Preparing for Backpacking

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We did just get home from camping, haven’t done anything about repairing the RV floor and yet here we are planning a backpack trip. We will leave next week.

Here are a few of the details: we will hike to Cottonwood Lakes, this is out of Lone Pine in the Inyo National Forest on the east side of the Sierras. There is a cutoff from this trail to Mt. Whitney if that helps. This area is south of Mammoth.

Our middle son Justin worked in this area with the CCC several years ago building trails up. We hiked back to see him at that time taking his daughter. The trail wasn’t too difficult; the biggest problem was just keeping her going. (Her bones were broken, her bones stopped working, she had no bones to walk with, and on and on)

So next week we will do a bit of a repeat trip but this time with our son, his boys 3 & 5, our adopted son Camilo and his 2 boys 12 & 14, our 13 year old grandson Elias, our 16 year old granddaughter, Belgium girl Charlotte and Dale and I.

A couple of weeks ago we did obtain our permits to hike, I got one by phone and the other on-line. I’d say that both ways are easy. A permit is $5/person thru the forest service. We were lucky in the sense that we were able to obtain permits for next Tues, as I found out there were only permits available for that day. Dale and I wanted to go in on Wed but nothing was available and actually nothing is available for some time after. I believe there are some permits for those who show up at the ranger station early, the day of their hike but we don’t want to take a chance.

We have great packs and boots but no sleeping bags since ours wore out and were given away years ago. Now we’ve been investigating bags. There are double bags, these bags zip together on the outside and there are sleeping bags that zip together. I think that we will go with the double bag so that whoever gets hot can unzip without causing the other to freeze. But when shopping just make sure that your zippers match as there are different sizes of zippers and some are on the right side some on the left of the regular bags. We will try the Big Agnes brand.

Girls do not have hiking boots and I’m really not anxious to buy some so we will see what we do about that. Our neighbor offered to loan kids’ packs and sleeping bags.

Food is going to be somewhat of an issue as I cannot eat gluten. Also with so many people packaged foods would be pricey. We will have a food powwow on Monday to meal plan and to see who buys what.

I really could kick myself for not buying an IPad also. I do not want to lug this laptop up the mountain but do want to write. My husband has suggested a pad and pencil. UGH! I have a difficult time with that as I’m trying to add and delete stuff. But I’ll see, maybe I can get my phone to work for writing too.

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