I was leaning over the back of my boat, trying to start the outboard when my watch popped off and dove in. Within seconds it had slipped beneath the coffee-colored water and disappeared.
Thus began Life After Fitbit.
When the watch was gone I felt badly but not too badly. One of my daughters was right next to me – she’d arranged it as a group gift for someone (me) who doesn’t want anything but can’t get enough of fitness gizmos and data. That’s the part that made me feel bad.
On the other hand, literally, it was a relief of sorts to lose the watch. I write about data brokers hoovering up personal info online so I know that extensive amounts of biometric data collected by the maker of Fitbit is a goldmine. In fact, the company probably was interested in collecting personal data when they dreamed up this watch. I can just imagine the marketing meeting:
“We make a watch that monitors the wearer’s heart rate and calorie burn, and people will give us all of their personal information just to use it. And they’ll pay us, too!”
“Nah, no way. Nobody’s that dumb.”
Well surprise, surprise, Google saw the potential in Fitbit and paid more than $2 billion for the company. They’re not in the business of just helping folks trim their waistlines through data.
Honestly the watch was a bit of a pain to use. Yes, it tracked my calorie burn, the number of hours I slept, my location, and a lot about my activities. Getting it to start tracking and stop tracking when I was biking was a pain – and only worked correctly about half the time. Still, that was comparable to my Garmin watch and chest strap heart rate monitor, which frequently left gaps in my tracking data due to a poor fit (sorry, I was breathing at the time).
Last summer I had to step back and wonder WTH I was doing when I left on an average weeknight ride with a Fitbit on my wrist, a heart rate monitor on my chest, and a similarly aggravating Garmin Edge mounted on my handle bars (I’ll have to write about the latter cluster sometime – don’t buy an Edge until you read it). Really, how much personal tracking data is really necessary, and is there a point when the ride or run or hike becomes more about the numbers than the enjoyment?
Over time I completely stopped trying to track my activities on the Fitbit and just used it for overall calorie burn and general activity levels. Under these conditions I decided it had benefits. I learned that my sedentary days resulted in only about 1,600 calories burned, but if I biked 8 miles it easily shot above 2,000 calories. And when I was skiing hard last winter I saw my heart rate top out at 182 bpm without passing out or bursting my aorta, which was kind of cool.
As a woman of the 80s for whom dieting was a complete lifestyle, I’m here to say that a fitness tracker isn’t the only tool you need to lose weight if that’s your objective. I actually gained weight while skiing my arse off last winter, watching my daily calorie burn soar above 2,200. That’s because I came home and shoveled pasta in my mouth — although I was eating fewer calories than I burned it was the wrong food at the wrong time. I’m not sure there’s a tracker that will jump between the fork and your mouth to prevent dumb decisions like that.
Still, $10 a month for monitoring is a lot to spend to have a machine tell me “get up and keep moving” and I have unanswered questions about how it recorded 11,000 steps one day aboard a sailboat. Seriously.
Now that my wrist tan has filled in and I’ve been a couple weeks without my tracker I wonder how many calories my Fitbit is burning on its swim? Bon voyage.
Alaska is remote and unfamiliar to many of us, so we feel like we have to take absolutely everything we might need just in case there’s no place to pick up gear when we get there. That’s a mistake. I suggest going as light on gear as possible. In fact, my trip improved the minute I dumped a deadweight boyfriend!
Seriously though, my hiking partner and I planned and trained and made lots of lists with the mindset that we’d be far out in the wilderness without resources. That’s not a bad thing, because we were both looking forward to completely unplugging from society and getting serious about our gear helped us cut ties, at least temporarily, with our normal lives.
Anchorage was our jumping off point for all three legs of the trip. It’s a well provisioned city, including a large REI store, some used gear stores, and a big Bass Pro shop. Unfortunately we went shopping almost as soon as we arrived. Bass Pro supplied a lightweight daypack for me, lots of freeze dried food, and monoculars for sighting wildlife. Oh and yeah, bear spray.
The food and daypack were really necessary as the pre-trip packing fell a bit short. We planned for four days at Twin Lakes where we’d be hiking and there was zero opportunity for scrounging provisions. We had one large bear safe for storing food, so everything that had any scent (think toothpaste, chapstick, lotion, and all foods) had to fit in that container. It seemed big when I first got it but planning for four days of meals for two of us made it shrink quickly.
Gaiters, trekking poles, hats, bear spray, a frying pan .. a fishing pole … what’s your essential gear?
Worried about taking the right gear? Beyond the obvious, gaiters were great to have, day packs and bear spray were a must, and a frying pan would have been nice but we were able to borrow one rather than having to carry it.
Our food planning wasn’t stellar. One day after a long hike I actually ate dry tuna mixed with peanut butter. Mmmm! I got anxious when counting our tiny sachets of instant coffee. We shared a large freeze dried dinner each evening. Fortunately we also brought fishing poles and reeled in two good-sized fish to be cooked over the fire. That made a big difference in stretching our food supply as well as just giving the freeze dried food a break. It gets old real quick.
What kinds of things did we pack and bring?
MSR Pocket Rocket stove, 2 large white gas cans (plenty for 4 days), one pot and one set of cups/bowls.
At least one large Mountain House freeze dried dinner for each night.
A large “tube” of peanut butter (flexible packaging allows more to fit in the bear can).
Lots of little instant coffee sachets and a ziplock bag of instant capuccino.
Foil packets of tuna.
Rice, plain oatmeal in ziplock bags (cooked oatmeal mixed with peanut butter is a great breakfast)
Miscellaneous Larabars and protein bars (plan for 2 each per day)
“Freeze dried” granola with blueberries for breakfast (best with warm water!).
What’s not here? Bread or crackers. They just couldn’t be squished into our food container. Most fruit and vegetables were also impossible to take (but we’d try to make up for it when in town). Some dinners had freeze dried veggies but our favorites were Pad Thai and Lasagne, as both were flavorful and plentiful. Thumbs down for any freeze dried egg product for breakfast. Yuck!
Eating this way for a couple weeks changed me. There really was no snacking unless we were on a long hike and nibbled on an extra LaraBar along the way. We were ravenous when we got back to camp, ergo the tuna/peanut butter combo was fine with me! We drank tons of water. Due to the veggie shortage that’s what we ate in town — so I was feeling really trim and fit by the end of the trip!
Clothing/Shoes
Short pants aren’t really a thing in Alaska even in July. I think we wore the same basic hiking pants/shirts day after day but changed socks and underwear more often (right there you can save space and weight by skimping on clothing). The temperature was also pretty comfortable until we got wet and cold on the Kenai Peninsula. Both of us were pretty happy with our regular hiking shoes/boots but a pair of crocs or water shoes for in camp is a great idea too.
Key items:
windbreaker/rain jacket with pit zips for ventilation
windblocking fleece (full zip)
polypro shirts and ripstop hiking pants
knee-high gaiters
non-cotton socks and sock liners
non-cotton underwear
hats (amazingly we both had headnets for bugs but they weren’t a problem so we never used them)
Are ankle-high hiking boots necessary? Maybe not. I wore some Merrell hiking shoes with an integrated “sleeve.” They’re super comfy and keep dust/pebbles out BUT take a while to dry. The gaiters were a solid addition because bushwhacking is a significant part of hiking in AK.
After the dance party in the mud that was Salmonfest on the Kenai Peninsula I have been jonesing for XtraTuf boots.
Tents
The Sorting Hat tent (an ultralight AliBaba tent that I got used for about $100) earned its name on this trip. It’s a pyramidal-shape one-person tent supported by a trekking pole in the center. No joke it looked just like the Harry Potter sorting hat as it swayed in the breeze on the shore of Twin lake. It was also a bit temperamental. While it was nice to have the vestibule space for my pack the mosquito netting seemed extra-flimsy (especially when there was a porcupine on the other side of it). Thanks to its size and ultralight weight I will definitely use it for bikepacking but the jury’s out for future hiking/adventure travel.
The second tent was a one-person REI Quarter Dome. It’s easy to assemble with just one pole structure and can be picked up and moved as long as there are no stakes in the ground. It seemed sturdier than the sorting hat as it maintained its shape under all conditions and was easier to dry out too. (Because it was tough to stake in certain soils, the sorting hat tended to collapse on itself in rain and layers stuck together given its flimsy shape/construction). While I love it, the materials is just a bit bulky for carrying it for backpacking or bikepacking.
Bags/Pads
My 20 degree mummy bag was sufficient but the piece of sleeping equipment that made the trip amazing was my pad, an inflatable Sea to Summit with diamond-shaped baffles (that’s key for side sleepers!). I slept better than I ever expected and had little or no hip pain at night. The pad was worth every penny of its approx $150 cost. My hiking partner had a closed cell accordion pad, which looks like it would be annoying to carry (strapped on the outside of his pack) but again, as long as you’re sleeping well it’s worthwhile.
Emergency gear
Bear spray — it’s a given in Alaska, but we never needed it. We bought ours at Bass Pro when we arrived, (of course you can’t take it on commercial airlines), each can is about $50. After a friend told a story about an overzealous visitor spraying it into the wind and clobbering him with the horrible stuff (instead of the bear), we were particularly cautious. But we carried it everywhere. (Read my post about Denali for the reason we didn’t see many bears.)
Garmin InReach — I got one of these devices used from Facebook Marketplace for less than $200. It was a great purchase. The $15/month subscription can be turned off when not needed, which is a plus for me. The InReach allows you to track your hikes and to communicate with family members as well as call for help in an emergency situation even when you’re well out of range of cell phones (but don’t expect Seal Team 6 to show up in minutes, it’s more like the SAR team arrives in a few days to look for what’s left of you). It will be useful on my boat or anywhere I plan to go. HOWEVER, don’t give the contact number to any crazy future exes. Trust me. The last thing you want when you’re hiking to a glacier is hearing the “beep” of incoming messages. And they cost you.
Packs
I spent some time obsessing about the pack I should get: not too big or too small, something with a good belt system.. something I could afford without it being more than 20 years old. After obsessing over details on GearLab.com I found a used $50 REI women’s pack, about 60 liters, that fit well. But I hardly used it! Why? We got everything nicely stored in our packs to fly from Anchorage to Port Alsworth then to Twin Lakes — then we put the packs down and used day packs for our hikes. Same at Denali. Same in Homer. In fact I used this pack more in New Hampshire on training hikes than I did on my entire trip. Keep that in mind.
First aid kit — get one that fits in your daypack and carry it. We didn’t need first aid on this trip but I often add Gu gels to my kit, and those have come in handy on hot mountain hikes.
Water filters — We each carried large Nalgene bottles, and I had a LifeStraw too. My Sawyer mini was just okay for filtering stream water for drinking. It’s a slow process. The Sawyer bag that you scoop the water into is small, so the process of scooping, attaching the filter, and squeezing into your drinking reservoir over and over is laborious. Fortunately it was only really needed at Twin Lakes where there was no dedicated water source (we had a rushing glacier-fed brook between the campsite and the Proenneke cabin). I refuse to risk giardia infection so I filtered everything but my partner drank some unfiltered and lived. I also had water purification tablets in case things got really sketchy but I never used them.
Conclusion
I’m going back to Alaska, and soon. There’s so much to see there and I love being off the grid (heed my warning above about the InReach!). Don’t stress about your gear, just go. You’ll figure it out.
If you’ve been isolating from society and the corona virus for what feels like 732 weeks as I have (that was a joke), odd thoughts begin to creep in after a few days. Instead of jumping out of bed in the morning, ready to be part of the unfolding day, I move slowly, my thoughts turned inward, taking stock: how am I feeling? what are my senses telling me? Am I sick?
With the luxury of true isolation (I live alone) I’m at very low risk for picking up the corona virus. Yet the smallest twinge makes me wonder: is this it? The vigilance is nerve-wracking, and anyone with a radio on 24/7 coverage of the rampaging disease risks his or her mental health. I must remind myself that I’m at low risk, I don’t have a fever, I have no other symptoms, and my health has been strong. I also have to further retreat from media to salvage my mental health.
We’re in uncharted waters. For those of us used to maps and trails to find our way the circumstances are disconcerting. It’s understandable if your anxieties are off the hook.
Try this.
When I lecture about hiking and getting outdoors, I talk about “forest bathing.” It’s the practice of visiting the woods to release anxiety and become more grounded. It sounds hokey and ridiculous but it works. And it can work virtually as well. All it takes is a few minutes, your imagination, and a desire to reset your stress level.
Take a deep breath — if you’re alone or more than six feet from others. Shut off the television and your computer. Leave your phone at home. Go for a walk, even on a treadmill or a city street. Get out of your own head for a few minutes and release some of that stress. Doing this as guided meditation is fine but physical activity enhances the effect.
If you’re able, find a tree and touch it (or imagine doing so). Close your eyes while your hand is on the bark. Imagine the strength of the tree’s roots anchoring it in the ground. Think about the storms it has withstood, the ice and heat, the weight of snow on its branches, the way rain runs down the rivulets of its bark.
Sit on the ground with your back against the tree and close your eyes. Let your mind scale the trunk and explore its branches. What does the world look like from up there? Do other trees tangle their branches in its canopy or does it stand above them?
Using your imagination, venture out onto a thin branch like a small bird might, right down to the end where leaves branch off. Feel the breeze rocking your perch. Trust your grip, you won’t fall. Is there a bud forming, waiting for the sun’s warmth to grow? Imagine the texture of a leaf, its cells that knit the shape together, duplicated in every bud that sprouts from the tree’s myriad appendages. Consider for a moment the wonder of the photosynthesis process that turns sunlight into energy, made possible by the chlorophyll in each cell of every leaf. Let your mind float among the leaves, appreciating the intricate process of transformation that’s happening as spring awakens the tree’s lifeblood and the sap begins to flow out each branch to form leaves.
If you could fly above the trees like a bird in summer, you’d look down on a sea of waving, undulating leaves, pine needles, and branches. Soar above the canopy a while, feeling closer to the sun. For a few moments you can be light and quick as a swallow, turning and diving through the foliage, enjoying your ability to release yourself from the weight of your cares.
When you return from your flight spend a moment appreciating the roots of your tree and the strength it derives from that connection with the earth. Even as the world around us seems to be changing by the minute, you can still choose to be rooted and strong.
She's Gone 