How Much Battery Capacity Should I Bring?

Batteries are heavy so dialing in the proper battery size is an easy way to drop a few ounces off your pack weight. Step 1: List Device Battery Capacities First, start off by listing your devices and their battery capacities (units here are milli-amp hours or mAH): Pixel 1 phone: 2,770inReach Mini satellite communicator: 1,250Nitecore NU25 headlamp: 610Fuji X-T20 camera: 1,260 That's 5,890 mAH total. Step 2: List Device Expected Lifetimes Most devices provide some sort of estimate of lifetime based on typical usage. Let's list those out: Pixel 1: 19 days (standby)inReach Mini: 20 days (extended tracking mode)Nitecore NU25: [...]

By |2020-03-28T15:54:08+00:00December 19th, 2019|

December 2019 Loot!

Becoming a 4-season backpacker ain't easy - or cheap! Neither is getting in shape, apparently. Here's all the junk I've accumulated this month: Oboz O Fit Plus Thermal Insole Few things reduce your enjoyment of the outdoors like cold feet. I prefer Oboz insoles to Superfeet so when I discovered they had an insulated version I snagged a pair. They feature a fuzzy (moisture-wicking polyester) top and mylar reflective layer on the bottom. They now live at the bottom of my winter boots although I don't see any reason I couldn't throw them in my trail runners as well. ($34.95 [...]

By |2020-01-01T19:16:04+00:00December 15th, 2019|

Book Review: Training for the Uphill Athlete

Training for the Uphill Athlete is a follow-up to the bible of mountaineering fitness Training for the New Alpinism, generalizing the fitness advice to include mountain running, skimo and ski mountaineering. This time around they've enlisted the help of Killian Jornet, a crazy person who jogs across mountain ridges for a living (that's him on the cover). Despite being loaded with pretty pictures and semi-interesting athlete stories the book contains a numeric overflow's worth of scientific and tournament-tested endurance fitness information. It starts out with the biological basis of fitness, covering mitochondria, pyruvate production, ATP, lactate thresholds, and so on. [...]

By |2019-12-15T20:03:21+00:00December 15th, 2019|

Trip Report: Cle Elum River

I went skiing for the first time yesterday. Winter had finally come to the Central Cascades so I drove up Salmon la Sac Road to the Pete Lake turnoff and did a little bit of tooling around on my new Altai Hok snowshoe-skis. There were only a few inches of snow with a hard thick crust so conditions weren't ideal (or so I assume since I have no frame of reference) but since I was just doing loops around a parking lot I still had a good time. I first read about the Hoks in Ultralight Winter Travel and was [...]

By |2019-12-15T15:15:25+00:00December 15th, 2019|

Cotton Shirt Drying Times Compared: Kuhl Airspeed vs. Montbell Wickron vs. Wrangler Riata

In his September wrap-up of his Northern New Mexico Loop trip Paul "PMags" Magnanti mentioned his love for cotton-polyester blend thrift store hiking shirts, particularly western-style snap-button shirts. Having been raised in a "cotton kills" household I found this to be rather shocking, but since he obviously does a lot more hiking than I do I decided to do a little more digging. I picked up a Kuhl Airspeed (265g, $85) and Wrangler Riata (194g, $20) to compare against my Montbell Wickron Light (203g, $69). The Montbell is 100% polyester and the Wrangler is 55% cotton and 45% polyester. The [...]

By |2019-12-18T18:13:11+00:00December 9th, 2019|

Book Review: Ultralight Winter Travel

In the winter of 2014-2015 Justin "Trauma" Lichter and Shawn "Pepper" Forry became the first people to complete the Pacific Crest Trail in winter. That's 2,650 miles of continuous winter backpacking which is absolutely insane. Two years later they released this book which contains not only a wealth of knowledge on winter backpacking but also an appendix containing their PCT gear lists. I picked this up at the beginning of November and despite not being much for physical books these days I've had trouble putting it down. During a bout of insomnia I finally finished it around 4 in the [...]

By |2019-12-05T03:39:58+00:00December 5th, 2019|

Trip Report: Red Mountain

I headed back to Red Mountain Trail #1330 to do some solo trail maintenance, managing to clear about 10 downed trees (including one leaner) and brushing most of the first fifth or so of the trail. I didn't quite make it to the first creek crossing but when the trail is as overgrown as it is I wasn't expecting to even get that far. It poured rain on and off for the whole five hours with temps in the low forties which gave me a great opportunity to test out my gear in the rain. Also due to the rain [...]

By |2019-11-22T23:18:59+00:00November 22nd, 2019|

How to Attach an Ice Axe to an Osprey Levity Backpack

One of the features that was omitted from the Levity was a dedicated ice axe attachment system. Fortunately creating your own is easy, you'll just need two things: About nine inches of cord (I use LiteOutdoors 1.8mm guyline)A Lightrek pack bungee attachment ($2.50, 4g) Ice axes are typically stored by pushing the shaft through a loop near the bottom rear of a pack until it catches on the head, flipping the shaft up vertically until it's near the top of the pack, and then cinching the shaft down against the pack so it's nice and snug. Since the Levity has [...]

By |2019-11-20T04:21:57+00:00November 20th, 2019|

November 2019 Loot!

I guess we're only halfway through but I'm pretty excited about this month's gear purchases so I thought I'd kick things off a bit early: Massdrop x Dan Durston X-Mid 1P Tent I love my Lunar Solo and used it exclusively for the entire 2019 season but the X-Mid's simpler setup (four stakes in a rectangle) and double-wall-ness (better condensation management and summer stargazing) were intriguing enough to me to overlook the fact that it requires two trekking poles. From experience I'll always carry at least one trekking pole in case of injury but custom carbon fiber tent poles are [...]

By |2020-01-04T03:16:43+00:00November 16th, 2019|

Review: Osprey Levity 60 Backpack

Short and stout wins the race After using an Osprey Exos 58 for over two years I upgraded to an Opsrey Levity 60 in Q1 of 2019. After using it for the entirety of the 2019 backpacking season I thought I'd share my impressions so far. This review will focus on the Levity but also contrast it with the Exos for those considering a similar upgrade. Stats Make: OspreyModel: Levity 60Model Year: 2019Volume: 60 litersCarrying Capacity: 10 - 25 poundsMeasured Weight: 873 grams (863 main body, 10 compression cord) in size mediumDate Purchased: 2019-03-10Price Paid: $270.00Usage: 13 trips (32 days [...]

By |2020-05-22T03:20:52+00:00November 12th, 2019|
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