Words and Photos from Carl "Professor" Stanfield @prof_carl
Love backpacking but getting tired of ruining your gear with all that sweat? Stoked to spend days on end outdoors but can't stand all those itchy bug bites? Burnt out on all your quality one-with-nature-time being squashed by the never ending streams of other hikers? Well, boy, do we have a solution for you–shoulder season backpacking! As long as you can put up with a little more cold and a little less light, you'll be rewarded with a whole lot more of what you're out there for and a whole lot fewer of the pests you've become accustomed to.
WHAT EXACTLY IS SHOULDER SEASON?
I'm sure there are plenty of discrepancies out there for exactly what this mystical backpacking season is referring to, but for the purposes of my musings here, we'll use my own definition. Shoulder season is the ambiguous time/weather window on either end of the coldest winter. It's easy enough to get out backpacking in the late spring and early fall (in fact those are the very best times of year to get out backpacking in many places) but going out for a trip just beyond that familiar zone is where this aforementioned magic happens.
This is an amped-up version of spring and fall backpacking, halfway to "full-blown winter" on the difficulty scale. There shouldn't be much or any snow, and the temperature isn't freezing your nose hairs. You won't be breaking ice on ponds to find water or bringing a mallet to smash tent stakes into the hardened frozen soil. Still, you can expect freezing temperatures at night, and a high level of difficulty departing the comforts of a cozy sleeping bag each morning. This is trading bugs and severe sweat for icy condensation and numb toes. THIS is shoulder season.
CONSIDERATIONS
Setting out in this unfamiliar season comes with its own new list of backpacking considerations far from the minds of sweaty summer hikers. Along with the perks of escaping the heat and crowds come a laundry list of trade-offs. The most obvious of these is, of course, the cold.
COLD
In addition to "it feels cold outside," cold weather while backpacking means a major change up in a person's daily routine. To start, the day itself begins with the aforementioned dreaded sleeping bag emergence into frigid temperatures. In the shoulder season, this means not just your own body, but all the gear you needed to sleep with the night before as well. I'm not just talking about those extra layers you wore to bed, but the gear that you kept in your warm cocoon to keep from freezing during the night.
Most (all?) water filters are rendered ineffective if ever frozen. The water in the micro filter tubes freezes and expands, breaking the system from the inside in a way that is extremely hard to notice. The filter should still push water through just fine, but that water is no longer being filtered. Every day in the cold is a game of "don't let this thing ever freeze."
In addition to keeping the means of hydration unperturbed, electronics also must be kept warm at night. Cold temperatures deplete batteries: phones, headlamps, battery blocks, and even emergency communication devices. Right around freezing temperatures, most of these things won't take too much of a battery hit, but when things dip a bit more, fully charged cell phones can die in the middle of the night.
So, you're out of bed, your gear is packed, and you're on the move. Again, things are going to look different here. While you won't sweat as much as you do on a hot summer day, exerting energy will still make a person sweat. And now that it's pretty cold outside, that extra moisture on the body can become a problem. For that reason, thermoregulation is extremely important during this season.
It's ideal in this kind of weather to stay a little cool while moving in order to reduce the amount of sweat your body is putting out. You don't want to be shivering nonstop, but you also don't want to be soaking through your baselayer. Figuring out this ideal system takes trial and error, and is different for everybody. In addition to changing the factors of layering, a person can also adjust their hiking speed, which can be tricky for hikers with tried and true paces.
In between the hiking, during breaks, hikers also need to be mindful. It may not be comfortable to sit down for a couple hours during a chilly windy day, so location is now a more important factor in break spot selection. You might also want to throw on an extra layer or two while still warm to conserve that body heat.
And then, before you know it, the sun is down.
DAYLIGHT
Another tricky factor to get accustomed to is the lack of daylight. In the summer months, hikers get used to only having maybe 7-10 hours of darkness, exactly enough time to sleep. In the winter, things are backward, and now hikers either need to be ready for 12-14 hours of sleep or get real comfortable hanging out by the light of their headlamps.
And of course, with the dark comes more cold. So, during these seasons, daily mileages either need to drop or again, it's all one big headlamp party.
GEAR
Even without being full-on winter backpacking, there does still need to be somewhat of a gear changeup for shoulder season backpacking, which, in this case, will mean a heavier pack.
For one, you'll need to bring some more warm layers. Not a ton more necessarily, but enough to hang out and be warm in for a bit during breaks and at the end of the day for dinner at least. Your sleeping bag will also need to be a bit warmer, but again, maybe not so drastically different from a summer bag. I know I can stretch my 20-degree (Fahrenheit) bag pretty deep into the shoulder season, and I also bring the same bag with me most of the spring and fall as well. Ideally shoulder season backpacking stays above 20F, but you definitely wouldn't be wrong to pack a 0F bag.
The Good Professor and his Unbound 2 tent.
For tents, I find that single-wall structures become much more of a hassle when temperatures so much as flirt with freezing at night. Even the best ventilated tents collect an obnoxious amount of condensation. Still, I bring one with me most of the time, as long as I can reasonably expect to dry it out after two or three nights. They take a little more upkeep, but man, it can be hard to give up on the weight savings. There's a great case to be made for a double-walled, freestanding tent here, though. I'd say switching up tents for shoulder season backpacking is definitely worth considering, but not definitely worth changing.
LOGISTICS
Finally, beyond your time on trail, you'll need to take a look at logistics before even getting out there. Shoulder seasons are prime time for backroads to close down, campsite outhouses to get locked up, and shuttle services to be down until spring. There may even be notices of unexpected snow in higher elevations despite much warmer temperatures down low. But, because it's only shoulder season and not necessarily the dead of winter, you've got a chance at these services still being open. Just do your local research before getting there–even if you just hiked there a few months ago.
REASONS IT'S AWESOME
Now that all the hurdles have been cleared, we can get into what makes this season so special and worthwhile. If you're still interested after all the tricky considerations, we might be onto something here.
One of the biggest perks actually is the fact that it's less comfortable and generally more difficult to hike in this season. Well, at least indirectly. That extra difficulty factor keeps a lot more people bundled up indoors, which means a more remote experience for the hikers who are up for the challenge. All of my quietest backpacking is always in these shoulder seasons. And a lot of the time, it isn't even that much tougher to be out there!
Another one of my favorite perks is the lack of bugs. Mosquitos, flies, gnats, bees, ticks, and spiders all hunker down for the colder months themselves. You may still see a few out there depending on how deep into the shoulder seasons you go, but wherever you are, you'll definitely see significantly fewer of these critters in the colder months.
One of the coolest, most interesting aspects of shoulder season backpacking is how different the landscapes are. In the shoulder seasons, I've revisited places I had previously hiked in the summers to discover completely unrecognizable trails, particularly in areas with lots of trees. Mountains covered in foliage lend themselves to views impossible during the lush summers once the leaves have fallen. A mere inch of snow in a quiet forest creates a wondrous experience itself. Familiar, beaten paths take on completely new personalities and feelings in different seasons, bringing fresh excitement to worn-out walks.
GO GET IT!
Now, don't write off this season because it sounds uncomfortable, and don't take my word that it's all it's cracked up to be. Grab your gear, do your local research, nudge a buddy, and get a leg up on all those folks waiting for warmer weather for the adventure to begin. Experience shoulder season backpacking for yourself!
