- Joined
- Jun 19, 2007
- Messages
- 2,964
Before you learn how the zip-ties saved the day a little backstory is needed.
I work Sunday through Thursday and usually like to take off into the mountains on Thursday to avoid the crowds. Since the weather has been hot recently I decided to hose down some co-workers loitering outside the warehouse. One of the co-workers took offense and retaliated by smashing a rotting honeydew melon on my chest. In the following battle for control of the hose his gigantic size 13 foot came down on my left foot and left me with a 2" high goose egg from hell. When I got home I realized the extent of my foot injury but packed up my gear and hit the road anyways.
Since my foot didn't hurt that bad I made it up to the lakes where I would be spending the next couple days. I started to search for a place to put up my tent when I realized....I forgot to pack the tent poles.
I let this bother me for about 3 minutes until I started to improvise. I've used tarps plenty of times on lightweight summer trips, so no problem there. The only real issue is that there are no guy out points on the outside of the tent fly. So I made a small ball of duct-tape, put it on the underside of the fly and wrapped a zip-tie around it. These are the screw-mount zip-ties with the hole in the top so you can attach them to a wall. They also work great for cordage. It would have been possible to rig this up without the zip-ties, but with them it was much easier. While packing I replaced my trip-tease bear bag cord with some thicker longer 4mm cord, good move. I used this to set up the fly. But now I have no cord to hang my food.
So I had to go with the "bear pole" method. Basically I found a 25' downed tree with about a 7" bottom diameter, cut a notch in the top and used that to hoist my food up and away.
Oh, and another thing. When I reached the trailhead and turned on my GPS it was totally dead. It had been giving me a double vision screen that would go away if I smacked it. Now it won't even turn on. This was only a problem when the trail disappeared under snow, so getting back to my truck was just a matter of using my intuition and experience in the mountains. Off trail hiking is great, I saw lots of deer and elk and several piles of mountain lion scat, some which were rather fresh.
Overall a good weekend, and now my toes are a fashionable shade of purple from all the blood that has drained into them.
I'll post pics once I upgrade my membership, or i'll put them in a photobucket album.
I work Sunday through Thursday and usually like to take off into the mountains on Thursday to avoid the crowds. Since the weather has been hot recently I decided to hose down some co-workers loitering outside the warehouse. One of the co-workers took offense and retaliated by smashing a rotting honeydew melon on my chest. In the following battle for control of the hose his gigantic size 13 foot came down on my left foot and left me with a 2" high goose egg from hell. When I got home I realized the extent of my foot injury but packed up my gear and hit the road anyways.
Since my foot didn't hurt that bad I made it up to the lakes where I would be spending the next couple days. I started to search for a place to put up my tent when I realized....I forgot to pack the tent poles.
I let this bother me for about 3 minutes until I started to improvise. I've used tarps plenty of times on lightweight summer trips, so no problem there. The only real issue is that there are no guy out points on the outside of the tent fly. So I made a small ball of duct-tape, put it on the underside of the fly and wrapped a zip-tie around it. These are the screw-mount zip-ties with the hole in the top so you can attach them to a wall. They also work great for cordage. It would have been possible to rig this up without the zip-ties, but with them it was much easier. While packing I replaced my trip-tease bear bag cord with some thicker longer 4mm cord, good move. I used this to set up the fly. But now I have no cord to hang my food.
So I had to go with the "bear pole" method. Basically I found a 25' downed tree with about a 7" bottom diameter, cut a notch in the top and used that to hoist my food up and away.
Oh, and another thing. When I reached the trailhead and turned on my GPS it was totally dead. It had been giving me a double vision screen that would go away if I smacked it. Now it won't even turn on. This was only a problem when the trail disappeared under snow, so getting back to my truck was just a matter of using my intuition and experience in the mountains. Off trail hiking is great, I saw lots of deer and elk and several piles of mountain lion scat, some which were rather fresh.
Overall a good weekend, and now my toes are a fashionable shade of purple from all the blood that has drained into them.
I'll post pics once I upgrade my membership, or i'll put them in a photobucket album.
