I took my modied Seattle Get Home Bag (GHB) for a test run today. I put on my normal work clothes, put on my GHB boots and headed out to a friends house. For those interested in what's in my GHB and why, see the separate thread "Seattle GHB".

After a previous test hike, I found that I wanted a small accessible pocket for keys, flashlights, etc. I also found it difficult to reach the water bottles in my pack while on the move, so wanted an easier to access water source. A cheap solution I ran across was a separate small waistpouch that held a water bottle and had two small pockets. I thought I would try it out on this trip, so strapped it around my waist in addition to my backpack.

Here are miscellaneous notes from the trip:


Distance: 6.6 miles (according to Google maps)

This was a summer hike, so I removed the following from the pack before I set out:

long underwear
camp towel
pen/cards/notebook
dogbowl
shampoo/toobrush/toothpaste
paper maps (took laminated instead).

Backpack weight: 24 lbs 7 oz
including 2 ltrs of water, gore-tex jacket, and sleeping pad

Waistpouch weight: 2 lbs 3 oz
including 1/2 litre of water, keys, cell, and radio/headphones

Found the built-in straps on bottom of my northface recon pack are really short. I can fit a rolled sleeping pad in, but could not fit the pad and my coat which had been my plan. Strapped the coat over the top of the pack instead. I am going to look at extending the bottom straps.

Attached the reflective "slow vehicle" sign to back of pack. Sign had been rolled up inside the pack and did not unroll very well. Might need to store it flat. Attaching it using the sign's built-in waist-strap was kind of jury-rigged. A better/faster way to attach the sign would be helpful. Could not find a good way to attach the sign when the pack cover was in place. Need to look into that.

I used two utility carabiners to attach water bottles to pack to keep them from falling out of side mesh pockets. Worked much better than using the pack tightening straps I had originally been using.

Wore a small separate waistpouch that held a small water bottle, keys, cell, and am/fm radio. Worked really well.

Meant to take some ibuprofen before leaving but forgot.

Started the hike between 11:30 and 12am.

Weather was overcast with rain/drizzle the whole way. 65 degrees. Mild wind.

Did not take my PSK on a neck strap. Still debating this. Main reason for it is if somebody takes my pack, I still have some basics.

The pack cover just barely fit the pack without my jacket strapped to the top. Did not try it with the jacket, but probably would not have fit. Need a bigger cover. Also need one that is not bright silverish-grey.

I took the pack cover off after about a mile. In the light drizzle, the pack seemed to stay pretty dry without it. The jacket was covering the top of the pack though.

My trekking pole (LEKI Wanderfreund Antishock) worked fine and proved very useful and quite capable of knocking the attacking blackberry vines out of the way. It worked much better than the folding shock-corded Stansport I had tried on a previous test. Still need to work on length, I kept making the trekking pole shorter throughout the trip. Was really thinking two would be nice (as several people have recommended) by about 2/3's of the way through my hike.

Other than radio, jacket and pack cover, never used anything else in my pack.

Knew the route well enough, I didn't even use the maps.

The Coby headphones worked great. Don't think I need the ear buds after all. Not the best quality sound, but for this purpose, quality is not that important. Comfort and stability are. The Coby's worked fine for me on all counts.

My hat, a Outdoor Research "Seattle Sombrero" worked really well. Kept the rain off my head and face, did not get too hot or sweaty, stayed on well.

Having the small water bottle on my belt to drink from worked really, really well. It was actually a 1/2 litre of bottled water. While the belt pouch does hold a full 1 litre Nalgene, I think it would have been to big and uncomfortable. Drinking from the small bottle and filling it every once in a while from the big bottles would probably be a great combo. With the small mouth on the smaller bottle I had with me, would have been difficult, but I think a 1/2 litre wide-mouth Nalgene would make this really easy. Will look for one.

When wearing the hat, I tended to keep my head down to keep wind from blowing the brim up. This worked well, but restricted my visibility quite a bit. Probably not a good thing in a real GHB scenario.

When I met people while walking, I did my normal look at them and nod/smile. In a real scenario, I think I would still do this, but should be far more alert, keep more distance between us, be ready to move fast if needed, and have my trekking pole in a position for quick defensive use.

Pavement is pretty hard stuff. Some additional padding in the hiking boots would be helpful. Will look to see if I can find something that will fit and is not to squishy.

Only drank 1/2 litre of water on this trip. Was cool and rainy, but should probably have had more to drink. Toward the end of the trip, I was debating about stopping and getting water out of my pack to drink, but knew I only had a mile or so to go and just kept going instead. Worked fine, but not sure that was a good decision.

The am/fm radio certainly helped make the trip seem to go faster. However, during a real scenario, there might not be any stations operational. If so, an mp3 player might help considerably. A combo am/fm/mp3 would be great. Long battery life and excellent fm and am reception are the most important factors though. Most mp3 players I know of with bult-in radios have pretty poor reception.

While the radio made the trip go faster, it probably also lulled me into not paying as close attention to my surroundings as I should. I wonder about the trade-off between alertness and help with the psychology of getting home.

Total Hike time: 2 hrs 6 min

Overall:

Backpack and waistpouch were comfortable the whole way. Never felt like the pack was to heavy. In fact didn't even notice it most of the time. Bottom of my feet were getting sore as were my legs. No problems with breathing. Think I could have gone another hour fairly well, but it would start getting pretty hard after that. (As I said before, that pavement is hard!) While this test was only about a third of what the hike from my office to home would be, it did give me more confidence in making it. If worse comes to worse, you can make it a long way by taking 100 steps at a time. All in all a successful test and maybe I am not in quite as a bad a shape as I thought.