This pack is killing me! The wimpy hip belt is bearing no weight, putting it all on my shoulders. In less than a mile, my shoulders are getting rubbed raw.
Fortunately, this wasn’t my pack.
“This is what you get for buying a $70 backpack,” I yelled back to Ray, who had surrendered his pack to me so that I could experience its shortcomings first-hand.
What do we love most about what we do with the GetHiking! program?
Help people fulfill their dreams.
Using the skills developed through the GetHiking! GetBackpacking! and GetOriented! programs, folks accomplish any number of goals.
For instance, ascending one of the revered Seven Summits.
I climbed into the frigid car this morning, turned the key and was met by a sluggish grind, followed by clicking, followed by quiet. A moment of worry, then a smile. The New Year would be getting off to an active start with a bonus three-mile “hike.”
Hiking is a gateway activity. You start with a hike along Umstead’s Sycamore Creek after a rain, maybe hike the Little Mountain Falls Trail at Virginia’s Fairy Stone State Park on a cloudless winter day. Before you know it, the notion of spending a day or more on the trail has a keen appeal. You’re hooked by the lure of outdoor escapes.
It was cold and dark, and we were occasionally plunked with raindrops. But not a one of us moved from our spot by the fire.
“What is it about a campfire?” someone asks.
We’re drawn to fire for its light and heat, of course. But for us, on a three-day backpack trip on the Neusiok Trail in the Croatan National Forest, it was less about survival and more about pondering, as Guy Noir might say, life’s persistent questions. Like whether one would survive a freeze-dried meal with an expiration date of 1997. (Answer: yes, surprisingly.)
