Alexandria Griffith: American Camino

 Throughout the book the author talks about leaving no trace while on the AT. This is something that is much easier said than done. When hearing this saying it seemed like common sense to me. "Leave no trace", well who would want to leave a trace? Once I backpacked this summer I realized very quickly that the statment leave no trace is much easier said than done. Whatever trash you are to produce you must carry until you are able to find somewhere to dispose of it. Along with that you have to try and cut down on the amount of waste you are producing overall. The more things you carry in our pack, the more weight you need to carry on your hikes. The few differences in weight makes a huge difference when backpacking. When I was on the AT there was one day where my pack weighed way to much. Both my friend and I had overpacked and it made the hike that day feel miserable. Once we met back up with the van we got rid of a lot of things that ew did not need, I got rid of an extra jacket, extra clothing, ect. If I had not touched it in 4 days I was not going to keep carrying it. Once we started backpacking after we got rid of things from our packs I felt a huge difference and was able to move much faster and enjoy the hikes much more. I had gone into the hikes planning to carry as little as possible to reduce the amount of weight that I would be carrying. Because of this I did not carry a stove, fuel, pots, etc. I ate tuna for both lunch and dinner and carried granola bars for breakfast. I had snacks of course but I found this helped me to reduce the amount of weight that I had to carry from location to location. Doing this I also found helped me to reduce the amount of waste that I was carrying around as well. I noticed the hikers I was with would have large bags of trash from them meals, where as I only had one small bag from the tuna packages.

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