Date: 2009-10-09
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Miles today: 0.0

I have found a training buddy. She is planning to hike the AT beginning in April 2010 going NOBO. We both live in Lexington and are retired. We are lucky enough to have the Red River Gorge 45 minutes from Lexington. Great place to train, steep trails and lots of them. The scenery ain't bad either.   We planned an overnight at Koomer Ridge Campground to test some new gear. We spent the day hiking from the campground on Koomer Ridge Trail> Rough Trail> Pinch em Tight Trail> Buck Trail> and back to Koomer Ridge Trail to our campsite. About 7.6 miles round trip with a pack weight of about 20 pounds.   For dinner, I was trying some freezer bag cooking. I had made spaghetti to try out. This concoction consisted of ramen noodles(throw away the flavor packet and crush the noodles), a package of dry spaghetti sauce and some dehydrated tofu hamburger(stolen from a fantastic foods sloppy joe box) all mixed together in a quart size Ziploc freezer bag. An additional Ziploc bag of Parmesan cheese and garlic breadcrumbs. I placed the spaghetti mix freezer bag into my homemade cozy(more about cozies later). I boiled 2 cups of water and poured it into the spaghetti mix freezer bag and stirred with a long handled spoon. I sealed the bag and the cozy and waited about 7 minutes. Opened the cozy, opened the freezer bag, added my cheese and garlic breadcrumbs and enjoyed. I ate right out of the bag and only had my spoon to clean up. Worked wonderfully and was very tasty.    It was, also, my first night out in the hammock in the cold. To those of you who are curious, cold weather is the challenge to hammock hangers. When you are sleeping on the ground the earth and your thermarest insulate you from the cold air. Not so in a hammock. The cold air is blowing underneath your back. The challenge is to find insulation which can keep you warm and is lightweight. Sleep in your nice warm sleeping bag you are thinking? Won't work because your bag compresses under your weight and loses any insulation value. So what to do, there are many answers, the trick is to find the one which you are comfortable with, i.e. weight/warmth ratio.   The answer I am currently playing with is an underquilt and a top quilt. Both are filled with 800 weight down and sewn with a nylon DWR material. The underquilt hangs under the hammock. In this manner, your weight does not compress the loft of the underquilt. A fully lofted underquilt is a toasty invention. The top quilt is the same construction as the underquilt. It has a foot box, which as it sounds, is where you place your feet. The rest of the top quilt is placed over your body, not under your body. Very warm set-up.    The weather was clear and 52 degrees for a night time low. I started out wearing an Icebreaker short sleeved t-shirt, lightweight fleece pants and smart wool socks. After the hammock warmed up the socks had to come off. This set-up kept me very warm. I had to push the top quilt below my waist as I was too hot. At about 2 AM, I had to answer the call of nature. The curse of all women in their fifties. Before I left my hammock I noticed my feet and shoulders were feeling cold spots. Got out and took care of business. I came back to the hammock and readjusted the underquilt suspension. This involved tighting up the two ends of the quilt by pulling on two toggles, six seconds max. I guess the heavy dew had caused the shock cords to stretch a wee bit in the underquilt. Hopped back in to the hammock, added a fleece hat, fleece overshirt and put the socks back on. Slept warm and comfy until the morning.   I probably would have slept later, but my hiking buddy was rustling around in her tent and woke me up. I asked her how she slept and she replied not very well. She kept sliding off her sleeping pad and her hips and shoulders were sore. I offered the comfort of my hammock for her to try out. She climbed in and I didn't think she was coming out. Hmm, maybe another convert. Rise up oh ground sleepers and hang in comfort!