Lighten Your Load on the Trail
Workshop and Overnight Hike
Brown County, IN
August 13-14, 2022
Co-Trip Leaders: Leslie Green
Type of Trip: Food/Hiking
Trip Cost/Deposit: $65/$65
Cancellation Date and full payment: July 13, 2022
Wilderness Level: 2
Trip Difficulty: Easy/Beginner
Policy on Fitness Self-Assessment
Level 1: Applies to trips in which we carry only day packs and stay on maintained trails. Hiking distances range from 3-6 mile, and elevation gain can be as much as 2000 feet. You should be comfortable hiking 3-6 miles in a day with considerable gain/loss on good trails.
Group Size: 10/8 Maximum/Minimum
Adults and Youth 16+ with Adult
***Before registering***
While considering your participation in CIWC trips, be aware that some trips will involve shared transportation, lodging, and other activities. Each participant is encouraged to evaluate your comfort level with such arrangements based on your health condition, vaccination status, and unknown COVID positivity rates at the time of the trip. Members are encouraged to review the COVID waiver as a part of this evaluation.
Have you complained and labored with the weight of your backpack? Do you come home from a hike with a pack full of extra stuff you didn’t even use? Are you new to backpacking and don’t know what to bring? This hands-on training session will give you techniques, tricks, tools, and tips to reduce the weight you carry on the trail. Then you’ll put your new-found knowledge (and gear) to the test with an overnight hike. We will use some of the ideas of the ultralight hiking gurus without risking comfort or safety. This trip could be good for beginning backpackers that haven’t yet invested in equipment and can use the information to select the best, lightest gear. The session includes:
- Making and using your own alcohol stove cook kit
- Making a ditty bag of camp essentials at less than 8 ounces
- Making a personal first aid kit
- Determining your clothing system for various seasons
- Evaluating your sleep system and shelter system – examining options
- Evaluating water treatment systems and the lightest weight options for various situations
- Creating a menu that provides tasty, substantive nutrition and energy without weighing you down
- Learning what things weigh zero in your pack
The cost of the workshop and trip includes lunch, dinner, breakfast, and snacks; a new cook kit (stove, pan, lid, wind screen) that you will create, fuel for cooking and a ditty bag with toiletries & a first aid kit that you will assemble. You’ll also receive a resource guide that you can use after the trip.
We’ll spend the morning and early afternoon on Saturday in a location to be determined in Brown County and then take an overnight hike to the Fox Den on the Tecumseh Trail.
Questions may be submitted to ciwcinfo@gmail.com.
All trip participants must fill out and submit a CIWC Medical Form and Long Waiver Form.
Effective on all trips, there will be a $50 non refundable registration fee. This fee will be assessed to those who sign up for a trip, get on the roster and then later cancel. Even cancelling before the cancel date. Those who never make the active roster (i.e. those who stay on the waitlist) will NOT be charged the $50 cancellation fee.
