Day 127 : Equipment failure

24th August 2013
Mile 1934 to mile 1969.5 : Another Burn Zone to Mesa Table Creek
Mileage : 35.5

Average mileage since day 101 : ?

Today for some reason lots of bits of my kit seemed to be failing me. I got through socks at a rate of knots, and am used to them falling appart on me. Other bits of kits though should not be failing me though. I noticed today that all the other bits of my clothing, i.e. my shirt, underwear and hiking shorts are also failing me. In truth i am surprised my shirt has lasted this long without getting holes in it, but in contrast I am surprised that my hiking shorts are wearing out, as are is my underwear. In order to provide my lowever back and hips with extra padding i usually where both the aforementioned pieces of clothing up high, and clearly they are taking the brunt of the abuse from my rucksack, which is a good thing i suppose, but I am annoyed that I will soon have to replace both. My Dirty Girl gaiters have also seen better days, and are developing holes on the sides where they catch on vegetation. I can ascribe all these kit failures to general wear and tear on the trail, and am mostly proud that it has all held together this long. What I am less than happy about however, it my tent. I have the Contrail Tarptent, and I do not like it. The Contrail Tarpent should not be thought of as a tent, but more as a basic shelter which will keep the worst excesses of the weather off you while you do a weekend hike or something of this nature. The reason I say this is that it does not keep me dry, at all. The Contrail Tarptent when erect resembles an irregular pyramid, and in profile looks like a right angled triangle on it's side, with the hypotenuse on the floor, and the right angle at the apex supported by one of my hiking poles. The opposite side functions as the head of the tent, with the adjecent side sloping down to the floor where my feet rest when I'm sleeping in it. The problem is that my feet, when in my sleeping bag, touch the sloping roof, and as the tent does not have an outer rain sheet the water comes through and soaks my sleeping bag. This effect is compounded further by the fact that almost from day one, I have been sleeping with my feet elevated on my rucksack which I do because a) my feet usually hurt too much in the evening for me to be able to just leave them flat on the floor when I sleep, and b) I don't have a full length sleeping bag so need to keep my legs of the floor in order to keep them warm. This means that my sleeping bag from the knees down is touching the top of the tent and is thus soaked every time I use the tent. This wouldn't be a problem if I were only out for a day, but given I have now been on trail for over 4 months, and that I have another month to go in the northern cascades in the autumn, I am going to have to figure out a way to deal with it. Last night, with more rain clouds on the horizon I again put up my tent, and although it did not rain, my sleeping bag was nevertheless wet when I woke up. Today this wasn't a problem as I stopped for about an hour at lunch to dry it out. I think though, that both the sun, and hour long breaks, are going to be frequent my days less and less as I get closer to the Canadian border. As I was looking for somewhere to stop at the end of today's hike though, the spitting started, and I resigned myself to another wet night, and following day.