Happy New Year!
Yesterday, we backpacked to the summit of Mt. Jefferson to test out my new gear and my new ear. I was going to title this post, “Testing New Gear and My New Ear in the New Year,” but I refrained. Ha ha. The elevation of the summit is 4,665 ft, which is a good test of the ear tube.
I wanted to test out my new backpack with some gear packed inside, as well. Since I had just gotten the tube on Wednesday, I wanted to see what the tube would do when I got to higher altitude. But it had to be a mountain at least 4,000 ft to be sure the tube worked.
When Marty and I first started dating 6 years ago, one of our first dates was to summit Mt. Rogers in Virginia. Mt. Rogers is the highest point in Virginia. If you are trying to knock out highest points, it is cool, but the view is not. The summit is in the middle of a dense forest. It looks like something you would see in Lord of the Rings. Very pretty and Mossy. But you cannot see a view of the surrounding mountains. Its elevation is 5,729 ft.
As we scrambled rocks and kept climbing, I became dizzy and then nauseous. At one point I had to stop for about 30 minutes. Marty asked if I needed to go back. I told him I didn’t get this far to turn around. It was hard to reach the summit because of the nausea, but I made it. This wasn’t the first time that ear dysfunction had disrupted my life.
I’ve had Eustachian Tube dysfunction since I was a child. Back in the late 60s, early 70s they didn’t put tubes in like they do now. At least not in my neck of the woods. My right ear drum burst a number of times and ever since I have dealt with ear pain or pressure on a daily basis. I get motion sickness and flying is not comfortable. I always have had pressure and/or fluid in my ear. It’s all I’ve ever known. I have taken Sudafed daily for years at a time. I stopped the Sudafed when I started the Budesonide rinses.
I think I wrote about getting sick this past summer at Red River Gorge. The trip to Red River Gorge made my mind up to get back into the ENT to get this issue fixed once and for all. It took 6 months to get in! I developed an inner ear infection on this trip– likely due to pressure changes and fluid sitting in my ear. Before consulting a doctor for a diagnosis, I took Sudafed to open things up. That was a HUGE mistake with the climbs. I did ponder this before hitting the trail. “Do you want a higher heart rate or clear ears and no dizziness and vomiting.” I chose clear ears and no vomiting.
The climbs are steep and somewhat brutal if your heart rate gets up to 194 during the ascent. My heart rate was between 180 and 194 during the steep climbs. I stopped a lot. It felt like my heart was going to pound out of my chest. Thankfully, these were just day hikes and we did not have weighted packs on our backs. Carrying extra weight in and of itself elevated heart rate.
Thursday, we started at the visitor’s center at Mount Jefferson State Natural Area and hiked 3 miles up. I felt MAYBE a slight pressure in my right ear on the drive to the park as well as the hike to the summit. I was able to look down where I was stepping without getting dizzy the entire climb. Pretty epic given that since I was a kid, I could always feel my Eustachian tube. If you have Eustachian Tube Dysfunction (ETD) you know exactly what I am talking about — you can literally feel your Eustachian Tube. Every. Single. Day.
On our 50 mile AT hike in October, we went up and down. White Top mountain is 5,520 ft, Thomas Knob Shelter is 5,400 ft and Damascus is around 2,231ft. This is why I figured summiting a mountain that is 4,665 ft would be a good test of the tube. I had many ear issues on the 50 mile trek. After throwing up a few times, I took my emergency steroids. This was a test to see if elevation was a key factor with my ear and creating dizziness. The steroids definitely opened things up. While not perfect, it allowed me to complete the 50 miles without throwing up any more.
The new backpack is AMAZING. I can definitely tell that it is a custom made backpack. It is very comfortable and I love all the features. It’ll take a few back more packing trips to figure out where everything goes in the pack. Overall, I give it a 10 out of 10 on its first day trip. It’s got 46L in the main pack and with the pockets, it has 61L of space to carry stuff. It can carry up to 35 pounds total.
My other backpack is 3.6 pounds heavier than this pack, so I should easily be able to get the total pack weight below 35 pounds. My max weight with water and food open any of our trips with my other pack was 40.5 pounds, I believe. Just the pack being 3.6 pounds lighter gets me pretty darn close.
I really like the big pocket on the back. This is where I put my hydration bladder. It worked perfectly on the trial run. In the Osprey, the bladder goes inside the pack. It is a royal pain in the rear to remove it when we stop at a water source to filter water. As Marty has the male version of my Osprey, we both had to remove things to get the bladder out when we got to water sources. The stuff in his pack often seemed to cut off the ability to drink his water from the tube, too. I did not have that issue with my Osprey.
While the large pocket on the back of the LiteAF pack isn’t designed for a water bladder specifically, it works GREAT for that purpose. This is going to be amazing when we hit the longer trails and have to replenish water. Why do we prefer hydration bladders? I don’t know about others, but Marty and I cannot reach the bottle holders on the backpacks we have. With this LiteAF pack, I did get the front two pockets sewn on, but those will be my snack pockets. They can hold 100ml water bottles, I believe. For me, it is just easier to drink from the tube. I can grab it on the go, take a few sips and click it back to the magnet. No fooling with bottles. The hydration bladder also holds 3L of water. When we are on trail with Ghost, we like the ability to carry extra water for his needs, too. He has his own pup flask that we fill up. It holds 40 ounces of water for him. With 3 of us needing water, we just like the extra water storage ability.
2026 is really going to be an amazing year!
My Little Red Bike 