Having dozens of small parks makes the small amount of protected space more reachable by people but it doesn't provide many trails long enough to be done over multiple days. That is especially true for the central Texas area, near Austin.

I have several backpacking goals this year and getting ready for them without any backpacking options nearby is challenging. One of those goals is to do the Lone Star Hiking Trail (or on Alltrails) from start to finish. That trail is roughly 98 miles and is usually done in 7 to 10 days. The trail passes through a few different parks but also crosses private land and sections even go along highways to string together a modest through hike.

While the LSHT is on my to-do list this year, I feel like I need a few warmup hikes, and one of the few within hundreds of miles is a trail that circles Lake Georgetown called the Goodwater Loop.  While I've done a ton of hiking, one thing I haven't done is 15+ mile days on flat land at low elevation. I've done a few 10+ mile hikes and even a few 10+ mile days in the mountains at elevation. The 10-mile hikes locally were fairly trivial. The 10 mile days in the mountains were barely survivable but they were also done when I wasn't in the shape I needed to be in.

The Goodwater Loop is my chance to see what a 100 mile through hike might feel like. Is 15 miles a day a good target? 20? 25? This is a whole new type of hike for me and I just have no idea what to expect.

This is also my chance to try out my cold-weather gear and my shoes. Sadly, my sleeping bag is bound for the closet since it is synthetic, doesn't pack down well, and is stupidly overrated for warmth. I have a new quilt ordered but it won't be here for a few weeks.

Wish me luck on my hike!

Night one was the first time I got to test my tent + sleeping bag + sleeping pad in a real Colorado mountains situation. The result was... BRRRrr! The Six Moons tent was great and had plenty of room even for a big guy. Setup was super easy, it had great protection from the wind, no moisture issues, and pretty much great all the way around. Aside from the weight being a bit heavier than some other options (45 ounces), this is the perfect tent!

Back to the BRRrr part though. The tent gets a 4.5/5 rating. The combination of a "25/40 degree" sleeping bag plus a budget Sleepingo sleep pad was a big fail. Even during the modest, 45-degree night temperatures, I was cold. The sleeping bag idea seemed decent on paper. It is a rectangle bag, not a mummy bag and one side of the bag is thicker and rated for 25 degrees. The other side is thinner and rated for 40 degrees. Perfect solution on paper as you can use it for summer camping or winter camping, right?

BUZZ... first off, sleeping bag makers still don't have a standardized system for rating temperatures for bags. Some list the temperature for their comfort rating while sleeping in boxers.  Some list the temperature as a comfort rating while dressed in thermal underwear. Some list the temperature as an extreme or survival temperature while dressed in thermal underwear + multiple outer layers. For this bag, that 25 number was definitely that last one!

At my test camp spot, the temperature got down to about 45 and during the night I got cold enough that I ended up putting on polar fleece pajama pants and my puffy jacket but with those two on I was just fine! Ok, problem solved. The sleeping bag kind of sucked but was easy to fix, I'll just have to take the polar fleece pajamas and the puffy jacket to stay toasty warm at night!

So I think this was a bit of blind optimism combined with some naivety plus a couple of beers with the camp neighbors making this really bad call. The difference between 45 degrees and dry after a warm day in the car vs 35 degrees and wet after a day of being chilled was WAY more than I planned for. I think a big part of the problem was not just my sleeping bag but the sleeping bag with a thin side (the 40-degree side) that was resting on a comfy but completely uninsulated sleeping pad. At my practice camp, I was on soft, dry ground that had direct sunlight all day and was fairly warm but on the trail, I was on packed, shaded, damp, frigid ground. I could almost feel it sucking the heat out of me right through the pad once I got on the real trail!

So, one night at elevation under my belt, check. The sleeping situation all squared around (in my brain at least), check. Spent the morning testing out my cooking stove situation and zero issues, another check! Packed up camp and put everything straight into my backpack and left camp to drive up the valley to Aspen. The reservation for the second night of camping was closer to Aspen so I could get an early start on Day 3 and get on the trail!

The drive-up Independence pass is slow but amazing. Lots of spots to stop for incredible vistas, waterfalls, meadows full of flowers, and even several historic mining towns. It is slow and windy and you WILL get stuck behind a mini-van going 10mph under the 25mph speed limit but it is still tolerable due to the views and the glory of it all!

I had been to Aspen but not for around 25 years. What I remember of Aspen was that it was a sleepy little mountain town with a few artsy shops and a bunch of ski lodges. 25 years later and Aspen is now completely overcrowded, has zero parking,  has what felt like endless rows of overpriced shops and restaurants, traffic is absolutely hellish, and I have zero intention of ever going back again if I can avoid it. Also, good luck finding a public bathroom. I managed to find one in the one, smallish grocery store and I ended up using it three times!

After about 3-4 hours wandering around Aspen, having a few slices of mediocre pizza from one of the few places that had outside/pandemic safe seating, I was done. Also, while I have been very cautious about Covid for the entire pandemic, I was trying to be SUPER cautious on this trip. Getting Covid would suck. Discovering you had Covid on a backpacking trip while 10+ miles from an exit, at low oxygen altitudes, and in the cold would be unimaginably bad!

By around 1 PM, I had decided I hated Aspen. I decided to go check out the parking situation for where I was going to leave my car. This is probably my least favorite thing for doing the Four Pass Loop from Aspen, the parking. There is parking at the trailhead but it has to be reserved months in advance and even then you have to get lucky. Everyone else has to pay to take a bus (during a pandemic!) to the trailhead.  That means you have o

After a ton of research, I found there were basically 3 common options. Option one, park at the bus stop that goes to the Four Pass Loop Aspen start and pay $45 a day for as many days as you're there. Option two, park at the ski resort 2-ish miles away, pay $25 but max 4 days and then walk or ride the bus to get to the bus to take you there. Option three, take your chances and park on the street or in worker lots for ski stuff and walk or take a bus to get to the bus to take you there.

Option 1, oof. Hard to stomach $200-ish just to park but man, sure is convenient. Also, not time-limited so you can stay an extra day if you want to. This is probably what I should have done. It would have been the least stressful even though it would have made my wallet sad. I usually pride myself on going cheap on backpacking trips (so I can spend all my money on gear instead).

Option 3, was too much risk for me. All the signs on places where people said to stay had big "WE WILL TOW YOUR ASS!" signs. Just couldn't stomach the idea of coming out exhausted, wandering to where my car was, and finding it had been towed.  The main spot people were suggesting was the Tiehack Parking spot and multiple people swore it was safe. Others said they got towed... tempting, as it was more convenient as well but I just couldn't stomach the risk.

So, option 2 it was! According to all the research I had done, the best option was to park in the Aspen Overnight parking at the Buttermilk Ski area and take the bus. I found a nice guide for the bus trip and it seemed fairly quick and easy!

While in the parking lot where I planned to park after another day of acclimating, I was searching on my phone for a place to grab some food that didn't suck. I was trying to figure out my afternoon and evening plans after discovering I hated downtown Aspen and it dawned on me that I could just start the hike a day early! The bus was still running for a couple of hours. I could just hike in and camp by crater lake, about 3 or 4 miles in! This made perfect sense at the time! Basically, skip Aspen and its insane crowds, start a day early, and get a head start on the hike!

While I was sitting in the car in the parking lot, thinking it all through, fate sent me a message and a car pulled up with two hikers in it. They started unloading their packs and getting ready.  Definitely a sign that it was a good idea! I jumped out, got my pack together, paid for 4 days of parking, and asked if they were doing the four pass loop. Sure enough, they were! I talked to them a bit and they both seemed like super nice guys. They were police officers from the Denver area and had both done a lot of backpacking including the John Muir Trail, a very difficult and long trail.

We talked as we walked to the bus stop and they were planning on doing the exact same trip as me! 4 days, 3 nights, and clockwise. Perfect trail buddies! After about another 7 seconds of thinking about it, I realized they were both from Colorado, had done a number of big hikes, were younger, and were bicycle police. These guys would HATE hiking with me because I would be so freaking slow compared to them! Ok, so not trail buddies but maybe getting to the trail buddies!

According to what I read, getting to the trail was a piece of cake, a straight shot bus ride to the village and then a bus ride to the trailhead! BUZZ! The bus routes in Aspen were all completely bonkers due to Covid. Fortunately, I was traveling with two assertive police officers who ran around talking to people until they figured out how to get us there.

Ok, so made it to bus stop one, got on bus one, made it to bus two, which took us to the ski lodge where you get on the real bus!  Making great time. Time to check-in for the bus to the trailhead! Whoops, my ticket was for the next day.  My hiking budies picked up theirs with no issue. I went up and said I had a ticket for the following day and they said no exchanging. I quickly mentioned that I was told I could swap it if there was room. The woman asked, "Who told you that?" I pointed to my new hiking buddies and said, "They did and they are police officers so I thought they would know." She smiled and exchanged my ticket! Friends with benefits indeed...  This also confirmed my suspicion that if I were ever a police officer, I would abuse my power endlessly for special favors.

So, finally on the bus to the trailhead! Relaxing 20-minute ride with a half-full bus. We finally arrive and depart and my real journey finally begins!

While I obviously survived the trip and I'm glad I did it, it was such a severe reality check that I was both discouraged and embarrassed. So much so that I didn't really write or post much about the trip until now. Now, a bit more than four months later I've recovered emotionally, and I'm back, twice as fired up about backpacking, blogging, and preparing to do multiple hikes in 2022. I'm also planning on doing the same Four Pass Loop hike again but this time, do it right. I'm also planning at least 3 other trips to New Mexico, Big Bend, and also an attempt at doing the 100 mile Lone Star Hiking Trail through-hike, possibly solo!

As part one of this blog details, I believed I was absolutely prepared to cruise through the Four Pass Loop hike! What could possibly go wrong? After all, I had all but done this same loop years prior. I would have easily completed it then but a friend developed severe elevation sickness after we had already done 2 out of the 4 passes forcing us to turn back. Back then I even took most of the weight off my friend's pack and carried it for him and still had no issues!

Lesson one, an "out-of-shape" 28-year-old version of me is still in a LOT better shape than a 53-year-old version of me that has been training and losing weight for 6 months. While I thought of myself as out-of-shape at the time, I think that was all relative. My brain remembered myself being out of shape but that was because in my early 20's I was playing professional racquetball and played on a water polo team. Around 22 or 23 I got a job as a computer game programmer and my fitness went downhill fast. Turns out that you can go downhill a LOT from being a competitive racquetball and water polo player in your 20's but still be miles uphill from being a 53-year-old who just lost some weight while getting in shape.

Lesson two, driving 1100 miles in one day has some risks. First, starting my trip around 2 AM is always risky. Not because I might fall asleep but because the creatures come out at night. On the previous trip where I started early, I hit a coyote at around 4 AM. No damage to the car but I don't think the coyote faired quite as well. This trip was worse though, I hit what I believe was an armadillo. I didn't get a great look at it and I was only going 40 but it damaged the underside of my Prius. I stopped when I got to a spot with street lights and whatever it was tore up the plastic air shield under the Prius. Not a huge safety problem except that it was dragging on the ground for the next 2000 miles of the trip and my mileage dropped by about 5 MPG.

Lesson three, and the second lesson I learned from driving 1100 miles straight as a 50-something-year-old was a more painful one. After driving for around 16 hours straight with only a couple of breaks for gas and bathroom, I arrived at my campsite before 6 PM with tons of daylight left. I reserved a beautiful spot at the Lakeview campground at the base of Mount Elbert, the tallest 14'er in Colorado! I pulled into my camp spot, jumped out, took a deep breath, and then went to unpack. I opened the hatchback, grabbed my big box of camp stuff, and yanked it out! Bad idea, POP! Due to being super tight from driving for so long and not stretching after stopping, I managed to pull something in my back... right before a big hike. Major oof... fortunately, due to this being the "age of getting things done", I was prepared and had some Icy Hot and ibuprofen. My back was still super tight and painful the next morning but tolerable. This did bother me most of the trip but fortunately not while hiking since it only hurt when I bent over. It did make the evening tent setup and crawling into it a much more challenging adventure.

The best part of the evening was that the campsite next to me at the campground had a super nice group at it. Two friends, who were both surgeons, and their family had a nice setup and cooked me a bison burger with sides. I repaid them by sharing a six-pack of Stash IPA beer from Austin and spent the evening talking (at a distance of course) about Covid, politics, remote learning for kids, backpacking adventures, Colorado, and Austin.

So day one, drive 1100 miles,  3 gas/bathroom stops, hit an unidentified varmint,  pulled my back, made camp to test out gear, made some friends, had a beer, ate some bison, and tested out my sleeping gear in cooler weather for the first time! Now on to part 3!

Despite my age and various ailments, my confidence was very high that the hike would be a piece of cake! Fueled by the goal of completing this hike I lost around 25 pounds over the 6 months leading up to the hike. Sadly, I need to lose around another 20 to get back to an optimal weight. Still, my logic was that if I lost 25 pounds and I can keep my pack weight under 25 pounds then it will be just like I was just walking the trail without a pack on 6 months earlier!

While I stopped backpacking due to job requirements, and an amazing wife who isn't a fan of the idea of sleeping outside, I never stopped hiking. In fact, my wife loves hiking and we average around 20 miles of hiking a week even when not in training mode. To prepare for the trip, we had been doing our usual, 3-mile hike almost every day but occasionally mixing in a few 10-mile hikes as well. My plan was to do the hike in 4 days and 3 nights. It was about a 28-mile hike so that means I only had to do 7 miles a day! Piece of cake, right?

With my weight loss, even a 10-mile hike with a 30-pound backpack felt trivial. Despite living in what is frequently called "the hill country" there are very few trails with real elevation changes on them to do some real training. My neighborhood has what we think of as a BIG hill in it but in reality, it is only around 130' elevation difference from the bottom of the hill to the top. So big by Texas standards but trivial by real hike standards.

We also have a hike here in Austin that had decent elevation gain, the Riverplace Trail. This is a 5.5 mile out and back hike with a whopping 823' of elevation change. My goal hike had around 8000' elevation change BUT that was over 4 days.  I hiked this several times with a 30-pound pack and my only real suffering related to doing the 5.5-mile hike was the Texas heat.

Also, as part of getting ready, I decided to drop some money on a few pieces of lighter gear. First up, a new sleeping bag! I'm a big guy at 6'3" and 220 so new camping gear is always a challenge. Probably pushed by the desire to keep weight to a minimum, all gear seems to be built for people 6' or under. My old bag was a cheap sporting goods store Slumberjack 30 degree mummy bag. Weight, about 4 pounds AND I knew from prior experience that there is no way it was warm at 3o degrees. I was expecting temperatures around 40 degrees on the trip so I started looking for something for tall people in the 2-3 pound range. As luck would have it, REI was having a garage sale and there was a long Exped 25/40 bag in the returns section for $75! Weight, 2 pounds 3 ounces, good down to 25, and bonus, it wasn't a mummy bag which I really wanted as I change positions a lot during the night. Bam, $75 to drop 2 pounds of pack weight and got a warmer bag to boot!

Next up, the tent! I had a couple of tents. One was a lightweight 2 1/2 pound tent that was practically a bivvy. While it was not a bad tent, I hated how claustrophobic it was. Also, on one of my last trips, I had foolishly left an empty power bar wrapper in the tent and a small rodent tore a hole in the tent to get to it. My other tent was an REI 2 man from around 20 years ago. It had enough room if I laid at an angle but weighed about 4 1/2 pounds. After researching tents a bit, I decided to go for Six Moons 2 person tent. Weight was around 3 pounds and it had plenty of room even for tall people! It is a hiking pole tent which I was fine with as I had fallen in love with using hiking poles. Another 1 1/2 pounds down for not a ton of money. The tent does need a footprint though which brought things up another half pound.

Next up, backpack! I had a fairly light backpack from 20 plus years prior but it was super uncomfortable. Weight was around 3 pounds, it had limited storage, and was effectively frameless. It had a frame but it was super flexible and didn't offer any real support. After doing a bit of research, I went and tried the REI Flash 55 and it was love at first sight! After stripping it down to just the basics, the large-sized pack weighed in at around 2 pounds 3 ounces, had tons of pockets, was super comfy, and even water resistant! $199 but 10% back from REI and you know REI will stand behind its products!

Next up, sleeping pad! My old sleeping pad was a super old Therm-a-rest self-inflating pad. It was not horrible but nowhere near thick enough for a large side sleeper like myself. As a bonus, it also weighed around 3 pounds! After investigating options, it seemed that there were basically two categories of pads. First, you had the good ones that were what I considered super expensive for a pad at $120-250 but offered lightweight, comfort, and even insulation. The second category was a sea of knockoffs and clones that were all in the $30-60 range but had mostly good reviews. I ended up going with the most popular clone option, a $30 Sleepingo pad. Not perfect but pretty decent for a side sleeper and only 1 pound! Bammo, another 2 pounds off my pack!

I already had a fairly lightweight stove (3 ounces), a 1.2-liter titanium pot (7 ounces), and I bought a 2.6-ounce collapsible cup, a fresh 7-ounce container of gas,  a long handle spoon, and declared that my cook set was ready for action! I threw in a small fireplace lighter and a container of weatherproof matches and called it done!

In the old days, we used pills for water purifying, and apparently this is not what the cool kids do these days. After some more research, it seems the majority of people are in one of two camps. Either they use a Sawyer Squeeze or a Katadyn Befree. Fate made this choice for me as there was a Katadyn Befree in the returns pile. It was unused and the return reason was "Too complicated". I'm not sure how this person thought that it was too complicated but whatever, their loss is my gain. Water filter acquired and for under $20! Weight, under 3 ounces with its collapsible bottle! I had read a few people who had sprung leaks in their bottles so I bought a backup bottle that was compatible and holds 2 liters and weight another 3 ounces.

For clothing, I took 3 pairs of cheap wool socks off Amazon, the budget puffy jacket from REI, a pair of "adventure pants" from REI with legs that could zip off and convert to shorts,  long sleeve Columbia fishing shirt, sun hat, polar fleece tube for my head, 2 pairs of underwear, and a short sleeve sleep shirt.  For shoes, I wore my trusty Oboz heavy-duty and waterproof hiking boots and took my new pair of Altra Lone Peak 4.5s as water shoes, camp shoes, and backup shoes.

For food, I bagged up 4 days' worth of food, about 4000 calories a day. I'm a big guy and that is about what I expected to burn if not more. Four Mountain House meal bags, one Mountain House Biscuits and Gravy, two meals of oatmeal with brown sugar and hemp hearts, twelve power bars, eight three-ounce bags of trail mix, and a few other snacks. In all, about six to seven pounds of food that I threw in my official kevlar "bear bag", which was required for the hike.

Due to various injuries, work situations, and the pandemic, none of my usual hiking buddies were able to join me so I was doing this trip alone. Since I own my own business *cough*go play Shroud of the Avatar *cough* and have to always be in touch with the team and because my wife was worried, I dropped a few hundred dollars on a Garmin Inreach satellite communicator. This lets people back home track your location in real-time and it also lets you send text messages even when off the wireless phone grid.

I know it sounds crazy, but I don't mind driving long distances. I've got a fairly new Prius that gets 50 mpg and is super easy to drive long distances. The drive from Austin Texas to Aspen Colorado is around 1100 miles. No problem, get up at 2 AM and drive it in one day and get to a campsite near Aspen at 9000' elevation before dark! Spend two nights there to acclimate and then BAM, hiking time!

I sure felt ready. Weight loss, check. Training, check. Gear weight reduction, check. Food, check.  Did a test camp in my backyard to verify everything was groovy and ready to go! Also planned to do another test camp at elevation for two nights before heading out on the hike to sanity check temperatures and clothing. Test camp in conditions similar to the trail, mostly check. Nothing could possibly go wrong! Insert narrator's voice here saying "Oh, but things did go wrong... terribly wrong."