gearing up

i picked last saturday to make my second attempt that the ricker 3400 geocache.

the weather was warm, and the number one chair running, so it seemed like a good time to go.

friday i went up there and checked the snow conditions. 

at home i checked all my gear, unpacked and repacked everything and made test runs of putting it all on.

because let's face it, you might only be walking .16 of a mile, but it's going to be rough terrain and on the outside chance something happens you will need to know for certain where all your gear is and have practiced with it recently because an emergency is NOT the time to find out that one of your snowshoe bindings has a kink in it.

this is particularly important if like me, you habitually travel alone. what might be a small inconvenience for three people travelling in winter can become an a-number-one crisis for a person travelling alone so it's best to go well-prepared.

this is my gear spread out.

spare gloves, hot, headband, snowshoes with crampons, ski boots, dry bag, water bottle, emergency bag, contents of emergency bag, food, shovel, and freshly waterproofed hiking boots.

it's worth going over what's actually in the emergency bag. 

there's a ziploc bag with hadwarmers in it, and i have checked handwarmers from this batch to make sure they are fresh enough to work. you might think of it as a waste of resources to tear open a perfectly good package at home just to see if they're still fresh, but  those things have a limited shelf life and unless you buy them new every time you go out you should test them periodically.

there are assorted energy bars and fruit snacks. it's not a meal, but will do in a pinch. for a longer hike, an actual emergency meal would have been packed as well.

there's a ziploc bag with four emergency candles some packages of firestarter, and a working lighter. outside this ziploc there's also a spare working lighter.

when i say "working lighter" understand that i have tested it.

i also have one of those sliver emergency blankets. they don't look like much, but they are very handy in an emergency. one of them can very well make the difference between you coming down fine and you coming down dead.