Better water treatment

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klearwater-clo2 I've been looking for a better treatment solution than MicroPUR tabs.

They work great, but we usually only let them sit for a half hour. In icy cold or dirty water, the recommended time is 4 hrs. I've always wondered if we are just being lucky when we are using very cold water from most of the streams around here.

So what are my other options?

Chlorine Dioxide also comes in liquid form – which has a faster reaction time.

Aqua Mira has had a two-part product on the market for quite some time. However, it requires pre-mixing before adding to the water – which sounds like too much effort.

KlearWater is a newer product that is pre-mixed and has a decent shelf life. It comes in small 9ml containers, that weigh 1.22 oz and treats 9 liters+. Ryan Jordan talks about a way to re-pack them down to 0.5 oz and a strategy that can stretch this to get 25 liters of treated water. 

Another interesting frontier-pro-filter-largeproduct is the Aquamira Frontier Pro Filter, shown on the right. This is inline filter is a mere 2oz in weight and fits onto the opening of a platypus bag and the other end to a hose.

I love the idea of not needing chemical treatment and having instant water, but I need to read some more reviews before I'm sold.

Even Dentists GoLite!

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I went to my dentist today for a tooth repair. Bob Spreen (quite possibly the worlds best dentist) was in a very excited mood. Last time I was there, we talked a little about backpacking and how he likes to get out once in a while, but doesn't so much anymore… his gear is heavy etc. I told him about my new found way of travel and something clicked. Bob is a weight-geek at heart too – except for him it's about shaving the extra threads of the titanium bolts on his racing car for more speed. Ultralight backpacking seemed like the perfect fit.

Bob and his wife acquired some new gear – a GoLite Jam Pack, a lighter stove etc and got their weight down considerably this year. They both said how much they enjoyed the new freedom. They don't use the new advantage to travel faster or greater distances, but use it to simply not be tired at the end of the day and not feel encumbered on the trail.

Hearing their story made my day. 🙂

How Ultralight Changed My Life!

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OK… maybe the headline sounds like something out of a tabloid, but there's a grain of truth in there.

bulb

There are two things that struck me recently where my fetish with going lighter has been of benefit in my normal life.

1. Light Airplane Travel
I go on a lot of business trips with my job and I travel very light. On one-day trips to the bay area, I'll take next to nothing: My mobile phone, a tiny ipod shuffle in my pocket and maybe a laptop (no laptop bag). At SeaTac airport – as I don't have carry on bags I can save time at security by using the 1st class line (For 1st class, MVP members or passengers with no carry on). On 2-3 day trip I might bring a small shoulder bag and on week long trips I bring a small Samsonite bag that I bought in Japan – similar to this.

I watch people fighting over locker space and hauling huge oversized bags onto the plane and getting stressed out all the time. Not me – traveling light takes all the stress out of flying. I can roll on after most people have boarded and always guarantee I can find a time bit of space overhead or worst case under my seat.

2. Impulse Purchase Immunity
Back in the heavy days I used to love to go to REI and get sucked into buying something cool and new. Oh! Look! An ice cream maker for camping, or a mini espresso maker. Now, I still love going to REI – but I'm immune to such impulse purchases. I scoff at the weight of things. Why would you ever bring a 20 lb dutch oven with you on a camping trip? I get more pleasure from purging things I already own, then I do acquiring new things.

The "Leave No Child Inside Act"?

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The Sierra Club initiated an effort that was adopted by an environmental organization in New Mexico to tax video games in an effort to encourage kids to spend time in the outdoors.

I'm skeptical that a nominal excise tax would be punitive enough to discourage a purchase and suddenly encourage playing outdoors. However, perhaps with increased revenue one of these organizations might have the funds to be able to reach out and market to these children to encourage them to get outside.

I think the responsibility lies with the parents, not the IRS, to pull the power on the xbox and encourage their kids into the wilderness.

5 long-distance trips I really want to do

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Happy new year! It's 2008, and I'm noodling on some backpacking goals over the next few years. I haven't done much long-distance backpacking. Most of my long ones are in the 30-50 mile range. I'd like to expand my horizons (and mileage) a little…

Here are some hikes that get me drooling:

1. The Wonderland Trail
This is in my own back yard, so it's a must. A 93 mile jaunt around Mt. Rainier. I think this might be my big trip next summer.

2. The John Muir Trail
This is supposedly one of the most spectacular sections of the PCT, that goes though Yosemite Valley in California. Its 211 miles in length.

3. The TGO Challenge
I already mentioned this one. 200 miles from west->east coast of Scotland.

4. The East Coast Trail
The antithesis of the West Coast Trail. This trail is still under development, but offers 335 miles of very pretty coastal hiking.

5. The entire Pacific Crest Trail
And finally… the mother of all challenges. This trail runs from Canada to Mexico down the west coast of the US. At 2,650 miles it would be a serious commitment – but I would love to do the entire PCT (continuous) some time in the next 5 years. It seems like one of these life-changing trails.

TGO Challenge

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There are several long distance hikes I want to do over the next few years, tgoand one of them I've had my eye on for a while is the TGO Challenge. TGO or "The Great Outdoors" is a magazine published in the UK.

The TGO Challenge is a ~200 mile hike from the west coast to the east coast of Scotland.

Of course… unlike hiking in the Pacific Northwest – Scotland has a generous helping of pubs to stop at along the way 🙂

Every year in October, TGO magazine publishes the entry forms for the challenge, which is held in May. It's an oversubscribed event every year and space is allocated by lottery. The official challenge site is http://www.tgochallenge.co.uk/.

I may have missed the window to apply for 2008 – but hopefully I'll I RESOLVE to be more on top of it next year. 🙂

Firelite 550 Titanium Pot

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A pot to be reckoned with.

This little fellow weighs in at a mere 2.5 oz and holds about 2 cups of water – which is the perfect amount for most freeze dried food bags.

I replaced my old pan set for this earlier this summer and have been thrilled with its performance.

You have to take a little care as its walls are very thin and so it can get bent out of shape easily.

Available from BackpackingLight for $27.

Senz Windproof Umbrella

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vanbezooyen_core77_senzumbrellas[1] I'm not sure this little fellow truly belongs in the Ultralight club at 8.8 oz (For the Mini). But for 3.2 oz more than the Montbell – it comes with some bonus features:

– Windproof up to 40 mph. Or 70 mph for the normal sized one.

– The asymmetric design has a very elongated tail which would cover the the top of a backpack nicely.

I bought one of these on a recent trip to England. I've used it taking the bus to work in Seattle (it rains a lot), but haven't taken it on the trail.

They just recently started distributing these in the US, so you can now buy them online.

Coconut Cream Powder Granola

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Coconut Cream PowderLooking to spice up your no-cook trail breakfast?

Instead of boring old dried milk – which is usually non-fat (unless you use Nido), give this is try on your Granola. It vastly improves the flavor of the granola and packs a whopping thirteen extra grams of fat.

I suspect this will be a new staple for me at breakfast time.

Credit for this brilliant idea goes to Freezer Bag Cooking, where I read the tip.

I bought my Coconut Cream Powder from Import Food online.

Google Maps Terrain

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Google just recently launched their "Terrain" overlay. Microsoft has had one for

a while over at maps.live.com, but I like Googles version better. It's cleaner and more detailed.

I wonder if someone will create a website where hikers can start plotting out trails using a combination of the Google My Maps and Terrain features.

Here's a quick sample one I whipped up for Copper Ridge Loop: Copper Ridge Loop Map.

Something like this for all the hikes in the US, with clickable pushpins showing photos at that view point. How cool would that be?

Heck – I'd even go a step further and allow people to collaborate photos taken from the same view point, combined with Photosynth to give a 360 degree view.

Umbrellas in the Snow?

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brolly Theresa and I took a quick morning hike yesterday to Snow Lake. I haven't done this hike for a while – and when we do, we like to be on the trail for 5am to have some solitude. It's one of the busiest trails in the Seattle area and is always packed. It's a short 5-6 mile jaunt to the lake and back.

It was raining in Seattle, and we assumed the same in the pass. When we got there, it was snowing hard – with about 2-3" of fresh on the ground.

We had the trail to ourselves and cut fresh tracks most the way to the lake – when we passed a party of backpackers hiking out.

We don't really do much winter backpacking – our gear gets tucked away in favour of Snowboarding season. We've done some day hikes and a few big-climbs in the snow – like St. Helens and Mt. Adams, but not enough to consider myself seasoned in any way.

I was really surprised how well the brolly performed yet again in the snow fall. It got heavy once in a while and needed shaking off, but all-in-all I didn't bother to pull out a waterproof – or the down jacket I had in my pack just-in-case. We did the whole hike pretty much in thermal undies and hat and an Umbrella – neither too hot, nor too cold.

Can umbrellas really be a credible winter-tool also?

Freezer Bag Cooking

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coverlayout.ai

In the world of software development The Mythical Man Month proposes the notion of a project triangle. Where the three points of the triangle are Quality, Time to Market and Features. You can pick (at most) any two you want and do them really well, but the other one suffers. Want lots of features, with high-quality – it's going to take a long time. Want something quick with lots of features? It's going to be buggy.

I think a similar triangle exists for backpacking food. The three points are – Lightweight, Tasty and Fast to Prepare.

Freezer Bag Cooking in an excellent site that appears to deliver on at least two of the key points: Fast to prepare and Tasty. However they don't appear to be lighter than store bought de-hydrated cardboard tasting goop.

Still, I really dig the site – the idea of home-made backpacking meals that very easy to prepare in the field and taste really good probably has it's place on shorter trips. I have not tried any of their recipes yet – but I intend to.

If only they would invent a Thai Curry freezer-bag recipe, then I would be in heaven.

Gear List Management – what do you use?

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I would love to hear from people who stumble on my site what software they use to manage their gear lists.

For day-day management, I simply have an Excel spreadsheet with stuff in. Then for my blog, I wrote a bunch of custom php code to allow me to easily edit my gear list page without dealing with HTML formatting issues.

What does everyone else do? Any one use Google Docs spreadsheets? Anyone found a gear-list management application that they like? Anyone found a web-based list application that can be used for gear-list management?

I'm noodling on the idea of adapting my php/wordpress code into something that could be used by others.

Anyone out there? Hello? …

Response from GoLite on Sun Dragons

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GoLite responded to my customer service inquiry about their Sun Dragon shoes.

The general manager responded to my post and pointed out that the first production run used a fabric treatment that left the uppers somewhat brittle. This is very consistent with my first impression of the shoe – the fabric seemed somewhat stiff and thin – and (with hindsight) probably prone to tearing.

I'm going to take them up on the offer and exchange them for a different pair with the new uppers and will report back. I hope they work out – as I really want to keep these shoes!

You can read the full response in the comments section of my previous post.

Polaroid Style Thumbnails

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I've had several folks ask me how I do the 'tilted' Polaroid effect on my image thumbnails, including a popup for the larger version.

Until today the answer was somewhat complicated: "using some tools and scripts I wrote that run manually on the server".

I exchanged some email on Friday with an old friend Greg Friedman – who is the Development Manager for several Windows Live products and who has Windows Live Writer under his command. He inadvertently prompted me to think about using Live Writer for editing.

Live Writer is a very cool WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that allows people to author blog posts seeing them in the style of their site. I use WordPress as my blog platform – which I love – but often the editor and the 'published' view differ quite a lot.

Last night, I downloaded the Live Writer SDK and hacked up a plugin that allows me to compose Polaroid images on the fly.

To get the 'popup' style, I added the Thumbnail Viewer WordPress plugin. With this technique any images that are marked with rel="thumbnail", get automatically lightboxed. My Live Writer Plugin sets this attribute for you, so you don't have to do a thing. It also generates an 800×600 sized image to go in the lightbox automatically. So you can shoot big photos, and publish them in seconds.

If you use WordPress and are interested in trying this out, do the following:

1. Download and install the WordPress Thumbnail Viewer.

2. Download and install Windows Live Writer.

3. Download and install my Polaroid Plugin from the Live Writer Gallery.

4. Run Live Writer, and there should now be an "Insert Polaroid" option.

Oh… and I made a few upgrades while I was at it – a new drop-shadow effect, and also the option to put a caption on the Polaroid.

I'm sure there are bugs – so if anyone uses it let me know and I'll fix 'em.

OK – enough geeking out – I did promise myself I'd try not to post any tech-related articles and so far I'm doing pretty good.

 

Update Version 1.6:

– options dialog to configure defaults

– added support for transparent backgrounds

– transparent backgrounds don't work if your blog is hosted on windows live. the windows live blogs don't allow uploads of PNG files that support alpha-blended transparency needed for the drop-shadow. you can change to a different solid background if you use windows live – or complain to MSFT 🙂

– support for some border styles

 

Update Version 1.7:

just bug fixes, including:

– improved performance when tilting images by caching last image

– reduced temp-files generated

– resize-bug fixed

– fixed some weird font-measurements where the captions were taking up more vertical space than they should with some fonts.

Old Ultralight Gear

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This is my list of gear that I no longer use. Usually means it's been replaced by something lighter or better IMHO.

Bretts Clothes

Brett's personal items and clothing.
Review Item Description Weight (Oz) Pack
Watch/Altimeter
 1.9 W
Sunglasses
 0.8 W
Fleece Hat
 0.8 B
Bandana
 0.9 W
Waterproof Jacket
 3.2 B
Thermal Shirt
 8 B
Warm Layer
 5.7 B
Shorts
 6 W
Windproof Pants
 2.4 B
Thermal Pants
 5.1 B
2 Handkerchiefs
 1 B
Socks
 1 W
Socks
 2 B
Hiking Shoes
 25 W
T Shirt
 3.6 W
T Shirt
 3.6 B
Gloves
 1.2 B
Hiking Poles
 15.5 W
Total Worn3.42 lbs
Total Pack (Brett)2.06 lbs

Theresas Clothes

Theresas clothing and personal items.
Review Item Description Weight (Oz) Pack
Sunglasses
 2 W
Fleece Hat
 0.8 T
Fleece Pullover
 7.5 T
Down Jacket
 3.4 T
Waterproof Jacket
 2.8 T
Thermal Shirt
 5 T
Shorts
 6.2 W
Short Legs
 3.8 T
Thermal Pants
 5.9 T
2 Handkerchiefs
 1 T
Socks
 1 W
Socks
 2 T
Hiking Shoes
 22 W
2 T Shirts
 7.2 W
T Shirt
 3.6 T
Gloves
 1.2 T
Hiking Poles
 15.5 W
Knee Straps
 2 T
Underwear
 2.1 T
Sport Bra
 2.5 T
Total Worn3.37 lbs
Total Pack (Theresa)2.73 lbs

Sleep & Carry Gear

This table shows all of the gear we use for carrying or sleeping.
Review Item Description Weight (Oz) Pack
Backpack
 19 T
Backpack
 19 B
3 season Sleeping Bag
 30 T
Summer Sleeping Bag
 16.9 B
Sleeping Pad
 13.1 T
Sleeping Pad
 4.7 B
Shelter
 38 B
Total Pack (Brett)4.91 lbs
Total Pack (Theresa)3.88 lbs

Cooking Gear

All of our basic cooking gear is listed here.
Review Item Description Weight (Oz) Pack
Seasoning
 0.5 T
Soap
 0.4 T
Spork
 0.6 T
Spork
 0.6 T
Fuel
 7 B
Titanium Pan & Lid
 2.5 T
Plastic Food Bowl
 0.6 T
Stove
 3.7 B
Windshield
 2 B
Water Carrier
 1.2 T
Total Pack (Brett)0.79 lbs
Total Pack (Theresa)0.4 lbs

Miscellaneous Gear

Random other stuff that is essential on the trail.
Review Item Description Weight (Oz) Pack
Shared Towel
 0.7 T
Ultralight Umbrella
 5.6 T
Ultralight Umbrella
 5.6 B
Rope
 1.3 B
Knife
 0.6 B
Camera
 4.2 B
Flashlight
 0.2 B
Flashlight
 0.2 T
Mosquitto Hood
 0.3 B
Map
 1.1 B
Duct Tape
 2 W
Rubbish Bag
 0.3 B
First Aid Kit
 3.2 B
Bug Repellant
 1.4 B
Suntan Lotion
 1.4 B
Purification Tablets
 0.6 B
Water Bottle
 3.2 B
Water Bottle
 3.3 T
Toothbrush
 0.3 B
Toilet Paper
 1 B
Wet Ones
 1 B
Spare Battery
 0.1 B
Toothpaste
 0.3 B
Chapstick
 0.5 B
Pencil
 0.2 B
Small Items
 1 B
Total Worn0.13 lbs
Total Pack (Brett)1.74 lbs
Total Pack (Theresa)0.61 lbs

Base Pack Weight

Base weight of our packs before adding food or water. This is the constant weight that will never vary.
Review Item Description Weight (Oz) Pack
Brett Base Pack Weight
Base Pack without food or water
 152 B
Theresa Base Pack Weight
Base Pack without food or water
 122 T
Total Pack (Brett)9.5 lbs
Total Pack (Theresa)7.63 lbs

Final Weight

This table shows our final weights once loaded with Food & Water at the start of the trip.
Review Item Description Weight (Oz) Pack
Brett Base Pack Weight
Base Pack without food or water
 152 B
Theresa Base Pack Weight
Base Pack without food or water
 122 T
Brett Full Water Weight
Full 60oz Platypus
 60 B
Theresa Full Water Weight
Full 60oz Platypus
 60 T
Brett Food Budget
Assume 4 lbs for 3 days
 64 B
Theresa Food Budget
Assume 4 lbs for 3 days
 64 T
Total Pack (Brett)17.25 lbs
Total Pack (Theresa)15.38 lbs

GoLite Sun Dragon Falling Apart

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I bought these GoLite shoes a few months ago, and wrote a very excited and optimistic post about them.

Today I have a different story to report. 🙁

I hiked a grand total of 3 hikes in them: a quick overnight to Kendall Katwalk, a day hike to Annapurna in the Enchantments, and the West Coast Trail.

Comfort and trail-use wise they performed really well. As I said in my first post – they are amazingly comfy and had excellent traction on a lot of terrain. However, durability wise, they were appalling. I'm amazed how badly they appear to be falling apart after a total of 7 days on trails.

Read on for more pictures of the damage.

Continue reading →