Trip Report: Pete Lake

Morning mist on Pete Lake On June 15th Person B and I went on an overnight backpack to Pete Lake which lies northeast of Snoqualmie Pass in the Central Cascades, just a mile east of the PCT. We wanted something short and flat and lake-ish so I browsed around on the WTA's Hike Finder Map until I stumbled across it. At about five miles each way with only 400 feet of elevation gain Pete Lake fit the bill. Overnight permits for Pete Lake are self-issue at the trailhead and a Northwest Forest Pass or America the Beautiful pass is required [...]

By |2020-08-01T21:06:34+00:00June 29th, 2019|

June 2019 Loot! Litesmith Edition

Hoo boy! Every quarter or so I like to browse around the various ultralight gear vendors and see what's new. This time I bought a bunch of stuff from Litesmith to help shave some grams off of my upcoming Enchantments trip. Without further ado: Nylofume pack liner (not pictured because it's a clear bag) 28g | $2.49 | 12g saved | 4.8g/$ I'm currently using the Gossamer Gear pack liners which, in addition to being made out of polyethylene, are a penny dearer and 12g heavier. I have no complaints about the GG liners but wanted to see if nylofume [...]

By |2019-06-25T03:50:33+00:00June 25th, 2019|

ASAP Orange Nitrile Gloves

Stats Make: ASAPModel: Orange Nitrile GlovesModel Year: 2019Price Paid: $11.91 for a box of 100 or $0.12 per gloveMeasured Weight: 7g per glove in size large When I was doing some maintenance on the Bogachiel Trail with the WTA I got some advice for keeping your hands warm while working in the rain: wear a pair of nitrile gloves under your work gloves. Every volunteer was given a complimentary pair and I can say from experience that it was super effective. Once I got home I ordered a box of 100 off of Amazon and have been bringing them on [...]

By |2020-01-04T01:57:10+00:00June 14th, 2019|

June 2019 Loot!

Another month, another giant pile of crap in the mail as I try out new things. Here's what's cooking: Instant Thai Tea I don't recall where I heard about this but apparently you can get instant Thai tea packets off of Amazon. Now that I'm back on the cooking wagon I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting drink mixes and this one seems like a winner. Testing it out at home it tastes great but doesn't mix well in cold water (the label says to use hot water so this isn't exactly a surprise). Update: took this out [...]

By |2019-06-16T23:47:37+00:00June 11th, 2019|

May 2019 Loot!

Bare Boxer Contender 101 Bear Canister First off, I picked up a Bare Boxer Contender 101 bear canister for about $70. It's a little over half the weight of the Backpacker's Cache (707g vs. 1238g) because it's much smaller - it only holds up to 3 days of food for one person. Fortunately I do lots of 1-2 night trips on the Olympic coast where hard-sided canisters are required so this actually made a lot of sense for an upgrade. Unfortunately, the locking mechanism is pretty annoying - instead of the circular devices having a slot which fits any coin [...]

By |2019-06-16T23:44:51+00:00May 30th, 2019|

Duckabush River

Your humble correspondent living out his childhood lumberjack fantasies I went on a four-day logout along the Duckabush River as part of the WTA's Backcountry Response Team. This was my first time doing anything like this and I got to cut downed trees in half with a two-person crosscut saw, kick giant logs down steep slopes, and generally just live out my lumberjack fantasies. Oh, and I also got a hard hat with my name on it, a t-shirt, and a sticker. And muscles. If you're looking to do multi-day backpacking trips where you cut and clear logs off of [...]

By |2020-08-01T21:18:43+00:00May 15th, 2019|

OpenStreetMap

One of the data layers for Gaia GPS is OpenStreetMap, a collaborative mapping platform (think of it as Wikipedia for maps). Often times features such as campsite locations, toilet locations, etc. are missing from OSM and thus missing from Gaia. Here's how I add new locations to OSM such that they're visible to all Gaia GPS users: Export the point from Gaia as a GPX fileLog into OSMSelect Edit with iD from the Edit dropdown to bring up the in-browser editorDrag the GPX file onto the editor to add the point as an overlayClick on the Point icon at the [...]

By |2019-06-04T03:22:20+00:00May 2nd, 2019|

Exciting News

Two things happened in the past month that I'm still having trouble believing: First, Andrew Skurka posted a help-wanted ad on the ultralight subreddit asking for shakedowners. So I applied. And I got it. I ended up going over the gear lists of his Alaska clients since the conditions in Alaska in June are very similar to conditions on the Olympic Coast in March. I also learned that bread bags are worn between dry socks and wet shoes, not just outside of socks alone. Whoops. I guess that's what happens when you spend too much time reading about backpacking techniques [...]

By |2019-04-22T02:43:45+00:00April 22nd, 2019|

CNOC Vecto Tethered Replacement Cap

Left: new cap. Right: ye olde cappe. On April 2nd I received an email from CNOC Outdoors saying that they were now offering tethered replacement caps for pre-2019 Vectos. 2 dollars and 6 days later I'm pleased to announce that my replacement has arrived. In addition to the tether you'll note that the threads appear to be much deeper and that the ribbed closure on the outside of the cap is also deeper and more widely spaced. The new cap weighs 4g whereas the old cap is 2g. Don't know how much more there is to say about a cap, [...]

By |2019-04-09T15:43:05+00:00April 9th, 2019|

Q1 2019 Loot

Q1 was huge for upgrades! I'm now at the point where the only thing I'm unhappy with is my pillow, the Sea to Summit Aeros ultralight. I'm thinking I might just eat the weight and volume penalty and pick up a small foam pillow, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. First, let's start with things I have yet to try out: Picked up a Gossamer Gear shoulder strap pocket. It only comes in size large and it's, well, large. Much bigger than is needed for my phone, and it looks silly on my Osprey Levity's skinny [...]

By |2019-04-09T03:10:36+00:00April 3rd, 2019|
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