[pct-l] Water Filters, trail journals, insoles

[Brian Lewis]

Water Filters: Stephen referenced the ULA Amigo gravity filter,
http://www.ula-equipment.com/amigo.htm
I carried that for the first ~700 miles last year, reckoning that in
the more waterless areas I might run in to more places I wanted to
actually filter rather than just treat --- as it turned out, I don't
recall many really sketchy areas there, but it worked fine, at any
rate, was even handy in one or two underground holding tanks I think
(?).    It's a fine system; mine weighs 7.7 oz (after I went
weight-geek and trimmed some excess plastic off the Katadyn filter
element).    I switched to chemicals (Aqua Mira) after that and was
happy with that approach too.

While there may be new water treatment systems in the works, I think
that in this too you can get the discussion you need on this topic via
a domain-constrained search of the PCT-L archives.

Dicentra opined that it's good to talk about food in trail journals.
I'm sure folks will talk about it to some degree, given how much
thru-hikers obsess on food (!), but maybe not a lot in terms of
specific recipes or ideas that worked well or didn't.   I think the
natural tendency is to talk about *town* food, or daydreams about same
...

Insoles: A couple of years ago I tried a set of insoles similar to
something described here recently, from REI if I recall correctly,
where you heated the insole in the oven then stood in the warm insole
to form it to the shape of your feet.  Seemed comfortable enough to
me, but I ultimately didn't put a lot of miles on these after I ended
up going to custom made orthodics.

One trick I tried and at least sometimes liked was to have two
different types of insoles.  I suspect this might be particularly
useful for the first few hundred miles of a long trip, before feet
have strengthened, toughened, whatever.   I used the factory insoles
from my Golite shoes (which I quite like), and alternated wearing
those with my orthodics.   At some point I just stopped caring as
much, but there were some benefits, including:
- after shoe is somewhat dry from stream crossing, can switch to a dry insole
- when shoes got filthy inside and out, and I want to put on clean
socks in an in-town setting
- neither insole "breaks down" as fast when only used ~half time.
Factory insoles normally are pretty flat by the time I'm ready to
replace the shoes.

The biggest reason, however, was if the different types of insoles
push on different pressure points on the foot differently, it might
help with foot fatigue.  Again, after a few hundred miles, it seemed
like I just didn't get foot fatigue any more (don't recall others
having that sort of foot issue either).  But for the first few weeks,
this might be a modest additional weight that's worth carrying.


Brian Lewis / Gadget '08
http://postholer.com/brianle