Source: http://freeoutdoors.com/blog/equipment/nemo-gear-accessories
יום רביעי, 29 בפברואר 2012
Canadian Dad Arrested after 4-year-old daughter draws picture of a gun in School
A Canadian father was arrested, strip-searched and charged with possession of a firearm after his 4-year-old daughter drew a picture of a handgun in her kindergarten class last Wednesday.
Source: http://offgridsurvival.com/canadiandadarrestedguninschool/
The Week In Review
A lovely cold week it was.
Gorgeous Timelapse Video showing the beautiful Australian continent.
The Removal of Cesare Maestri's Bolt Ladders on Cerro Torre.
Unboxing-Video of the LAUFBURSCHE huckePACK 2012. Unboxing videos rule. LAUFBURSCHE rules. Both together = awesome.
Speaking of LAUFBURSCHE, the webshop is set to open its doors at the end of February. Start saving now.
Choose the right skis to glide through winter.
Kids & electronics on the trail.
Why a wood stove?
Dawn is on La Palma, and has a been pretty much every day hiking some fine trail on the island. Los Tilos Tunnels is one of them. Beautiful.
Winter on the Rim, in case you prefer a little snow with your red rocks and mountain bikes.
James spent a stunning day on Stob Coire nam Beith.
Greg hikes up Mt Buffalo.
Photographing snow.
Tradition or habit?
PCT Food Review: What I liked, Would Do Differently, and Recommend.
Amanda lets us know What it's like being an Outdoorsman's wife.
Return of the villain.
A ramble from summer into autumn in Sarek.
David's Adventures in Aviemore.
Paul visits the patron fell of Wasdale.
Jake walks solo across the Park. Barefoot.
Primus OmniLite Ti, the newest Multifuel stove on the market.
10 oz. Shelter System.
Marmot DriClime Ether Wind Shirt.
Brian presents his Emberlit-UL Esbit mod.
Building a pit house.
Sabi prepares for hiking the PCT this year.
Don?t hike your own hike.
Are Blog Reviews Worth Anything?
<- [Affiliate Link]
Gorgeous Timelapse Video showing the beautiful Australian continent.
The Removal of Cesare Maestri's Bolt Ladders on Cerro Torre.
Unboxing-Video of the LAUFBURSCHE huckePACK 2012. Unboxing videos rule. LAUFBURSCHE rules. Both together = awesome.
Speaking of LAUFBURSCHE, the webshop is set to open its doors at the end of February. Start saving now.
Choose the right skis to glide through winter.
Kids & electronics on the trail.
Why a wood stove?
Dawn is on La Palma, and has a been pretty much every day hiking some fine trail on the island. Los Tilos Tunnels is one of them. Beautiful.
Winter on the Rim, in case you prefer a little snow with your red rocks and mountain bikes.
James spent a stunning day on Stob Coire nam Beith.
Greg hikes up Mt Buffalo.
Photographing snow.
Tradition or habit?
PCT Food Review: What I liked, Would Do Differently, and Recommend.
Amanda lets us know What it's like being an Outdoorsman's wife.
Return of the villain.
A ramble from summer into autumn in Sarek.
David's Adventures in Aviemore.
Paul visits the patron fell of Wasdale.
Jake walks solo across the Park. Barefoot.
Primus OmniLite Ti, the newest Multifuel stove on the market.
10 oz. Shelter System.
Marmot DriClime Ether Wind Shirt.
Brian presents his Emberlit-UL Esbit mod.
Building a pit house.
Sabi prepares for hiking the PCT this year.
Don?t hike your own hike.
Are Blog Reviews Worth Anything?
<- [Affiliate Link]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hikinginfinland/HApk/~3/8T_ik1oWI38/week-in-review.html
Two loops at Stone Mountain State Park
Score another one for the magnetic personality of Stone Mountain: I had just finished a fine loop hike of just under 6 miles on the Blackjack Ridge and Wolf Rock trails. I sat on the grass near the base of Stone Mountain, eating my lunch and trying to listen to reason, which saw no practical advantage in one more hike to the top of the huge granite dome. Listen to reason, or listen to the rock? I went with the rock. The Stone Mountain Loop hike was only another 3.5 miles and 1,000 feet of ascent. The skies were as blue as they get on this side of the United States, the temperature was in the mid-70s. The park was crowded, for sure, but why wouldn’t it be on a day like this? I’ve developed a crackpot theory that massive expanses of exposed rock create their own gravity, and somehow the human subconscious responds to the rock’s gravitational pull. Our susceptibility to the attraction (some might say seduction) determines our urge to get out there amongst the mountains. Utter rot, no doubt, but I have no better explanation. I also ran into Chris Berrier, who joined me on a hike [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tommangan/THD/~3/kmr34aUDO3I/
יום שלישי, 28 בפברואר 2012
Advent Calendar - Door 22
Dear Santa,
with all the climbing gear I got from you, I have one final wish: A nice looking Tendon T-Shirt to go climbing and bouldering in. I do sweat a fair deal, and a dedicated climbing T-Shirt would make the laundry making a lot easier while also being easier to get ready when heading out to the climbing gym or rocks - all my other T-Shirts being black it will be easy to identify the climbing shirt =)
Best,
- An aspiring UL-Backpacker
Subscribe to Hiking in Finland. Leave a comment. Time-wise you got till midnight.
UPDATE I
And the winner is... Dan Szczesny - Congratulations! Please contact me via Email! Thanks everyone else, see you tomorrow at 6 AM!
Disclaimer & Rules
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/hikinginfinland/HApk/~3/HSZFkuj5WVc/advent-calendar-door-22.html
Sunrise and beyond at Julian Price Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway
I love it when a plan doesn’t work out. Last week at Stone Mountain was only mildly colorful at 2,300 feet, so this week I surmised the woods would be blazing around 3,500. I woke at an absurdly early hour and set out for Price Lake on the Blue Ridge Parkway, aiming to arrive at dawn and capture a signature snapshot of blazing reds, yellows and oranges reflected in the still water. Everything about this plan went awry. I left so early that it was still pitch black when I turned onto the Blue Ridge Parkway from Highway 421 just east of Boone. I had time to kill, so I stopped by Moses Cone Manor and clicked a few time-exposures. OK, not bad, but not why I was here. Julian Price Memorial Park was just a few miles down the road. I pulled into the parking area just beyond the dam to see this: OK, so here I am shivering in the cold a hundred miles from my warm bed — and the fall color has fled. Serves me right, actually, because I’m a total snob about “leaf season,” which, to my mind, attracts throngs who appreciate nature only when [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tommangan/THD/~3/A812ujPG3JA/
The Ultimate Hang & Ultralight Backpackin' Tips
Time to start the year with some book reviews. Because books rule.
Last year Mike C! published another one of his fantastic books, Ultralight Backpackin' Tips. I got it pretty much right away, and it is an enjoyable, easy read which you can read in a few hours (provided you have some English language proficiency, though if you lack it - well, happily there's cartoons in this book =). The highlight of Mike's books are unmistakably his funny illustrations and humorous way of writing in which he educates us about some obvious (though often overlooked/ forgotten), and some not so obvious tips to lighten up.
The way the book is structured is simple: Mike discloses "153 amazing & inexpensive tips for extremely lightweight camping". These tips are further divided into 21 Chapters, with topics such as Basic Starting Points, The All-important Mind-set, Travel Techniques, Feet, Water, Bears, Recipes and a bunch more. Mike even got Glen Van Peski and Ryan Jordan to contribute a tip each = added value! It is a well rounded list of useful chapters and tips; if you have read some of Mike's other books some stuff will sound familiar, but there's also plenty of new tips in there. The only shortcoming is in my opinion the lack of an Index at the end of the book, though that might just be me.
My favourite tips are number 34, 35, 42, 65, 78, 95, 130 and 153. I'm working on implementing tip 116 into my outdoor experience. One of the biggest advantages of Ultralight Backpackin' Tips is its high re-reading value. You will read it once, and then you will be going back to it again and again, looking up this one idea, that tip, this concept. So even when one might easily dismiss that there's only 153 tips, I promise you that you'll have a long time joy on this fine little book.
---
I have a hammock, and have several times over the last two years tried to sleep in it - never successful. It's great for relaxing, but I yet have to sleep a whole night comfortably in a hammock. So imagine my delight as I saw Derek Hansen's book "The Ultimate Hang". In case you think "Hey, that looks a bit like Mike C! illustrated it!" - hmm, nope. Derek wrote and illustrated the book, though it does bear some resemblance to Mike C!'s illustrations. Anyway.
I like the book. Derek's illustrations are humourous and funny, not unlike Mike's (though Mike definitely draws better humans =). I especially think that Derek show's that he's what I'd like to call "Internet savvy" - there's QR codes and links all the way through the book, with a wonderful table of all hammock gear manufacturers and what they offer at the end (there's a lot of them!). I know that the hammocking community is a very relaxed, open-minded and fun group (Hammockforums.net should be your next destination if you're hammock-curious) and Derek's book represents that well, and gives plenty of love to his hammock friends (Sharing is Caring!).
The book feels like it is aimed at the beginner to intermediate hammocker, so it was just right for me (I'm more of the former than the latter). It gives us the hammock terminology (aka slang, so you can talk the talk!), hammock history and an (slightly biased) overview of hammocks and tents. I now know that what I have suffered from in my hammock camping trips is called Cold Butt Syndrome and have after reading this little book a good idea of what I did wrong and what I can do better to solve it.
The book is divided into an Introduction & The Basics, and then breaks it further down into Site Selection, Leave No Trace, The Hammock, Suspension & Anchor Points, Staying Dry & Staying Warm and a couple more chapters. There's plenty of good illustrations; discussion of different techniques; benefits of different hammocks, tarps, insulation possibilities and more. I did not feel overwhelmed, but found that I learned plenty of new things to improve my hammock camping experience in the future - from how far apart tree should be and how high to attach the anchor points over how to avoid the Cold Butt Syndrome to installing drip lines.
I like that Derek included a MYOG tutorial and tips in the book, and the Hammock Gear Checklist in the end of the book shows in a ingenious way what to remember when you go hammocking, and where to find the info in the book. The quick reference page, which shows imperial and metric measurements is a nice way to make sure those of us who don't follow the arbitrary retarded rollercoaster of imperial measurements get an idea what all those ounces and inches mean =) The table of hammock retailers and manufacturers is a useful tool for anyone interested in the topic, and Derek shares some useful websites (Shug = awesome).
---
I can recommend both books for the interested lightweight/ ultralight backpacker and hammocker. They compliment each other well, and what you learn from Mike you can apply to your hammock camping experience, and you also can adapt some of the hammocking tricks to your UL ground-dwelling camping routine. Two thumbs up from me.
Have you read the books? What's your take on them? What's your favourite tip from Mike? Have you had a better hammocking experience after reading Derek's book? Let me know!
If you don't yet own the books, consider buying them via the following affiliate links (yes, I won't retire from the few cents I earn from them =)
Europe - Paperback
Europe - Kindle
USA - Paperback
USA - Kindle
Last year Mike C! published another one of his fantastic books, Ultralight Backpackin' Tips. I got it pretty much right away, and it is an enjoyable, easy read which you can read in a few hours (provided you have some English language proficiency, though if you lack it - well, happily there's cartoons in this book =). The highlight of Mike's books are unmistakably his funny illustrations and humorous way of writing in which he educates us about some obvious (though often overlooked/ forgotten), and some not so obvious tips to lighten up.
The way the book is structured is simple: Mike discloses "153 amazing & inexpensive tips for extremely lightweight camping". These tips are further divided into 21 Chapters, with topics such as Basic Starting Points, The All-important Mind-set, Travel Techniques, Feet, Water, Bears, Recipes and a bunch more. Mike even got Glen Van Peski and Ryan Jordan to contribute a tip each = added value! It is a well rounded list of useful chapters and tips; if you have read some of Mike's other books some stuff will sound familiar, but there's also plenty of new tips in there. The only shortcoming is in my opinion the lack of an Index at the end of the book, though that might just be me.
My favourite tips are number 34, 35, 42, 65, 78, 95, 130 and 153. I'm working on implementing tip 116 into my outdoor experience. One of the biggest advantages of Ultralight Backpackin' Tips is its high re-reading value. You will read it once, and then you will be going back to it again and again, looking up this one idea, that tip, this concept. So even when one might easily dismiss that there's only 153 tips, I promise you that you'll have a long time joy on this fine little book.
---
I have a hammock, and have several times over the last two years tried to sleep in it - never successful. It's great for relaxing, but I yet have to sleep a whole night comfortably in a hammock. So imagine my delight as I saw Derek Hansen's book "The Ultimate Hang". In case you think "Hey, that looks a bit like Mike C! illustrated it!" - hmm, nope. Derek wrote and illustrated the book, though it does bear some resemblance to Mike C!'s illustrations. Anyway.
I like the book. Derek's illustrations are humourous and funny, not unlike Mike's (though Mike definitely draws better humans =). I especially think that Derek show's that he's what I'd like to call "Internet savvy" - there's QR codes and links all the way through the book, with a wonderful table of all hammock gear manufacturers and what they offer at the end (there's a lot of them!). I know that the hammocking community is a very relaxed, open-minded and fun group (Hammockforums.net should be your next destination if you're hammock-curious) and Derek's book represents that well, and gives plenty of love to his hammock friends (Sharing is Caring!).
The book feels like it is aimed at the beginner to intermediate hammocker, so it was just right for me (I'm more of the former than the latter). It gives us the hammock terminology (aka slang, so you can talk the talk!), hammock history and an (slightly biased) overview of hammocks and tents. I now know that what I have suffered from in my hammock camping trips is called Cold Butt Syndrome and have after reading this little book a good idea of what I did wrong and what I can do better to solve it.
The book is divided into an Introduction & The Basics, and then breaks it further down into Site Selection, Leave No Trace, The Hammock, Suspension & Anchor Points, Staying Dry & Staying Warm and a couple more chapters. There's plenty of good illustrations; discussion of different techniques; benefits of different hammocks, tarps, insulation possibilities and more. I did not feel overwhelmed, but found that I learned plenty of new things to improve my hammock camping experience in the future - from how far apart tree should be and how high to attach the anchor points over how to avoid the Cold Butt Syndrome to installing drip lines.
I like that Derek included a MYOG tutorial and tips in the book, and the Hammock Gear Checklist in the end of the book shows in a ingenious way what to remember when you go hammocking, and where to find the info in the book. The quick reference page, which shows imperial and metric measurements is a nice way to make sure those of us who don't follow the arbitrary retarded rollercoaster of imperial measurements get an idea what all those ounces and inches mean =) The table of hammock retailers and manufacturers is a useful tool for anyone interested in the topic, and Derek shares some useful websites (Shug = awesome).
---
I can recommend both books for the interested lightweight/ ultralight backpacker and hammocker. They compliment each other well, and what you learn from Mike you can apply to your hammock camping experience, and you also can adapt some of the hammocking tricks to your UL ground-dwelling camping routine. Two thumbs up from me.
Have you read the books? What's your take on them? What's your favourite tip from Mike? Have you had a better hammocking experience after reading Derek's book? Let me know!
If you don't yet own the books, consider buying them via the following affiliate links (yes, I won't retire from the few cents I earn from them =)
Europe - Paperback
Europe - Kindle
USA - Paperback
USA - Kindle
Wyoming Passes Doomsday Bill to Start own Government and Military in case the United States Collapses.
With many thinking that America is tittering on the edge of Financial Armageddon, State representatives in Wyoming are advancing legislation to look into the feasibility of creating their own mini country in case the United States collapses. This Friday they passed legislation that will look into everything from issuing its own alternative currency to implementing a military draft
יום שני, 27 בפברואר 2012
Home Invasion Prevention ? Prevent yourself from becoming the next victim.
You?re sound asleep when all of a sudden a loud noise jars you awake. You sit up and hear people rustling around down stairs. Your heart immediately starts pounding, a sense of panic rushes through your body and you have only seconds to react. According to the F.B.I. one in five homes in America will experience a home invasion or break-in. Do you have the necessary skills, training and weapons to protect yourself and your home?
Food for Thought: Stoveless backpacking
Over the holidays I read a post by Jake ?Don�t Panic? Dow on Going stoveless. He and his girlfriend hiked the PCT without a stove of any sort, quite a task in itself, and doing the whole thing without carrying a stove and food for cooking makes it even more interesting. But is going stoveless really lighter, more convenient and as easy as just leaving your stove at home?
Before we set off on cooking vs. no cooking, I'd like to know from you, my valued readers, how many hot meals and/ or beverages you have per day when you hike:
I myself am in the two to three camp. I have a hot breakfast (my MYOM�sli) and even more important than that, a hot cup of coffee. Yes, I'm addicted to caffeine (I can do and have done without, though I enjoy a good tasting cup of coffee in the morning to start my day), and prefer to enjoy my fine java beans hot. Iced coffee is another story (and only really possible in winter with proper snow unless you carry ice with you, which ain't UL I imagine) but cold coffee is somehow "not my cup of tea". The same goes for cacao - I prefer my chocolate hot! Anyway. That's one warm meal to start my day.
Which brings us to meal number two. Even in the summer I often eat a hot cup of ramen noodles/ MYOG tomato-lentil-soup/ pasta/ whatever. Maybe it is the deep-engrained habit of having a hot meal for lunch. [Off topic: I remember as I was maybe seven or eight that Mom, Dad, my brother and me had a discussion about hot vs. cold lunch. My mom is Dutch and my dad was German, and both had different habits: Mom has grown up with a cold lunch - bread, salad, cheese, spreads, etc. - while dad was used to a hot lunch. In a family meeting the question was if we continue to eat a cold lunch, or a hot lunch. We decided to eat a hot lunch, and somehow that has stayed with me since. Further Offtopic: Finnish Students enjoy one of the best lunch systems in the world: A State subsidized lunch which includes salad, a hot meal (choice of two to three different ones) and two beverages for 2,40?. After six years of studying a hot lunch has become very common, and has continued to be the norm in my working life.] Maybe it is just that I feel a warm lunch gives me more "power" to continue/ fuel my body after an good morning hike. Maybe it is that I feel a warm meal is lighter and easier to prepare than a cold meal. I also feel a second cup of coffee or tea helps with digestion and relaxation - I'm usually not in a hurry. However, I'm also just as often as having a hot lunch not having any lunch at all, and just munch more GORP, snacks, chocolate and m�sli bars or even a sandwich should I have one. So this is a 50/50 situation, where I'd guesstimate both warm and cold are equally often the case.
Dinnertime. If I'm not consuming one of my MYOG Meals, you most usually will see me eat one out of a variety of Freeze-Dried Meals. I have sat next to people who have cooked meals in the evening, and have felt envious with the tasty smells wafting through the air, up my nose, while me eating my Freeze-Dried Meal (Sorry, there's no Freeze-Dried Meal that can beat a cooked meal in my experience - yes, even Fuizion and Real Turmat). Imagine you're sitting there, eating your with cold water hydrated Freeze-Dried Meal while a mate with a stove is eating something he cooked? I can picture a rampage and slaughter at camp. Surely a reason to camp stealthy, far from anyone who possibly would cook something!
It's all mental, though - just as much as leaving behind the pair of spare clothes, the tent and the luxury hygiene set when you decided to go UL and now walk for a week in the same clothes, sleep under a tarp and your hygiene set is a mini dropper bottle of Dr. Bronners, a toothbrush and a 60 cm x 40 cm towel. So going stoveless would just be the logical next step in the pursuit of a lighter backpack and a more enjoyable outdoor experience.
Which brings us to weight savings: The weight of your stove vs. food which doesn't need to be cooked. My hypothesis is that even with a UL stove which is used to boil water for rehydrating food and a cup of coffee/ tea/ hot chocolate it should be lighter to go with a stove than go stoveless. I'm entering the realm of Turnerism here, and will rely on statistics, so it is nothing for the faint-hearted. I'll start with a real-life food list: ten days, the full set of breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinners, all which need to be re-hydrated; as used on my packrafting/ canoeing/ kayaking expedition in May.
6742 gram for the food on the trip. I carried a Backcountry Boiler incl. stuff sack with me, which is 282 gram [There obviously are lighter alternatives than the Backcountry Boiler, but they would require a pot and often a source of fuel other than wood which would add carried weight]. I will assume all "cooking" has been done in Freezer bags, so there's no need for a pot. Both with stove and without stove I surmise that a cup would be used to consume the beverages, so I leave this out.
If we assume that the stoveless hiker eats exactly the same food as the hiker with stove, he would in this case have saved 282 gram for the stove. That's substantial already in the UL universe. What we can't weight, however, is the satisfaction/ happiness/ tastiness of hot food vs. cold food (This assumes that hot food is tastier than cold food, a fact which is difficult to prove).
From the article mentioned in the beginning, I take that at least the lunch consisted of a Bagel sandwich with cheese and hummus, which definitely sounds tasty. However, it also sounds heavier than a bag of ramen (which also can be eaten cold, though seems to have a texture which ain't easily consumed). If we assume only a 5% increase in weight over the stove-lunch for the bagel, cheese and humus, the stoveless hiker is already carrying heavier food than his mate with a stove - only 55 gram heavier, but nevertheless. One can extrapolate this further to 15 days (stoveless 224 grams heavier) to 20 days (stoveless 392 grams heavier) and so on, though I think you get my point. The stoveless hiker would need to rely a lot on dehydrated food to keep the equation in his favour, add something more tasty and fresh and you add weight which quickly will make hiking with a stove being lighter. If he really has the weight scale with him, the stoveless hiker always could carry 282 grams (the weight of the chosen stove in this example) of extra tasty food with him and remain at the same level than the hiker with a stove.
But would it be possible for the stoveless hiker to save even more weight than the weight of the stove, while eating at least as tasty food (again, to define tasty we enter the realm of personal preferences. I, for example, still dislike Brussels sprouts and make a face when my wife brings them home and makes me eat them =)? Raw foodism is gaining popularity, and would be the perfect stoveless hiking diet - if not raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds would be the foundation of this diet. While the latter two are popular among UL backpackers for their low weight and high calorie count, the former two are rarely found on a UL backpackers food list. Sure, dehydrated fruits are light and tasty, but dehydrated veggies? Jack writes that mashed potatoes are easy and tasty when spiced up with Fritos and/ or spices. I believe that, and hence think it should be possible, with the help of dehydrated meats and fish (beef jerky, salmon jerky) to make a rather tasty stoveless diet which is much lighter than the stove diet - maybe not for a thru-hike, but at least for a long weekend or a week (I like variation). I believe the biggest thing here is again mental: The decision to leave the stove at home, to resign from the hot coffee and tea, and to be content with your cold, lighter stoveless diet isn't probably easy if you're at home planning a trip.
Furthermore, this also doesn't consider the question of which season you're out backpacking. In summer it is probably less troublesome to go hiking without a stove, move on to winter (I'm not talking about the crappy winter we have here at the moment, but proper winter with frozen lakes and rivers, -20�C and a meter of snow under your skis) and I'd say going without a stove is close to being suicidal. Unless you know where to find an open water source to get water, you'll need a stove to melt snow, and at -20�C or lower that hot cup of chocolate and hot soup really is something you want. At those temps none-dehydrated foods also start to stick together [the water in the food freezes, to be correct], and trying to separate or cut of a slice of cheese is a tough task; the same goes for bread, spreads, butter and so on. Thus I'd conclude that stoveless hiking belongs firmly into the warm seasons, where water is easily available and food doesn't freeze rockhard.
I'm really happy to have read about Jake's approach, and can see myself trying stoveless hiking sometime next year in the summer, but for the majority of my trips, I probably will continue to bring a stove and enjoy hot food and drinks. While I believe it is possible with a lot of discipline to create a really light stoveless Menu which is tasty, I'm convinced that it is on average lighter to go with an UL stove and dehydrated food, as I reckon it will be tastier and give more (mental) energy.
How about you - are you curious to try out stoveless backpacking, or maybe even are a stoveless backpacker? Or is the mental challenge to leave a stove behind, and the hot cup of coffee, something you're just nor yet ready to do?
Edit: Read Jake's take on stoveless backpacking as well - some interesting viewpoints there.
Before we set off on cooking vs. no cooking, I'd like to know from you, my valued readers, how many hot meals and/ or beverages you have per day when you hike:
I myself am in the two to three camp. I have a hot breakfast (my MYOM�sli) and even more important than that, a hot cup of coffee. Yes, I'm addicted to caffeine (I can do and have done without, though I enjoy a good tasting cup of coffee in the morning to start my day), and prefer to enjoy my fine java beans hot. Iced coffee is another story (and only really possible in winter with proper snow unless you carry ice with you, which ain't UL I imagine) but cold coffee is somehow "not my cup of tea". The same goes for cacao - I prefer my chocolate hot! Anyway. That's one warm meal to start my day.
Which brings us to meal number two. Even in the summer I often eat a hot cup of ramen noodles/ MYOG tomato-lentil-soup/ pasta/ whatever. Maybe it is the deep-engrained habit of having a hot meal for lunch. [Off topic: I remember as I was maybe seven or eight that Mom, Dad, my brother and me had a discussion about hot vs. cold lunch. My mom is Dutch and my dad was German, and both had different habits: Mom has grown up with a cold lunch - bread, salad, cheese, spreads, etc. - while dad was used to a hot lunch. In a family meeting the question was if we continue to eat a cold lunch, or a hot lunch. We decided to eat a hot lunch, and somehow that has stayed with me since. Further Offtopic: Finnish Students enjoy one of the best lunch systems in the world: A State subsidized lunch which includes salad, a hot meal (choice of two to three different ones) and two beverages for 2,40?. After six years of studying a hot lunch has become very common, and has continued to be the norm in my working life.] Maybe it is just that I feel a warm lunch gives me more "power" to continue/ fuel my body after an good morning hike. Maybe it is that I feel a warm meal is lighter and easier to prepare than a cold meal. I also feel a second cup of coffee or tea helps with digestion and relaxation - I'm usually not in a hurry. However, I'm also just as often as having a hot lunch not having any lunch at all, and just munch more GORP, snacks, chocolate and m�sli bars or even a sandwich should I have one. So this is a 50/50 situation, where I'd guesstimate both warm and cold are equally often the case.
Dinnertime. If I'm not consuming one of my MYOG Meals, you most usually will see me eat one out of a variety of Freeze-Dried Meals. I have sat next to people who have cooked meals in the evening, and have felt envious with the tasty smells wafting through the air, up my nose, while me eating my Freeze-Dried Meal (Sorry, there's no Freeze-Dried Meal that can beat a cooked meal in my experience - yes, even Fuizion and Real Turmat). Imagine you're sitting there, eating your with cold water hydrated Freeze-Dried Meal while a mate with a stove is eating something he cooked? I can picture a rampage and slaughter at camp. Surely a reason to camp stealthy, far from anyone who possibly would cook something!
It's all mental, though - just as much as leaving behind the pair of spare clothes, the tent and the luxury hygiene set when you decided to go UL and now walk for a week in the same clothes, sleep under a tarp and your hygiene set is a mini dropper bottle of Dr. Bronners, a toothbrush and a 60 cm x 40 cm towel. So going stoveless would just be the logical next step in the pursuit of a lighter backpack and a more enjoyable outdoor experience.
Which brings us to weight savings: The weight of your stove vs. food which doesn't need to be cooked. My hypothesis is that even with a UL stove which is used to boil water for rehydrating food and a cup of coffee/ tea/ hot chocolate it should be lighter to go with a stove than go stoveless. I'm entering the realm of Turnerism here, and will rely on statistics, so it is nothing for the faint-hearted. I'll start with a real-life food list: ten days, the full set of breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinners, all which need to be re-hydrated; as used on my packrafting/ canoeing/ kayaking expedition in May.
6742 gram for the food on the trip. I carried a Backcountry Boiler incl. stuff sack with me, which is 282 gram [There obviously are lighter alternatives than the Backcountry Boiler, but they would require a pot and often a source of fuel other than wood which would add carried weight]. I will assume all "cooking" has been done in Freezer bags, so there's no need for a pot. Both with stove and without stove I surmise that a cup would be used to consume the beverages, so I leave this out.
If we assume that the stoveless hiker eats exactly the same food as the hiker with stove, he would in this case have saved 282 gram for the stove. That's substantial already in the UL universe. What we can't weight, however, is the satisfaction/ happiness/ tastiness of hot food vs. cold food (This assumes that hot food is tastier than cold food, a fact which is difficult to prove).
From the article mentioned in the beginning, I take that at least the lunch consisted of a Bagel sandwich with cheese and hummus, which definitely sounds tasty. However, it also sounds heavier than a bag of ramen (which also can be eaten cold, though seems to have a texture which ain't easily consumed). If we assume only a 5% increase in weight over the stove-lunch for the bagel, cheese and humus, the stoveless hiker is already carrying heavier food than his mate with a stove - only 55 gram heavier, but nevertheless. One can extrapolate this further to 15 days (stoveless 224 grams heavier) to 20 days (stoveless 392 grams heavier) and so on, though I think you get my point. The stoveless hiker would need to rely a lot on dehydrated food to keep the equation in his favour, add something more tasty and fresh and you add weight which quickly will make hiking with a stove being lighter. If he really has the weight scale with him, the stoveless hiker always could carry 282 grams (the weight of the chosen stove in this example) of extra tasty food with him and remain at the same level than the hiker with a stove.
But would it be possible for the stoveless hiker to save even more weight than the weight of the stove, while eating at least as tasty food (again, to define tasty we enter the realm of personal preferences. I, for example, still dislike Brussels sprouts and make a face when my wife brings them home and makes me eat them =)? Raw foodism is gaining popularity, and would be the perfect stoveless hiking diet - if not raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds would be the foundation of this diet. While the latter two are popular among UL backpackers for their low weight and high calorie count, the former two are rarely found on a UL backpackers food list. Sure, dehydrated fruits are light and tasty, but dehydrated veggies? Jack writes that mashed potatoes are easy and tasty when spiced up with Fritos and/ or spices. I believe that, and hence think it should be possible, with the help of dehydrated meats and fish (beef jerky, salmon jerky) to make a rather tasty stoveless diet which is much lighter than the stove diet - maybe not for a thru-hike, but at least for a long weekend or a week (I like variation). I believe the biggest thing here is again mental: The decision to leave the stove at home, to resign from the hot coffee and tea, and to be content with your cold, lighter stoveless diet isn't probably easy if you're at home planning a trip.
Furthermore, this also doesn't consider the question of which season you're out backpacking. In summer it is probably less troublesome to go hiking without a stove, move on to winter (I'm not talking about the crappy winter we have here at the moment, but proper winter with frozen lakes and rivers, -20�C and a meter of snow under your skis) and I'd say going without a stove is close to being suicidal. Unless you know where to find an open water source to get water, you'll need a stove to melt snow, and at -20�C or lower that hot cup of chocolate and hot soup really is something you want. At those temps none-dehydrated foods also start to stick together [the water in the food freezes, to be correct], and trying to separate or cut of a slice of cheese is a tough task; the same goes for bread, spreads, butter and so on. Thus I'd conclude that stoveless hiking belongs firmly into the warm seasons, where water is easily available and food doesn't freeze rockhard.
I'm really happy to have read about Jake's approach, and can see myself trying stoveless hiking sometime next year in the summer, but for the majority of my trips, I probably will continue to bring a stove and enjoy hot food and drinks. While I believe it is possible with a lot of discipline to create a really light stoveless Menu which is tasty, I'm convinced that it is on average lighter to go with an UL stove and dehydrated food, as I reckon it will be tastier and give more (mental) energy.
How about you - are you curious to try out stoveless backpacking, or maybe even are a stoveless backpacker? Or is the mental challenge to leave a stove behind, and the hot cup of coffee, something you're just nor yet ready to do?
Edit: Read Jake's take on stoveless backpacking as well - some interesting viewpoints there.
Know What App Offers Curated City Guides
Last summer, I started talking with some people who were trying to create a guide app for cities that, instead of relying on crowd-sourcing like Yelp, asked local experts in all different types of fields to pick their favorite things to do and write up mini-guides. I was instantly a fan of the concept – [...]
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Advent Calendar - Door 19
Dear Santa,
I have cold ears. And my partner has cold feet. We both feel that sustainable and ethical principles in the making of garments are important, and hence found that the Swedish company R�jk would be the best to support - garments made in Sweden, with the happiness of employees & customers and the environment in mind, before the bottom line. But that ain't all, nope - great materials, functional designs and beautiful colours make for example their Primaloft Ski Mid-weight socks and their Reverse Beanie the right socks and beanie to fix my partner and my cold problems! We'd appreciate if you'd think of us when you're in Sweden the next time and drop something warm into our stockings =)
Best,
- An aspiring UL-Backpacker
Post a photo of you and your partner out hiking. Both are Unisex, btw.
UPDATE I
Excuse the delay in announcing the winner - I was abroad and out of town till yesterday night.
And the winner is... Allison - Congratulations! Please contact me via Email, you got till tomorrow 15 o'clock to get in touch otherwise it goes to the second in line! Thanks everyone else, see you tomorrow at 6 AM!
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