For many years I’ve been sleeping well with an Uberlite small sleeping pad as my pillow, wrapped in a shirt.
Much smaller and lighter at 6 oz than the Drift Camp 19 oz. BUT much more expensive.
I partially inflate the Uberlite. And stuff it with clothing. An adjustable-sized comfortable pillow. Good fully inflated sitting up reading, as well as partially deflated for bed.
I sleep on a (more durable) NeoAir short. If it ever starts leaking, my “pillow” is my back-up sleeping pad.
Oops – In this photo I have the Uberlite and NeoAir swapped from their usual positions.
IF I were to switch, I’d want something that weighed less than 6 oz.
Perhaps one of the Sea to Summit AEROS pillows. If you use a sleeping bag with a hood, it will probably stay inside even if you roll over side-to-side.
The biggest surprise for me on the sunny 😎 John Muir Trail 2021 was the number of hikers wearing sun-hoodies rather than the more traditional button down shirt, buff and/or bandana (that I was wearing).
Sun-hoodies are particularly popular with the ladies.
HIKING CLOTHES Soffe Running shorts #2 (as underwear) Running Room 7″ perforated run shorts red Nike quick dry t-shirt waterproof stuff sack Buff #2 long brim ball cap fingerless gloves
OUTER LAYERS Columbia OutDry rain jacket Helly Hansen puffy jacket Red L & 3L ultra-sil dry bag Helly Hansen puffy jacket Blue M & 2L ultra-sil dry bag
TOILETRIES in dry bag ASA and TUMs vitamins toilet paper TP (Coughlin x2)& alcohol gel sunscreen in ziplock 2 Imodium tablets
HIP PACK 1 credit card CAN cash $500 tiny Swiss Army knife hand Sanitizer – 1 oz bottle prescriptions bandaids Leukotape (blisters) duct tape water purification tablets (Acquatabs) toothbrush & toothpaste sunglass clip-on, flip-up toothpicks Health Insurance card chewing cloves National Parks Pass zip ties lens cloth pen & paper
The first time I hiked the West Coast Trail I fell 7 times in 7 days.
No injury.
June 2021 I fell only twice in 6 days. An improvement. But broke a camera on the first. And badly bruised my thigh on the second. 😕
About one in a hundred hikers are evacuated on the very challenging West Coast Trail.
MANY are carrying more weight than they can comfortably balance.
As a Gymnastics coach, I teach kids the safest ways to land and fall. In this video I’ve applied those same techniques for hikers. Absorb IMPACT FORCES over time and surface area.
BEST strategy is to pull in your arms (dropping poles). Take the first impact landing on your backpack.
Having things dangling can complicate. Keep your pack as compact as possible. Fragile equipment protected inside.
UPDATE – I fell and suffered a bad thigh bruise on day 5 of my first week. Limped out. And had to reschedule my second week to start July 3rd out of Nitinat.
Here’s my original post from June 8th:
I’ll be mostly offline for the next couple of weeks.
After being closed for all of 2020, our #1 hike in the world opened to reservations on April 30, 2021 — for Canadians only.
The online reservations system worked well — but my credit card was twice declined for no reason. I repeated the process and was finally able to pay.
Since there is less demand this year than normal, I was able to book myself for:
June 10 starting SE from Bamfield.
June 15 starting NW from Port Renfrew.
I’ll make haste on the first 75 km (47 mi) hike.
Pick up my resupply in Port Renfrew. Have a hot shower. Some wine.
Then take it more leisurely on my YOYO return to Bamfield.
How a secret project at Google led to driverless cars on American roads.
Freakonomics Radio shares a story from our friends at Search Engine. (Part one of a two-part series.)
SOURCES:
Alex Davies, author of Driven: The Race To Create the Autonomous Car.
Chris Urmson, co-founder and C.E.O. of Aurora.
Don Burnette, founder and C.E.O. of Kodiak AI.
PJ Vogt, reporter, writer, and host of the Search Engine podcast.
Sebastian Thrun, roboticist, C.E.O. of Sage AI Labs, adjunct faculty at Stanford University.
Timothy B. Lee, author of Understanding AI newsletter.
RESOURCES:
"Very few of Waymo’s most serious crashes were Waymo’s fault," by Kai Williams (Understand AI, 2025).
Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car, by Alex Davies (2021).
"An Oral History of the Darpa Grand Challenge, the Grueling Robot Race That Launched the Self-Driving Car," by Alex Davies (WIRED, 2017).
Understanding AI, newsletter on Substack.
Waymo Safety Dashboard.
EXTRAS:
"The Fascinatingly Mundane Secrets of the World’s Most Exclusive Nightclub," by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
Search Engine, podcast by PJ Vogt.
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