Outdoor Gear – Page 11

Sea to Summit Travel Day Pack

1 February 2014 / Camping, Outdoor Gear / lightweight backpacking, lightweight camping, outdoor gear, tea

The Sea to Summit Travel Day Pack has, since last summer, become my walking day pack of choice.

It packs away into a keyring size package making it excellent as an extra bag for backpacking, holidays and travelling. I started using it as my day pack to simply save weight.

In use Scotland August 2013

The 20l capacity provides enough space to carry my:

Waterproofs
Pot, stove and mug
Lunch and water
Extra warm clothes
First Aid Kit
Emergency equipment
Sit mat (back padding)

In use Scotland January 2014

The only time this is not my “go to” day pack is when I need to carry a walking pole. For short walks I can slide my lightweight pole in between the small of my back and the pack, letting it ride on the bottom of the straps. For more technical longer walks with a pole I use another bag.

Comfort

With such a light backpack there are some issues with the comfort – but these are not so great to stop me using it.

Because the bag has no structure I have to pack the it carefully so the items stay in place and so nothing sticks into my back.
To help with the above problems I have cut a section from an old sleeping mat so that when it is fitted into the back of the day pack it helps with giving some shape to the bag and pads my back a little.
The shoulder straps are unpadded so from time to time whilst walking I have to flatten them out and reposition them on my shoulders to support the weight.

Mods

I have added a couple of small caribieners to the ends of the very thin shoulder straps. This has stopped the straps being pulled back into the buckles, which happened a lot when walking with the pack with even a moderate load in it. Once the strap was back in the buckle it was then very awkward to adjust the shoulder straps for comfort and there was also a risk of the strap being pulled right out if the buckle.

I have also added a caribiener to the double zip for security.

Inside you can see an 8l dry sack – this is essential as the pack does leak in heavy weather

Wear and tear

The Sea to Summit Travel Day Pack is made from rip stop Siliconized Cordura® and the pack itself is very well made, making it extremely tough and strong. However I use the bag (particularly in the winter) well packed and this has led to some abrasion damage. When well packed the material is tight, with no give in it and when it had dragged against rough rocks it has been damaged. At the moment none of the damage is serious but I expect it to happen regularly and to eventually ruin the bag.

The shoulder straps now have permanent heavy creases in them through use.

A bag for work

A few weeks back I used this pack for an overnight business trip. It easily held the clothes, wash kit, paperwork, iPad, charger, cables, small toolkit and portable hard drive I needed for the job. I added to that a bottle of water and a snack or two for the journey.

With the mat slipped in the back it was comfortable to carry and easy to store on the train as well as being smart enough to turn up with at a client’s office.

Conclusion – Sea to Summit Travel Day Pack

For me the Sea to Summit Travel Day Pack is a great day pack and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a light, strong day pack. But remember it is a simple no fuss design, no extra pockets or straps and if you use a hydration bladder the crinkling tube has to come out through the zipper. Because of it’s packed away size and weight it is especially useful to carry as an extra bag when travelling – if needed I add it to my backpacking equipment to be used as a shopping bag.

The minus points have to be mentioned:

The bag has no structure – if I carry my iPad in it I have to take extra care not to damage it due to bad packing.
if the bag is packed full and tight it is susceptible to abrasion damage.
There are no external fittings for a walking pole.

If (when) I ruin this bag I will buy another.

Sea to Summit Travel Day Pack Read More »

Walking Today – Warton Crag

29 January 2014 / Outdoor Gear, Photography, Walking / black and white, iPhone photography, Lancashire, outdoor gear, tea, walking, Warton Crag

Rather than drive anywhere today I walked out to Warton Crag from the Pine Lake complex.

I traveled light today, carrying some water and a small first aid/emergency kit in my walking vest – the rest of my kit went into my coat pockets. For lunch I took some breakfast biscuits, some cold chicken from last night’s dinner and my small brew kit. I only carried my titanium mug with lid and a couple of solid fuel tablets and made a small fire place out of some stones to heat the water for my tea.

I also carried a small heavy duty plastic sheet to sit on and my hat and gloves.

Walking Today – Warton Crag Read More »

More Weight Saving

28 January 2014 / Camping, Outdoor Gear / Alpkit, lightweight backpacking, lightweight stove, outdoor gear

I packed some of my lightweight backpacking kit for this trip – to use whilst walking – and to review with the idea of saving some more weight for this year’s backpacking trips.

Wind shield, chopping board and stove board

My current stove wind shield is a commercial aluminium model that I cut on half. It works well with my meths stove but was useless for my MSR Pocket Rocket as it was too short and not quite tall enough for my new Alpkit Kraku stove.

I decided to replace this wind shield with something taller and ideally something lighter.

I bought two platters, made from heavy duty aluminium foil from a pound shop (2 for a £). Once I had cut off the lip I could flatten one of them out and I cut a 15cm x 30cm panel. To make it a bit more rigid I folded a small lip around the edge. I then folded this into a four panel wind shield.

Weight saved
Old wind shield 81g
New wind shield 26g

I use a small wooden board under my meths stove. When I originally cut the board I also used it under my Crusader stove, which is larger. It was time to cut the board to the right size.

Weight saved
Old board 38g
New board 23g

I was using a cut down plastic wall tile as a cutting board, I swapped this out for a plastic lid from a pot of fruit. It is about 9cm in diameter and the lip is useful to stop bits rolling off when I use it.

Weight saved
Old cutting board 18g
New cutting board 4g

I am no longer going to carry the case that I used to store all three items in – another 9g saved.

Total weight saved 93g – every gram counts.

Walking in the Lake District

27 January 2014 / Outdoor Gear, Photography, Travel, Walking / iPhone camera apps, iPhone photography, Lake District, outdoor gear, walking

The weather forecast was for heavy showers today so I planned a couple of short walks up near Thirlmere in between them.

One if the most useful gadgets I carry when walking is the dry bag for my iphone. With it I can take photos in really bad weather – although sometimes the quality of the image does drop with rain on the case or light catching on the extra plastic in front of the lens.

There is a sponge pad inside the case that helps squeeze the air out of the case and the small vacuum it causes pulls the plastic tight over the camera lens, which helps with image quality.

So here are some of my rain images from today – and one or two brighter ones.

Walking in the Lake District Read More »

Alpkit Kraku Backpacking Gas Stove

20 January 2014 / Camping, Outdoor Gear, Travel / Alpkit, Alpkit Kraku, Aviemore, Craigellachie National Nature Reserve, lightweight backpacking, lightweight camping, lightweight stove, MSR titanium mug, outdoor gear, Scotland

First use of the Alpkit Kraku Backpacking Gas Stove

It was my first opportunity today to use the new Alpkit Kraku gas stove. It is very small and I carried a small gas canister to make it a very portable unit. The small size of the burner unit does mean that some care must be taken when fixing it to the gas canister, it can cross thread very easily and if over tightened the shoulder of the valve can jamb on the lip of the gas canister. Once together and the pot supports are set up it does make a very stable stove. I used my MSR titanium mug with lid on it and it sat very well. Once lit, it only took a couple of minutes for the water to come to a rolling boil – I had the stove set up in a very sheltered spot and I was using a wind shield. In the photos you can see the pot support glowing cherry red.

The actual flame head is also quite small, especially compared with my previous MSR Pocket Rocket, it worked well under my mug and I am sure it will work under my Alpkit MiTiMug but I expect it will struggle with a larger pot. It probably will not deliver enough heat for group cooking. When I go camping later in the year I will try it out with the small frying pan I use when static camping. However I bought this as a personal backpacking stove where weight is everything and it is considerably lighter than the MSR stove and when camping on my own it should still be sufficient.

Overall (so far) I am very pleased with the Alpkit Kraku stove – it is very small and light. Well made and efficient – boiling a mug of water significantly quicker then if I had used my meths stove. Because it is so light I may be changing my backpacking habits and using a gas stove more than the ultralight Vargo titanium meth stove I currently use.

Here are some more detailed photos of the stove – More is less.

Here is the post about the walk where I used this stove.

Alpkit Kraku Backpacking Gas Stove Read More »

Walking today – Craigellachie National Nature Reserve Aviemore

20 January 2014 / Camping, Outdoor Gear, Photography, Travel, Walking / Alpkit, Alpkit Kraku, Aviemore, backpacking food, Cairngorm Mountains, Cairngorms National Park, coffee, Craigellachie National Nature Reserve, food, hiking food, iPhone photography, IT Support for Lincolnshire, MSR titanium mug, Octagon Technology, outdoor gear, Scotland, tea, walking

With the weather forecast for the day being reasonably good, I decided not to waste any time driving but set off to Craigellachie National Nature Reserve – with a plan to go up onto the ridge and walk along the top.

The weather was great and relatively warm (for January in the Cairngorms), I did not need my gloves, hat or jumper nor did I need to zip my coat up until I got out into the wind on the exposed ridge and summits. One thing I did have on though was the new Helly Hansen Lifa Dry base layer Diana bought me – and it was excellent, it kept me warm, was comfortable to wear and did not absorb any sweat when I was warm so when I did need the insulation on the top, it worked.

Have you ever wondered who puts the rock steps in the footpaths? Well I met two of them today.

Rather than get my stove out to make a coffee, I took hot water in a thermal mug, for the first stop. I had a number Octagon Technology emails and texts to deal with – if there is one problem with the titanium mug I normally use is that on a longer break, like this one, the drink would get cold too quickly. But not when using a thermal mug. I had packed it for this trip having recently read a blog of a backpacker who used one to keep water hot for his late night hot chocolate. He boiled the water when he made his evening meal so it meant he could pack his stove and pots away for the night and still have a hot drink later. I bought my thermal mug a number of years ago but it has had little use but I am going to try it out on this trip and if it works out I may pack it for subsequent trips.

Lunch

Lunch was soup and crackers. I really like the “Squeeze and Stir” tomato soup but I have found it difficult to stir in and dissolve all the paste when I have been making it for lunch when walking and backpacking. I tend to use cup-a-soups which are really easy to make on the trail. But today I had a thermal mug. I put the paste in the mug and half filled it with boiling water. Then making sure the lid was on firmly I vigorously shook it. After about a minute I topped the mug up with more boiling water and I had perfect tomato soup – and once I was finished no messy mug to clean up, I just put the lid back on and packed it away.

click on the above image for a larger version

Walking today – Craigellachie National Nature Reserve Aviemore Read More »

More is less

7 January 2014 / Backpacking, Camping, Outdoor Gear, Photography / backpacking, iPhone photography, lightweight backpacking, lightweight stove, outdoor gear, Photos 2014

In my quest to carry a lighter backpack I have changed another piece of my lightweight backpacking kit.

Alpkit Kraku stove

This gas stove from Alpkit weighs just 45g plus a few grams for the bag – my previous MSR Pocket Rocket weighed 108g.

To show how small the stove is, Alpkit has a photo on their website comparing it to a AA cell battery (like above) however when I got the stove I was still surprised how light and small it really is. I will easily be able to pack this stove in the stuff sack that I carry most of my backpacking cooking gear in – the MSR stove was to big to fit.

The next thing to do is get out and test the stove – which I plan to do next Sunday morning.