I’m so grateful to my friend Hannah for turning me on to this trail. I had been “training” by walking 10 miles a day on the Butler hike and bike trail, but I felt to weird to carry a loaded pack, so really, I wasn’t training at all. I was just making my plantar fasciitis worse for no reason.
This trail is about a 30 minute drive from my house. I started going out there every other day the few weeks before my trip to get used to carrying weight on my back and to climbs.
HIKING
River Place is just the weirdest little piece of nature. It’s like a shaved leg with one long narrow missed patch of hair. It’s bordered by a golf course on one side and chain link fence on the other. It looks to be roughly 30 to 50 yards wide, if that? I’m terrible at judging distance.
Everything you read says it’s a 5 mile trail. It’s not. It’s a little over 3 miles one way, so if you out-and-back it you are doing about 6.2 miles. And in that 6.2 miles you experience 1700 feet of elevation change.
It’s a high-traffic trail. Lots of trail runners and rule-breaking off-leash dog walkers, so if you have a leash-reactive dog, leave it at home. I’ve had to give water to more than a couple of people who were caught by surprise at how difficult the trail is. BRING WATER.
There were probably 8 people doing what I was doing – out there with full packs and trekking poles training. They were, oddly, not very friendly. I really wanted to talk to them to see how much they were carrying, where they were going. Maybe they were just struggling to much to look up. Dunno.
I was happy to see them though, because it’s a little embarrassing to be all geared up like that on a dinky trail in Austin, which doesn’t have much of a hiking culture (that I’m aware of).
GEAR
While I was waiting (really until the last second) on my ZPacks Arc Haul to get shipped to me, I just pulled out my really old Kelty pack and stuffed it with books and random things to get it to 10 pounds. I gradually increased the weight, but the Kelty wasn’t the right size for me and it’s old and crappy so I stopped at 19 pounds, afraid I was just going to hurt myself. When my Arc Haul came in, I filled it with my actual gear and food/water to get to my skin out weight of 25 lbs. I was able to practice at that weight twice before I left town. I was also able to dial in the pack a bit. It has a million points of adjustment, and getting those and the arc just right are a bit of a deal. I very slowly cut off the circulation in my right arm one of the days…
It was on this trail that I really started testing shoes. I had started out with the Keens hiking boots in Lost Maples. Hated them. Switched to Altra Lone Peaks on Town Lake ’cause that’s what all the cool kids were wearing. Wrong size. Test again. Wrong size again. No more sizes left, so I tried the Altra Timp Trails on River Place – HORRIBLE toe bang – wrong size.
I swapped out one last time. Stayed with the Timp Trails because they are the most comfortable. They are going to Minnesota with me and I can test them for a week on trails up there. If they don’t work, I can go to Duluth, I guess, and get different ones.
I’m not convinced zero drop is right for me. I’ve been battling a pretty intense case of plantar fasciitis for about a year now. I’ve got the night splints and they work great, but since I’m not resting, they are just palliative. I’ve also got ankle-high sleeves, which I’ll be taking on the hike with me. Again – palliative. They only work when they are on.
I also did a lot of practicing with my new adjustable trekking poles, which i had to get for my Lanshan UL tent. It was all this elevation change and rocky terrain that convinced me I needed them and I also figured out what heights work best for ascending / descending.
I kept meaning to test my water filter (MSR Trailshot), but I just never did it. :/