Steve Evans at Suluk 46 has a really cleverly designed adjustable titanium windscreen. You especially need a windscreen if you are cooking with alcohol or esbits, but in any case the wind will steal as much as half of the heat your stove is generating. That wasted fuel will weigh much more than this neat […]
Massdrop now have some of their great specials in stock – so you don’t have to wait for a drop. For example, they have the Enlightened Equipment Quilt I recently posted about for US $219.99 (Jun 2018). Their excellent Fizan compact hiking poles I wrote about here are just US$59.99 a pair. The Massdrop Klymit
This autumn we were in Scotland when our fields were alive with field mushrooms, alas. Mushroom time is one of my favourites. I always collect heaps of them, fry them up with lots of butter, onions and bacon then smother golden toast or pasta with them. I guess my waistline isn’t missing them. This evening
In the US this is a popular (and legal) pursuit though quite properly it is an offence to misuse any firearm. In Australia it is definitely a criminal offence to make your own, even a shanghai (see below). Mind you the fact that here (despite our draconian firearms laws) the great majority of guns ever
These ‘new’ lithium powered jump starters are amazing. I had been thinking of installing a dual battery system in the (’95) Discovery but it is difficult though not impossible to fit one in, as well as very fiddly. I already have one in the Defender. Anyway I realized that the main reason I would need
At last a fully functional GPS, satellite communicator and epirb which weighs 100 grams (3.5 oz!) The new and improved ‘Poor Man’s Satellite Phone‘. I already own the earlier ‘Delorme Inreach’ model (190 grams) which I love, so can’t imagine just now spending perhaps A$499 (Jun 2018) on its replacement in order to save carrying
There is no doubt that a quilt can be lighter, more comfortable, and a lot less inconvenient to enter and exit than a bag. A down quilt can weigh under 500 grams for something which will rate around -10C (providing you have a warm mat), so you can see that you can definitely make one
I have a number of favourite spots I visit every now and then sprinkled around the Gippsland bush mainly far from roads. Many are on the other side of large rivers which sometimes rise unpredictably and can cut you off for many days from ‘civilisation’ – whatever that is. Here I was two days ago
A cheap lightweight reusable waterproof sleeping bag/shelter which will save your life in an emergency. I have had one of these in the bottom of my day pack for over ten years. To date (fortunately) I have never had to use it, though I have come pretty close a number of times. By the same
I have used the Thermarest Neoair Womens for years. It has an (insulation) R-rating of 3.9. I was quite warm enough in it at around zero Celsius with just a Columbia Silver Ridge shirt and trousers and a pair of thin (Holeproof Heroes) wool socks in my – 1C Montbell bag. If it got a
