Outdoors

Sleeping bag liners for camping? My friend Dion made fun of my “poor excuse for a sleeping bag,” but it kept me warm as the temperature dropped to the low forties, and it weighed only five ounces. We were camping on the banks of the Manistee River in Michigan.

So, how did it a sleeping bag liner keep me warm? The real secret was the fifteen minutes we spent gathering dead, dry bracken ferns to build a two-foot thick mattress. We set the tent on that. Then, in my liner with all my clothes on, I was fine. Actually, I’ve rarely slept as well camping as I did that night.

Using Sleeping Bag Liners Instead Of Bags

You can buy light sleeping bag liners from Campmor and other suppliers, or do like I did. I sewed a simple one of bargain-bin nylon material ($1/yard) obtained at Walmart. Buy the lightest nylon or polyester material you can find. Depending on what you use and how big you make it, it should weigh between four and nine ounces.

I found I could stay warm with a light sleeping bag liner in autumn, at a few degrees above freezing, so this strategy should work well for summer nights in the sixties. Be careful, of course. It could be dangerous, or at least uncomfortable enough to ruin your trip. Test this strategy near home, and know yourself and your enviroment.

You may want to learn a few tricks for staying warm if you try this strategy. When it isn’t too humid you can breath in your bag, for example. Many backpackers will tell you not to do this, because you’ll be damp in the morning, but in a dry enviroment you’ll dry quickly once you hit the trail. Spread the liner out to dry during a break.

Just as I did the first time, you can also use a mattress of dried plants. Use dead leaves, palm fronds, grass, cattail leaves, some softer tree barks, etc. A mattress of this sort insulates you from the ground, which normally takes away much of your body heat. Scatter the leaves in the morning so they won’t smother the plants underneath.

Try to go to bed warm. If you’re warm when you get into your sleeping bag, you’re more likely to stay warm through the night. If you start out shivering, it’s difficult to warm up, especially in a thin bag.

More tricks for staying warm: Hot tea before going to sleep… Exercise a bit… Cover yourself with extra clothes… Elevate your feet slightly… Go to sleep earlier or later. Experiment to see what works best for you.

These are options, but not recommendations. I’ve gone out with nothing more than a bivy sack in my jacket pocket, but I’m not recommending that either. This is just to present all the possible options for the ultralight backpacker. One of those options is sleeping bag liners.

Hiking clothes and backpacking clothes need to function to a higher standard than everyday clothes. That’s why they’re often more expensive. Shop all the sales you want, and you will save money, but that extremely expensive waterproof/breathable coat will only be marked down to “very expensive.” Time for some more radical ways to find cheap hiking clothes.

Consider what you really need for the trips you have planned. If you’ll be scaling peaks in Patagonia for a month, you may have to stick with the best sales you can find on the high-quality stuff. If, on the other hand, your trips are fair-weather overnighters, a two-ounce, two-dollar plastic poncho isn’t out of the question.

Even on the more extreme trips you can often find cheaper alternatives. Did I take a $400 waterproof/breathable rain suit to the top of 20,600-foot Mount Chimborazo? No, I took my papery Frogg-Toggs rain suit. You’ll find these at golf shops, and yes it’s waterproof and breaths well too. It cost me $49 for the set, and I have used it for years, on many rainy trips, with only one duct-tape repair.

Do you like to hike in running shoes, as I do? Start watching the sales on out-of-style shoes. I’ve bought brand-name $90 shoes for just $25. With savings like that, I’ll gladly be out of style.

I stopped getting blisters when I gave up on expensive, high-tech, too-hot hiking socks. I hike thirty miles now without a blister in comfortable, lightweight, white nylon dress socks. They’re less than an ounce and about a dollar per pair.

Buy Used Hiking Clothes

The only hiking clothes I won’t buy used is footwear. Other potential backpacking clothes are worth checking out whenever I find them at a rummage sale or thrift store. I’ve found a Goretex rain jacket and North Face vest at a thrift store for a few dollars each. My thrifty used wool sweater weighs just 11 ounces, and is almost as warm as the newest models.

One of my favorite thrift store discoveries was silk shirts. I learned that they weigh just tree ounces, and show up on the racks regularly for $3. They are comfortable too, though on the trail some of the styles make me look like I’m searching for a wilderness disco.

Making Hiking Clothes

I can’t recommend sewing your own hiking and backpacking clothes, but I have made a few simple things. The sleeve from an old thermal shirt became a one-ounce ski mask with scissors and three minutes of sewing. Socks with finger-holes make nifty hand warmers. As an insulating layer, I wore a four-ounce piece of poly batting like a tunic under my Frogg Toggs, to the top of Chimborazo and other mountains. Finally, without too much sewing, you can often modify clothes to make cheap hiking clothes.

The Pacific Crest Trail runs over the mountain ranges dividing the west coast and the rest of the nation. There is a lot of history tied to the trail and it offers great hiking.

Pacific Crest Trail History

Running from the border with Mexico to the Canadian border, the Pacific Crest Trail was used by settlers in the 1800s looking for the good life in California, Oregon and Washington. This 2,500 mile trek offers a variety of environments including burning hot deserts and mountains peeks stacked up one after the other. Since most settlers came from the north, the trail area they encountered was definitely of the mountainous variety. While hikers of today will find it a beautiful and challenging trail, one can be sure many of the settlers had other opinions.

Ironically, the Pacific Crest Trail is really a relatively modern name. Prior to 1993, it was known as a general collection of trails running the route with parts of such trails as the John Muir Trail included as sections. If you could travel back in time, a settler would be baffled if you started talking about the trail.

Pacific Crest Trail From Here to There

Running from border to border, few hikers have every tried to hike the entire trail at one time since we often have to do this odd thing called work. Nonetheless, a trip from Mexico to Canada would take you along the following path.

Having paid your bills a few months in advance, you would head to the U.S.-Mexico border just to the west of the town of Campo. There you will find five wood planks set up in an unremarkable patch of scruff indicating the beginning of the trail. Staring to the north and remembering those boots are meant for walking, youre ready to go.

Winding north, youll pass through the mountains over Palm Springs, stagger through the Mojave Desert, walk the peaks of Kings Canyon, brush up to the west side of Lake Tahoe and finally head into Oregon by walking along the I-5 freeway. Along the way, youll stroll by Mt. Whitney and through Yosemite National Park. Not bad, eh?

Once in Oregon, youll cut to the east through Ashford and then head due north. Next up will be Crater Lake and the Three Sisters mountains followed by the old lava field area. Youll leave Oregon by crossing the Hood River near White Salmon, Washington.

Heading into the final stretch, youll shoot straight up through Washington to the east of Olympia and Seattle until you hit the Canadian border just below Manning Park. It is long, long trek and Im tired of typing it much less walking.

The beauty of the Pacific Crest Trail is you can spend weekends hiking small, scenic sections of it. In California, the trail sections through Kings Canyon are simply stunning and will leave you in awe of Mother Nature.