I faced a week of enforced bachelorhood anyway (as Della is craftily away) so I decided to take the pups for a week’s walk…Four hour’s driving later including a couple on bumpy 4WD tracks we gazed up a river somewhere, wondering… Who knows what wonders lie around the river’s bend? Delightfully there are a number of […]
It is incredibly difficult country. Some ‘easier’ areas (eg along the South Coast Track) are flatter and safer. There are both pigs and deer there. In NZ they have these excellent DOC (‘Dept of Conservation’) huts all over the place (roughly a solid day’s walk apart with a pack; all have a helipad) which make
This stuff is wonderful. First, there is its obvious utility in joining/repairing cuben fibre. There is a single-sided and a double sided version – and it comes in various widths). You normally use it to make joins to create a wider tarp, or to make ‘no-sew’ cuben fibre stuff sacks. Where it really comes into
Does your dog rip holes in your sleeping mat (see photo), your pack raft or canoeing dry bag with their sharp claws even if you keep them trimmed? Instead of leaving Spot (or Honey) at home you could get yourself some dog booties to prevent such disasters. This is the hole Honey managed to rip
It is highly desirable to carry a fixed blade knife mainly for those rare occasions when it is necessary to split branches to produce dry kindling and shave them to produce ‘excelsior’ (wood shavings) which are the best fire starter. Lighting a fire when it is very wet and cold is the most important time
Getting a fire going (in the rain and wet) is the most important thing you need to know – ever. If you don’t know it, one day you will die from your ignorance. It will always be unexpected. Folks are always heading off for a day’s drive wearing shorts and tee shirts into the High
The 14.8 gram 650 lumen glow in the dark Awesome Flashlight I wrote about recently which can be made into a head torch like this can also be converted into a cap light by using the supplied 1.9 clip. This A5X model is absolutely brilliant. You could just use the side LEDs (without the silicone
These tiny luminous line locks (.7 gram ea) are just great as is ultra light 1.25 high viz spectra cord (available at Zpacks) which (together) makes for a perfect guy line for a hiking tent/tarp. They glow in the dark so well, you can see them clearly through the material of your tent. The Clam
Venery is one of my passions. This is one of my all-time favourite photos. This was Eddie Herrick circa 1934 in his eponymous creek in Wet Jacket Arm, Dusky Sound, Fiordland NZ with his bull moose. In a moose hunting career in Fiordland which involved Eddie hunting there for nearly three months a year for
This is a very useful hiking stove you can make with a paper punch from Officeworks and some empty cat food cans. Its inception was a genius idea from Jim Woods. Be sure you only use the punch on aluminium cans. I have found that there are two sizes of aluminium can and that one
