>>1624093>5-6 month backpacking tripAwesome! Where are you going?
If it's typical 3 season conditions here's some advice and tips I got from my 4 month backpacking trip
Ultralight isn't a meme. A lighter pack will let you to further, faster or go the same distance with less chance of injuring yourself. It should be very doable to get your pack baseweight under 15lb without spending ludicrous amounts, and doable to get sub 10 if you are willing to spend a bit more or go more minimalist
Unless you're in an area with known problem bears or in proper grizzly country, you probably don't need to worry about bears, weekenders get really assblasted by the idea of sleeping with your food, but on long trails almost everyone does it in non-problem bear areas. I'd worry more about mice than I do about bears
People are kind, they want to help you, people will offer you food, beer, rides to town, etc on trail, take them up! Don't think that it's polite to refuse them, chances are they want you to say yes, so accept, be gracious and meet some truly great people.
Avoid pushing big mileage days when you don't feel like pushing bit mileage, you probably won't enjoy it. But if you feel like hiking on when you reach where you planned to stop, absolutely hike on, some of my favourite days on trail were days when I hiked 10-15 miles further than I had expected to that day
START SLOW. Injuries are one of the main reasons people suffer and have to get off long trails, start slow and slowly build up, sudden jumps in daily mileage and not giving your body time to adept is a recipe for a stress injury
You can probably carry much much less in your first aid kid and have no problems, also, carry body glide or something to deal with chafe, a bad chafe can fuck you up.
When you feel shitty and like crashing, stop and eat something, often that will help significantly
Ibuprofen+caffeine pills gives you superpowers
>>1624100>>1624117Most of this is bad advice if you want good mpd
