> Working in the outdoor retail industry has turned me into a serious gear head. I now have a gear solution to every problem. It's sick. > And seriously, I am in a situation where I get to use all of the gear, and buy it cheap, so my gear headedness is easier for me to maintain than it is for others. That said: > I use a snowpeak lantern. It puts out about 80 watts (enough) and uses fuel conservatively. While it is certainly nice to have the comforts of home in terms of lighting and bedding, I see myself poles apart from this approach. For several reasons. First, on lighting, a lot of the camping I have done is commando style and you just don't want to show a lot of light that announces your presence. In most cases, your eyes do dilate enough to see what you are doing with an occasional quick flick of a low power flashlight like an LED one for trickier situations. You would think that a city kid like me would be afraid of the dark in the mean bad woods but I am not; being in the dark brings out the wilderness experience and divides that world from the world back home which is so full of lights that you can drive without headlights if you wish (albeit illegal). Same with bedding. Minimal padding and even length (i.e. use a 3/4 length mat) unless you arrived at your launch site by car. If you are carrying all the gear to the launch site using public transportation, then you do think like a backpacker, not a boat packer in terms of weight of stuff. It actually pays even while on the water trail. Less stuff carried means less stuff to unload and get up to your campsite and back down to the water the next day. Of course, all bets are off if it is a trip of several weeks. Then the longer pad and thicker stuff is welcomed. But for just a few nights, you'll live with less. We should all take a lesson from John Muir. He would hike for weeks with just a sack over his shoulder in which he had tobacco and flour and no extra clothes. For cold nights he would stay up and dance all night on a flat rock to keep warm. The tobacco and flour in the sack is admittedly an extreme; I keep having these images of the two getting mixed together over time. :-) ralph diaz *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed May 08 2002 - 07:38:18 PDT
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