Month: March 2022

No sooner did I make up my mind than I started to rethink it.

If I’m wearing a hiking shirt, I want a wide brimmed hat.

If I’m wearing a sun hoodie or a rain jacket without a stiff brim, I want a ball cap design.

For wide brim, Frogg Toggs least expensive one is great. Light. Waterproof. Breathes some.

For a ball cap, the flex fit polyester weave is great. Breathes. Rejects water. Tells hunters not to shoot me. Deep instead of shallow.

Both go well with buffs.

Right now I’m hiking with the ball cap again

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footwraps

Cut out of a thick garbage sack, these got me through the rain and wet of “Vermud” on the Appalachian Trail when I failed to have waterproof trail runners.

We are doing some miles most days on the local trails. Today we also got out I’m the evening after sunset to walk in the driving wet snow to test rain gear.

The rain gear did well.

And the morning walk was great as well.

My current rain pants are 10.5 ounces. These are three ounces. https://www.montbell.us/products/disp.php?p_id=1128594.

Win picked up a pair. I’m keeping what I have for the future if we do bushwhacking but for the PCT I’m moving to Versilite.

Win has also switched from her Packa to the Versilite rain jacket (moving from 14.5 ounces to 6.5) and I moved to a Lightheart Gear rain jacket at the same weight savings.

With this change we shaved almost a pound each off of our gear. That seems like a lot.

We are also looking at cooking system improvements. Since we aren’t dealing with lots of wind we moved away from our MSR Windburner.

We are playing with an aluminum grease pot for a pot. The titanium pot is 6 ounces, the grease pot is 2.5 ounces.

Still evolving.

We’ve started with two hours on local trails and then a three mile walk in the afternoon.

It was a great morning.

Also read some on 2.5 ounce cook pots.

https://zenstoves.net/Pots.htm