I must be getting quicker because it only took me a couple of hours to hike the Pilot Trail to ‘Twin Falls’ creek. The creek bed and falls were dry, the pool at the foot of the falls was tiny. I remembered the spring box and spring I’d found further down ‘Twin Falls Hollow,’ so I gave myself half an hour to search for water before I gave up and hiked another three miles to Rock Spring.

Ten minutes later I’d bushwhacked down the hollow, found the spring, and there was plenty of water. Happy I’d secured my water source, I climbed up the hill to a spot I’ve camped at a couple of times before. I sat down and enjoyed the view for a few minutes before setting up camp. I’ve made a few gear changes, that seems to be the story of my backpacking life! I’ve changed the tarp setup, hopefully, it will no longer slip in the wet. It’s the first time I’ve set the new system and I took it slowly, working out the best way to rig it to make it easy to use in future. Besides the tarp setup, I have a new Dyneema food bag, rock sack, — a small sack you put a rock in to throw the food bag line over a tree branch — and a small pouch to keep my keys and wallet in. The rock sack surprised me. It was a lot better than the previous one I was using. I easily got the line over a branch 20 feet up.

Recently, thinking about my gear, I realized that my next step is to start simplifying things, removing anything unnecessary. It’s not so much weight as bulk that I’m looking at reducing. This trip I tried out a compression sack for my quilts. It worked fine, but I’m not 100% convinced that this is the way I want to go (yet). I really liked it when I was just shoving the quilts into my pack with no stuff sacks at all, and I have a new Dyneema pack liner to try out, which for some reason I didn’t bother to use on this trip. If you’ve not heard of it, Dyneema, is a very strong, lightweight, waterproof, and expensive fabric.