Lightweight Gear for Long Distance Hiking: Four Months in Europe

Roger, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to lay out not only your detailed gear list, but the logic behind your choices. I have learned a lot from articles like yours, and they are the principle reason I subscribe to BPL.

Also, I too appreciate seeing an article now and then that isn't just a SUL contest. While I have all the respect in the world for those with the skills to go SUL, I learn as much or more from hearing the rationale behind UL or LW gear selections.

I consider myself a LW backpacker with base weights between 12 and 15 pounds for 3 season trips (has BPL defined what base weight range they consider UL?). My gear selection is based upon weight AND comfort, much like Roger's, with the caveat that I value simplicity and fewer total items/parts like Brett eluded to in his reply.

Your report was not only both informative and enjoyable, but quite inspirational.

It encouraged me to add a long distance hike in Europe to My (& Wife's) Life List of Things To Do.

I love your bread and cheese strategy.

Hi Roger,

I enjoyed reading your article it was nice change, sometimes it is not practical to go UL and SUL.

I recall that in previous discussions about Titanium vs Aluminium pots that you preferred aluminium pots with a thick base over Ti pots I would be interested as to find out why you are now using Ti pots.

I have used Ti pots for several years and my test indicate Ti pots are more efficient to use than aluminium pots although I have not tested the newer light anodized pots yet.

Tony

Roger,

Excelent article, very informative. Seems you have a good reason for all the items you take. One question however; what are you gonna use the scalpels for? Those were the only items that for me seemed odd on your list.

Eins

> One question however; what are you gonna use the scalpels for?
A good question.
These are straight-edge scalpel blades, with a very sharp point. I am carrying a steel bread & butter knife ('sharp') and a small miniature box cutter (also 'sharp'), but no pocket knife at all and no scissors. The scalpel blades are 'very sharp' and weigh what – less than a gram each? They serve for getting large splinters out, cutting micropore surgical tape and elastoplast strip, performing minor surgery if needed (quite minor!) and so on. They start life sealed and so are sterile. Once again, there's a weight/utility trade-off here.

On the topic of Ti vs Al…

I have done a lot of testing with pots and stoves, like so many in this community have no doubt already done. Among the many things I learned was that boil times with an Al pot were consistently much faster than with a Ti pot (hence one would use less fuel).

This all makes sense. If you look at a table of thermal conductivity of metals Al is right at the top. Ti is way, way down the list. I was talking about this to a friend of mine that welds. He laughed and said he could hold the end of a Ti rod for a while he worked with it. If he did the same thing with an Al rod he would badly burn his hand. It was a classic example of how empirical experience is more valuable than book knowledge. :)

Now everyone knows there are pros and cons as well as personal preferences. My lightest Al "pot" is a 2 cup aluminum flour measuring cup I bought at a flea market. I use foil for a lid. I don't have a pot (Ti or otherwise) that even comes close in weight.

The problems that I have my "SUL Al pot" are trivial and manageable. First, it's somewhat easy to mangle so it does need to be packed with care like almost every other piece of SUL gear I own. Second, because Al is so heat conductive it makes a terrible mug. The cup is literally the same temperature as the liquid within it. I burn my lip when I try to drink out of it if I don't let the beverage cool first. Finally, the Al pot cools very quickly and if I don't us a proper windscreen a slight breeze seems to rob the setup of heat.

The Ti vs Al topic is far from closed in my book, that's for sure. I switch-hit between my flour-cup pot setup (by far my lightest), the Fosters beer can setup, and a Ti pot setup. Still, for a weekend trip, the flour cup setup most often finds its way onto my ever-changing gear list.

Hi James

> Among the many things I learned was that boil times with an Al pot were consistently much faster than with a Ti pot (hence one would use less fuel).
I have to record that I completely disagree with you. And yes, I have done the tests too. There are several reasons why what you say is not true every time.
First, the thermal mass of the pot is trivial compared to the thermal mass of the water. It takes huge amounts of energy to heat a mass of water compared the same mass of any metal.
Second, the thickness of the metal base in lightweight pots is so small that the temperature gradient across the base is usually of the order of about 1 to 2 degrees centigrade, despite the differences in thermal conductivity. This is a trivial temperature drop as well.
Third, the blanket statement that Al pots boil faster ignores two other quite important factors: the diameter of the pot and the thickness of the metal. The base can vary over a large range of thickness, which does affect the thermal mass, while the diameter of the pot directly affects the rate energy is absorbed by the pot. The bigger the diameter, the faster the heating. Yes, I have measured this, although it is not that easy to make accurate scientific measurements here.

> (hence one would use less fuel).
Here I have to disagree with you as well. The faster you heat a pot the less efficient the heating, because at higher power more of the heat is wasted up the side of the pot. This is quite well-known these days.

Sorry, but based on my measurements I think the Al vs Ti claims are another suburban myth.

Hi Frank

Thanks for your comments. It's very interesting to get someone else's perspective. However, I think you do a different sort of walking from us. I get the impression from your web site that you often go from town to town, and often eat and sleep in the towns. We live in the mountains and only go into towns to shop, then we leave quickly. So our needs are different.

> I can't believe an Australian would choose a dinky canvas bucket hat versus a stylish Akubra felt hat.
Chuckle. The Akubra hats are what we sell to tourists from overseas – for megabucks. I make my own hats from heavy unbleached calico, so they cost me maybe a dollar each. Unfashionable but very functional.

> Contrary to what you wrote, tightly quilted polarguard, such as the Patagonia Puff pullover, will NOT break down under heavy use. If you get a piece of raw polarguard insulation and pull at it, you will immediately see that the fibers are extremely strong in one direction, as strong as polyester thread in fact, and so all you have to do is prevent the fibers from separating in the other direction by quilting every 2 inches or so.
This is very interesting, and encouraging. Maybe these synthetics have improved over the years? Sounds good, because we are taking the Cocoons instead of the 200-weight fleece. Thanks for the information.

> I am not sure if the Cocoon is this tightly quilted. Tight quilting reduce loft some.
No, there is no quilting in the Cocoons at all. Ah well, we shall see.

> don't understand this comment about soft alpine soils.
> My own experience is that about 50% of my campsites have very hard ground. In particular, I often find myself on the tops of hills where the ground is basically nothing but rock. Any less than a titanium nail stake is unlikely to work in places like this.
You should see some of our local Australian ridges! Hammering in Ti wire pegs witha rock takes time and breaks the rock … trying to push the wire pegs in just wouldn't work. Our experience in the Pyrenees has been that the soil there is generally softer than our hard stuff at home, but I know that doesn't mean it will be the same everywhere. So I am taking some Ti wire pegs and some larger tubular pegs, to cover all bases. Of course, in really rocky situtaions I can often wedge a tubular peg in somewhere and then cover it with rocks.

> Personally, I'm quite happy eating uncooked food
No stoves and no cooking? Not for us. But we live in the mountains and don't eat in restaurants like you. As well, we find the ability to make hot food to be an absolutely vital safety factor in cold wet windy alpine situations.

> I think you should spend a lot more effort worrying about the appearance of your hiking clothes as opposed to funtionality. In the wilderness, no one cares what you look like. But when walk into town, it is a wonderful feeling to be able to dump your gear at a hotel or campground, shower up and wash your clothes, then put the clothes back on and let them dry from body heat (20 minutes for Taslan/supplex) and walk around town looking like a normal person rather than some geeky hiker. I would be especially surprised if your wife doesn't feel conspiciously underdressed during town stops.
Ah well, we don't spend any time in the towns you see. We shop and run. We have stayed in campgrounds a few times for the hot showers, but the hotels and restaurants thing – never done that, except when the trip is finished and we are waiting for our flight home
No, my wife does not feel any concerns about looking fashionable either. She usually just wants to get out of the town and back into the mountains.

> Silly kangaroo pocket, or a purse around your neck
Ah, but we aren't in the towns much you see. In our experience the kangaroo pocket works much better in the mountains than something hanging awkwardly around our necks. Very different requirements I think.

Cheers

No worries. I am used to it.

To be fair my tests were not designed to evaluate pots and their material. Several years ago I was in my "everything is better when made from a pop can" phase. I swear every backpacker goes through this at one point or another. I don't think I ever left. Anyway, my goal was to concoct a cooking setup that could reliably boil 2 cups of water in realistic conditions using .5 oz of alcohol (including "priming" fuel if the stove so required). I defined boiling as 212 degrees on a thermocouple and started with, I think, 68 degree water. My memory is a little foggy on this but you get the point. I started in my kitchen and then moved candidate designs onto my backyard picnic table. Those that did well went into my pack and onto the trail. For each series of test I had a control setup that I would burn at the start of each of a series of tests. I am not sure if "control" is the right word but I would use it to make sure the starting conditions for the test were the same.

I went through a pile of pop cans changing the number of burner holes, burner hole patterns, burner height. I build pressurized side burners, open-top double-walled stoves, open top stoves (like the "ion"), etc, etc. I was scolded by the man that picks up the recycling because apparently you aren't supposed to put chopped up cans in the bin for pickup. It was THAT bad.

I have no clue how much denatured alcohol I bought from Home Depot. I bought it in gallon cans.

I even experimented with "fuel blending" meaning the mixing of higher BTU/lb fuels with alcohol in different ratios.

I learned a LOT from this, however. So it was worthwhile for sure. I recognize that there are many that could have just told me the answer and sent me packing but I am the kind of person that has to figure it out for myself. It's not that I am stubborn. I just like to have some sense of rationale behind what I am doing besides, "Linda said the fuel blending exercise was dangerous and a mistake." (She really said this and THIS is another story!)

One thing that I think everyone will tell you is that a cooking system has a lot of variables. You gain advantage in one area but lose it in another. All of the elements have to work together in the right conditions to produce consistently good results. Pot, lid, windscreen, stove, etc, etc. It's a balance.

I tried to change as few variables at a time as possible. Being a firebug I focused on the stove first (because that is the fun part). Later I moved on to the pot and windscreen.

The pot was a particular challenge because at the time I only had two of them. One was aluminum, an old pot my wife inherited from an aunt that passed away… old "garbage" from her house (one man's garbage is another man's…) The other was a Snow Peak 700 mug that I had used and abused. By the time I was done I couldn't pull a shirt out of my closet and not have a cascade of pots and pans fall out. I bought coffee pots (2 cup pots) both new and ancient, "normal" pots, the WalMart grease pot. I spent money on titanium pots that I only used once or twice. Really, it was nuts.

Anyway, I did manage to get a setup that boiled 2 cups of water with .5 oz of alcohol in the kitchen and sometimes in the field. Not a big "fireworks" discovery but the only way I was able to do this was using aluminum pots. I was never able to achieve this result with a Titanium pot, not even close.

Hi James,

It does sound like had fun with your testing, I am not much into testing Alcohol burners other than the Trangia,
“Anyway, I did manage to get a setup that boiled 2 cups of water with .5 oz of alcohol in the kitchen and sometimes in the field.”

The JetBoil that I have just Purchased and tested used 4 grams (1/7th oz) of gas to boil 0.5 litre of water in the lab and I have just completed a three day walk which we used a JetBoil with the larger pot most of the time and I was very impressed with the ease of use and the efficiency of it although I did not have to carry it.

Here are some graphs of the results of my test on Titanium vs Aluminium vs Stainless Steel pots. The tests were conducted in similar conditions. The pots tested were similar in size but not exact sizes, each pot was tested on a MSR Pocket Rocket through a range of burn rates from very slow to very fast. At fast burn rate there is not much difference as most of the heat is being blown out the sides before it has time to transfer into the pot but at slow burn rates the pots showed different characteristics with the Aluminium pot coming out as the least efficient and the Ti pot the best.

I think the reason for the Aluminium pot being the least efficient is that as Aluminium has by far the best thermal conductivity which means the heat can be transferred to the water better it also can loose the heat from the side walls easier.

The first graph is thermal efficiency vs time.

The second graph is Time vs Fuel used to boil 0.5 litre water.

The picture is of my home testing lab. I use a calibrated Thermistor probe to measure water temperature and a thermocouple to measure gas temperature coming up the sides of the pot both temperatures are recorded on a computer using data logging software.

Tony

Hi James,

I ran some test on the JB using the larger JB pot and from the slowest flame setting (or burn rate as I like to call it) to the fastest flame (fully open valve 3.5 turns) while boiling 0.5 litre of water. The time taken to boil was between 16 minutes to 2 minutes 20 seconds. The amount of fuel used was between 4.0 grams to 4.9 grams. The Pocket Rocket used up to 10 grams of fuel to boil 0.5 litre of water in some tests.

Tony

Hi Roger,

I would like to make a pillow like yours. How does one put holes so neatly into the foam?

thanks