Essential hiking gear: Don’t leave home without it
They have increasingly become prerequisites — in intent if not always in practice — for going on any hike led by an organized outdoors group such as Washington’s Cascadians hiking club. They are gear items everyone should carry on a hike to ensure they are at least partially prepared for the unexpected and unplanned.
How essential are the “13 essentials”? Why 13, instead of the 10 that comprised the first published list 41 years ago?
And, since seemingly every list available at your website-hopping fingertips is a bit different than the last one you perused, does that mean some “essentials” are more essential than others?
No. The differences on those lists are semantic and organizational. The key stuff hasn’t changed. Are they all essential? No, not at all. A lot of them are superfluous, “I don’t want all that extra weight” type stuff.
Right up until you need them.
Anybody who has spent much time on backcountry trails has felt ridiculously overprepared at times, wishing the day pack weighed a bit less on a long uphill slog. But what if you get off-course and confused? Or if you get too hot or too cold? Too hungry or too thirsty? Too late in the day to get home, and too dark to see where you’re going? What if you get hurt?
“We’ve had numerous instances where rain or a snow squall come in, and people don’t have rain gear,” says Jim Brown of Yakima, a longtime Cascadian hiking leader who spent 20 years with Everett Mountain Rescue.
“In those situations, it can be a matter of life or death. Not just inconvenience, or you get chilled — it can be the difference of whether you go out in a body bag or you walk out.”
If something unexpected happens and you can’t walk out the day you walked in, are you ready to spend the night? Could you light a fire to keep warm? No? Don’t have a flashlight to light your way and keep the boogeyman at bay?
Bummer.
Wishing you’d brought all that extra weight after all?
Yup.
Phil Bird, a Yakima, Wash., hiker who regularly leads Cascadian treks and often hits the trails by himself, keeps what he calls a “scramble pack” that’s fully stocked and ready for any last-moment decision to go for a hike.
It typically weighs just 10 to 15 pounds, though he says it “could run up to 20 pounds” when he carries extra water — as he usually does.
“I’m really very conscious of water,” he says. “I don’t seem to drink a lot, but boy, I’ve always got some with me. Dehydration will cause cramping that can get quite severe.”
To that end, Bird also typically brings a water-filtering pump so he can take advantage of creeks or ponds should his own water run out — and iodine, in case the pump breaks down. “Water is so critical,” he says. “And the iodine is so light it doesn’t even count.”
As for what does count, well, there are those “essentials” — however many of them there are on the list you’re looking at. And if the rebel in you objects to having some seemingly arbitrary list dictating what’s “essential,” try looking at this a different way: Just take whatever you need to avoid having your hike turn into a miserable experience.
Avoid getting lost. Yeah, you may know the trail, but you can easily find yourself in unfamiliar territory if you bushwhack into the brush to find some mushrooms, some huckleberries or some, um, personal relief. That means having whatever navigational tool or tools — i.e., map, compass, GPS — you need to get home, or at least back on track.
If you do get lost, avoid staying lost. Yeah, even a lightweight flashlight or headlamp seems ridiculous for a day hike — right up until it gets dark.
Avoid body-temperature extremes. You don’t want to roast if it’s hot or freeze if it’s not — and if after a hot day on the trail you end up spending an unexpected night in the boonies, you could experience both ends of the thermometer. That means layering — clothing layers you can peel off or put on.
Avoid hunger. You probably won’t need that extra food if everything goes according to plan. If things go awry, that food could save your life. Better too much than not enough.
Avoid thirst. If you’re not getting enough water into your system while you’re hiking up a sweat, that dehydration can lead to problems on either end of the scale.
At one extreme, if you’re so dehydrated that you can’t sweat sufficiently you can end up with heat stroke. At the other extreme, if the temperatures drop and you have to spend an unexpected night outdoors, dehydration can inhibit your circulation and lead to uncontrollable shivering and hypothermia.
Avoid getting sick. If you didn’t bring enough clean water, drink from a buggy pond and come down with Giardia infection, this is bad. If you cut yourself and bleed all over the place, this is bad. If you don’t clean the injury and end up with an infected wound, this is also bad. Obvious, right? So why are first-aid kits and water-purification systems so often left behind?
Avoid being miserable. If it’s buggy and you have no repellent, you’re miserable. If you’re crossing sloping ice fields without an ice axe or unstable terrain without hiking poles, you’re miserable. Ditto with hiking in bright sun without sunglasses or getting blisters without any moleskin.
Avoid having a DUUUUHHH moment. This is when something happens where you’d trade your soul to have that Swiss army knife, or anything resembling a repair kit. At the very least, wrap duct tape around your water bottle; if anything needs taping up, hey, it peels right off your bottle and is ready to go to work.
Avoid a cold, dark night. OK, so you brought along that lightweight flashlight. Bully for you. Will it keep you warm? Nope, but a fire will. You have what it takes to build one? No? Bummer. Did you bring a lightweight tent, a Bivvy sack or a lightweight emergency blanket? No? Even bigger bummer.
If you’re prepared to avoid all those miserable situations, hey, you’re covered on the “essentials” front.
Better than that, you’ll know you’re ready for an enjoyable, safe hike.
And that’s essential.
This story was originally published June 25, 2015 at 12:00 AM.