Ultralight Mobile Clothes Line

You might have noticed it in the cover picture below or this post, that I seemed to have something hanging from my pack as we walked in to Pangboche:

It is a DIY mobile clothes line which I am drying one of my handkerchiefs on. If you walk the EBC some time you will find you need quite a few handkerchiefs. Most people get some sort of ‘sniffles’ (or worse) somewhere along the way. The low air pressure and dry atmosphere no doubt contribute – as does constantly breathing in dust made up of yak and donkey dung – and the like!

In this case though my handkerchief was dry, but it was so covered with dust after a couple of hours it needed washing again! This is not the case places I usually go, such as the Gippsland bush or Fiordland New Zealand or Tasmania where a clothesline on your pack works very well indeed when the sun is shining as in the photo above.

You can just attach two lengths of string or light webbing horizontally an inch or so below each other on your pack, allow the clothes item to fall behind each then tuck it in at the front under the lower one. If the string is tight the clothes will go nowhere, and the arrangement only weighs a couple of grams at most. If you are nervous about your clothes falling off, you can use a couple of ultralight clothes pegs.

You can usually dry a pair of socks on one side, knickers on the other and a shirt or trousers at the back. Mostly I dry socks, knickers and hankies as I resent the added weight of carrying an extra set of clothing. Of course I have some long woolen underwear for sleeping in when my clothes are wet at the end of the day, or in warmer weather perhaps wind pants and top.

I might wash my clothes out and dry them in front of a fire in the colder months (eg in the Victorian bush). In places like Fiordland it is often too wet to light a fire and dry them over night, so I usually wash them in a stream etc in the morning, then put them on wet. Brrr! They will be dry after a half hour’s walking or so, and it certainly prompts you to get started!

You might just be able to spot the clothes line on Della’s pack during our walk across the bottom of Tasmania back in 2011.

We wouldn’t have got much dry the day that picture was taken, but the next day I managed to dry a pair of trousers which had become very muddy. In this case it was a worthless task as within a few yards squelching along the track which was shockingly wet and muddy, they were pretty dirty again!

There I go, up the Ironbound Range. As you can see both pairs of trousers are pretty dry:

Our friend Kerri looking back towards Louisa River s drying her socks:

PS: If I feel I need ultralight clothes pegs, I cut a few of the outer ones shown in the photo below in half. They only weigh a gram or so, and work very well.