Well, at least the end of the preparations for the Idaho trip. Unfortunately our great leader has a ruptured disk and won’t be able to make the full trip. He and his buddy (we all have a buddy) will stay behind and car camp at the Campground. The rest of us will continue on to the lake. It’s a bummer but at least he’ll get to enjoy some of it.

I think pretty much everything is falling into place. The last food order is due tomorrow. I normally prefer to dehydrate my own meals but I’ve had too much going on. I’ve been impressed with the Packit Gourmet selections I’ve tried in the past so I’ll be doing a blend of DIY, Mountain House, and PIG. Now to figure out how to carry all this food.

Tomorrow I also have a new fly rod coming. After I talked my buddy into picking up a Teton rod from Tenkara Rod Company I decided to pick up the Sawtooth for myself. I have a Tenkara rod already but it’s only 9′ and with the lake fishing I wanted the additional reach of a 12′ rod. I’m actually tripling down on the fishing gear. My philosophy is that you can never be too prepared. I’ll have my Sawtooth, a traditional fly rod (debating between the Sage 5-weight or the TFO 8-weight), and a super lightweight Daiwa spinning rod I got for my birthday. I can hear the fish trembling now.

I ordered a custom topo from through MyTopo. Hopefully that’ll be here early next week. It’s going to be so nice to have a the entire hiking area covered in a single map. Another added benefit is that I won’t have to waste time waterproofing a USGS map as I’ve done in the past since it’ll already be on waterproof paper. I’ve been spending my time boning up on my map/compass and GPS skills as well. As soon as the map arrives I’ll transfer key waypoints to the paper map.

The first aid kit is stocked and ready. I decided to pack one SAM splint. Hopefully I won’t need it and more importantly I won’t need more than one. 😉 I’ll just tell everybody not to get hurt. That should work.

I think the only outstanding issue is clothing. It’s hard to get accurate weather predictions in the middle of the mountains. The nearest forecast looks perfect with highs in the mid- to high 70s and lows in the 40s. How that’s going to translate to our mountain lake, though, I don’t know. I hate to overpack with clothing but I don’t think I’ll have much choice. I’ve decided I’ll probably take 2 different rated thermals and my down jacket. Heck, that’s light enough and packs up to nothing. Of course I’m not worried about life in the hammock. Down is a wonderful thing.

Well, that’s about it for now. I’ll try to get some pics up. Oh poo, that’s another thing. I really need to figure out what camera gear to take. I can’t see leaving the wide-angle lens at home when faced with gorgeous mountains. That means I need to figure out which DSLR to lug along. And the tripod. And batteries. Ugh. There goes my pack weight. But oh the memories. 🙂