Back safe and sound

I've been back since Sunday actually. It was an interesting trip, resulting in one night slightly chastised in the car, the most expensive rest stop ever and one night on the summit of Snowdon.Trip report, photos and videos to follow.

apologies

I can't seem to get my own comments to cooperate. I'll answer y'all when I get it figured out.

Extra weight

I made the mistake of trying out the pack with the Mountain Laurel tarp and Titanium Goat Bivi in it instead of the Laser competition. Noticeable weight difference, which means I am inching towards taking those instead. There is always the possibility of creating a windbreak type shelter using snow and tarp combined- there certainly seems to be enough snow in the Lakes. And here is where another doubt creeps in. My walking buddy Martyn has a bad neck- it's debatable whether he'll be good to go for the weekend. I am up for a solo mission but conditions in the Lakes are looking edgy and more than that, very hard going. If the cold continues, there will still be a lot of loose unbonded snow, which is snowshoe weather really. There's also the risk of avalanches and my avalanche awareness is not as good as I'd like it to be. So I need to decide whether to see the Lakes in conditions not seen for many a year or to go the first weekend of February when conditions should have stabilised.

If you have a better offer..

On Friday, the bloke organising the Rab mini mountain marathon uttered those glorious words. They had enough teachers to cover the students who had signed up, so the game is on!
I did a test packing over the weekend. The Jam was the only pack big enough to carry the volume of gear but the real shocker was the weight- it's been a year since I carried a winter pack and during that time I've savaged the weight I'm carrying. Including food, fuel and water the pack weighed 8kg-Ouch! Since last year I've added a neoair which is about 200g more than the GG nightlight and a down hood which weighs 60g. I do want to carry those though. If I don't take the Laser competition I can lose 500g even taking into account my trekking poles which I would probably carry a lot of the time. The choice comes down to the Gatewood cape with polycro groundsheet and no inner or the cuben tarp.

My nan never said...

'look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves' but if she had, and if she had been an ultralight hiker she may have said 'look after the grams and the kilograms will look after themselves' . Which is a roundabout way of saying I have some new stuff but it's not big or exciting.

My medical kit is very basic and it's up to you what you put in yours-I'm in no way advising here just saying what I've got. In my opinion, the complex medical kits you can buy often have nothing very useful in them and realistically, in this country you are never very far away from help. If anything really major happens you're going to need mountain rescue and if it's serious but not life threatening, a bodge should see you through. So I have plasters, alcohol wipes, some ibruprofen and some duct tape. Since I was in the cubs I've assumed that you can improvise things like triangular bandages and a serious bleed is not going to be stopped by anything you can get in a normal medical kit but could be patched using a fleece hat and some duct tape for example. Over christmas, however, I cut my chin seriously enough to need five stitches. The first aider who was on the scene put on a few butterfly stitches and advised me to go to hospital. As it was Christmas and I had no wish to wait in casualty for ten hours I ignored him until the cut bled all over my pillow and I went to get it stitched. He mentioned that Americans without insurance often use super glue. I was aware of American hikers who use super glue to patch blisters but it turns out super glue has been used in medicine for a long time. When I saw these single use super glue tubes in B&Q I snapped them up. They weigh only 2g each and should be enough to patch a decent sized cut or blister if I get one (Which I usually don't). Heres a disclaimer: THIS IS NOT MEDICAL SUPER GLUE! It's got additives which may irritate skin or damage flesh if the wound is deep. I'd only use it in emergencies where I'm a significant walk away from help. It's a little bit of safety though.

If I'm adding in a bit of weight, it's nice to reduce some somewhere. The Bic mini lighter is only 11g as opposed 15g upwards for a regular, but better than that, it's much smaller. It helps if you remove the child safety strip, which is really easy to do. I use it for burning my toilet paper and as a secondary fire source.

My new primary fire source is the mini firesteel (9g). Eddie Meechan did a good write up on this inTGO, but instead of using a bit of hacksaw for a striker, I'm using my Swiss Army knife(22g). Iv'e struggled mentally with carrying the SAK for a while now-I did try using a razor blade instead of a knife for a while as I virtually never use a knife but I felt like the scissors may come in useful. It also carries tweezers and a toothpick (Useful for beef Jerky!). It really is a 'just in case' item which is rarely used. The use of it for a striker justifies it's existence in my pack a little more!

Winter hiking

I've arranged a weekend to head up to the lakes to have some fun in the snow. Only problem is I'd already agreed to partner up with some of the students at my school for the RAB mini marathon in the peak district on the same weekend. The idea is that because you have to 18 to take part we partner teachers with student teams and they act as a chaperone. One of the other teachers is a keen fell runner and I'd expressed an interest. Before Christmas, however, no-one had signed up. When the snow came I contacted Martyn about going to the Lakes-he's free-job's a goodun. Except now three students have signed up and three are possibles. The event takes teams of two-if the three sign up by the end of the week they'll need me-if not, I'm free and while the mini-marathon will be fun, compared to wandering round with an ice axe and a flask of Jura it seems a poor exchange. My son Solomon is teething and it's unfair to leave my wife with him two weekends in a row. I'll just have to pray that this generation really is as apathetic as they say!
Anyhow down to gear choices for the weekend, which is what this blog is really all about. Pack choice is easy-It'll have to be my Golite Jam as it's the only bag with the capacity I want. I could use the murmur with my crampons strapped on, but that would be a pain-also, I would be pushing the carrying capacity of the murmur I suspect. It's strange to think that when I got my Jam I was going from a Karrimor Panther. At 600g, the Jam was about 1/4 of the 2.2kg weight of the Panther. My Z pack is less than 1/4 of the weight of the Jam! The only other alternative is my Golite Dawn at 400g- it might be a little snug though.
Last year I used Hedgehog Mids with my Kahtoolas. I've got some low-tops now and I might use them just for kicks and because I can! I've bought some Berghaus Glacier Gaiters which are a fantastic fit round the shoe and should keep out the snow.
The real quandry for me is shelter. Reason says I should take the laser competition. Martyn carries a Microzoid which is not big enough for two to play cards and drink in and the laser can cope with most of the weather that is thrown at it. I still haven't had a chance to use my cuben poncho and bivvy combination though. If the weather is anything except windy or heavy rain, I could easily be tempted. My winter bag combination (My minim Ultra inserted in a Vango Venom) fits inside it and if we get a clear night, it should be an amazing experience. I'll see how the weather goes.....

A sense of scale

Here's a confession- the one item that no dedicated ultralight hiker should be without has not featured in my gear closet. What is it? A set of digital scales. For anyone who is interested in cutting weight in terms of single figure grams, this is a "serious" omission. I owned a set of traditional scales but these only measure in 25 gram increments. To be pefectly honest, I saw no real need for the extra accuracy- I could use the published weights, gamble on my small size (published weights are often for a medium), get a ball park figure using the scales and when I weighed the whole pack it came in pretty much at where I expected it to be. Realistically, if you only buy the lightest possible items and get rid of anything that you don't need then your weight will be cut drastically wheteher published wheights are accurate or not. Unfortunately my calm acceptance of the status quo was thrown into disarray when my brother in law bought me a set of scales for christmas- cue a great deal of christmas period drunken weighing and lamenting over my spread sheets. It was similar to the angst caused by my realising that my equipment weights also needed to include stuff sacks. Hmmm. Actually it was quite good fun weighing my boxer shorts and getting an accurate reading.
So who are the winners and losers? Losers: Rab windshirt-published weight 70g, actual 80g, PHD minim ultra sleeping bag, published 345, actual 389- winners:PHD minim ultra vest, published 150g, actual 138g and that's pretty much it. Why? because the vast majority of my gear actually comes in at the published weight. My theory for this is that the cottage industries where I get most of my gear from make their name based on their sales to a group of weight obsessed fanatics who are very much in contact via the internet and therefore they have to make sure that the gear matches the weight. This may well be the reason that Thermarest, despite having a reputation for innaccurate weights came up with the goods for the neoair (mine is spot on the published weight) Overall winner, however has to be Joe from Zpacks. As far as I am aware (and I am available for correction) mine is one of the a very few packs of this size with these features isn't a standard option and yet it came up exactly on the weights published for the options on the site (125g if you're interested).