Archives (*)
Articles published at Backpacking Light prior to November 26, 2015.
- GEAR • Gear Reviews
- GEAR • Gear Guides
- GEAR • Gear Checklists
- GEAR • Make Your Own Gear
- GEAR • Gear Testing & Research
- SKILLS • Tips, Tricks, and Hacks
- SKILLS • Wilderness Skills
- SKILLS • Training
- SKILLS • Trip Planning
- SKILLS • Food Preparation
- PLACES • Trips
- PLACES • Routes
- CULTURE • Essays
- CULTURE • Stories
- CULTURE • Issues
- CULTURE • People
- CULTURE • News
- CULTURE • Media Reviews
- ARCHIVES (Before 30.Nov.2015)
- SEARCH LIBRARY
- TRAILHEADS
Latest
New Personal Locator Devices at ORSM 2009 (Outdoor Retailer Summer Market 2009)
Personal locator devices (PLDs) are a hot, rapidly evolving area for the outdoor market. An overview of where we think it's headed (and why).
Energizer Micro Headlamp is Powered by a Single AA Cell (Outdoor Retailer Summer Market 2009)
A bright and lightweight LED headlamp from battery giant Energizer that offers several attractive features at $30 and 3.1 oz with a lithium battery (as weighed by BPL).
A Potpourri of Eye Candy: Day 1 (Outdoor Retailer Summer Market 2009)
A grueling first day at summer 2009 OR rewarded us with loads of lightweight goodies; here's a first installment, with more to come.
ORSM09: Open Air Demo (Outdoor Retailer Summer Market 2009)
Open Air Demo consists of booths and boats – and there is always something new, something interesting, and something unique.
Tarptent Moment (Outdoor Retailer Summer Market 2009)
Henry Shires performs his magic once again – the new Tarptent Moment has one hoop pole, two stakes, sets up in less than a minute, and has loads of room for one person.
Coming Soon – Backpacking Light Coverage of the Summer 2009 Outdoor Retailer Show (Outdoor Retailer Summer Market 2009)
What can you expect from our coverage of the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market next week?
Wilderness Trekking School Summer Initiation
The summer of 2008 got Backpacking Light's Wilderness Trekking School off to a great start. We ran three trips in three wildly different locations: Northern Rockies, Pacific Northwest, and Desert Southwest. Each allowed for a unique experience and permitted us to focus on the core curriculum of the Wilderness Trekking format.
Shangri-Lite at 62 – Haute Route at 20 Pounds or Less
On the Haute Route, a 21-pound pack is over-inflated. At sixty-two well-used years, I submitted myself to random weight checks to remain sub-twenty pounds and passed most of them. Making the formula feasible are the huts and hotels which always appear just when you've had enough.
Ultralight Backpacking in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca
With dozens of peaks above 6,000 meters (nearly 20,000 feet), Peru’s Cordillera Blanca range is one of the highest, most rugged sections of the Andes, and the most heavily glaciated of any mountains in the planet’s equatorial zone. It is a well-known mountain climbing destination, and hundreds of kilometers of hikeable trails have made the range increasingly popular among trekkers.
Photo Essay: Packrafting the Madison River
Stretches of the Madison River can be described as a "booze cruise," where innertube flotillas of relaxing college students and drift boats of fly-fishers fill the river. The Bear Trap canyon isn't one of those stretches, especially during spring snowmelt.
Packrafting Utah’s Escalante River in Late March
At 1.6 cfs in the Escalante, would there be more packrafting or raft-packing for our intrepid explorers?
Therapeutic Ultralight: Using Lightweight Backpacking to Help Troubled Boys
Getting emotionally disturbed boys working together to take a backpacking trip is a big job... with many setbacks, limited gear, and almost no budget.
Aniakchak Adventure
Packrafts open up the lunatic fringe of National Parks. We hiked into the Aniakchak Caldera and Surprise Lake to packraft down the Aniakchak to the Pacific Ocean.
*** ALERT *** APPALACHIAN TRAIL HIKER FOUND!
*** ALERT *** APPALACHIAN TRAIL HIKER FOUND!
John Muir’s Birthplace – a Photo Essay
John Muir will be forever linked with the High Sierra and California, but it was far from there that his life began, in the little coastal town of Dunbar on the southeast coast of Scotland.
Uncovering the Truth: Underground Doping in the Long Distance Hiking Community
When Jason Goldman* (not his real name) completed a thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail in less than 100 days, not too many people paid attention: it had been hiked faster by others. But this was Jason's third thru-hike of the PCT. His previous two were completed in 183 and 174 days, respectively...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: BACKPACKING LIGHT SEEKS PARTNERSHIP WITH OHV/ORV COMMUNITY TO PROMOTE MULTI-USE HARMONY IN AMERICAN WILDERNESS
Backpacking Light (www.backpackinglight.com), an internet-based community of hikers known for their pro-wilderness values, is forging partnerships with organizations such as the pro-trails Blue Ribbon Coalition (www.sharetrails.org) to join forces in the fight for American Wilderness preservation.
Metamorphosis #4: Monocle
It is amazing how removing so much from one's hands puts so much at one's fingertips.
Metamorphosis #3: Walking the Edge
At the onset of my affiliation with Backpacking Light, my base weight stood at a whopping sixty pounds. After several months worth of hand-wringing and basic re-education in the art of backpacking, I'd dropped my base weight to nineteen pounds.
Metamorphosis #2: A Change in Attitude
Compared to the expertise written into surrounding pages, a nineteen-pound base weight must look like an embarrassingly tight pair of pants. With another ten pounds in food and water, my thirty-pound pack still needs heavy trimming.
