A Soak on the North Fork of the Skok

I started hiking at about a quarter to 10, finished up at about 6pm.  It was wet, wet, wet.  My right boot leaked around my ankle brace but my left foot stayed dry.  I was never really warm enough on this hike.  It was cold up there!  Maybe I should pack one more layer for day hikes.



I sloshed my way to Camp Pleasant and back.  I had the trail mostly to myself. 

Hypothermia weather a high of 55F and
over an inch of rain

My new pack is great!  I like having no hip belt.  With no hip belt I can just shrug my pack off anywhere.  There is also no sternum strap.  I don't need a sternum strap because the tops of the shoulder pads are only two inches apart.  The pack fits me!  I designed it for an 18 inch torso. 

Also with no hip belt I can comfortably carry stuff in the pockets of my rain coat, so I'm not missing having hip belt pockets.

The new beefy elastic on the outside pockets did the trick and the tougher thread on the pad holder pockets is holing up well in spite of having thinner elastic.

I ate my lunch under my tarp.  Lunch would have been miserable with out the tarp today.

13.5 miles with 800 feet elevation gain 1,700 calories burned, 4 cups of tea drank.

Boiling water at lunch time under a tarp at Camp Pleasant

Kindbergia and Rhytidiadelphus loreus moss

Rhizomnium moss (Dr. Calabria's favorite)



My pack grew some Lobaria oregana lichens!

Alder bud

My hand made pack

Ranger Bruce waz here!

Moss and lichens paint a landscape  or trees and clouds on this rock

Lobaria, but what kind?  Maybe pulmonaria or maybe that other kind
that I have never seen yet?

Tea time number 4 with the river mosses



River moss with sporophytes Scouleria aquatica

Muddy and wet trail

Ranger Davis was no where in sight
so I made it across safely

Elk butt fur

Mossy rock in a tree

Tea bag to wamer.. later the right boot leaked
was the tea bag to blame?

Tea time number one

My pack

My pack

Wet trail

The start

Lunch time

Some microscopic pictures of mosses that grow on river rocks in the Olympics

Scouleria aquatica




 Scouleria aquatica



Sporophyte

Spore

Apex

Racomitrium aciculare - Codriophorus aciculare

Apex at 400x

Whole leaf at 40X

leaf tip at 100x

Dosewallips, no snow

We were short on time so we only went as far as horse camp on the Dosewallips River road.  We saw no snow, what a change from last time!  Four cars were at the trail head, it must be time for me to switch to my summer routes for solitude.

This was the first voyage with my new daypack.  The design is solid, the mesh is not.  I will have to replace the mesh at some point, but I'm not sure how to make that pretty on a pack that is already sewn.    I could rip all the main seams on the pack and sew them all back together again as there is still room to take the seams in a bit.    But if I'm going to do that, it might be just as easy to make a whole new pack.

I might cannibalize the mesh and some of the dyneema from my old daypack.

9.5 miles round trip
800 Feet elevation gain
1,200 calories

First trip with my home made pack

Now with beefy elastic at the tops of the pockets

Urban "hiking" in Seattle

Thanks to Mason Transit and the Ferry System I can take my daughter to Seattle for just $12.00 round trip.  I wish I had learned that Mason Transit goes to the Bremerton Ferry terminal years ago.  With this new knowledge getting to Seattle is easy!

feeding seagulls on the ferry




My grandparents met on the Carlise II

 For this trip  to Seattle money was tight so we did not do anything special in Seattle, we just walked around.

 We started at the ferry terminal and made a long ascending traverse up to Broadway via the switchbacks down town.  Once we hit the Summit ave we went one more block to Belmont ave and looked at my old apartment building.  Then we headed up to Broadway where we slogged to the far end and turned around at Roy street.

One of the three Seattle apartments I lived in

My first alma mater where I got my GED and my A.A. degree

 After that we made the fairly straight forward traverse from Capitol Hill to First Hill via Broadway.

Once we were on First Hill it was time for what we though would be the crux of our hike, the scary down climb!  We down climbed Yesler ave via Yesler Terrace and we ended up in China town.

 In China town we had lunch and walked in circles for a while.

 Then we made a hair raising slog through Pioneer square.. sheesh.. that place has not changed at all!  Don't use the out house there! You have been warned.  Pioneer Square was the crux of the hike for sure.

Then after that horror show it was back down to the ferry terminal to wait for our boat to take us back.  We got home at 8:10  pm.

 It's a really long day and we were exhausted.  Plus our lungs were full of exhaust smoke. 

Still, it's fun to visit my old stomping grounds once in a while.

When I lived in Seattle I walked and skateboarded all over the place nearly every day.  I know Seattle better than I know the town I'm living in now.

6 miles round trip with 200 feet elevation gain.

Marchantia polymorpha liverwort at Swedish Hospital

Sea Lions and Comorants

Me 25 years ago

Acrobatic Seagull

Hitch hiking to Portland on  I-5
I just knew their sign would say "Portland" even
before I zoomed in on it.  The hiker on the left looks familiar

My new Daypack

For the last several weeks I have been working on making my own hiking day pack.  I designed this pack to be a hybrid between my last two hiking backpacks, but with a roll top closure and a removable internal pocket.  This pack is smaller than my last day pack and hopefully stronger than my golite dawn pack.



DIY home made hiking day pack

The roll top closure will allow the pack to expand enough to carry two gallons of mushrooms or extra gear in the winter time.

I'm really not very good at sewing, especially by machine.  I learned so much about my old sewing machine and myself while making this pack.

Later I may post a step by step guide but for now I will just post a few pictures of my new pack and the process of making it.

I paid $5.75 for the materials to make this pack.  How did I do it so cheaply?  I recycled!  Oh wait, the word is actually upcyled.   The pack body is made from 72 denier ripstop fabric salvaged from the rain fly of my four season tent. (Eureka outfitter assault 4) The mesh I already had on hand and all the hardware such as clips was salvaged from other gear that I have tossed over the years.  I took the shock cord off two older day packs.

The biggest expense was the thread.  I used an entire 150 yard spool of thread and had to buy more thread before I could finish the project.  Most of the thread I bought is left over and can be used for other projects.  Here is my cost break down, not counting all the left over thread I have.

Thread $3.00 (Wal-mart)
Batting $.75 (from thrift store)
Elastic $2.00 (Wal-mart)

Final weight of my pack is 9.7 ounces, including the foam pad.  It would be lighter if not for the super heavy recycled oops, I mean upcycled zipper on the internal pocket.

After just a quick spin around town I found that I needed to redo the top stitching on all my pockets because the thread was breaking.  With that problem fixed I think this pack is ready to hit the trail.

Step one finally cracking open the owners manual for the machine that I
have had for 28 years.  Note that the spool of thread is in the wrong position here.
It turns out that the needle was also in backwards and the feed dogs
were not working at all.  I had to take my feed dogs a part twice to get them working.

Design took weeks

Tested my design with scrap fabric first

Front panel with pocket sewn on

The back and side panels with the side pockets sewn on

Side pockets, pad holder pockets and bottom of shoulder straps sewn on

 

 

Making the shoulder strap tops

Shoulder strap tops are ready to be sewn onto pack body
 all that is left after that is to sew the pack body together
and finish up the roll top closure

Time to load it up and take it for a spin around town

Next I need to test this out on the trail

 

upcycled zipper  on internal pocket is a bit heavy

Velcro inside pack to
attach pocket to



Velcro attachment on back of pocket

Update after taking the pack around town I redid the stitching on all the external pockets because the threads were popping. I thought I had fixed the problem by doing a zig zag stitch through the elastic.

 

 After taking the pack on a ten mile day hike some of the zig zag stitching was coming out on two of the pockets. I think my machine did not stitch all the way through the elastic or the thread is too weak.

I have now added very thick elastic (a bigger target to hit with my sewing machine) and I have both machine and hand stitched the elastic to the tops of the mesh pockets. I used much stronger thread for the hand stitching.   I also added reinforcement patches to the top of the front pocket on the inside.

I don't really understand why my thread was popping with a zig zag stitch.  Was the thread too week or did my machine have a problem?  My sewing machine is in need of repair.  The feed dogs hit the pressure plate and there is no way to adjust them that I can see.  It sews okay but after enough banging the feed dogs get loose and I have to tighten them up again.  They get loose due to hitting the pressure plate on the top of every stroke.  I don't know what the solution is short of filing bigger holes into my pressure plate.

Now with wider elastic and narrower shoulder straps

 The pack body and the shoulder straps held up just fine on my hike.  It was just little problems with the pockets that bothered me.

When I took this pack on it's first day  hike I carried my old Golite dawn pack inside of it as a back up in case of catastrophic pack failure.  But there was no catastrophic failure and I am now certain that this pack is trail worthy.

 

I always carry a needle and thread in my first aide kit so I can do field repairs to any of my gear.  Maybe I will add a bit more thread to my kit, but I don't think that I need to carry a back up pack anymore.

 

I also don't think this pack will need a hip belt.  Sure there is a bit of extra weight on my shoulders with no hip belt, but the freedom of no sternum strap or hip belt makes it so easy to shrug the pack off.  I think that freedom to shrug the pack off and the extra freedom around my hips with no hip belt make up for the extra strain on my shoulders.

 

One other adjustment I made to this pack was to cut the should pads in half lengthwise.  They were way too wide and were rubbing too much.

 

Lower South Fork Skokomish

Lower South Fork Skokomish River

I was not feeling motivated but I forced myself out of the house anyway. I hoped that I would feel better once I got out on the trail. I must still be sick, I never did feel any better.

My $405 brakes tried to catch on fire on the way home. Les Shwab is fixing them under warranty right now.

I think I have a sinus infection.  I also think I will ride the bus next time.

8 miles with 300 feet elevation gain

Lichen

Moss

Liverwort