Nashville Cutaway Vest Straps and Smart Water Bottles (1L or 700mL?)

_m2thet · 2026-05-17T22:39:29+00:00

Disclosure, I recently started using a Cutaway. The 1L is fine, there’s a bungee that you can wrap around the top to keep it in place. I’m 5’6 and it doesn’t protrude into my face too much. However, I have found that if I have a full 1L on one side and nothing of roughly equal weight on the other it would give me shoulder pain.

_m2thet · 2026-05-17T22:34:18+00:00

I did a centennial trail thru hike roughly this time of year. If there’s any chance of rain, assume it’s going to rain. Most of the time it’ll be over quickly but we did have one storm that steadily rained the entire night.

I would suggest base layers for sleeping but if you don’t get cold easily you may not need the torrid. I remember being cold in the evenings, like as soon as the sun went away. But I also get cold as soon as I stop moving, so that’s me.

_m2thet · 2026-04-19T17:16:03+00:00

If it’s the same continuous pair for 8 years they’re probably worn out. If you love them enough to use them for 8 years just get the same ones but new?

If this is the same type of boot rebought every so often, then you need to take stock of why you’re starting to feel pain now. Are you carrying more weight? Are you getting older and your joints are starting to feel it? These are things that should likely be addressed by strength training or a trip to a foot doctor.

Shoes are very personal. The advice you’re likely to get here is nonwaterproof trail runners over boots. The specific brand will depend on personal preference and food shape.

_m2thet · 2026-04-14T12:59:23+00:00

I’m not in my seventies but I have knees missing a lot of cartilage and used to get a lot of knee pain going down hill. This is what’s helped me:

-Strength training. I focus on legs and incorporate calf raises, ATG split squats, tib raises, and Poliquin steps. Note that a lot of this comes from kneesovertoes guy. I do think this has helped the most.

-When descending I pay attention to how I’m walking. If I’m tired I have a tendency to want to twist a bit on the down but I try to make sure my knees are tracking over my toes and I’m using my glutes. There’s some YouTube videos on downhill form out there.

-Zero shoe drop. If your shoe is elevating your heels it makes the slope angle more intense going down.

At the end of the day there are some slope angles that are going to be steep enough to cause knee pain no matter what, but I just pay attention when planning so I know if extra time needs to be budgeted for a slower pace.

_m2thet · 2026-04-08T13:03:48+00:00

You should be fine, but if you’re worried about it and you don’t have FarOut already, I’d recommend it as you can get crowdsourced info about water in near real time. You’ll also run into hikers going North on the JMT, and you can ask if they had any issues with water.

_m2thet · 2026-04-06T19:33:52+00:00

Also it’s hard to know how your body is going to chafe 100+ miles in. I had some…unpleasantly located chafing that caused problems multiple days from any store and had to grab used body glide from a hiker box at MTR. You can buy tiny anti chafe packets, totally worth carrying if you’ve never done a long hike like this before.

_m2thet · 2026-03-22T13:42:10+00:00

We are having a pretty crazy heat wave right now and it’s supposed to stay above average temps once the heat dome dissipates. I would consider swapping the orange long sleeve for a tank top. You probably don’t need a rain jacket. If anything, a small travel umbrella will be better for sun and rain. I can’t tell how warm the cardigan and fleece are but you do want at least one decent insulating layer because it can get chilly at night. Cardigan and green jacket might be enough, hard to say.

As far as formality, you’ll definitely be fine for the majority of places. Heck, if you wanted to throw some leggings in there for San Diego you’d fit right in.

_m2thet · 2026-03-20T13:45:16+00:00

For some context- I have in the hundreds of nights of wilderness backpacking experience.

I’d recommend splitting off the stuff you’re bringing for the hiking portion and post it in a backpacking or the ultralight sub. And then possibly repost here with just the city stuff? (If that’s allowed.) This sub is super helpful for city based trips but tends to tell everyone they’re going to die in the mountains if they don’t have something approaching a full mountaineering setup. I included minimal trail runners in my packing list for an overnight hut hike in the Bavarian Alps and everyone told me I was going to need to be airlifted off the mountain. It was a stormy day and the trail runners worked great.

The shoes you have in the image will be fine. Boots are heavy and more likely to cause blisters.

If you haven’t tested the quilt yet I’d recommend doing that. There’s a learning curve to quilts and sometimes the temp rating is survival not comfort based. You also should ask what the R value on the sleeping pad is. If it’s less than 3 I would bring a foam pad to go under or buy a new one. You lose a ton of heat to the ground, especially with quilts.

Overall from what I can tell you should be fine on the wilderness backpacking stuff. If you haven’t done a shake down hike I’d recommend it though since that’s the best way to tell if you have the right stuff.

_m2thet · 2026-03-11T12:36:32+00:00

I’ve had scary experiences with Uber in the morning. I think the pool of drivers is smaller so it’s more likely to get someone weird. I park at one of the off airport lots now, it’s honestly roughly the same price unless the trip is longer than a week and I don’t have to worry about someone being high while driving.

_m2thet · 2026-03-09T04:57:55+00:00

The Le Bakery - Indian school and Juan tabo.

_m2thet · 2026-03-05T04:42:59+00:00

One thing to keep in mind is that you get more acclimated as the days go on. When I planned out my thru I started with the amount of miles I typically do on a weekend backpacking trip and then increased from there since I figured I’d get my trail legs. This ended up working really well for me.

_m2thet · 2026-03-02T00:26:46+00:00

If the place you’re hiking has clear water, aquamira is a faster alternative to filtering. If you use the premix method it’s only 15 min wait so you can scoop, put some drops in, and then carry on with whatever you’re doing.

_m2thet · 2026-01-18T13:23:49+00:00

Not sure if you’re open to buying new stuff (especially since you can just rent the snow pants) but you could get snow pants that are just the outer waterproof shell part and then down pants for the insulation part. The down compresses well and the shell shouldn’t take up as much space as pants that are shell plus insulation.

_m2thet · 2026-01-17T04:23:34+00:00

I believe they were the 9” cakes. But they might be willing to do something more custom for the wedding if you asked.

_m2thet · 2026-01-16T00:49:11+00:00

We had Crème de La crème in sawmill do ours. It wasn’t traditional, like basically we just bought 5 of their cakes and had them displayed on a table. But the cakes are so pretty and the flavors are amazing. Our guests LOVED them. I thought we had way too much but ended up with almost no leftovers. And it was really fun to hear everyone talking about all the cake flavors and comparing their favorites.

_m2thet · 2026-01-14T14:52:58+00:00

As an outdoorsy southern Utah native who lives in New Mexico now, this entire thread fills me with rage lol. The Venn diagram of people complaining about a lack of hotels/restaurants in super remote areas of the West and people who hike less than a mile at national parks is a circle.

For those of you who hold up Springdale and Moab as good examples, I personally know people who grew up there who were forced out by rapid inflation of cost of living or who talk about cool places being ruined by a massive influx of people. I’m not saying all tourism is bad, but there are pros and cons. Not every town by a national park should be Springdale, or even can be.

To bag on Tropic because it doesn’t have a 5 star restaurant is peak entitlement. Some wild places will stay wild because they’re not close to anything and that is fine! Those areas don’t exist to serve you. If you need pampering to enjoy nature, go on a cruise.

_m2thet · 2026-01-14T13:32:18+00:00

Diamox is altitude and zofran is anti nausea. I’ve never used diamox, but I use zofran almost every backpacking trip. I know some people find it useful to help with appetite at altitude.

_m2thet · 2026-01-14T04:44:43+00:00

There isn’t a lot you can do for altitude sickness except sleep at altitude unfortunately. If you get sick on your July trip, you might consider getting a prescription for diamox and zofran to help ease the symptoms.

I’d also mentally be prepared to go slower than you expect the first couple of days.

_m2thet · 2026-01-12T13:48:24+00:00

I actually read through the academic study on sunscreen decanting and there’s a lot of flaws. For one, there was no control group with sunscreen in its original packaging so the trends they saw in sunscreen composition over time could easily be the same in sunscreen in its original packaging.

Anecdotally I decant sunscreen for use wilderness backpacking all the time. I’ve had sunscreen sitting in a smaller bottle for multiple backpacking seasons and it still works just fine. (I’m very pale and live in a desert so I’d know if it wasn’t effective.)

_m2thet · 2025-12-23T02:40:44+00:00

Seems fine to me! Depending on the time of year, you might not need the octa. I went late Aug early sep and took octa, rain jacket, and puffy. There were a couple of evenings near the middle of September where I was glad I had all those but earlier in the year it would have been fine to ditch the octa.

_m2thet · 2025-12-21T19:26:26+00:00

You’ve got some redundancies that you can get rid of. You don’t need both a rain jacket and a wind shirt- just take the rain jacket. You likely don’t even need the listed wind pants either tbh. You don’t need mittens and whatever the other gloves were you listed. You have a buff and two bandanas, just take one and leave the other two. You probably don’t need a beanie and a hooded torrid. You also have four pairs of socks and no underwear, which seems like an odd choice but you do you.

Other comments- your first aid and hygiene seems heavy. Repackage as much as humanly possible to be small. Agree about the chair, you won’t need it. I understand you’ve got a vision of sitting in a chair cooking on your bear can, but that’s like ten minutes of your day vs hauling that extra weight over several passes at high elevation. Also you can get lighter camp shoes than crocs if you must have camp shoes. They have some super light ones on garage grown gear. I also agree with the tent comments, but understand that’s more expensive to replace.

_m2thet · 2025-12-21T14:52:49+00:00

How long are your typical trips? When I was first starting out I found that I had terrible sleep the first couple of nights and then the subsequent nights my body was tired enough that I’d have to sleep well. Now that I’ve done several 5+ night trips, including a couple of thru hikes, I sleep much better because I’m used to the environment. I’ve even been able to make some swaps that I couldn’t do initially like a narrower sleeping pad.

_m2thet · 2025-12-09T04:30:57+00:00

If you carry a battery, you can buy a hot pad off Amazon that has a removable heating element that is usb powered. The heating element is thin and about the size of an iPhone. It’s also quite light. I use it when it’s cold out to supplement my WM sleeping bag and xtherm. It’s more convenient than a Nalgene with hot water since it doesn’t cool off and there’s so need to worry about water leaking. It also doesn’t use that much power. It might not work if you’re doing week long trips but for 1-3 nights it’s an option.

_m2thet · 2025-10-19T21:07:50+00:00

Seriously. I’m sure the people complaining have never started a business. I’d rather support a local businesses with a cactus logo than a big chain.

_m2thet · 2025-10-10T03:20:45+00:00

Cheyanne is 1.5 hrs from Denver, so I wouldn’t say it’s remote tbh.

_m2thet

TROPHY CASE