High Sierra Topix

Seven years ago I went on a six day trip in Sep. above 10K. Instead of my sleeping bag I stuffed my sons bag for a ten year old. It only came up to my armpits. I slept in all my warmest stuff but it was still a very cold sleeping trip. It's a good thing we had a tent.

I am the biggest idiot in the world. And I can prove it.

I left on a great road trip recently, and left my backpack with the food, $, and everthing in it on the chair be the door. I do it all the time.

I have a checklist I keep in my pocket, that I religously follow, and I still leave my camera, or whatever behind all the time.

So, no, I am the idiot...

I always pull out of the driveway thinking, "what is it I forgot this time?" I've forgotten my stove and even hiking boots one time, but the trips always worked out o.k. anyway. Over the years I've learned not to forget coffee & hooch - I'm pretty careful about those.

We have a list that we dont always check...and ´we do tend to leave most of our stuff in our packs, so that we know where it is. SO far, no real disasters. But we´ve come close.

I remember one trip when my wife thought she had packed the matches...grin.

We did find enough to get us through the trip, but with only a couple to spare. We now pack two BIC lighters..

I have had ridiculously long and detailed checklists back to before one could do so on computers. Then since spread sheets existed have been using them to organize checklists. On any trip longer than two or three days, tend to be religious about taking the time to methodically go through my lists because I learned decades ago it is so easy to miss an item or two that is important. It is on the short trips often spur of the moment however, where I have been burned because I often don't bother to take the time to adequately check everything. I know all about checking things because I'm an old electronic test tech and test eng that has been working so for decades. Written many elaborate test processes.

So I might return from a backpack then dump all my gear in a pile in the room where it all goes. Then a week or two later on the next trip in laziness just pick most of it up in whole bags and containers and toss it all in the car. Simply checking off stuff like fishing gear as the whole bag full of little stuff containing such without looking inside. Then later out on the trail after catching a couple trout, may suddenly notice I used up the ziplock bags on my last trip for carrying trout back to camp in. Duh!!! Or one of the SD memory card that had images from my G10 digital camera, is not in the camera but rather likely still sticking into a slot on my computer from when I had downloaded images a week before. Long list of ways to get burned that some of which is guaranteed to occur if I don't bother to check my gear.

A few years back returning from a morning hike in Lundy Canyon I passed two backpackers, one with thick curly hair, the other bald. Lying on the ground next to the only other car in the parking lot was a nice thick wool cap...jeez, I felt bad knowing that pack would be torn apart when the sun went down. I left it under the windshield wiper for all the good it would do him that night!