I’ve just discovered a smoked sausage at the bottom of my bag. I don’t remember buying it, but it appears fresh(ish) . Mustn’t grumble.
The photo above (and below if I remember to attach it before I press ‘Publish’) were taken on Saturday crossing Rannoch Moor in some of the best winter weather I’ve ever experienced in Scotland. It was proper T-Shirt weather and I even managed a decent bit of sunburn too. I joined Steve on the final 2 days of his rather luxurious West Highland Way thru-hike, and we travelled together through the snow from Bridge of Orchy to Fort William, pausing only for the odd pint and G & T along the way. I’m not going to pretend that it was easy – as you can see from the photo above some skis would have come in useful, or maybe the snowshoes that I left in the car…D’Oh! Some items of kit didn’t work the way I expected them to, but there was some human error involved there, more to follow.
Steve has kept a rather nice diary of the trip over on his blog at stevenhorner.com, (though technical problems appear to have prevented the last few days from being shown) so head on over.
Both photos taken on a Nokia 5800 XM and unedited (far too lazy).
One or two of you might remember that Ron at Mountain Laurel Designs sent me a pre-production version of the MoPacka that I used as a lightweight alternative to a traditional foam buoyancy aid for packrafting. It appears that Ron has quietly made some changes to the design and released it as The Thing – which is not in any way marketed as a piece of safety equipment, and certainly not a buoyancy aid. If I were to purchase one of these then I reckon that’s what I would use it for though, but that’s at my own risk and I wouldn’t recommend anyone else do that. Ron would probably frown upon it too.
The obvious difference between this and my MoPacka is the construction material – Epic rather than some kind of mesh, which looks nicer but probably won’t drain as quickly if it gets wet. The new version will pack down smaller and weighs less, plus Ron’s got rid of the slightly uncomfortable crotch strap (but there’s provision to add one if you want). I love the daisy chain on the front – perfect for tying the lanyard of a safety knife.
I’ll leave you with these two fantastic modelling shots by way of a side-by side comparison. Sleep well…..
It’s snowing again up here in Scotland, and this week there have recently been several well publicised deaths in avalanches to add to those from the previous big dump of snow. Obviously it’s only a minuscule percentage of the people who venture out to enjoy this magical winter landscape that don’t return, but wouldn’t it be great if EVERYONE did?
Probably not going to happen – nature doesn’t really work like that – but you can certainly minimise the risk by taking a look at these FREE websites before you set out:
All of these sites have some form of ‘mobile’ service, so you can get the latest, up to the minute conditions wherever you are (assuming you have phone signal of course).
For general avalanche safety advice, you can’t go far wrong with:
“Hike your own Hike” and all that, but the bottom line for me is that if there’s any doubt in my mind, I just don’t go. I continually perform a dynamic risk assessment when I’m out, and if I think it’d be wise to turn around, or take a different route, I do it. I appreciate that people may have driven a long distance and/or taken time off work to enjoy the conditions, but there’s always something else you can do. Low level walk in the forest? Head to the climbing wall? Support the local economy by consuming all-you-can-physically-eat pizza (that gets my vote)? It’s easy to preach this sitting in front of a computer an hour away from the mountains, but seriously – this isn’t the last time it’s going to snow, and though the kids might be disappointed now, pizza cures disappointment pretty quickly.
I know quite a few people that enjoy getting out into the outdoors in winter, and I really enjoy hearing about their exploits, but I’d rather it be on their blog than the national news.
I don’t require much from a backpacking stove – no simmering or variable heat output or whatever – I just want my water boiled in a reasonable timeframe without setting fire to my shelter. Thus even a 100g titanium pot is slightly excessive for me – it’s not as if I’m actually going to eat out of it as all my food is rehydrated in freezerbags or pouches and it seems an awful waste of such a beautifully made item.
So as with all my kit selection I tried to think holistically and asked myself what I ACTUALLY need out of the complete cooking ’system’. Trying to combine a selection of disparate components is never as effective as a system that’s been designed to work in unity (feels like I’m at work now…). My first choice for gear shopping is always the cottage manufacturers – these guys are experts in system design (think the Jacks R Better hammock set-ups and the LuxuryLite Pack33 for example) so it was inevitable that I stumbled across Trail Designs and their Caldera Cone systems.
I’ve got a Caldera Cone for my MSR Titan Kettle, but as I moved on to Esbit fuel it was neglected in favour of a Ti Wing stove with separate windshield which all fitted in the pot nicely and packed up in a little cuben bag and made me smile (essential). But then Colin put me on to the Caldera Keg GVP system, and it all fell into place.
It’s simply an empty Fosters can with a ridge lathed around the middle allowing it to sit in a very thin cone-shaped windshield. Beneath this you can sit either the Gram Cracker Esbit holder or the ubiquitous coke can meths burner (supplied with the kit if you need it). The complete package is nice and modular, you can pick and choose different elements according to your preference, or in my case, according to the season.
Photo (c) Gossamer Gear LLC
The weights for each component are as follows:
Caldera Cone: 27 g
Fosters Can: 25 g
Lid: 6 g
Gram Cracker Stand: 3 g
Small BeerBand: 5 g
Large BeerBand: 8 g
Stuff Sack: 4 g
Cozy: 6 g
Caldera Caddy: 75 g
Meths burner: 17g
I tend to use Esbit for three seasons, and switch to meths in the winter, so my set up looks a bit like this:
I use the caddy in the winter too, despite it being a ridiculous 75g, as I find I’m generally harder on my gear at this time of year due to falling over more (intentionally and unintentionally) and spending more time sliding down things (again, intentionally and unintentionally). The unprotected can in the stuff sack, whilst a pleasing package, is decidedly dent-prone despite the modicum of protection offered by the cosy. Plus the caddy is food-grade plastic and the smaller section makes a really nice cup for your choice of warming drink.
The obvious compromise with a system like this is the durability. You can’t use the can as a make-shift snow shovel and expect it to remain water tight, and repeated use of the cone as an outdoors megaphone or ultralight fez will result in it tearing (Colin tells me that’s not how he ripped his, but I know better…). I managed to snap the ringpull off the lid – not a catastrophe, but I sent an email to TrailDesigns, who make the system for GossamerGear, and for $10 I received a brand new can and cosy, two lids and a bottle of graphite powder for lubing up the cone dovetail joint. How much was that MSR Titan Kettle again…..?
In use, it works. I’m not going to try and time how long it takes to boil 500ml of water or anything – that all gets thrown out the window when it’s minus 7 and you can’t feel your fingers. You just splash some meths into the centre of the burner, spill a little on the built-in priming pan, light it and snuggle back into your down cocoon, confident that this is the most efficient meths cooking system you’ll ever use.
Hendrik has been inviting me to Finland for a while now – and as it was time to book my pre-Challenge warm-up walk I decided it was time to investigate these reports of idyllic hiking trails and mid-forest saunas. So, a quick visit to the Ryanair website saw the flights booked for a whole £70 return (£10 for the privilege of paying?! And £10 to check in?! Do I have the option of saying no?!) and luckily work let me have the time off. That’s the month of May written off then….
I’ve got no itinerary planned other than I’m going to need to be doing some repeated 15 mile days with wild camping (OK, maybe a hut or two) and I’d love to get a bit of Tenkara fishing in. Convenient that the rod JUST squeezes into the hand-luggage dimensions as I’m not paying the checked luggage fee (lucky I’m going ultralight) I knew I should have got one of those BPL.com Hane Tenkara rods…
If anyone else fancies tagging along, I’m arriving in Tampere on 29th April and leaving on 4th May. I’m going to and from Edinburgh but Ryanair also go there from London, and I’m sure there are other, far superior airlines flying there indirectly.
You might have noticed that I’ve been playing with some different geolocation tools recently – with the growth of things like geo-tagging in Twitter, and more accurate GPS in mobile phones, I think there’s definite applications for these kind of techniques in the things that I do in the outdoors.
True, there’s a Big Brother element to it all, and these privacy issues are something I’m thinking about. But ultimately I have control over when and where I choose to broadcast my location, to what degree of accuracy and to who - it’s not the same as an ASBO tag….
If anybody is interested, the systems are based on Google Latitude and Twitter – Latitude only lets you broadcast your current location at the moment, though it does store a (currently) non-public history of your movements assuming you tell it to. That’s an important point actually – I’ve got control over what I choose to broadcast, and whether my history is stored on Google’s servers. So that’s the ‘Current Location’ tab at the top of the page, utilising Google’s excellent mapping. – it was boring.
The obvious progression from this is some form of public track-recording – something that was initially a bit more difficult (thanks to Steve for putting up with my badgering). I’ve got Viewranger on my phone, which has the BuddyBeacon function that will in theory do the same thing as Latitude, and has a public API which allows me to ‘interogate’ their server and download my coordinates over a pre-determined time period. I (and Steve actually) had a nightmare with the various steps involved in the interogation and overlaying process onto Google Maps, and had pretty much settled for Google Latitude until I came across Mapme.at. This service integrates with both Latitude and Twitter geo-tagging and shows your location on an OpenStreetMap.org map. Best of all – your history can be made publically viewable…. Hence the ‘Location Tracking’ tab above.
This is all very much under development, so there’ll frequently be maps showing my location as the west coast of Africa (no idea why that happened) or just nothing there at all. Nonetheless, feel free to play around, copy any code that I’ve produced (not that which is copyrighted by others) or whatever. I accept no liability for either the the failure of your website or your marriage - it can get a bit addictive…..
For those of you that like gear lists (yeah, it’s OK, you’re in a safe place, let it all out, nobody will judge you…), there’s a cracker here.
“In mid-March 2010 endurance adventurer Andrew Skurka will begin the Alaska-Yukon Expedition (AYE), a 4,700-mile, 7-month-long ski/trek/packraft adventure that begins and ends thirty miles north of the Arctic Circle in northwestern Alaska. The AYE has never before been completed or attempted.”
- Now that’s a trip.
There’s loads about it on both Andrew’s site and the BPL.com forums – a truly inspirational and aspirational trip. The logisitics alone are terrifying, it’s not as if the Poste-Restante service is going to be particularly useful in the Yukon, and I’m fairly sure mountain rescue are going to take a while to get to you. I think the route only crosses a couple of roads in total? I know Andrew’s Mum acts as quartermaster back home, but still – there’s some serious planning involved there!
Now Andrew’s sponsored by Golite and it’s interesting to see that he’s using some ‘normal’ items from the range. If it’s good enough for the Yukon I reckon it’ll suffice for a weekend in the Lakes. Also good to see Ron represented, and the MoPacka!
It was raining today, so my plans to photograph a few more walks for walkhighlands.co.uk were scuppered. Instead, I did a bit of housekeeping on the ol’ blog, and it should now be slightly more acceptable to those viewing on a mobile device. It wasn’t pretty before.
Steve has also been a massive help with a little project I’m playing with, a kind of tracking system using my mobile phone GPS. The Viewranger BuddyBeacon API proved a bit too much hassle to implement, so I’ve gone with Google Latitude for the time being. My initial trial is available by clicking the link at the top of the page – I’ve tested it in Chrome and Firefox but it just doesn’t seem to work with Internet Explorer (yet).
I decided that instead of waking up stupidly early to get the first train south from Glasgow on Saturday morning, I’d meet Steve after work in Penrith and we’d make use of my SYHA ‘Familyand Friends’ card in the YHA Coniston Holly How hostel and have a more leisurely start to the day.
I’m greatly enjoying these little weekend jaunts south – it feels a bit odd to be heading OUT of Scotland to the hills, but the fact is that it’d be unreasonable for Steve to have to make the drive up from the North East, and it’s far cheaper and environmentally friendly for me to get the train two stops than drive.
Anyway, we had a great time – not really as planned and I was certainly feeling it on Monday morning. The weather can only be described as ‘odd’ – bright sun on Saturday had us down to base layers for most of the day, followed by a crystal-clear night (perfect tarp weather) and then an overcast and altogether more wintery Sunday. I was trying out my new custom Dyneema winter pack from ZPacks.com – standby for a Zpacks extravaganza in the not too distant future by the way – as well as a few new ‘techniques’. My biggest regret is not bringing my RBH Designs Vapour Barrier sleeping bag liner – I’m sick of soggy down now.
As this was Steve’s route, he’s done a thorough write-up here and I won’t bother repeating it.
As well as putting on my Inov8s and enjoying a good long walk in the hills, I spent a few days during the autumn of 2009 soaking up the Scottish scenery from the water in my 21′ Corribee, Davaar.
I have another confession to make – I’m not very good at sailing.
I fancied a bit of a change of scenery the other weekend, and inspired by the beautiful photos of Finnish water on Hendrik’s blog I decided to take a little trip out into the Inverness Firth. I’ve recently replaced the propeller on the outboard after a potentially nasty incident off Lossiemouth (resolved with a Stanley knife and a very cold swim in the North Sea) and the total lack of wind gave me the opportunity to give it a good test. It appears I’m not a sailing purist either.
Leaving Inverness Marina wasn’t without drama as the outboard packed up at an inopportune moment, but the boating community spirit kicked in to give us a hand with a bit of fending. Once past the rigging-snagging davits of the MASSIVE Gordonstoun School 80-foot yacht at the end of the pontoon, it was into the harbour and under the A9 bridge into the Firth.
It was getting on for lunchtime when we set off, so we weren’t being too ambitious, just a little pootle around, a bit of lunch at anchor then back to the marina. Anna took the opportunity to play with my inherited camera, a Panasonic DMC-FZ50 (725g), which has a ’stupid person’ mode that suits me just fine. It was nice to see just how red my Paramo Velez Adventure smock actually is!
Nothing much happened, the wind returned just as we headed back towards the marina in the form of headwind, and being quite lazy I couldn’t be bothered with tacking for the short journey under the bridge, so the sails stayed down and my carbon footprint increased. I find boats much like airplanes (stay with me) in that it’s the landing that’s the most difficult bit – once you’re out there it’s just a case of avoiding solid things – but coming into land involves the un-natural act of purposely steering towards hard stuff. This of course makes me a bit nervous when entering a marina where the hard stuff is generally very expensive and/or damaging to my GRP hull. Suffice to say I take it very, very slowly, with any crew armed with an assortment of long poles and brooms awaiting the inevitable. On this occasion my seamanship was up to scratch (ha!) and we glided into my berth to the applause of the assembled cast of world-reknowned sailors (yeah, right).
Anyway. The point of this post (there is one) is that I’m a member of the Corribee & Coromandel Yahoo Group, where members can shareinformation, ask for help, share photos – that kind of thing, and a message came through today that caught my eye:
—–
Hi all,
After much deliberation, I have sadly decided to part with my beloved Junk Corribee.
The boat has had a lot of love and attention over the past few years -new rig with hinged battens, new cabin cushions + lots more. I still have the original rig and battens also. Loads of pics on the group here.
She is currently on her trailor in North Wales, was not put in the water last year. Trailor was new 3 years ago, twin axle with little or no rust on it.
About to post on Boatsandoutboards….shout up if you are interested, she is a very nice boat!
Best regards
Mike Auton
—-
Now Mike runs theYahoo Group, and every time I’ve visited the page I’ve been met with a great photo of Tern Tu being enjoyed in beautiful blue water, and further into the site Mike has posted photos of her under her gorgeous burgundy sail. Mike has allowed me to post the following photos in case anyone fancies rehoming Tern Tu.
All photos (c) Mike Auton
If anyone has any questions for Mike, drop me a line using the ‘Contact’ link above, or join the CorribeeCoromandel Yahoo Group and make contact there.
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