Ground Truth Trekking: Expeditions to explore environmental issues.
The Gear
Gear is hard. Some of it we'll be replacing mid-route, but most of it will have to last through nine months of harsh bushwhacking in an extremely wet climate. But since we'll be carrying it for 4000 miles, it had better be light.
Read the Gear article at Backpacking Light for a more thorough discussion of the gear for this journey
Check out the "Gear" category on the trip blog for a lot of gear making, gear testing and gear choosing discussion.... '
We'll have about 24.5 pounds (11kg) of stuff (worn and carried, without food and water) each for this trip when we start, with packrafting gear and camera gear being some of the largest weights. In the winter, with skis and warmer clothing, that could increase by as much as 10 pounds.
If you just want numbers - go to the Gear Weight page
Quick and Dirty rundown of the Gear: (abbreviated from a longer article at Backpacking Light)
The three major factors we look for in our gear are low weight, a good ability to deal with water (from packrafting and fall rainstorms), and durability for nine months of bushwhacking. Additionally, a lot of our gear is for photography and record keeping - to fulfil the environmental mission of the trip.
- Packrafting - primarily ocean packrafting - is an integral part of this expedition. We expect it to make up roughly a quarter of our travel distance. Between a 5 pound Alpacka Raft, a 2 pound paddle from Sawyer Paddles, a homemade thermarest life vest, and assorted odds and ends, this is by far the heaviest category of our gear.
- Clothing - Just two main pieces: a breathable drysuit (worn all the time), and a one-piece fleece suit made of powerstretch fleece (added underneath when it's cold). The drysuit is a beta test of a new packrafting suit from Sheri Tingey at Alpacka Raft. The fabric is Toray Dermizax - breathable and stretchy, but waterproof. The cuffs, neck, and feet can all be sealed for packrafting or opened up for hiking. In addition, we've got Mountain Laurel Designs rain mitts, Teko socks, and Montrail shoes.
We don't carry extra clothing, and we don't wash clothing in the woods (laundromats in towns work fine). No one can smell us in the wilderness anyway.
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Photography - We're photographers. I'm a writer. Communicatingthese places and our experience of them is an important part of the mission of this trip. For our still camera, we carry a digital SLR - a Canon digital Rebel Xti. We'll be carrying two lenses; a 24-105mm lens with image stabilization, and an ultra wide angle 10-35mm lens. We'll be carrying about 24 gigabytes of memory cards with us, but it won't be nearly enough for the thousands of photos we'll take across the nine months of the journey. Our plan is to mail a laptop computer ahead of us to the larger towns, allowing us to back up and clear memory cards roughly monthly. In combination, the camera, lenses, extra batteries, memory cards, card reader, tripod, and the drybags to protect it all come out to a little over 5 pounds. We're also carrying a 7oz water-resistant and shock-resistant camcorder from Panasonic (SDR S10), which records mpeg videos to memory cards.
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Shelter and Sleeping - As a couple, we have a huge advantage on this front, saving weight and adding warmth by sleeping in a single bag. For summer and fall, we sleep under a homemade synthetic quilt, with insulation on the top, and a thin sheet of nylon on the bottom. When the weather turns to winter, we'll add a down quilt inside the synthetic bag. For a tent, we'll be using a spinnaker pyramid tarp from Mountain Laurel Designs.
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Packing - All our packs and bags are homemade. The packs were a collaborative effort between Hig (the seamstress of the two of us and the one with the weirdest ideas), Andrew Mattox (design), and me (standing around and telling them what I thought wouldn't work) The basic goal was to make packs as light as possible, but still able to withstand bushwhacking. We also wanted removable hip belts - allowing us to use them as fanny packs while packrafting, and as sled-pulling belts while skiing. To achieve this, we used different weights of fabric for different sections of the pack, and made the hip belt out of a simple piece of wide webbing. Rather than being part of the pack, the pockets and fanny pack are threaded onto the removable hip belt. This way they're easier to reach, and stay with me when I'm not wearing the pack (especially useful since our clothing doesn't have pockets).
We also find dry bags to be absolutely essential in these kind of conditions. We make our own, using heat-sealable fabric and a small iron. Each dry bag is the size and shape of what we're putting in it, and probably carry 10 of them between the two of us.
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Cooking - In the past, we've usually cooked directly on fires. But after playing around with a tin can "hobo stove" this winter, we decided we wanted to bring a small wood stove (the Bushbuddy), on this journey. We have a titanium pot to cook in, and we'll carry a pair of extra-large Ursacks (bear-proof food bags) for the first two thirds of our trip, until the bears all go to sleep.
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Safety - We always carry an EPIRB. This is basically a satellite panic button, calling in the rescue cavalry with the flip of a switch. We travel in many places where it would be difficult or impossible to self-extract with a major injury. I fully intend to never use it.
Our other unused piece of insurance is bear deterrent. Usually, we've carried one can of pepper spray for bear-season trips. Though the one time I was bowled over by a bear (in the Kenai Fjords), I didn't have time to use it! Despite this, we probably will carry some kind of bear deterrent for the B.C. and Southeast Alaska coasts.
We carry the EPIRB along with knife, fire starter, first aid, raft-patching stuff, and other emergency items in a fanny pack kit (with a waterproof drybag for those items that need it). This kit threads onto the removable hip belt of the pack, so it can stay on us at all times, even while rafting and skiing. Even if we lose our packs, we'll have the critical tools for survival.
Want more specfics? Visit the Gear Weight table, or read the more in depth article at Backpacking Light
Also, you can visit my gear page at my Alaska Trekking site for a discussion of our equipment and gear philosophy from past trips.
And check out Backpacking Light for interesting discussions of lightweight gear.