The Marked Tree

Posted By JTHats on February 5, 2010

By Alice Moon of Free Range Human

If you share a tent — especially one of those small, light models — and camp in the rain or in winter when you can become trapped inside for prolonged periods, a shower can become more than a courtesy, it may be all that keeps your tentmate from suffocating you in your sleep with your own stinking socks.

Some people on the trail prefer to “return to nature,” allowing their funk and their perception of it to even out over time. Others cannot stand going into their bag at night covered in a day’s worth of sweat. And even the best planned trip can go awry. You never know when you may have an incident crossing a stream, end up covered in mud–or worse…

To cover all of your bases–from comfort to social obligation–a portable camp shower is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

Many modern pump showers operate by pulling water from a reservoir, eliminating the need to lift a heavy water bag. This may seem like a great help, but actually it creates more problems than it solves.

Pump systems can be heavy, requiring numerous batteries, propane. They also don’t collapse to store as lightly and with as much flexibility as a simple bag shower. Plain solar shower bags are made to heat water, as well as to dispense it. Pump systems often pull the water but make no provision for heating it.

An even more pressing concern, neither pump nor hanging bag systems treat water. If you draw yours from a pond or stream, you are showering in water that could potentially harbor an infective agent. There is a debate in hiking circles about whether all backcountry water harbors nasty bugs like Giardia. And you never know who is upstream, who has been there before you, what may have washed into your water source.

Your best bet is to always treat or boil your shower water before use if the water will come into contact with your face. It is easy to overlook, but if you lick your lips, if the water splashes or runs into your mouth, you can swallow the same nasty bugs that make found water unpotable. If you prefer to avoid prepping a large volume of water, wash from the neck down with your shower and use treated water on a cloth to attend to your face or treat a batch for washing your hair.

The safest method for using a camp shower is to treat your shower water as if it is drinking water. Prep it before you use it. You can then drop the intake hose for your pump shower into the treated water reservoir or fill your bag from it. This keeps your entire system as free of contamination as possible.

If you do draw your water without treating it first, keep in mind that dropping your intake hose into a wilderness water source contaminates the hose. You can cross contaminate your other equipment or the clean portion of your shower gear without vigilance. Be careful when you wrap and store the unit to keep the treated and untreated items separate.

Depending on your style of hiking, different features will be more attractive:

The backpacker:

The Zodi Hot Showers & Water Heaters Extreme SC w/Stove Md: 8170 is made from stainless steel. The 10K BTU stove and shower combo takes 5 minutes to bring a cylinder of water to 100 degrees. The Zodi dispenses using a hand pump, includes a temperature indicator and a six foot hose with an on/off showerhead. While the set weighs in at a hefty ten pounds, the Zodi stove can replace your pack stove to save bulk.

The hedonist:

Let’s face it, some of us love a hot shower and the feel of clean skin as much as we love exploring a remote trail. The Zodi® Hot Tap Single Burner Travel Shower is a single burner shower that will heat enough water for a good long shower or two reasonable showers in one batch. The 4 d batteries and requisite propane give you a lot of water for the cost, but are heavy and better for car-camping trips or base camp gear.

Travel with friends and share the load, because anything more than a solar shower is heavy. The Pine Creek Outdoors (Portable Camp Power Shower Clean in the Outdoors!) is a battery driven pump model which takes four heavy D batteries. The hose is a good seven feet in length, but the unit doesn’t heat or hold water, only pumps water to the showerhead.

Whatever model you choose, a good motto to keep in mind:
If you wouldn’t take a big drink of it, don’t shower in it.

Category: Gear | No Comments »
Tags: camping, hiking, pine creek outdoors, portable camp shower, pump showers, solar showers, zodi hot tap, zodi xtreme

Posted By JTHats on February 5, 2010

By Alice Moon of Free Range Human

If you are still carrying a bulky, full sized flashlight and accompanying heavy D-size batteries, what are you thinking?? There are many options out there that perform better and add a weight you’ll barely notice.

I prefer to buy mine at the local box store, where they carry a variety of small, rubber coated LED style lights. You can go cheap and find an acceptable model easily for under $5 or you can look for better quality.

Maglites are superior, but not always available with a rubber coating. The coating keeps out water and blunts any impact the light may suffer as you bang about in camp and along the trail. In good quality lights, the coating covers the flashlight switch for added protection. It also keeps your light from sliding to the bottom of your pack as you move. And the press switch is usually set in the end of the light, helping prevent any accidental activation during storage.

At about four inches long, these mini flashlights tuck easily into a pants pocket or pack pouch. Most come with an option for a carabiner clip or lanyard. If need be, these lights can also easily attach to a hat or pack to project a beam in front of you or steadily light a work area. They also fit nicely between your teeth if you find yourself working in the dark and need both hands.

In a tent, they hang readily in a pouch or from any of the attached ties to provide illumination from above so you can read or sort gear. All without the danger of bringing a live flame indoors. Read in the tent at night without disturbing your tentmate–the LED lights produce a focused, brilliant white beam of light that won’t spread to illuminate the entire tent.

The lights operate for an extended period of time on a few small batteries. You can easily carry spare batteries or a back up and still save weight over a larger model, but you won’t need one–these lights are dependable and last a long time on one set of batteries.

Category: Gear | No Comments »
Tags: backpacking, camping, flashlights, hiking, led flashlight, led light, maglite, mini flashlight

Posted By JTHats on February 3, 2010

I’m sure there’ll be many rave reviews about the JakPak, a two pound survival suit combining rain gear, bivy bag and tent in one neat $250 package you can wear like a rain jacket. I do admit I’d love to try it out for a night or two, but the price is too high for me. I can imagine all sorts of reasons I wouldn’t like the JakPak, but that’s just me. I’d rather be wet than wear rain gear unless it’s a howling storm and I’m miserably cold, and whenever I do minimal camping I wind up building the things I left behind. So for me at least, the JakPak holds little attraction. It’s the concept I like — emergency gear that’s lightweight and will pull you through bad situations without serious damage. In that sense, the JakPak is a good idea, with all the pieces of gear I’d normally carry for emergencies and rarely use. I just don’t have the money in my budget for a $250 rainsuit when I can put together something for much less that’s actually more comfortable and practical — and allows me to wear my regular denim jacket instead of musty rainproof nylon.

If you do wind up sleeping in the JakPak it will either be as a test of the gear or because there’s no other option. This isn’t a comfortable approach to camping and not a piece of gear people will use on a regular basis. Although the company says it’s a three season suit, that doesn’t count winter, and winter tends to encroach deeply into either spring or fall and sometimes there’ll be a few days of winter even in summer, depending on how high you are in the mountains. I saw no details on the Jakpak site about temperature ratings — any sleeping bag will have that information up front, because a bag that’s toasty warm at thirty degrees will be pretty useless at zero. I will assume from the lightweight construction that the JakPak is a fifty degree suit, meaning you’ll only be marginally miserable in it when the temperature drops that low and you’re trying to sleep. I’ve spent quite a few nights doing that with less gear, or the wrong gear, and it’s a horrible thing to contemplate once that’s in your frame of reference. It could keep you alive in a bad situation, and that’s reason to have such a thing with you, but you’ll be much better off if you have some sensible survival skills and use them as well.

My picks for a lightweight and economical alternative survival kit:
Army Nylon Camping Parachute Hammock w Sack
Space Brand Sportsman’s Hooded Blanket (Blue or Red)
MPI Space Brand Emergency Bag
About $62.50 for new products on Amazon today.

As an alternative, for those of us who don’t have a lot of cash to toss around, many cheap pieces of survival gear can add up to something as good as the JakPak or even better, at a lower cost. Space blankets weigh only ounces (about three for the least expensive) and make serviceable groundcloths or rain gear. Eighty percent of your body heat reflects back to you from the reflective aluminum foil in the blanket.

That sounds good, but it’s a twenty percent loss and it still gets cold under one. I have tested the space blanket in cold conditions and found it helpful but miserably cold. In warmer weather, such as the aftermath of a summer storm in the middle of the night, it’s a bit better. Expect to be wet when the air is warmer, because the moisture your body vents will condense on the inside of the blanket — nasty but tolerable. Heavier versions can be used more than once without being ruined, but where weight is a concern the three ounce version is enough for emergency planning. Switch them out every year, otherwise you’ll discover as I did that over time the layers tend to weld together into a lightweight but useless lump. Always smart to check your gear now and then to see if any of it actually works — I learned that lesson at home and was very happy the secret wasn’t revealed when I actually needed the emergency warmth. (more…)

Category: Gear, Survival | No Comments »
Tags: emergency kit, jakpak, survival gear, survival suit

Posted By JTHats on January 21, 2010

Some boats are just plain lucky boats, and the Bear Creek Mirage has been that sort for me. You get feelings about good boats and I had that one when I first got the Mirage. It started surviving disasters the first week, when I tried to cartop it on the Hyundai for the first time.

I had asked at several canoe dealerships about what rigs I could get that would allow me to do this, and no one had any suggestions beyond rope and foam blocks. No manufacturer had tackled the problem successfully and none of the rugged systems for cartopping canoes would fit to a Hyundai Accent, probably because the companies building those rigs don’t want to get sued. The ratio of Mirage to Accent is about what you see in the pictures above, though the Hyundai is a little bit exaggerated. The Accent is one of those cars no one notices until they nearly run over one. Truck drivers scrape them off their bumpers every morning. If you drive one, you get used to being invisible and are always ready to dodge. They really aren’t designed for carrying anything bigger than they are. Put a box around a motorcycle and that’s the Accent.

So I tried the foam block thing, setting the Mirage on the Accent’s roof on four foam pads that slip over the gunwales and tieing bow and stern to the bumpers of the car. At least I intended to do that — there’s nothing on a Hyundai bumper you can hook to, since the bumpers are some sort of flexible plastic. Lucky for me there are some welded tow loops under front and back and a couple of pretty sturdy metal things on either side of the front that I could hook to as well. I’m not sure what they’re for, but they looked strong enough to hold a canoe up top, so I strung a rope from the bow to either side of the front and a single rope from the stern to the loop in the back, and headed off to the lake.

Within a mile or two the Mirage looked like it was about to go airborne, so I stopped and tightened things up, and again after the next two miles, and in little bits and pieces I got through the first ten miles without serious incident. By that time I was gaining confidence, since the boat was about as tightly tied down as you can get things without a winch.

A few miles farther a young couple came up behind me, since I was only doing the speed limit and not sure how well the combination vehicle would hold to the road at a higher speed, and in the mirror they both looked oddly animated and excited about something. They were really friendly and waved at me frequently, so I waved back a couple of times until I got tired of it. I must have offended them because they gradually dropped farther and farther back.

Coming around a sharp curve the bow of the Mirage caught the wind just right and started to oscillate up and down at a pretty good rate, so I pulled over in a church parking lot and checked out the rig as the friendly couple zipped past me, waving and grinning. Apparently they’d been trying to signal that the Mirage was about to leave the car. I hadn’t noticed the foam blocks creeping along the gunwales and out from under the boat. All my tight rigging had been for nothing because with every bump the blocks slipped a little closer to disaster. The Mirage was one lucky boat to still be sitting on the top of the car. About another inch and it would briefly have been hanging on the driver’s side of the car instead of the top, and it seems unlikely the ropes would have held up to that.

There’s nothing more fascinating than a problem you have no choice but to solve, and with a few additions to the basic setup and some later improvements I did solve it. The cartop rig I’ve used has been good enough for winding mountain roads in the Ozarks as well as long distance trips on busy interstates. It’s solid, it hasn’t ever shook loose, and I’ve never been arrested for using it although I’ve suspected that’s possible, especially in St. Louis.  Eventually the Hyundai Accent wore completely out and rolled to a final stop, literally, but the Mirage lives on. Both of them were lucky vehicles.

I rarely talk about cars but I have mostly good things to say about the Accent, except for the brakes. In icy weather or snow the parking brakes tend to freeze up and I’ve driven a few miles on slick roads from time to time dragging the locked rear wheels along like sled runners. The parking brake never really worked well enough to hold the car in place unless it was frozen to the drums, so my use of it was pretty ceremonial. In the mountains the regular brakes overheat really fast, and although they don’t actually burn up they do turn to something like very hot jello and it doesn’t slow the car down much. At idle the hot brakes won’t even stop the car, and you’ll roll right through an intersection unless you throw it in neutral. So heed the warnings and use the gears, because you’ll have some exciting adventures if you don’t.

More to say on the details of the cartop rig soon. It’ll probably work even better on a bigger car.

Photo Credit: Bear Creek Mirage by Bear Creek Canoes

Category: Gear, canoes | No Comments »
Tags: bear creek canoes, canoe carriers, canoes, cartopping canoes, hyundai, hyundai accent, hyundai accent brakes

Posted By JTHats on January 19, 2010

When I buy something I research the heck out of it — the last thing I want is a piece of gear that isn’t great. So, back in the mid-80’s when I decided to step up from a homemade wood and canvas canoe to something a little tougher, I looked for a canoe that was special. It took me a long time to find one.

Most canoes and kayaks today are made for rivers and creeks, with the emphasis on white water travel and built for the maneuverability and fast response you need for that. I wanted something else, something made for lake travel. A lake canoe has a deeper keel, higher gunwales and payload, and it both holds a course in windy conditions and slices efficiently through waves. My old canoe was none of that, slow and stable and turned like a leaf until I put keel strips on it and tamed it down a little. In whitecaps it came to nearly a dead stop every time the bow hit a wave, so there were days when you just pulled into a quiet cove and waited for the breeze to subside. If you were twenty four hours late getting back to the car, that’s just the way it was.

I was getting the sailing itch again, and the canoe I had in my head was good enough to serve as a small sailboat. The sailing rig was easy enough to find, but the right boat for it wasn’t. Spring Creek’s sail rig fits nearly any open canoe, but not every one work well with it.

Having looked at nearly every canoe available I found that the ones which would suit me were generally far out of my price range — special orders that added thousands to the cost. Sea kayaks were also expensive, and though I like that idea it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. An open canoe for camping and fishing and sailing seemed unattainable in my price range until I came across Bear Creek Canoes. I had remembered a book I read on wood and canvas canoes back in the 70’s, the inspiration for my other boat, and a section in it that mention the Maine Guide style. Built with a displacement hull and a shallow keel, the Maine Guide had a three point hull that was stable in three different positions. So I did a long search for one and came up with Bear Creek Canoe Company of Sebago, Maine.

The Bear Creek Canoe Company had just gone into business a few years before and was at that time working with some older molds discontinued by another manufacturer. One of them, the Mirage, looked like it would fit my needs, so I decided to gamble and buy it. I actually had a bit of trouble convincing the owner of the company I was serious, because shipping from Maine to Arkansas was going to add several hundred bucks to the price. I still wanted the boat, and after a long odyssey by semi and some arguments with a shipping company that thought getting the canoe within twenty miles was good enough, the Mirage was dropped off in my driveway.

I’ll have more to say on this boat. It’s the focus of a piece I’m building for my main page, Jimmy’s Backpacking Page, and in combination with the Spring Creek Sailing Rig it has been everything I wanted and more. There’s a lot of open water in the lakes of the United States, and with a sail and a good canoe you can claim that space quietly. More people should do this.

Links:
Bear Creek Canoes
Free Range Human
Main Farmhouse Journal

Category: canoes | No Comments »
Tags: bear creek canoe, bear creek mirage, canoe, sailing, sailing canoe, sailing rig