11/9-11/07 Allegheny Backpacking Trip by Timothy Szczykutowicz 9 OAC members departed on the National Allegheny Forest, Tracy Ridge Trails, for a 2 day beginners backpacking trip led by Tim Szczykutowicz. The weather was not like last year, it did not snow. We arrived late Friday night and hiked into the woods roughly three fourths of a mile before setting up our tents and putting our food into bear bags. To bear bag, we employed a technique called the Shanbango, which our club president Alex Kitt learned while in Colorado. The Shanbango method works by finding a dear tree and tying your bear bag to the end of it. Then you prop this dead tree up against a living tree and tie the dead tree so it holds up the bear bag. Once we got our bear bag up into the tree, we then all yelled “Shanbango!.” The next morning we awoke to some pretty cold temperatures, my (Tim) hands were cold without gloves. We proceeded to hike all day until almost dusk. When I felt my beginner backpackers were just about to have a mutiny on me, we arrived at the campsite. We split up into groups, three people got water, two people cooked dinner and the rest set up tents and set up camp by making a fire pit and gathering wood. After dinner we settled in around a fire. I discovered that by peeing on a fire the resulting steam stinks like pee. Everyone did pretty well for their first backpacking trip. I think people learned that backpacking can be fun if you are in shape for it. We saw some really nice views of the Allegheny reservoir on Saturday and some nice views of the surrounding little mountains as well. The leaves were not in peak color, but they still looked nice. Waking up to the Shambango, morning 1 Getting our hike on Tim realizing that we were about to hike an extra 5 miles What you do for fun in the woods Getting to close to night twos camp Cars, you either hate them or you love them