ALFRED SMITH aka PUMA SALAD PART 1 ~ THRU HIKING GEAR & TRAIL WISDOMS
“That’s why I love the trail. You’re kinda sitting inside yourself in a way and I think that’s part of the beauty of doing a long distance hike or any endurance event.
It gives you a chance to kinda fold into yourself a little bit.”
GEAR
MISC
• Mentrual Cup
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• Mentrual Underwear
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WISDOMS
FOOD
• Food doesn’t soak when it doesn’t get above freezing. So your meals are pretty functional in the terms of just providing you with energy (when you get into Washington late in the season).
THRU HIKING
• That’s why I love the trail. You’re kinda sitting inside yourself in a way and I think that’s part of the beauty of doing a long distance hike or any endurance event. It gives you a chance to kinda fold into yourself a little bit.
• If you want to thru hike you immediately become a professional hiker. That’s what you do every day. You wake up, you pack your shit up and you start moving.
• If you think your life is a crazy routine now living in the city, wait til you go on trail and it just becomes an even bigger routine…you walking like 26 miles every single day is a routine like none other. You waking up every single day and packing your bag is a routine like no other. Every evening you unpack everything. Setting your tent up is a routine like no other. Eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for six months is a routine like no other.
• Obviously you really dial it in when you start thru hiking. You become a perfectionist at your preferred style of hiking. It doesn’t take long, because a week in….things can only go in so many places.
• Me, personally, my sleeping bag goes all the way to the bottom to fill the bottom out. Then, after that, I will put my sleeping pad, I’ll fold it like a square, on top of my sleeping bag to create like a nice shelf. After that I’ll put my tent in on top of that. Then on top of that my food bag in to push everything down so it’s nice and tight. And then after that I put my clothes bag in and then that’s it.
• Taking it day by day and not getting to caught up on the outcome. Right, cause it’s not about…it’s about your journey. The starting and the finishing are just two points of measuring time and distance. Right. It has nothing really to do with your experience. Always remember that when you’re hiking. If you only make it 800 miles…always remember that had nothing to do with Canada. Canada is just this thing that doesn’t matter. When you get to Canada, what’s there…a piece of wood monument in the middle of the woods. It’s not like anything magical happens. It’s just another place in the woods and you’ve been in the woods; in the mountains for six months.
• Life is continuous. You’re either living or you’re not living. The PCT, Monte Blanc…none of these things are a vacation…It’s just my life.
• In your city life or wherever you’re coming from, that shit (your troubles) doesn’t just disappear cause you get on the PCT. You’ll bring it! If it’s something deep and heartfelt, you’re really going to bring it. Or let’s just say, it’s going to come…and it won’t even ask you. There’s no avoiding it at all, cause to go through anything you must go through it. So let’s go through it on the trail. Let’s face it every day. And let’s steep in it. Let it wash over you until it is gone.
• It all is what you put into it. You get out of it what you put into it.