I’m getting ready for my first hike of the year, and I’ll tell ya…it just can’t get here fast enough! Next Friday morning, I will meet up with a few old friends (don’t take that the wrong way Hiking Shoes), as well as some new friends, in a quaint little mountain town. After we all meet one another, then fill our bellies with some breakfast, we will head out and begin making the necessary arrangements to begin our hike!

As I said, the hike is not until next weekend, but due to normal everyday life between then and now, now is the time I have to go ahead and start getting all of my gear together.

As usual, I started by putting together a gear list using Google Docs, then pulled everything from the list (from all corners of my house) and put it all in a big little pile (I love “UL” gear). As I pulled everything, I ticked it off on my checklist. Once the checklist was all checked off, and the pile was created, I then sat down and started figuring out how my pack needed to be packed. (Hence the video above.)

So, without listing everything here in this post, if you are interested in checking out my highly-detailed, super-awesome, gear list, then feel free to do so by clicking:

So, real quick… I am expecting temps anywhere from the mid teens on up (at this point, it is hard to say because I don’t trust most of the extended weather forecast…), so I am bringing my cold weather gear and clothing. However, there are a few new items in my pack (as usual), so this will be a learning experience (shouldn’t they all be?). To highlight, a few new gear items I will be carrying on this trip are my ZPacks tarp, my LiteTrail Cook Kit, and a totally luxury item, my Kindle (but, to justify it, it does have the companion guides and elevation profiles on it…)

As well, at this point, I believe that I will be wearing an IceBreaker GT200 Chase 1/4 Zip long sleeve shirt as my base layer, instead of my tried-and-true, Patagonia Capilene 2 long sleeve crew. On top of this, I will be sporting the new Patagonia Capilene 4 Expedition Weight 1/4 Zip Hoody, as opposed to my much-loved Patagonia R1 Flash Pullover… Then, last but not least, I will be checking out for myself, just how breathable the Patagonia Houdini windshirt is, as opposed to my North Face Verto… And ok, one more… my sweet new Luke’s Ultralite Silnylon rain shell!

So, this is going to be a short hike (only ~ 16 miles), but that will be cool since there will be a few of us, so we can all kind of hang out, have a little gear talk, probably compare some gear, and of course enjoy the views! I am definitely looking forward to the hike… But, until then…

Thanks for reading!

~Stick~

Disclaimer: Blah, blah, blah… I enjoy this stuff and no one is paying me to talk about it…