equipment failures

I've taken a picture of a lovely open sore I acquired during the Blaine-to-Lynden walk. It got worse from Lynden to Bellingham. Will upload the pic when I have the chance, because I know you want to see it.

I didn't realize I had the sore at first (actually, there are two), but when a sudden pain flared up during my hot shower in Lynden, I looked in the mirror and saw the problem. The sore lies a bit below the region of the pelvic girdle and is the result of too much chafing. The chafing is due to a combination of factors, especially: (1) being overweight (thus having fat rolls where there shouldn't be any), and (2) wearing three belts that all get tugged downward by the weight of the backpack (upon reconsideration, I think it may weigh closer to sixty pounds). I wear a large leather belt to hold up my pants, then there's the belt pouch's belt, and finally there's the backpack's hip belt. That's a lot of strappage.

I'm lucky not to have more chafing in the armpits. The hip belt might be scourging my pelvic region, but it's definitely keeping most of the weight off my shoulders.

Here, too, however, fat plays a malign role. I have no real hips to speak of, so the hip belt is essentially hugging a cylinder. I have to tighten the belt periodically to minimize downward slippage, which increases the pelvic chafing but gives my spine a break from the constant compression caused by pressure from the shoulder straps.

Compression is an issue even with a hip belt. Yesterday, I left Lynden around 1:20PM and got to the Bellingham Zen center around 6:30PM (an hour's break to shop at Wal-Mart and grab some Chinese food = about 4 hours' actual travel time for 11 miles, or an average of 2.75mph with 50-60 pounds' encumbrance), but because no one was at the Zen center, I spent another three or four hours wandering the town in search of a place to stay (warning: the Blackberry's GPS navigator isn't always to be trusted: I called up one place listed as an "inn" and discovered it was actually a bar!). In all, I probably walked about 14 or 15 miles before I finally had the chance to take off my backpack. My spine felt fused.

While checking in, I had a, uh, liquid incident. I was in the lobby of the very nice (and rather pricey) Chrysalis Inn and Spa, where I had finally decided to check in. This had to be around 10PM or so. The front desk's computer was doing a night audit, which meant that I and another customer had to wait a few minutes. I had already unfastened my hip belt to allow myself to breathe more easily, but when I leaned forward with my hands on my knees to give my back a chance to stretch, water came gushing out of my Camelbak water bladder and onto the floor.

This wasn't really because of an equipment failure, per se, but I do wish the Camelbak had been stronger. I had strapped it to the back of my backpack and had run the drinking tube through the loops atop my backpack, thereby allowing me to reach up, tug the bite valve down to my face, and have a drink of some vinyl-tasting water. Alas, a few hours earlier in the hike, the pack had been riding high after one of my belt-tightenings, and when I tugged the tube down to my mouth, the bite valve simply popped off the tube. I was on the move and unready to set the pack down, so I went without water for those few hours, holding the useless valve in my hand. When I was bending over to stretch my back by the hotel's check-in desk, I'd forgotten that the valve was no longer on the Camelbak's drinking tube, hence the mini-deluge. The nice young lady at the front desk was very patient with me, I thought.

Since we're on the subject of equipment failures: you'll recall I had mentioned a problem with my backpack's sternum strap. My one-hour rest stop yesterday occurred by a Wal-Mart at the outskirts of Bellingham. I went in and bought a tough black nylon strap that now serves as the new sternum strap. It seems to be doing its job well, but we'll know its true toughness only with the passage of time.

In all, I'm impressed with the Gregory backpack, which truly does seem able to hold a mini-household's worth of belongings. It hasn't been tested by heavy rain or snow yet, but those conditions will be here before we know it. I am, however, disappointed by the early and ignoble failure of the sternum strap. Perhaps I should write to the Gregory people about the problem. Before the Wal-Mart pit stop, I spent some time in a bit of pain, especially in my left shoulder. For that, I blame Gregory.

So those are my three equipment failures: (1) my Camelbak's valve (not a major problem, and not a true failure); (2) my Gregory pack's sternum strap (a potentially serious problem had I been out in the boonies); and (3) my tender skin, of which you'll have a nasty picture soon. Perhaps even tonight.


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