Here are some ideas to make your camping more enjoyable. Some of it is applause for great design, but some of it is pure rant. Hopefully it is generally useful, and some of it is of direct interest to anybody who owns the particular gear I discuss below. The theme is: 'Don't be afraid to try to improve on what the manufacturer provided'. They are constrained by all sorts of things like manufacturability, cost, weight, style, fashion and other things that their marketing people and focus groups think affect buyers' perceptions and expectations. You aren't. You have your own particular expectations like 'The bloody zip shouldn't jam all the time' and other usability issues. If it's broke, fix it. (Carefully, don't wanna broke it even more...)
Also, it gives me forum for complaining about stuff I've bought that doesn't really live up to what was on the box...
Bit 'O String
If I remember (and sometimes I don't and usually regret it...) I try to include a length of rope or string in my pack. Over the years, this has provided me:
A means to get a bunch of scouts up and down a tricky section of a path. (Slippery or steep)
Repairs to pack
A camp chair to help my poor back when I have to sit up and cook (see below)
An extra guy rope when it got windy
Clothes line
Get Knotted
There are so many references for knots online (so Googling the names below will find you examples) but I'll mention my favorites here and what they are useful for:
Bowline - Rescue harness (i.e. the one you put around yourself under your arms) There is a neat way to tie it one-handed whilst holding onto the rope with the other hand. (Or the rockface or that tree-root that is slowly coming out whilst you dangle from it) that I found in a book somewhere. Here's an online tute (I'll make a better one myself one day. Just imagine in the tute that the rope is around you before you tie the bowline): How to Tie a Bowline With One Hand by TIAT - YouTube
Reef knot -left over right then right over left. Easy to remember. For joining ropes but is somewhat overrated as it can slip. I use a sheet-bend or bowline for preference.
Clove hitch - for tying around a branch or for tying around a corner of fabric.
Halter hitch (or a sheet-bend with a bow) - Quick release knot
Rolling hitch - a means of tightening or loosening a rope. Good for guy ropes if there isn't a built-in tightener.
Camp chair
Ever been sitting in camp after a hard day and your lower back aches? You'd love to lean back against a tree, but you can't because you are in the tent and it's raining outside? You'd rather be laying down resting but you have to cook, or eat, or sit up to enjoy that well-earned cuppa? You could maybe have planned ahead and bought one of these with you: Sea To Summit Air Chair but they weigh 300g! (Oh the horror!)
So, all you have is an empty backpack and some string (bootlaces?) and your camp shoes. And an aching back.
Here's an idea I've been playing with that actually works, (it is still in development but I used it successfully recently when cooking in the vestibule whilst I was sitting in the tent) It's based on the idea that you need some tension (not in your back muscles, that's the problem) to lean back against, and some padding and maybe a bit of stiffness (again, not in your back!) to support the tension element from slipping down. Put the empty backpack on, loop the string around it at the belt level and push that up a bit so it is over your lower back. Then loop the string around your feet, tighten (I use a rolling hitch on the loop for this), lean back and enjoy the coffee!
You don't really need the backpack or shoes, they are mainly just for padding. Stuffing a clothes bag or something else between you and the string works too. You do need something though, else the string gets uncomfortable quickly. I found that the padded belt on the pack works well as it gives padding on the sides as well as the back. In fact, if it is one of those ones that comes off the pack, you might be able to refine the idea a bit further.
Another possible advantage is that it can allow you to stretch your calves at the same time. (Move the string up from your foot arch more towards your toes) After a hard day's yakka, that might be good for them. (It certainly helps alleviate calf cramps!)
A possibility is to use a tape instead of a string. Or to have sections of tape for the back (and sides) and the feet, with string in between to save space when packing.
Cheap(er) gear
You can only get good gear from a camping store right? Nope, wrong. And if you buy camping gear from a camping store it'll cost less, right? Stands to reason, they sell more of them so they charge less for each one, right? Nope, wrong again. They tend to work on a different principle of "We have a monopoly on this stuff so we can charge lots for it." Only the low end gear gets sold cheaply and their production values are oriented towards cost and quantity, not quality.
Of course, there are some items that for quality and good design reasons I'd only buy from a specialty manufacturer, such as tents, sleeping bags, backpacks etc, and they normally distribute through camping stores, (and more and more online nowadays).
However, here are 4 items I got from K-Mart for ridiculously low prices. e.g. the gas cost $4 for a 230g can (Nett, i.e. not counting the weight of the can) and I've only ever seen them for $12 and more in camping stores. It worked well on a recent multiweek hike. I've used the small blue and green $5 and $8 dry-bags for years now and they are still going strong. The $10 anodised aluminium frypan with insulated folding handle is a new one that does sausages a treat. Not exactly non-stick but worked well enough. At a camping store they'd be asking $20 or more (and a lot more if it was titanium).
Tent Improvements
Here's some ideas I've developed to make tenting easier.
Six dead men on a dead man's chest, yo ho ho...
I sometimes like to use alternatives to pegs, especially when snow camping but it also works around rocks when the soil is impossible to get a peg into.
In soft snow, unless you use a big (heavy) snow peg, pegs don't work very well. A better alternative is a deadman's anchor. And the easiest and lowest weight one I've come up with weighs 0g because you pick it up at the campsite. (As long as you are camping near or below the treeline) It's just a bit of branch buried in a hole you dig in the snow with your boot toe and then stamp down on it. Works great, holds a ton. The problem is getting your guy rope free of the anchor when it comes time to pack up next morning. If you've been silly and tied a clove-hitch or similar to the branch, you'll have to dig it up and the snow froze solid overnight, didn't it? Hard yakka for you because you don't want to leave that bit of cord behind to litter the place do you? (Unfortunately I have come across plastic bags buried in snow as anchors where people have just left them. The thoughtless beggars.
A much better idea than a clove-hitch is this one. Tie a small loop in your guy rope (maybe overhand or figure of 8 knot?) near the tightening device if there is one, but leave room for tightening, or about halfway down if there isn't. Then take the rest of the line just once as a single loop, importantly, don't wrap it, and with no knots in it that would snag when you tried to pull it free, around the branch or rock and tie it back to the loop with a quick-release knot like a Halter Hitch which I like to think of like a sheet-bend with a bow, if that helps... Then to get it out of the frozen snow, just release the knot and pull the unknotted bit of guy rope out from around the frozen branch or rock.
Sock it to me baby
This idea grew out of getting sick of tangled guy lines. If, like me, you have a few ankle stockings floating around (I use them as inner socks when running) or maybe if you aren't a user, you can wheedle your partner into relinquishing an old pair, if they have them. Long stockings work ok too, just cut them off at the ankle. In fact, once you do that you might be able to use the leftover bit by tying one end closed to make another little bag. Or you can buy them, they are cheap. I wouldn't use socks though. They'd work but are a bit bulky compared to stockings, plus they'd soak up more water in the rain. Then you tie them into the guy ropes of your tent and use them as little stow-bags to stuff the rope in when packing it up so they don't end up in a tangle when you come to unpack the tent to put it up. Stuffing is easier and less likely to tangle than a conventional 'coil the rope and tie a hitch around it' method. Some better designed tents actually come with these little bags built in, but you can make your own, like this:
Naturally you don't tie off all the opening to the stocking else you won't be able to tuck the rope into it. Just put a clove-hitch around a 'corner' of the opening and leave most of the opening, well, open.
Leave nothing not even footprints
No, not advice about how to have an ultra-low-impact on the environment when camping, but rather about how to reduce the impact of the environment on your comfort.
Tent 'footprints' are layers of something that go under the tent to make it more comfortable and reduce the chance of something sharp puncturing it.
Poly-wanna-cracker?
Polyolefin (called polycro or polycryo by backpackers) is a plastic that can be obtained in a thin tough film, often for window insulation purpose. Window Insulation Film / Polycro Groundsheets – TrailGroove Blog. It's light, waterproof and pretty resistant to puncture, unless the intrusive object is sharp. So it's good for gravel or leaf-litter, but not good for sleeping on Bindii. It will tear easily if slit but I've used mine for a few years with no punctures or tears.
Make a rectangular (or whatever strange shape your tent is) piece that fits under the tent and doesn't stick out the sides. You don't want it catching water. Attach hooks to the corners if you like to hook into tent corners. A loop of duct-tape makes a good anchor to tie a bit of thin line through.
Snow job
When camping on snow, I like a bit of foam under the tent. Doesn't have to be very thick, the sleeping mattress takes care of most of my insulation, but I find a millimeter or two of foam under the entire floor makes quite a bit of difference, especially when I slide out of my sleeping bag in the morning onto the bare floor. Brrr. Also I'm convinced that the air in the tent stays warmer with less contact to the snow through a thin floor to cool it. I found that I could get expanded polyethylene foam in 2 mm thickness from a number of places in a width that suits the tent. One I got from the side of the road where it had blown off a rubbish truck, I think... However I found that it tears easily. So I got some underlay foam from Bunnings that had a tough metallised film on one side. Had to buy way too much, so if you know any friendly wood-floor-layers, see if they have any offcuts. It is bulky because it doesn't compress but it is extremely light and does roll tightly and is worth the extra volume. Stick it in a tough bag on the outside of your pack if you have to.
Stupid little loops for pole crossovers
One of the nice things about the my Big Sky Chinook tent is that it is 'single-pitch' which means that I can put up the inner and the fly in one go. And it has been designed with nice little hooks for the fly to attach to the poles, rather than having to thread the poles through a long tube and get stuck halfway. When the rain is bucketing down, usually. So it goes up pretty quickly and I can get under shelter fast.
However, (you knew there was going to be a However, didn't you?) the manufacturer made a stupid mistake in my opinion. There are these other little 'click-together' loops that go around where the poles crossover and they are on little short bits of tape and they are impossible to get to click-together and keep tension on them at the same time. Especially with snow gloves on. Your hands get in each others' way.
Gordon came up with a simple idea that helps immensely.
It's a simple addition of a loop of string. It means you can pull up on the tent without your hand getting in the way of the other hand which is trying to click the things together.
Food-like substances
Sometimes I think I do outdoors stuff because it gives me a reason to eat whatever I want. Then I realise that I have to carry it and my dreams come crashing down. I rely on freeze-dried foods and the stuff you can get today is pretty good (certainly better than TVP. Google it. I'm not going too because of PTSD) but it is expensive and after a few nights of Roast Lamb with Vegetables I crave some more variety. (Yeah, I know it comes in a variety of flavors, especially from the Outdoor Gourmet people, but still it tastes kinda samey after a while.) Of course, you can also try these guys: Strive Food | Dehydrated Meals | Dried Meals | Bushwalking food but they aren't cheap either. You can dry your own as well and if you have the time this is the cheapest way and you get all the variety you can stand to organise. Modern air-fryers on low heat setting make a great dehydrator. We recently had a fight-off between Spaghetti Bolagnise made by my spouse Jennifer and dried/rehydrated and the freeze-dried spag-bol by Outback Gourmet. Jennifer's won hands down on cost, flavour, quantity and even competed well on rehydratability.
In the middle-ground, you can find a lot of good stuff on the supermarket shelves. Here are some almost off-the-shelf ideas, all of which I claim credit for inventing (though others might have invented them independently). I go for the dry ingredients to avoid weight, but think about using some of the 'moist' packaged food, especially if you are doing an overnighter into somewhere you have to carry water into anyway. (Hmm, I should have thought about that when I did The Crinoline and almost ran out of water. Next time)
Caution. Recipes below are extremely vague about measured amounts because I cook by blind faith... Usually that works ok-ish, except when it comes to the chilli.
Chocolate mousse made with coconut milk.
Name says it all really. This is a high energy (read: high in fats and sugars) dessert that is really yummy and easy to make. No cooking and the ingredients are dry so weigh little. Get the dry ingredients from Coles (and other places, Woolies too I think) mix with a cup of water, beat the crap out of it. All that fat in the coconut milk help it go thick really easily. (Never ever try making instant puddings with skim milk powder. It WILL not go thick! A half hour beating in a freezing snow camp convinced me of that....)
Apple crumble
Generous handful of chopped dried apples (or apricots or pears or whateves), half tablespoon of sugar (or more or less as you wish), a tablespoon-ish of cornflower (makes the sauce thicken), 4 or so ginger-snap biscuits (or similar crunchy ones that can be crumbled) and a cup-ish of water. Serves 2 (or 1 if hungry enough. Usually I am). Takes only as long as it takes to boil 1 cup of water, plus a few minutes pfaffing around. Tastes great. Fairly high energy from all the sugars.
Simmer together for just a short time the water, the apple and the sugar until the apple is soft-ish. Be sparing with the water, add more if needed but don't let it get all soppy. Pour off excess water (makes a sweet drink) if needed. Don't simmer too long, don't waste fuel. Leave it to sit with the heat off to get softer if not in a hurry.
Then add the cornflour, pre-mixed in a little water to avoid lumps, and heat again whilst stirring until it all thickens up. Don't overdo the cornflour or it'll get too thick.
Then crumble the biscuit on top of the re-constituted apple and enjoy!
Use your noodle(s)
2-minute noodles get a bad rap because they miss a few essential vitamins and elements and things you need to keep you alive. Bah. As far as I am concerned, unless you try to live exclusively on them, they are a fine, cheap, lightweight source of carbohydrates that doesn't need a lot of fuel to cook. Plus provides flavorsome salts and MSG, if you like that sort of thing.
Noodles Bolagnaise
Get leftover meaty sauce from Jennifer's (substitute favorite cook's name here) Spag Bol and dehydrate it. Add 2-minute noodles, crumbling them. Use the flavor sachet that comes with the noodles if you want. I'd normally avoid it because of too much salt, but I just sweated of a chunk of NaCl on the way up this bloody mountain and I need some back!
On camp, re-hydrate it in a cup of cold water about half an hour before you need it, whilst putting up tent etc. (This is optional. Rehydrating in hot water for 10 mins usually works just fine)
Come dinner time, add hot water if needed and bring to a good eating temperature. Don't simmer too long, again, let it sit with heat off to soften noodles (if needed) to save fuel. (BTW, I gotta make me a camp oven 'cosy' to make this 'sit and soften' process even more efficient. Some of that leftover metallised EPE foam I used for a snow mat maybe? Some metallised bubble-wrap like they use for bags of ice?)
Sensational Noodles
Get a packet of 2-minute noodles. Extract the flavor sachet (before you go if you plan not to use it) and either put it aside, or use it if you need/want the saltiness and don't mind the (possibly) MSG. Break up the noodles into a cup (unless you like slurping long noodles). Add a sachet of Continental Soup Sensations (Any flavor, I like them all!) Add a cup of hot water, stir, let sit until noodles soften. (2 minutes, it says on the packet... but probably more) Slurp 'em up. Serves one hungry camper. Almost (not really) a meal in itself, but add one of the desserts mentioned above and go to bed full of flavorsome goodness.
Add some off-the-shelf turkey-jerky (or beef if you prefer less poetry with your food) for even more substance. Home dried lamb mince or kangaroo is good too. Cook it first though, for safety, unless you really know how to make jerky or biltong.
She'll be apples
I found these great freeze-dried fruits at the local Ritchies' grocery shop. Pretty cheap compared to buying freeze-dries at a camping-goods store, though more expensive than simple dried apples (especially if you do your own). Other fruits too, like strawberries! Yummo. Good for my Apple crumble recipe above.
Waterboy
One of my most prized bits of camping gear is a simple waterbag I made about 40 years ago. You can buy them now, but it's more fun to make them. Instructions follow:
Buy a cheap cardboard cask of wine with a sealed bladder in it. A nice Moscato perhaps, if you like it sweet. 3 or 4 liters ought to do. One with a rubber valve that pops off. This might be hard to determine at first and some experimentation might be called for. Don't get one of those new-fangled ones that is just essentially a plastic bag with a non-removable valve. It needs to be refillable by taking the valve off.
Drink wine and empty the bladder (insert off-color joke here). Check on valve popping-off ability. Repeat until successful.
When the hangover goes away and you are feeling better, take wine bladder out of cardboard box, pop off valve and rinse bladder out. Unless using it for water carrying immediately, in which case just fill it with water and the little bit of remaining wine will add to the flavor. DON'T cut the bladder open. You refill it through the popped-off valve. (Made that mistake first time...)
Get or make an appropriate sized light canvas gear-bag, with a long enough drawstring. This is for the bladder to go into for protection and the drawstring is to give it a handle. Canvas is best because of evaporative cooling when it gets wet (do they still make canvas waterbags to hang on the front of your truck?). Cut a small hole down the bottom of the bag for the valve to poke out of. Maybe sew the hole closed a bit to retain the valve once it's in.
Tie a string to the valve cap so that you don't drop it in the creek when filling the bladder. (Yup, did made that mistake... had to drink another cask to replace the valve) Make sure the hole you put in it for the string doesn't compromise water-tightness, otherwise go back to step one. (Did that one too... more wine please)
Put a bit of narrow hose on the rope of the bag because thin rope will hurt your hand when carrying the full bag back to camp from hundreds (or more) of meters away. (Uhuh, learned that the hard way also)
The original bladder has been replaced once or twice in that 40 years, but more so that I had an excuse to buy more wine than because it was needful. They are tough!
One of the joys of camping in high places is that they often don't have water available and you need to carry it in from tens of kilometers away. My water bag is OK for this, often strapped to the top of my pack, but I sometimes worry that I might snag the valve on a branch and pop it off after carrying it 99% of the way to camp. I'd get a nice shower, but I'd have lost all the water. Or have it come loose from the strap and fall off and burst or just get lost. Best to put it into the pack, but do make sure everything in the pack is in waterproof bags in case it leaks.
Once when I was feeling flush (get it) with cash, I splashed (oh it gets worse) out on a 10 liter Sea to Summit water bag of similar design but with grommets to tie it onto the pack. I've used it once. 10 liters is too much! Of course you don't have to fill it but even part filled it has too much volume and my old 3 liter old one does the job better and packs away neater when empty. Maybe I'll use the 10 liter one for car-camping. Being able to hang it up and having a more easily operated valve is an advantage over the rigid plastic water 'jerrycans' or barrels. And despite previous whinging, it doesn't take up a lot of car room when empty.
How to avoid doing your head in, in the bush
I like a cap with a brim or a peak on it to keep the sun and rain and occasional spider out of my eyes. (Doesn't work very well on spiders...) But there is a definite drawback. Things above eye-level get obscured. I just don't see them when I'm focusing on the ground ahead to avoid spraining an ankle. Consequently I've hit my head on numerous occasions, sometimes quite hard. (Which might explain a few things)
One solution is to use a peaked cap that can be reversed, baseball catcher style. This also makes you look cooler. (So I'm informed by decades of social reinforcement conditioning) The problem is that I also like my caps to have a neckpiece, think Foreign-legion cap, to keep the sun off my neck. Reversing this style of hat does not improve your outlook at all. Quite the opposite.
I recently had to replace the bit of stiff material in a cap brim (which originally seems to have been made out of a biscuit) because it got wet and crumbled. A curved bit of plastic from an old milk bottle looked like a good, waterproof replacement, so I took the chance to also engineer the shape of it to allow it to fold back and to stay folded back. It didn't take much, just a bit of experimenting with the curve of the edge that went against the forehead, and some hand-stitching to sew back the slit I made to take out the old material.
OK, it makes me look like Gomer Pyle (look it up), but it does save me from abrasions and potential brain injury, so I'll put up with that.
Zippedy doo dah
Ever been caught in a sudden downpour or a blizzard and you don your raingear and try to do the zipper up and it gets halfway and sticks? Or desperately trying to do up the waterproof zipper on a pocket before it fills up with water and it sticks? I have.
Or, having put off getting out of the nice warm sleeping bag you finally have to give in to nature's increasingly urgent calls and the bag zipper sticks? And then the tent zipper sticks after that? Aaaargh! I have actually ripped a tent when this happened as I desperately tugged on the zip to get it unstuck.
Note that this is usually a different problem than the slider not meshing the teeth properly or needing some lube. The thing that is happening here is that a bit of fabric (usually the storm flap that covers the zipper or the baffle tube in a sleeping bag) is riding under the edge of the slider and getting jammed.
After that episode with the zip in the blizzard, I made a little flat bit of plastic to go around the outside of the zip slider mechanism. Its purpose was to act like the cowcatcher on a steamtrain and push away the material of the zipper cover that sometimes gets stuck under the slider, but is loose enough that the fabric doesn't jam under it.
It worked well. It was made of a plastic sometimes called polymorph, e.g. Hand-Moldable Plastic - Low Temperature Thermoplastic that when dipped in water above about 70 degrees C goes soft and malleable and can be molded and sticks to itself. It also sticks to lots of other things, so coating the zip teeth with a bit of detergent or oil first is a good idea unless you want to spend an hour picking plastic out of your teeth.
However, there's a fatal flaw. That 70 degrees C thing is incompatible with the idea that to renew the DWR on your jacket you toss it into a tumble-dryer. Fortunately it didn't make too much of a mess...
Another possibility is to use Sugru to do the same thing, or this 3d-printed solution I designed. I think they'd be resistant to levels of heat like the tumble-dryer. The 3d-printed one 'worked' but not as well as the polymorph, perhaps it was too flat. In the end I just glued the zip cover flaps back with Gear Aid Seam Sealer. McNett Gear Aid. The zips were waterproof anyway and the flap wasn't needed (and as discussed, actually got in the way...)
There is an application where tumble-dryers are not really a consideration (though hot sun might be...) My tent (one of them) is a Big Sky Chinook and it's a great tent. Light, roomy and the zips on the inside are pretty good and don't stick.
But the zips on the fly! They stick if you even look at them! The floppy lightweight design of the flap of fabric that covers them to keep the rain out is such that it will stick every bloody time unless you use two hands, one to hold the zipper taught when trying to open or close the outer door of the vestibule. This is a complete pain in the apse! I might try the 'cowcatcher' technique on these zip sliders to see if I can improve it.
Unfortunately I can't just remove the zipper cover flaps on the tent because these zippers aren't waterproof and they'd drip into the vestibule in the event of rain. An alternative would be to stiffen them with a tape glued onto their inside so that they weren't loose and floppy and couldn't fold up and jam under the slider anymore. I tried just a thin coating of seam sealer but it didn't make the flap particularly stiff. It did however reinforce the fabric where repeated jams had weakened it, so that's a good thing. Perhaps repeat that idea but this time put a tape of thin fabric mesh into the glue. Or more seam sealer.
Personally I think it's a poor design and a waterproof zip would have been far superior... and cost more and been harder to unzip. (All the w'proof zips I've seen are very stiff)
UPDATE: Huh! While I was out taking photos of the tent for this blog, I think I came across a good solution for the zipper jamming. Remember how I said above that you could avoid it if you used 2 hands, one to keep the zipper taut? Well, here's a photo of how the zipper is normally. Note the saggy zipper cover? (Look carefully and you can see a damaged white patch where the zipper keeps catching)
And here's a way to keep the cover taut without using any hands. Does need another peg though, and a thin bit of elastic bungee cord. I used a tiny weeny titanium peg, they don't add a lot of weight. Note that you can't just move the original peg from where it is supposed to be because the tension needed to keep the tent from blowing down needs to be where the manufacturer designed it to be not where some half-smart cowboy like me decided to move it to. This addition is just to keep a little bit of tension on the zip cover. Too much and you'll end up ripping it. Which is why I think the new cord needs to be elastic.
Anyway, it appears that adding the elastic tie-down and peg to keep the zip cover taut stops it jamming all the time. It works, but it's a pain because sure as eggs I am going to trip over it or something. Perhaps I can figure out something less sticky-outy. And maybe something that doesn't need an extra peg. Maybe a triangular batten (see Sail components - Wikipedia) down the bottom would do it.... Hmmm.... Maybe tying it back to the original peg instead of a new one would work, especially if done with elastic.
Final Solution
No, I didn't set fire to the tent and destroy it in a fit of frustration. Instead I glued a strip of stiffer material onto the inside of the zip cover. The tent fly is sil-nylon so I used Gear Aid Silnet Silicone Seam Sealer (wildearth.com.au) Net Gear's sil-nylon seam sealer (be careful not to get their other one with is polyurethane based. It won't stick to sil-nylon) and a strip of a woven blue polythene. There are other contenders, nylon Grosgrain ribbon or some light webbing of some sort would do do. The stuff I used is stiff, strong and light and seems to stick with the sil-nylon sealer well. Will put in a picture one day.
Getting into hot water
Wouldn't it be nice to have an electrical heater to boil water with when hiking? Rather than all those dangerous and inefficient gas or fuel stoves, or heaven forbid, a camp fire?
Well, here are the calculations. It takes about 4.2 Joules of energy to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 C. So 4.2 KJ to do so for 1 liter. Lets imagine that we start with water that is 20C so we need to raise it by 80C to boil it. This means 80x4.2 or 336 KJ. (I don't even want to think about starting with melting snow. Phase changes are EXPENSIVE in energy!)
I have a portable USB charger that can store 10,000 mAh or 10 A hours and outputs 5V. It weighs about 250g. Not too bad. Now 1 hour is 60x60 seconds so here's the kicker. If I completely discharged that USB brick into a heating coil I'd get 5x10x60x60 J out of it. 180 KJ. About enough to boil 1/2 a liter. (Assuming you get all of that energy out of the charger. I'm dubious. Tests show that you are lucky to get 70%.) You might be better off removing the 5v regulator out of the circuit though and getting a few more volts out of it. Maybe one of those car jumper batteries that puts out 12-ish volts instead of a 5V from a USB charger.
Not quite practical is it? 2 cups of hot water per recharge? Twice as much if you don't actually want to boil it? However, if battery storage density improves by two orders of magnitude, so I could carry a rechargeable 250g device that would boil 50 liters of water, that'd be a game changer. Wonder if I'll live long enough to see it?
Interestingly, if you divide the mAH by the mass in that USB charger you get 10,000/250 or 40 mAH/g. Multiply by voltage of 5 and you get 200 mWh/g or 0.2 Wh/g or 200 Wh/kg. That's the energy density.
I'm told by Google that 200 Wh/kg is about as good as is currently achievable in Li-ion batteries. I think we are gonna need one o' them paradigm shifts to get much better.
Skirting the problem
My hike buddy Gordon uses a rain-kilt rather than waterproof trousers when we are hiking, and I can understand why. Ventilation. It's nice to have the wind on yer nethers so things don't get too humid down there. (He does wear shorts under it, if you are wondering). It's a simple article of clothing, basically a cylinder of a waterproof material, tough enough to withstand a bit of bushbashing, fastened at the waste and with a bit of velcro to close it at about groinal altitude and a split gives the leggies freedom of movement to step over logs and things. It won't keep yer socks and booties dry, but does avoid wet shorts and to an extent, protects from nasties like blackberry bramble when bushbashing.
Also, that cylinder opens up to a rectangle of material which could be useful for other things at the end of the day. A porch for the tent. Something to sit on if the ground is a bit soggy. Ground sheet for the front door. Somewhere to stand when putting your boots on. Roof over the head of your bivvybag if you are going minimalist.
Losing My Grip
I bought a nice pair of down filled hut booties from Macpac. A bit tougher than my down booties that I often wear in my sleeping bag and with a waterproof sole. They definitely do the job and are great except for one thing...
If you go to that link above and zoom in carefully on what you can see of the soles, you might see that they have a little grip thingy printed on the bottom. It turns out to be the Macpac motif, a little mountain icon. Cute idea, hey?
Well, after wearing them around the house, as you do, I started to notice little black things on the carpet. Yeah, you got it, the little Macpacs were coming off. I've been finding them for months now. I guess they'll stop eventually, and the sole has a good grip pattern without them, so no biggie. I just have to put up with dirty looks from Jennifer until they stop...
Crossing the Styx with sticks
I, like many, used to disparage hiking sicks as an aid for the elderly. A useless extra bit of weight to carry, for a fit young man. Well, now I am one of the elderly and I use walking sticks. Very expensive, ultra-light foldable carbon-fiber ones that I bought for running up hills with.
There are a number of manufacturers, like Black Diamond, Leki, Gipron, Harrier and probably others I haven't seen. And there are a number of designs.
There are of course heavier, sturdier, less expensive models to choose from, so if you decide you need them, look around and find some that suit you.
I have found them useful for added stability, especially when crossing rivers with slippery rocks, hiking uphill, running downhill and for holding up a tent. Also for warding off spiders and potentially snakes. (Do not poke snakes to make them move off the track! They will turn and strike!)
The carbon fiber things are great in many ways. Light and strong in compression. But they are weak in shear, so sideways forces can make them buckle and break. Also standing on them when they are laying on the ground is a bad idea. The aluminium ones are heavier but in many ways sturdier.
On a recent 100 mile ultra, I managed to break one of my carbon poles because of a design flaw (and because the terrain was really gnarly and I was exhausted...)
I was trying to get up a high rock ledge and put the pole tip on the rock with my hand in the wrist strap high above my head and pushed vertically down. I must have twisted my wrist at some point and put some sideways force on the pole because there was a sad little crackling sound of carbon fiber giving up the struggle and the pole broke at a weak point.
The point that it broke at was where a hole had been cut in the fiber to allow a locking button to protrude. That of course weakened the pole at that point. I have since fixed it by cutting and glueing the pole into a new tubular section of carbon fiber I happened to have. I had to make a new locking mechanism because I wasn't going to make that same mistake of cutting into the carbon. I stole an idea that Gipron use and it works great. Now the kevlar cord that runs down the pole on the inside is locked into a notch at the top of the pole to hold it all together when assembled. This leaves about 12 cm of cord to flap about at the top of the handle but I worked out a way to clip it down using one of the little plastic clippy things you can get to clip your poles together (and which are often find in the middle of the track when hiking)
No-one that does reviews or comments on these things on Youtube or any other forum that I have perused mentioned this design flaw. Many of the manufacturers (except maybe Gipron) use a variant of this in some of their models, so they don't point it out as a flaw in their competitors either.
I did come across one reviewer complaining that the Black Diamond Carbon Z poles frequently broke at the tip where the carbon plugs into a short plastic tube and I had experienced the same thing so I beefed up the plastic using semi-flexible meltable TPU from my 3d printing 'mistakes'. It stuck to the original plastic well when they are both heated sufficiently and it's much stronger now.
I wanted to get some Leki Cross Trail FX Superlite Compact Poles as replacements/backups and also because I am intrigued by their Shark wriststrap idea. Leki make a LOT of models (be careful to get the name exactly right as the models names are very similar yet their construction, weight and cost can very considerably) and some of them use a technique called Core Locking Device (CLD) instead of the 'hole in the pole'. It didn't look like a twist-lock (which I dislike because they jam, or come loose at the wrong time). I looked to see if there was any explanation of how it worked but found nothing except a bunch of videos showing how to use it. So I enquired with a seller and they assured me that with CLD there was no hole in the carbon fiber to add a weakness, so I pulled the trigger and bought some. I'll find out what the design is when I get them after the Christmas-New-Year parcel delivery congestion has cleared.
Post Delivery Note:
Yep, the CLD mechanism is very good. Not only does it lock firmly without needing a hole in the carbon, it allows for some adjustment in length. I'd suggest these Lekis over the Black Diamond Carbon Z.
Soggy Sox
To dry out socks (and other things) first gently wring them dry then wrap them in a small towel that you carry for mopping up water in the tent, then wring the whole lot as dry as you can. Using the towel takes some of the strain off the socks as you twist, allowing you to get them drier without destroying the wool (or whatever). NOTE: Don't do this with waterproof socks. You'll break the vapor membrane. Then take your hot water bottle (Nalgene, anything that can take hot water) fill it with hot water and put it inside the socks, one after another, or wrap the articles around the bottle if they won't fit over the bottle. Then put the whole lot somewhere out of the rain, but with good ventilation. (Preferably out of the tent so you don't end up with even more condensation in the tent). I tried this and I could see the water steaming out of the socks and in about an hour the socks were much drier. You could even do this with your freeze-dry dinner for 10 minutes as it reconstitutes but be careful not to get chili con carne in your sox.