Mountain Preparedness

Tent Preparedness

About 10 years ago, I went hiking with my family on Labor Day weekend in the Bear Tooth Mountains in North West Wyoming.  The trail was called the Copper Lakes trail as the trail ended in the tops of the mountains at three lakes that were known to have copper embedded into a lot of the mountain rock nearby.  It is a beautiful hike.

We never stayed overnight.  Even at the end of August, the weather is harsh and too crazy for a bunch of kids to stay the night in, so we never carried survival gear.  We never carried a tent or anything of the sort.  We all had our own daypack with some food and fishing gear for the lake.   Again, we never planned on staying overnight.

This came back to bite us in the behind this particular year.  The hike takes about 2 ½ hours, which we all completed with ease.  As we all neared the top, storm clouds began to billow and my dad got nervous.  We were all dressed just fine, and we had coats.  However, we didn’t have backpack tents, and we were far above timberline to get any decent kind of shelter.  It started to sprinkle, and at that time in the afternoon, that meant it was going to get bad.  As the rain started to come down hard, we were all huddled close together when I remembered that I had a space blanket with me.  I didn’t think it would be big enough as I had never unpacked one before.  I quickly unfolded it and spread it over all of us.  This allowed us to stay dry as the storm only lasted 15 minutes and we were back to our hike and our fun afternoon.

What is the moral of the story?  The answer is to always be prepared when you are hiking in the mountains.  We were lucky the storm didn’t turn to deep snow as it can in that part of the mountains.  What are some things to always keep with you when mountain hiking?  Food, first-aid kit, tent, pocketknife, and extra clothing are just a few things you should always take.  Don’t bring the whole house with you, but the boy scouts have it right when the recite their motto ever week: Be Prepared.