Introduction

My husband and I are super newbies at backpacking. I thought it would be interesting to start an account of our progress. It will probably be very funny for experienced folks and maybe useful for those thinking about getting into backpacking. We are 29 & 30 year olds living in the Chicago area. We are trying to go about this somewhat frugally because who knows if this hobby will stick. We are shooting for backpacking light, because we’ve found packing light on our other travels makes things easier and more enjoyable. But my hostel days are over and I feel the same about sleeping under a tarp, so this will not be a tale of learning to be UL. 

DH and I enjoy city traveling but recently we’ve been slowly adding in some more outdoors stuff, like a couple day hikes or bike rides on longer trips. In March 2018, we day tripped to Olympic Nat’l Park on a Seattle vacation. This was our first experience with mountains. There we learned that a) mountains have snow in March even when it’s 55-60 F and you’re not up very high and b) gym shoes aren’t the best for hiking, especially in snow. I can hear you snorting and, in my defense, at least we weren’t wearing jeans. We had a lot of fun despite the snow.   

Having done one 5 mile mountain hike and having bought some trail runners, we were now prepared to hike the Alps. (Hope you can hear the sarcasm.) We went to Germany last summer for a couple weeks to see castles and museums, but also planned four days of day-hiking in Berchtesgaden and Garmisch. Note that we went at the end of June to avoid snow. On our first hike we learned that a) mountains are not (necessarily) mostly wooded, b) sunblock or at least not wearing a tank top without said sunblock would be nice is imperative, c) mo’ water is better, and d) local detailed maps should be acquired in advance. It didn’t help that they had record breaking temps...but seriously if I get skin cancer later I’m blaming this hike and resulting blistered sunburn. PSA: higher altitudes means stronger rays. I had done a lot of research on trails inexperienced hikers could handle, but apparently the basics escaped me.

We clocked 11.2 miles on our first hike, mostly because we took a wrong turn and ended up hiking up a different mountain top than planned. The first 5 miles of that hike had 3540 ft in elevation gain (to 5540 ft). Our next most difficult hike was 6.2 miles downhill with 4250 ft in elevation change (started at 6688 ft). The trail was what made the hike difficult: lots of very steep, loose gravel drop offs from narrow trails. Some parts made me a little nervous, but I think it was aggravated by the memorial placards. There was nothing “technical” about the hike.

                                            

Turned out the hiking bit was the highlight of our trip, but unlike castles you don’t need to go to Europe for mountains. So I started planning our next trip for Colorado in August 2020. We’ve wanted to get to Denver and RMNP is nearby ish. I had thought to stay in Estes Park (in a hotel) for four to five nights and do day-hikes using the shuttle bus until I read about the long wait times to get into the park. Then I considered camping in the park to avoid entrance delays each day, but the cost of rental gear added up real fast - we might as well buy. But if we’re bringing in our own stuff from Chicago, it needs to fit into backpacks. And I guess if we have to fit everything into backpacks anyways, we might as well look into backpacking. Right??? 

At least we somewhat learned our lesson(s) above and realized we needed to practice up (a lot) more before we attempted even a beginner backpacking route in RMNP. Thus, our subsequent and continuing baby step efforts to learn how to backpack before next August.