2023 – Year of the Great Western Snow Dump AND Bear Cans

I’ve changed my thru-hiking plans for 2023 almost as many times as I’ve updated and reconfigured my gear list on lighterpack.com.  If you’re like me, your gear list is in a state of constant change.  It is part of the fun.

So, my initial plan for 2023 was the PCT.  I’ve hiked a lot on the AT going back to the 1980s.  I’ve hit most of the big Fuckin’-A sections – The Presidentials, GSMNP, Mt. Rogers, etc.  I met the late Baltimore Jack, one of the most notorious AT hikers, at a hostel in Georgia.  Hell, I’ve even slept at the Doyle, perhaps more of a WTF experience than a fucking-a experience. So, for a change, I got a PCT permit with a great start date and was ready to go.  Then it snowed 60’ in the Southern Sierra.  I’m 63 and am not up for, nor interested in, what that will bring as far as trail logistics and dealing with difficult to impossible (TBD) conditions.  Plan B was the AZT, but Arizona got dumped on too.  The snowmelt for the North Rim of the Grand Canyon is expected to finish 4-6 weeks later than normal.  Again, hard pass,  plus I live in AZ.  I’ve hiked for 20 years in Arizona.

The AT, My First and Always Love  

I have been fortunate to have backpacked in many great places – Buckskin Gulch and the Paria River, Denali National Park, Canadian Rockies, Annapurna Region in Nepal, El Camino in France, The Cotswold Way in the UK.  However, the AT was my first backpacking trail and remains my favorite. I love the social aspect.  I love the beauty which is more often human scale – moss, fungi, dense fog, wildflowers – rather than giant vistas.   It is subtle beauty.  I love the culture.  I’ve met some of the best people in my life on the AT, and I love random discussions at AT shelters.

So 2023 will be an oddly configured flip flop starting at 19E in Tennessee. I’ll explain why in a different post.

Bear Cans!

The ATA and all federal land management agencies along the AT are strongly encouraging the use of bear cans (not Ursacks) for the entire trail.  I might have close to 45 years of backpacking experience, but I’m not a bear expert like the folks at the USFS, the NPS, and the ATC.   My experience at Groundhog Creek Shelter clickhere convinced me that our practice of hanging food and poor food handling is making habituated and aggressive bears that will ultimately be killed entirely due to human behavior and human choices.  So I’m adding that 31 ounce BV 450 to my base weight, not because I like the idea, but it is the responsible thing to do.  We come to the AT to be in nature, not to make conditions that foster euthanasia of wildlife.   I figure if 2 pounds breaks me, I shouldn’t be on the trail in the first place, right?

My base weight is just at 15 pounds including the bear can.  I could easily cut that to below 13 depending on my willingness to suffer (more on my views of light weight vs. ultra light in my next post).

Less than 2 weeks until I start at Roan Mountain.  That gives me lots of time to reconfigure my gear a dozen or so times.

My picture was taken by me in 2020 somewhere in North Carolina on  beautiful foggy morning during a AT LASH.