So we tried ultra-heavy hiking...
A hot tent in the mountains!
Ever since we began long-distance hiking our unofficial motto has been, “when in doubt, leave it out”. This approach has served us well for thousands and thousands of miles on the trail. To cover long distances you have to walk all day, so anything you can do to make the walking part more pleasant is worth it. For us, this means leaving out luxuries at camp (like games) to make the walking part itself more luxurious by placing less weight on our backs. But what about when covering ground isn’t the goal?
We love the outdoors; it’s like an earth-sized puzzle. When we’re outside we spend our time trying to figure out why soil is the color it is, why certain plants grow in one spot but not another, what routes animals travel, and on and on. We even used to volunteer for the Wisconsin DNR to help count wolves in the state by finding their tracks in the snow. Decoding nature’s puzzle is why we go outside in the first place. Walking far let’s us soak up a lot quickly, but another way to absorb nature is to stay in one spot and look more closely.
So, we decided to give that a try! We slowed down and went on a base-camp trip, staying in one spot for two whole nights and using a hot tent to do it. A hot tent is like a regular tent, but designed to safely accept a wood stove inside and keep things warm and cozy. The first time we saw one was when we were walking from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. We were in the midst of two straight weeks of rain and were freezing cold. We walked past a tent with a chimney and a warm glow inside, right in the middle of nowhere. We were so jealous! It looked so pleasant, and we were so cold! For this trip we grabbed a lightweight[?] hot tent + titanium wood stove combo from Three Ridges and headed to the Sierra! (We couldn’t completely turn our back on our roots, which is why we got a light model, but the standard for light is different in the hot tent realm — our full tent setup weighed 12 lbs).
We skied only 2.5 miles into the backcountry to find a place to set up. On the way out we took our time by following animal tracks, snacking after only 1 mile of skiing, and searching hard for the ideal campsite. The spot we found was above a frozen lake and below a mountain. It was beautiful! Despite being only 2.5 miles from the parking lot, we had selected a direction that had us away from everybody. We saw no people anywhere near our campsite.
We got the stove lit and watched the temperature inside the tent quickly rise. It was 60ºF on the ground and 100º+ near the ceiling. It was very cozy inside. We spent our time cooking, talking, and absorbing the sounds. And slow was pretty much the story for the entire weekend.
On the second day we spent lots of time cooking a huge biscuits and gravy breakfast, we did a 5-mile ski exploration around the area, and then we went back to camp and cooked some more. Even though we only covered 1/4 of our typical 20+ mile day, a slower pace gave us more time to soak up our surroundings. It was fun fin! Back at camp, we spotted a marten running through our campsite. These guys are kind of like squirrels but they’re the size of cats, they’re elusive, and they’re rare to spot. We slept in on the third day before packing up and skiing the 2.5 miles back out to our car.
Tim’s pack was 44lbs and Renee’s was 33lbs. These things were HEAVY compared to our usual pack weight of <10lbs excluding food and water (or <20lbs fully loaded). But, that weight was only on our backs for 2.5 miles — then we dropped the packs and enjoyed camping! So we weren’t “ultra-heavy” for long, and the weight was totally worth it for the slower-paced trip.
No, we aren’t going to become ultra-heavy hikers going forward. But on the other hand, this trip reminded us that even we can enjoy a slower-paced trip from time to time. And the hot tent was SO FUN. We can guarantee we’ll be doing more of this type of trip in the future, especially in the winter time!
If you’d like to see more of the trip, we just put up a 48-minute video of the whole thing:
This is more our speed! We have a hot tent too (but haven’t used it since the baby was born…. Don’t trust the toddler and a hot chimney quite yet). We have a lot of ultra lite gear…. To justify our heavy open-fire cooking gear! Comes out somewhere in the middle. The elaborate camping meals are where we come alive.
Brilliant piece on finding the balance between distance and immersion. The way the hot tent flips the ultralight equation is fascinating - instead of optimizing weight for all-day movment, its letting weight buy time and warmth for deeper observation. I've always beena miles-chaser myself, but something about staying still to decode nature's patterns like thoose wolf tracks feels oddly harder.