stuff that is going on. I mean, I really don’t care how people…I’ve never, while I’m on the trail, I’ve never asked anybody how they’re doing their hike. And I am a proponent of hiking the entire trail if you’re going to thru-hike. Here again, that’s traditional.

RB: How did you get your trailname?

DWB: To make it short, I started off on my hike, and there were three young guys, I think from Pittsburgh, and they were down at Amicalola Falls State Park. And we’re all weighing our packs, and I had that little 27 pound 10.5 o unce pack, and they all had 80 to 90 pound packs, I mean these kids the Dinty Moore beef stew. They were big kids, and great attitudes and everything, but they just had humongous packs. So we weighed our packs and wished each other well, and I made it on up to Springer. And then late that evening, after I’d already gone to bed, they came struggling in, and they were just beat. And we sat around, I got up and stoked up the little fire I had out in front of the shelter, and made some hot chocolate for them while they were trying to get set up. And then we all had a great time. The next morning they left just at first light, they were out of there. And the last thing I remember is they were hollering "hey, come on old man". I was still in my bag, I’d like to think I was smarter, I waited until it warmed up [laughs]. Truth is my old bones were hurting. But anyway…

RB: It’s cold starting off on a northbound hike!

DWB: Oh ye
ah, absolutely. Even though this was late in April, April 23rd…

RB: It’s still cold up there.

DWB: It was still cold.

RB: They’re getting snowstorms up there right now!

DWB: At any rate, though, the next few days we kind of repeated that process, where they got up at the break of dawn and about mid-morning I would pass them. And they had nicknamed me the Old Man, because they were all about 18 or 19, and I was 42 at the time. I think it was around the third day, I came bopping up that morning after they had left hours before I did, and one of them said "hey, old man" and the other one said "he’s not an old man this morning, he’s hiking like he’s got wings on his feet". And the other one just looked at me…it’s just one of those moments you know that meant a lot of me, I’m sure they forgot about it two seconds later. But it changed my life because, the other one looked at me and said Wingfoot.

RB: Wow.

DWB: And I thought, hey, I like that! And it certainly was better than being called the Old Man for 2000 miles [laughs]. So I adopted that as my trailname.

RB: That’s great, that you can actually get named a trailname that you like.

DWB: Some of the best names I’ve ever heard, in fact all of the really good trailnames, have happened on the trail. There was a young woman one year, and no one would ever have thought to name themselves this, but she was hiking in boots that hurt so bad she started hiking in her Tevas. And she and her two friends, somewhere up there in the early part of Georgia, she got her foot with the Teva wedged down among the rocks on the side of the trail. And her friends were trying to help her pull her leg out, because the Teva was catching on the rock. And they were all laughing and carrying on, and she became known as Stuck Teva. Isn’t that a great name, it’s like Mata Hari or something like that? But she was called Stuck Teva, and it had an exotic ring, sounded Russian. But who would ever have thought to have named themselves Stuck Teva? So that’s the way good trailnames happen.

RB: Are there going to be any major updates for the 2006 edition of the Thru-Hiker’s Handbook?

DWB: Well, the book is updated every year. It’s totally updated every year. Now what will change, I don’t know.

RB: Which sections seem to change the most?

DWB: There is no answer to that. Remember I’ve been doing this…this will be the 16th edition.

RB: 16th, OK.

DWB: So this coming one will be the 16th, or 17th if you count…one year I did a southbound edition because I thought that would be useful, but not enough people gave me feedback on it to make it worthwhile doing. So now I’ve got the book where it can be used either way.

RB: Does the process of gathering information for this never stop?

DWB: Yeah, it never stops. And it involves a lot more t han just gathering information. The handbook is fairly popular…

RB: Well I would say that it’s probably considered *the* guidebook these days.

DWB: And I check with every place that’s in there, everything that’s in there I try to check every year to verify that it’s accurate. And even then, of course, things change from the time you go to press to the time people are using it. And, of course, some of these places are mom and pop operations, and they’re just good people that…half the time they’re not sure what they’re going to do two days ahead, much less four months ahead. So I’ve gotten where I can interpolate what people say. Now when you’ve been dealing with them sometimes 14, 15, 18 years in some cases, you develop a feel for it. But then there’s a lot of other things…for instance, we have hostel wars. And I try to keep it so that the things don’t get out of hand so that it’ll affect hikers.

RB: I’ve read about some of these hostel wars.

DWB: And it’s just, here again, it’s human nature. My objective…I have several objectives when I write the handbook. The first objective is to supply hikers with good information that will help them function well on their thru-hike. And of course, not only
thru-hikers use it, section-hikers use it and others, too. But that’s my first objective. The second is to help the people who provide services as best I can, secondary to serving the hikers. But I figure that if I can help by the way I put information in and what advice I give them, I can help the service providers be happy in what they’re doing, then that helps the hiker, too.

RB: It looks like you’ve mixed up the format of your book a little bit. You’ve included a section in the back that has more of the detailed information about stops and trail towns, whereas it used to be just inline with the mileage and trail info. Is that new, or is that you’ve something that you’ve gone back to?

DWB: Well, that was the change I made in 2003. What was happening is that I decided to put a lot more on-trail information in. Because I’d been making notes for years, and I decided to put all this in that I knew about and all the sights and that type of stuff. What I wanted to do is just to make it so that the information would flow well. You have really two types of ways the book is used. Some people use it during the day to help pace themselves on the trail. And then you have, when you go into town you use it. So I separated the two uses, basically the on-trail and the off-trail.

RB: Do you have any other publication projects that you’re working on about the trail?

DWB: I’ve got several. I had, for years I put out a planning guide that was really popular, and I’ve been wanting to rework it. But I’ve got that one on the back burner.

RB: OK, what else do you have?

DWB: I’ve got a history of thru-hiking.

RB: Oh, wonderful! When’s that going to be available?

DWB: Here again, it’s one of those things that I just keep working on.

RB: That sounds interesting. Anything else, besides the planning guide and the history?

DWB: There are several others. Online, I’m thinking about a guide for the whole trail. That would be something…in fact, are you online now?

RB: I am.

DWB: Go to trailplace.com/profile/map1.html.

RB: OK.

DWB: Are you using Internet Explorer by any chance?

RB: I’m using Firefox.

DWB: I’m not sure what to do in Firefox.

RB: It’s Java, and it looks like it came up…oh, I see, you have a very, very nice profile here. Yep, that’s very nice, that’s one thing I do like having the Appalachian Trail maps for, is so I can kind of figure how much…

DWB : If you would pass your cursor along the ridgeline…

RB: Look at that, very nice! It has a little mouseover text with the elevation, that’s a very nice touch. That’s well done, did you do this?

DWB: Yeah, it’s just a rough draft of what I want to do. It’s going to take about a million pieces of data to put it in a database to make all that.

RB: Yep, that’s very good, I really like that.

DWB: You’re talking about a multiyear project. But I would like to have the whole trail so that…it’s really meaningful when you look at the profiles and work off of the profiles.

RB: Of course it is, yeah. It really is.

DWB: And that affects everything. We have so much stuff that’s out on the Appalachian Trail now, and for instance, I have galleries, everyone has photo galleries, but I’d like to link all my photos…for instance, when you pass your cursor over a certain point, then you have options to get, for instance, a photo gallery for that five mile section.

RB: That would be great.

DWB: And a video, maybe a video gallery.

RB: That sounds like a very, very detailed project.

DWB: And it’s where you have information where people can go and prepare for hikes. I’m really not interested in doing an entertainment thing…there’s a place for that, but that’s not my interest. My interest is…information that they can plan well, go out and actually do a hike. Then once they get out there, you know how ideas of anything, it’s like planning to go to the Super Bowl and actually to the Super Bowl a
re two different things. Once you’re there, all your plans, forget them! Even though they’re in the back of your mind, you forget them. And in Georgia…Super Bowl, they really get into it. And that’s what I would hope people do after using what I would put up online.

RB: Well let me tell you, the information that you provide, especially in your Thru-Hiker’s Handbook, is amazing, and I’ve used it for several years on section-hikes. I wouldn’t think about using really anything else…I mean, I’ve had maps before, but I always want to fall back to the guidebook.

DWB: Well, it’s really a tricky book to do, because one thing I’ve learned after being around for 20+ years, is that what I don’t say is often just as important as what I do say in helping people have enjoyable hikes. And the real temptation when you do a book like the Handbook is to rate everything and point everybody to the things you think are great, but I’ve found that doesn’t serve people well. I try to give people an idea of everything that they need to function well and a few other little things that are options. Enough that they can do their own exploring, and not have to get involved…I try to minimize the hassles. We had, for instance, someone ask on our forum years ago about, somebody had mentioned the bear poles up in the Shenandoah. And I had mentioned in my book…are you familiar with what I’m talking about? They have poles for hanging food, they call them bear poles.

RB: I’ve seen those, yes, near the shelters?

DWB: Yeah, and they’re basically just a great big pole with several little forks off the top where you can loop your food bag over one of those little prongs. And up in the Shenandoah they have a great big iron pole with a V at the top where you can lift your bag up there. But it becomes quite a thing because it’s really unwieldy to hold a 20-foot pipe or 15-foot pipe or whatever it is, and with a food bag on the end of it…it’s just really unwieldy! So it’s quite a humorous thing to see people trying to do it [laughs], one of your real entertainments that evening up at Calf Mountain Shelter. So I made a note of that years ago when I had the format that would allow me to do that. I said there’s a secret to hanging your food, but I won’t tell it here. A nd the reason I didn’t is because there is a secret, but that’s part of the adventure, let every person figure it out. Because I don’t believe in telling everything, and then people say wow, isn’t he smart. But they missed the opportunity to either figure it out or have a humorous experience trying to. But I know on the Internet, for instance, somebody asked, well what is the secret? And of course there were 15 people that rushed to tell. And I thought to myself, OK, and they were just trying to be helpful, I mean, everybody meant well. But they basically…and before they could get in there I kind of jumped in and said, oh these bear poles, the bears up in the Shenandoah are very old and they’re arthritic, and I said Leki got together with the park service and they developed these bear poles to help them get around [laughs]. And it kind of shut the thing down. But you follow the point I’m making…let them have their adventure, because they will. But if we interpret everything for people, then we probably haven’t helped them, because I’ve seen it happen so much in AT circles, especially in recent years, where people’s ideas have been colored about different aspects of the hike. And then they can’t see anything else except the way they’ve been influenced before their hike. And they don’t go to the trail with an open mind, or at least as open as it should be for a hike. You really should have no expectations and no preconceptions when you go for a hike.

RB: It’s getting harder and harder to do with the amount of available information about it.

DWB: So when I’m talking about setting up that thing that I showed you just now, the type of information is not one that would influence you. It just would be enough that you could look at and get an idea so you could plan. And then the
logistics shouldn’t get in the way, it’s not like we’re heading off to do the Lewis and Clark Expedition when we do a thru-hike. It has been done before [laughs]. And to try to say that you have to stay at this particular place, or else your trip is going to be ruined, that’s not the type of thing we need to be telling people. We just need to let them know what’s there, and then let them make their decisions. And sometimes you’ll make great decisions, and other times you’ll look back and say, I wish I’d made a different decision. But that’s all part of the trip. And it’s all part of the experience, because a thru-hike is really a spiritual journey, and you’ll come away with having a profound experience that will stay with you the rest of your life. And it’s something you can be proud of. It’s a lot of effort, a lot of time and money and effort to do a thru-hike. And so that’s why I encourage people, do it right! And what I mean by right is do it the way that makes them really happy, not just at the moment, but will make them happy when they are standing on top of Katahdin, because that’s when it really counts.

RB: Mr. Bruce, I really do greatly appreciate this interview. I want to thank you again so much for providing this amazing resource, the Thru-Hiker’s Handbook, as well as your website www.trailplace.com. I really appreciate all the efforts that you’ve done!

DWB: Well, thank you, I appreciate that. As you know, when you work with the public, you usually hear the complaints. So it doesn’t hurt every now and then to hear a few words that it’s been helpful to somebody, because that’s what it’s all about.

RB: It’s been amazingly helpful, and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to speak with me.

DWB: OK, thank you a lot.

RB: Alright, you take care.

DWB: OK, good night.

RB: Good night.

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Well that’s going to wrap up this program of TrailCast. A huge thanks to Dan Bruce for that great interview. I’ll put a link to his website www.trailplace.com in the show notes, as well as a link to his guidebook, the Thru-Hiker’s Handbook.

A couple of weeks ago I finally broke down and bought the book Beyond Backpacking by Ray Jardine. To be honest, I really bought the book more out of curiosity about the man himself. I wasn’t really looking for more info about gear or lightweight hiking concepts and philosophy. Everything that I had read about the man on various hiking forums seemed to indicate that Ray is a bit of a lightweight hiking zealot, and that he steadfastly held to some extreme ideas which are not particularly safe nor accessible to anybody other than the most seasoned hikers.

Well, after reading Beyond Backpacking, I feel as if I owe Ray Jardine an apology. I was pleasantly surprised by his book, which is written in a comfortable and very non-judgmental tone. I really couldn’t put the book down…he does address just about every possible hiking topic and offers the Ray Way of doing things, but he’s always able to add a polite disclaimer that what works best for you is always best. Hiking topics include everything from food, clothing, safety on the trail, hiking partners, and most importantly, about how to get your base pack down to 8.5 pounds.

I’ve been pretty lightweight with my gear for a while, my base pack is around 12 pounds, which I still think is pretty darn light. And I’ve always been a little bit skeptical that I’d ever be able to get comfortably much lighter. That’s after a lot of reading on hiking forums, talking with other hikers, and looking at a lot of gear. But after reading Ray’s book, I do feel that there may be a chance that I may actually be able to deal with the Ray Way.

So I think I may have to start reprioritizing my gear projects, because I am extremely curious about using a quilt instead of a full sleeping bag. Ray talks a good bit abou
t this in the book. Quilts seem to be getting pretty popular, I’ve been seeing a lot of do-it-yourself quilt projects popping up on websites for a couple of years now. I’ve also been fascinated with the frameless packs out there, like the GoLite Breeze and the Gust, and various ULA models like the Lab or Fusion. Ray’s 8.5 pound base pack is contained within one of these minimal packs, which is essentially just a rucksack…some of them have more bells and whistles than others. Ray offers some very minimal sewing instructions for quilts and packs in Beyond Backpacking, probably enough instruction for anybody who has done even a very, very small amount of sewing with a sewing machine. Ray also sells kits for quilts and packs and tarps on his website rayjardine.com. They seem pretty reasonably priced, too.

I also bought Ray’s tarp book, which is his smaller manifesto about his love affair with the tarp. This book has much more detailed instructions for making a Ray Way tarp, as well as really good diagrams for pitching the tarp in various weather, something that really isn’t particularly intuitive to a tarp newbie. But these diagrams really helped me understand alternate pitching methods.

I really enjoyed both of these books, and I’ve gotten excited again about the prospect of shaving a few more pounds…yes, pounds off of my pack. Ray may indeed come off as a bit of an odd fellow…me and my brother-in-law were reading these books during a long road trip a couple of weeks ago. We kept saying, man, this guy’s pretty hardcore…and he is, no doubt! But after reading his bio at the end of the book, it makes sense. He’s seriously changed the sport of rock climbing, invented all sorts of outdoor equipment, including the climbing device known as the Friend. He’s canoed thousands of miles in the Arctic and rowed a specially made rowboat…yes, a freaking rowboat, across the Atlantic.

So yes, Ray is hardcore and may come off as such at times in the book. But in my humble opinion, he does a good job of relaying his experiences from the perspective of a hardcore pioneer in outdoor recreation to those of us who aren’t. So I highly recommend this book, and I hope to snag an interview with him soon.

TrailCast is licensed under the Creative Commons 2.0 license. For more information about this, visit the TrailCast website at www.trailcast.org.

Special thanks to Chris Erswell aka Tom Joad and Kelly Vice for providing the music for TrailCast. Their music is available at the amazing website archive.org and ACIDplanet. Thanks for listening to TrailCast.