Five years flies by very quickly (when you are having fun). I had hoped that this post would be titled ‘The Seventieth Birthday Stag’ but he did not emerge from his lair during my recent sojourn up the bush to check how my hunting camps had fared from the terrible bush fires of earlier this […]
It is easy to make an ultralight alcohol stove which will boil water (instructions here and here – and in the comments below) but a bit more difficult to make one which will simmer. Many of my recipes require that the food simmers for 10 minutes or so (usually to soften lentils etc). I guess
I recently modified my Waratah Quilt and Zpacks Quilt so that they would better fit me, would be easier to enter and exit, and in the case of the Waratah be fractionally lighter as well. I found Kam Snaps to be just the trick for these mods. As I said in that post I will
There is much debate about which is better, a sleeping bag or a quilt? But why not have both? In most cases it is easy to convert your old bag so you can use it as a quilt. I just did this with my old Montbell bag – and it works a treat. The conversion
While we are on the topic of sleeping (which we are), I have also really ‘lashed out’ and added an excellent $2 pillow to my sleeping arrangements from Aliexpress. I should add that I have modified my Waratah Quilt so it is a little lighter and easier to enter and exit. It is already delightfully
So, as you know I bit the bullet and bought myself a new Thermarest XTherm at 440 grams for its standard 6′ model. Though I definitely did not ‘need’ a new pad I wanted to see whether I could reduce size/volume in my pack – and I was just curious whether the improvement in the
The Pad Pal weighs only 9 grams, costs a mere US$48 (July 2024) and will pump your pad up in a little over 30 seconds. This tiny device will revolutionise how you inflate your sleeping pad. Eat your heart out Flextail – which otherwise I was going to buy some day, but at nearly 100
Ponchos, Umbrellas or Raincoats? That is the question. What’s the best way to stay dry in the rain and enjoy yourself in the outdoors while doing so? I have been soaking wet, all over, every ‘warm’ layer down to my skin, more times than I can count. Mostly of course it was when I was
We visited the Hunter Valley where I grew up last week to catch up with relatives which was really great, however I did not expect this amazing treat. My cousin Brian had pulled this strange object out of the ground where we/they used to live in Tenambit (Maitland) when he was circa 8 years old.
A 1970s US army survival guide used to claim that you lost up to 50% of your body’s heat from your head. As the surface area of your head is only 10% of your body (though your brain uses a lot of your blood supply) this is almost certainly not true. However, not very much
