[pct-l] Plea for Fire Safety 2014

[Carol]

Well you just put that whole skipping through the daisies hiker meme out to pasture, Diane. We're all ready to be beaten to a pulp now. 

;0) In all seriousness, it's good to put our "head pictures" of the trail (and the future in general) to rest. Were picturing pristine mountain meadows, or high desert passes, or crystal mountain lakes. We all have a tendency lock on to mental images that we get from photos of the trail or great PCT stories we've heard. But the truth of the trail is this: Hike Your Own Hike is such great advice because no matter how well one plans, no two hikes are ever the same. The world is too big, the PCT too long. Your Hike is waiting for you. You can hike it, or you can try to hike someone else's. If you Hike Your Own Hike, it will be great. Hike someone else's hike, and you will be disappointed every time. 

So Diane, your point is well taken: A long hike is not all sunny meadows and cricket-filled conifer forests. If we think that conditions will always be conducive to firing up a stove, we're fooling ourselves. 

Carol

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 17, 2014, at 7:55 PM, Diane Soini <dianesoini at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Stoveless works great. What you do is you start rehydrating at the  
> meal before the next one. You can rehydrate mountain house and  
> anything similar in this way.
> 
> For dried potatoes, you probably only need to rehydrate them right  
> when you eat them. Otherwise they'll probably soak up all the water  
> and leave your other stuff less hydrated.
> 
> You can start your oatmeal breakfast the night before complete with  
> the milk and dried fruit. It comes out better that way, even if you  
> end up cooking it.
> 
> For coffee, you can either make a coffee milkshake of some sort or  
> you can eat chocolate covered espresso beans. But these will melt in  
> hot weather and become chocolate covered espresso bean bark.
> 
> It's not just the dry weather you have to worry about. It's the wind  
> and single-digit humidity. It's been single digit for weeks now. This  
> means that a tiny stray spark can ignite the brush and instantly  
> explode into a forest fire before you even know what's happened.
> 
> There were many times on the PCT when I could not cook even if I  
> wanted to because my stove would have blow away. Sometimes I couldn't  
> even set up a tent because of the wind and a few times, rain was  
> being blown at 55mph from 3 miles away making finding shelter very  
> difficult. TrailHacker and I slept under a boulder on San Jacinto one  
> rainy/windy night. And one night I slept in my tent without poles and  
> let it beat on me all night over near Mojave Dam. And one night our  
> tent was completely disintegrated on Apache Peak so TrailHacker and I  
> packed up and retreated down the Spitler Trail at 3am.
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