Hot answers tagged equipment
5
What type of cookware you choose depends on what type of cooking you do. Titanium is certainly the lightest, and it's great if all you do in your pot is boil water to add to dehydrated foods (Lipton noodles, Mountain House, homemade boil-in-bag meals, etc.) or to make beverages. I've never seen or heard of a titanium pot shattering at low temperatures. ...
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Expedition weight relates to the temperature rating and level of activity. It usually means cold and low activity.
According to REI expert-advice section.
For cool conditions, thermal underwear is available in light-, mid- and expedition-weights. Choose the weight that best matches your activity and the temperature.
[...]
Like thermal underwear, ...
5
You propose packing food deeply in your backpack. I'd specifically recommend against that. Bears (and other wild animals) have vastly more acute senses of smell than humans, and they won't hesitate to chew through your pack to get at anything buried there. Even if there aren't bears in an area, there are likely to be some kind of varmints (squirrels, ...
4
Inflatable pillows blow. (Get it? Ha ha! I kill me.)
Seriously though - after years of battling inflatables (sticky in hot climes, slippery, hard to breathe when you are face down in them) I've found the most comfy pillow is a fleece jacket rolled loosely in a pillow case. You presumably have extra clothes with you - roll em in there too.
For extra comfy - ...
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According to Yosemite Park's website, bears have lost fear towards humans and will try to get food from whatever is the easiest way.
This usually means that it's easier to break a car's window of wreck a campsite than going hunting.
They have a keen sense of smell and will follow not just food, but products with various scents that we wouldn't think of as ...
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I think the regulations are so strict because the park service wants to keep a level of discipline about how hikers manage their food, so that none is accidentally left in a pack, and the oils and crumbs from food don't contaminate a pack. This avoids scenarios where food was left in a pack unintentionally.
Bears don't hunt humans except in rare cases ...
4
Generally speaking, the main differences between bouldering and top roping (unless you are an expert) is that you are likely to find yourself trying more extreme positions when bouldering.
Huge generalisation, I know, but when top roping you usually look to conserve energy, assess the pitch, and make vertical gains.
As a boulderer, you will be crabbing, ...
3
As per The North Face Customer Service:
Each strap (not bungee, sorry about that) should have a barrel on one end followed by an overhand knot holding the two ends of the strap. Simply undo the knot, depress the button on the barrel and un-thread one end of the strap. Thread through loops as desired, re-thread through barrel, tie off ends using a 2 ...
3
Bear populations, bear problems, and aggressive bears are distributed extremely unevenly in California wilderness areas. There are dense populations of problem animals in a few small areas such as Yosemite Valley and Little Yosemite. These are areas with a lot of humans packed into a small space. You're going to the White Mountains, which gets very few human ...
3
"Unlikely" is not the same as "won't happen." You're going to the White Mountains in California, so call the ranger station in Bishop and ask them. They will probably tell you that bears do exist there, so the probability is not zero.
"It seems quite difficult to me to keep food at least 15 feet above the ground and 10 feet horizontally from a tree trunk. ...
2
The best recommendation is to take all necessary precautions for yourself, wildlife and the fauna.
What measures make sense depends on the area you are visiting. For example, in more remote parts of the east coast (Maine, New-Brunswick, etc.) you will only find black bears and they tend to be pretty shy. In these areas, many people rely on hanging their ...
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I live in Sweden and I hike a lot in the wild. My personal top three properties to look for in a handheld GPS receiver for The Great Outdoors:
Battery life
Battery life
Battery life
I honestly don't care if the measurement is 20 metre off. In the Swedish mountains, it usually isn't, there are no deep canyons, and if there are you can only go in one ...
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I picked up a memory foam travel pillow for around $5 at Canadian Tire a few years back. It actually packs small enough (about the size of a 1L Nalgene) that I also use it on easier multiday mountaineering trips where I'm not already trying to shave as much weight off of my pack as possible (otherwise the down jacket wrapped in a fleece works beautifully.)
...
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I have a small summit pack that has loops on each side of the backpack, which your's seems to have as well. My pack advertised those for "securing overloads," meaning you can drape stuff that doesn't fit inside (like a rope), over the pack before you close the lid and secure it with the straps to each side of the pack. On each side of the pack I thread a ...
1
If you really do need exceptional accuracy, you could use the solution many Ingress players use - a good Android phone with a battery pack.
In the game you often need accuracy of 2 or 3 metres - so the Galaxy S3 or a phone paired with the Nexus 7 (which has an excellend GPS) are the tools of choice. The game uses google maps and wireless navigation, as well ...
1
Freezer bag cooking eliminates the hassle and environmental impact of washing your pot and dishes. You simply boil the water in the pot, then pour it into the ziplock freezer bag where the ingredients are. You eat out of the bag, so you don't need to carry separate dishes that are heavy and have to be washed.
If you're using this technique, then the only ...
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