Category: Gear

AT 2012 Equipment List

“Some say opportunity knocks only once, That is not true. Opportunity knocks all the time, but you have to be ready for it. If the chance comes, you must have the equipment to take advantage of it.” — Louis L’Amour

Do not use this version of my equipment list as a guide. At the end of the hike, I will have more real-world experience, and hope to publish an updated version informed by my adventures. Two days before I fly out, I am still considering changing some items, especially clothing.

I would have liked to have built more of my own gear, as inspired by Ray Jardine’s Beyond backpacking, but ultra-light is so new to me, and a generous and supportive spouse wanted me to spare no expense, that I splurged a bit on several of the small equipment manufacturers with a passion for lightweight gear: ZPacks, Mountain Laurel Designs, AntiGravityGear, GoLite, and more. When I am ready to try making more of my own equipment, then kudos to ZPacks for selling high-tech ultra-light fabrics and materials on their site.

REI, is it really so hard to show weights for all your products on your web site and in your stores? Do I really have to continue going into your store with an electronic scale?

Comments on particular items:

The brim of my cap weighs more than the rest of the materials. I wonder if anyone has experimented with removing the center section of the brim, or substituting some kind of plastic mesh.

Instead of using low cut running socks, perhaps I should switch to longer socks because of the threat of ticks carrying Lyme disease. I treated all clothing with permethrin.

When the pack arrived in the mail I was struck by how small and ethereal it seems. With my frame pack background, if I had come across this item at REI I would have dismissed it without a thought, but I am confident of the choice due to on-line recommendations from several bloggers whose opinion I trust.

I really liked the butane stove on my previous trip because it is so easy to light and control temperature, yet I decided to go alcohol this time. Zenstoves has some really great info on making your own stove, and I did try a few designs. Eventually I purchased the Caldera system because I really liked the combination wind-screen and pot support, but anyone that wants to make more of their own gear should try making a soda-can stove.

The 500mL pot comes with a lid that helps keep it from being crushed in the pack. The volume is too small for cooking a pack of ramen in the pot, but works well for heating 2 cups of water for my PCG-in-a-zip-bag cooking.

I am not entirely comfortable with the design of the SteriPEN Freedom. The water sensors are spaced too far apart, so you have to use a wider mouth bottle. A recycled Powerade bottle with medium diameter mouth is still too small, and a G2 bottle only barely works if the bottle is completely full. I would be happier if the Freedom was a couple of ounces lighter as well. I might revert to only using tablets like most thru-hikers.

An alternative to the ZPacks tarp-tent would be combining a traditional tarp (good do-it-yourself opportunity) with a Mountain Laurel Designs SuperLight Bivy.

I lightly spray-painted tops of tent stakes with fluorescent green paint, increasing weight of six stakes by 2 grams or 6%.

Removing the nail-file blade of my Swiss Army Knife only saved 2 grams, so I wouldn’t recommend anyone bother with that modification.

A razor not carried this time, but sent with mail packages.

I pine for lower weight trail-runners. Inov8, how about offering wide sizes?

Warmer clothing will be shipped to me as necessary, possibly around New Hampshire.

I use 2″x3″ zip bags to store some small items. Handier and lighter than snack-size zip bags in many cases.

Several hikers have published gear lists on the web that taught me a great deal. Thanks, people.

Related Posts:

Food Cozy Pot Cozy

In PCG, I describe adding boiling water to a zip freezer bag and waiting 5 minutes for the meal to cook/re-hydrate. A special container was described, with a small piece of corrugated cardboard for heat insulation on the bottom to make it comfortable to hold in one hand.

For this trip I wanted to upgrade to a food cozy to keep food warm longer. I still want to cook in a freezer bag, not a pot, to eliminate washing dishes. Serendipitously my choice of pots, Evernew Titanium ECA-266 500mL mug pot, is close enough in key dimensions to the quart size bag I would be using, so the food cozy can also double as a pot cozy.

I was going to use close cell foam from an old sleeping pad as insulation, until an Internet search showed many hikers are now using Reflectix(tm) insulation, available at big-box home stores, which resembles bubble-wrap with foil facing on both sides. Very light weight, the material is easy to cut with scissors and fastens together nicely with foil tape. Following the data-driven nature of this blog, I should have built cozies out of different materials (Reflectix, closed cell foam, and perhaps bubble wrap) and measured the temperature change in each, but sadly I’m running out of time. It’s less than a week until my flight and copious amounts of trip preparation still remain. This video shows some temperature measurements.

The series of photos shows how the pot cozy goes together, rather self-explanatory. No template is needed other than the pot to measure against. The materials are flexible and forgiving, so measurements need not be precise.

My cozy weighs 25 grams. Some weight reduction might be had by reducing tape, although I would prefer to do some field testing before trimming much more.

A word about freezer bags: Different brands may have different dimensions. Hefty brand quart slider freezer bags are labeled as 7 inches by 8 inches, but 7 is height. Another brand is listed as 7 x 7 3/4 inches, but the 7 refers to the width. The Hefty bag fits well in my cozy, but the other brand isn’t quite wide enough to fold over the top of the lip. My preference is to tape the bottom of the bag to be square-bottomed (see PCG) and to cut off the zipper and use a twist-tie. If one prefers to keep the zip closure, the bag still folds over the top of my cozy if you remove the slider.

To operate, place the freezer bag in the cozy, with the top of the bag folded down over the top edge of the cozy, pour in boiling water, and put on the lid. Alternatively, tie the bag closed with a twist-tie, and then add the lid. Wait five minutes or so for the meal to cook, and enjoy a warm meal. Consume with the bag still in the cozy, holding with one hand and a spoon in the other.

To measure the effect of the cozy, I added one cup boiling water (at 5000 feet altitude, 78F ambient air temperature) to two identical zip freezer bags (with square bottom modification mentioned above), with one bag bare on the counter-top closed with a twist-tie, and one bag in a cozy. After five minutes, the cozy bag water measured 181F, and the nekkid bag content was at 160F.

Related Posts:

Toothpaste Dots

Ultralight Backpackin’ Tips by Mike Clelland is a list of 153 tips and tricks for ultralight backpackers, with a few of paragraphs and line drawings explaining each tip, readable in any order. Some ideas, such as #116 “Liberate yourself from toilet paper”, I am not not quite ready to adopt…

Number #54, “Make your own toothpaste dots” however, is one I like. Take some toothpaste, preferably one of creamy consistency rather than the gel kind, and squeeze out a few thin lines on a fruit leather sheet of your food dehydrator.

Dehydrate on low heat until most of the moisture is gone, and use a sharp knife to divide into 1/4″ “toothpaste dots”. Measure out how many you need for your trip, and store in a small 2″x3″ zip bag. No need to pack a travel-size tube of toothpaste at 0.85 ounces (24 grams), and easier to use than tooth powder.

To use, put one or two dots in your mouth with a swig of water, crunch and mix thoroughly, and start brushing. Of course, your toothbrush will have most of the handle broken off, or holes drilled in strategic patterns, to save weight.

Related Posts: