Yesterday I went for a short hike/trail run in the Kachess Ridge area northeast of Easton, between Cle Elum Lake and Kachess Lake. My modest goal was to summit both Mount Baldy and Domerie Peak, with a stretch goal of continuing further north along the ridge and perhaps making a loop out of it by heading south along Silver Creek on the return. Sadly, the mostly-sedentary dad lifestyle’s terrible toll on my fitness as well as the short window of opportunity meant that I had to turn around before even reaching the three-way point leading to Baldy. Nevertheless, I did learn a few things:
Gear
What Worked
The soft bottles on my Ultimate Direction Mountain Vest 5.0 are actually quite handy. They sit high enough where you can just lower your mouth onto the bite valves and suck, you don’t even need to remove them from the vest. Because they collapse, this works until they’re empty, no need to tilt them up as you would with a hard bottle. Still, I don’t think I’ll ever be hardcore enough to not want to stop to drink water, and I’m thinking about trying to replace the soft bottles with 500mL SmartWaters (after a weight comparison, of course).
To save grams and space, I placed my keyring inside my truck’s lockbox and kept just the lockbox key in the vest’s zipper pocket. However, I then had second thoughts about leaving the actual truck key with the truck and decided to take that as well. In any case, it was nice to not have the whole giant set of keys to lug around, although it did take a bit of time to get the ones I wanted off the keyring.
Oh, and the Hoka Speedgoat 3 trail runners are incredibly comfortable, and pretty grippy as well for being a used pair.
What Didn’t
The vest has a few flaws, although I believe I had noted all of these in reviews ahead of time.
The stretch pockets just below each soft bottle (open on the left, zippered on the right) are severely impinged when the bottles are close to full. This meant that I had to place my phone vertically, hanging half out of the pocket, in order to get it to fit. Not great, and then I became worried that it would fall out during the running segments and I wouldn’t notice, so I ended up holding my hand against it most of the time. The bottles also jiggle, which I think they’re not supposed to do, but that’s probably (hopefully) down to not dialing in the adjustments all the way.
Also, the pockets in the vest are not sweat-proof! I was surprised to find that the screen on my phone, which was facing towards my body, was drenched in sweat when I pulled it out during a lunch stop. I guess I’ll need to start facing it the other way.
Finally, the vest does not breathe very well. It became very apparent which parts of my skin were covered in vest and which weren’t, something I don’t normally notice with suspended backpacks.
While we’re on the topic of breathability, I don’t think the Hokas are as breathable as other shoes I’ve worn, my feet definitely felt a bit damp on the tops of the toes. I also wasn’t stopping for my usual hourly breaks due to the time crunch so that may have contributed somewhat.
I neglected to bring along my trekking poles. Due to the obnoxious steepness of some of the sections of trail, I actually wished I had brought them. First time for everything, I suppose.
What’s Next
I’ve ordered a set of quick release keychains so that it’s easier to get the minimal set of keys on and off. I’m also looking into an appropriate hard-sided replacement for the soft bottles in the vest, if only for comparison’s sake.
Photography
Only two semi-interesting photos on this trip, and both were taken with my Pixel 4a. Originally I was having trouble getting the raw photos off of the phone and onto my MacBook since I couldn’t get the Photos app to browse the phone when it was connected via cable and Dropbox’s Android app only seemed interested in syncing JPEGs. A friend recommended AirDroid, a multi-platform syncing and remote management app which makes importing a day’s worth of photos from your phone as easy as checking a box and clicking a button. So, now I have a viable path forward for getting phone-based photos into my workflow. I’m not thrilled with the results of the photos themselves but for faster trips it’ll have to do.