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Showing posts from October, 2011

Fly-Hike-Fly: The Rincon Mountains Hike

On the flight to Atlanta the guy next to me was commenting that flying through Salt Lake City would have been much shorter. Well since this was a mileage run the extra long flights were on purpose. Now I'm a proud Delta Silver Medallion member. Was it worth it? Well,yeah! I got to go backpacking in the Rincon Mountains by Tucson, AZ. I packed light. The only things I didn't take along on the hike where my iPod,sport shorts (for the hotel pool), a nylon laundry bag (in case the backpack needed to be checked) and a "man-purse". I used the extra bag to keep the backpack within the dimensions of the carry on. It worked well. The pack fit into the overhead compartments of the MD88 and the 757 without trouble. TSA didn't made a fuss about the camping gear either. Driving to Summithut (an outdoor sports store) to get the camping fuel did take some time. There I also filled my water bladders. I decided to take six liters with me. On the way out I stopped at a grocery ...

Fly-Hike-Fly Notes

Food The apples, cucumbers, and Subway sandwich were a hit. I'm still packing too much food and too large portions. This is specially true with the oat-granola mix and milk-chocolate mix for breakfast. The chicken (bag), mashed potatoes (plain flakes), Nido (whole milk powder), and vegetable (Just-Plain-Vegetables freeze dried mix) with pepper was a great dinner. Instead of just adding everything to hot water I might try to add the vegetables earlier so they rehydrate better. Water The six liter water worked out great. It's just the right amount to hike to the Happy Valley camp, overnight, climb Rincon and hike to Manning. Although I actually only use up all of the four liters. Water for filtering at Happy Valley isn't great. There were a couple of stagnant puddles that didn't look very inviting. Manning on the other hand has clear running water. The best place to get it is on the rock by the fence where the water comes out of the holding pond. The gravity wat...