Trial for the Trail

On Friday, Tom, Andrew, Ashley and I will be starting our road trip out to Vancouver. We'll be working Friday morning, so we'll likely only make it as far as Revelstoke or Golden on Friday night.

The plan is to spend the remainder of Saturday (which we don't spend driving) and Sunday in Vancouver with Tom's relatives. After that, we'll be starting our four-day hike on the Juan de Fuca Marine trail on Vancouver island.

This weekend we had been planning to do a test hike to try out our gear. Unfortunately, after the car got busted up and I ended up with a hairline fracture, we opted to cancel the test hike so I could have some more time to heal. However, we still wanted to test out our stuff before we were actually on the trail.

So, we did some back yard prepping.

First, Tom broke out the water filter. When we hiked the Grand Canyon last September, there was potable drinking water at each of the campsites. They actually had pretty good plumbing in the canyon! Unfortunately, that's not the case with the West Coast. Any water we drink will be out of streams, so it's important to have something portable to get rid of sediment and bacteria. This is where the MSR Miniworks EX Microfilter comes in. It did a really good job when we tested in on tap water... Heh heh, totally drinkable!

Tom and the MSR Microfilter.

Next, Andrew and Ashley tested out the portable burner. Coincidentally, it is also an MSR product, the MSR Firefly! Once Andrew got a gigantic flame going, we boiled a pot of water with their new camping pots. It didn't take too long, and it didn't seem to use too much gas either. That's good-- because the gas canister is pretty big to bring along on the trail with us.

Andrew and Ashley with the MSR Firefly.

And finally, we pitched the tent. It's a... You guessed it! MSR tent! Because we're secretly spokespeople for MSR equipment. To bad they don't pay us anything...

Do you remember the tents of your childhood before collapsible poles had been invented? I have this memory of my parents' red two man tent. It was a huge production to set it up. When I was little, they would set it up in the backyard for us, and there were strings tied to trees and ropes anchoring the tent to the deck to get it to stand up. Then if you had to get up at night (say, to use the washroom), it was a veritable minefield of trip-wires getting around the tent!

Thankfully, tents these days are much improved. It took us less than 10 minutes to get the tent in standing order. The MSR Hubba Hubba is pretty awesome. We've heard and read a lot of good reviews about this particular tent, and we got an awesome deal on it at Atmosphere (formerly Coast Mountain Sport). It is lightweight, sturdy, and has good head-room!

Tom and I celebrate tent-pitching success!

So now we know that the water filter, burner and tent will work. The only question that remains is: Will my FOOT work by next week? I think it's probably at about 70-75% recovery, and I have 7 days before we start the actual hike. So I hope that will be enough time to heal up properly.

If I still can't hike properly come next Monday, Tom and I will probably do some camping from the car. The Juan de Fuca trail has multiple trailheads, so it would be possible for Ashley and Andrew to continue hiking, and for us to meet them along the way. Hopefully it won't come to that-- but at least we have the option.

Please think positively for me!