Muskoka River X

There are many options for eating well on trail so no need to chew on twigs and bark. Blueberry cobbler or pad thai? No problem. There’s a huge selec tion of dehydrated meals, and some of them taste pretty darn good. They come in handy packs: just add boiling water and eat out of the pack, so you don’t have to clean your camp plate. A cheap er route is do-it-yourself backpacking meals online. Coffee addicts rejoice: Instant coffee packs well and comes in single-serve packets. (Add half a pack of hot chocolate and you’ve got a mocha. My camping rule book says it’s totally OK to eat chocolate, because you burn so many calories each hiking day – woohoo!)

There can be backpacking times when you’ll be tired, sore and fed up and want to quit, but there are rewards for persevering. The sense of accomplishment is a big one. You’ll also see aspects of the natural world that only a small group of people will ever see, and that’s pretty cool. Just educate yourself so your fears fade and you are as prepared as you can be. Then you’re headed for addiction to the trail. Φ

A PERSONAL TALE The trail was hard and took way longer than By Shannon Peddell planned. So we left the trail hoping to make up lost time to the campground on a road. Bad idea. Blazing LET’S GO BACKPACKING, she said. It’ll be fun, heat, cars roaring past. she said. What we discovered was cheap tents leak, road

Backpacking is hiking and camping combined. You hiking sucks, and if it’s your first trip, whatever dis carry all of your gear, hike to a location, set up camp, tance you think you’ll hike each day, cut that by a third. sleep, get up, pack up, and repeat. But astonishingly after all of that, we didn’t quit.

When my friend asked, I thought carrying heavy Instead we planned a nine-day trip to Newfound camping gear for kilometres sounded downright mis land’s East Coast Trail. The cause of this apparent erable. I loved camping, and I loved hiking, but backinsanity was that after the Rideau Trail adventure was packing - a combo of the two - sounded like someover, we missed it. There was something to be said thing only for the super-fit or unemployed. for carrying everything that you need to survive in

So my friend recommended Wild: From Lost to the woods. You forget about material possessions, Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. work, commuting and the daily grind. You get to be And a strange thing happened. It made me want to what human beings are meant to be. We are built to learn more. I researched everything about backpack ing I could find, watched hours of YouTube videos, learned about knots and woodcraft until I felt ready for our first multi-day hiking adventure.

We wanted to start easy, so we planned about 100 kilometres of the Rideau Trail, nice and close to home. I bought a sleeping bag, a cheap lightweight tent and move and we have the minds to survive.

In short, backpacking had made me feel more alive than I have in years. After that, every morning I wake up planning to get back at it again. Backpacking may not be for ev eryone, just as running, or camping, or fishing isn’t for everyone, but if you are a few things to get by with before spending big bucks even slightly intrigued by the idea, try it. It on the good stuff. We planned and planned and finally can change your life . Φ the day came when my husband dropped us off at our starting point in Sydenham. We stayed our first night ~ Shannon Peddell is the editor of in Frontenac Park, but the second day … trailaddicts.ca