Hiking with Franco

Hi Petras
Sounds great. I would like to meet that Franco…
BTW I am not and never considered myself an ultralighter, my category is "light and comfy" …
Franco
Comment heard on the trail from a woman that was carrying a 20kg (44 lbs) pack (talking to one of her club members) " and that is why you should get into lightweight gear like me…" . She was part of a group of six bushwalking club members doing exactly the same loop as Petras and myself and had the lightest pack of her group . The rest of her party had packs going up to 27 kg (60lbs)
Petras and I met them half a way up the first steep ridge, left them after a few hundred meters of walking together and arrived at the hut more than 1 hour before them.

To clarify , I did not include the "lightweight" comment to make fun of those very experienced bushwalkers, I am sure that on any area not familiar to me they would arrive at destination well ahead of myself because I have very poor navigation skills. The point was to highlight how entrenched the "durable/strong/safe" mentality is here , hence the difficulty in selling lightweight equipment.

nm

Franco, you need to put those pics up here

Sadly when we arrived at camp Franco was too busy checking out tents and forgot to take any shots. Pity because my Contrail stood out beign the only shelter in the open whilst all the other mostly four season shelters were hiding behind rocks or next to wind bent trees….

1)Petras at lunch, his only non fried food meal… note the fresh tomato; the fresh rocket salad and similar stuff is already inside his tortilla.
2)Petras on the last bit before the descent to camp, about 50 vertical meters below past that crest.
3)The Contrail at 6:15 AM after a very humid night with no wind. The ground is wet and so are the tents, still I could bounce coins off that ridge. So much for sagging Tarptents( it was set up at about 10:30 the night before and not touched after that)
Franco

…

NM

>Where is the snow? ;)

It is summer down under but this picture was taken few days before and not far from where Franco was walking.

Tony

nm

Great trip report and pictures, thank's for posting!

So is this area all dry camping? That's a lot of water to be humping up several thousand feet!

Note to oneself : avoid having fun with Tony….

As it turned out, because it had rained the day before there was water in the water tank at the hut but it needed to be boiled and some water was trickling down from a couple of sources. The local ranger did give the correct advice to one group but another that was walking back with some students was carrying her own.
We had a bit more water than necessary because it was a hard slog up-hill under the sun , then it turned cold up on the ridge.
As usual local knowledge would have helped.

Franco

> So is this area all dry camping? That's a lot of water to be humping up several thousand feet!

That applies to a lot of Australian mountains and ridges, in both Victoria (Franco) and NSW (me). It is not at all uncommon for Sue and me to be carrying all the water we need for the next 18-24 hours up a mountain, to camp on top.

However, we find that 4 1.25 L PET bottles is usually enough even in mild summer for the two of us. Yes – that's 5 L for the two of us for 18 hours including overnight. It usually leaves enough for morning tea/coffee as well – about 0.6 – 0.7 L.

Really mid-summer, with temperatures over 35 C – I carry a few more litres in a wineskin bladder as well, but that does get heavy! We avoid that if possible.

Cheers

That is a reasonable amount of water for 3:00pm to 9:00am. Without "camelling" I actually prefer 3 quarts each for that time frame.

That is not a reasonable amount for 3:00am to 9:00pm. The including overnight is a very important qualifer.

Petras, if your Starlite is, as I suspect, a Six Moon Designs Starlite, then adding back the "optional" stays should take care of the problem. I have a Six Moon Designs Comet (slightly smaller version, with internal pad pocket). Last summer I backpacked with about 37 lbs. (~17 kg) total weight. I use the stays all the time anyway, because without them the load lifters don't work too well. With that horrendous (for me) load, my shoulders, back and hips were just fine, although my knees and feet were screaming. I didn't even have a stiff pad in the pad pocket, just my insulated air mattress empty and folded up. The stays did the weight transfer very nicely.

I suggested in another recent post that, for those of you who want your ashes scattered somewhere scenic once you've gone to that great hiking trail in the sky, please be considerate of your relatives and pick somewhere not far from a trailhead. The site selected (not by me) was almost 4 days' backpack in, so in addition to the relative's ashes, which were a little over 7 lbs. (and he was a small person), I had to start with 7 days' supplies. Since that trip, I have drastically revised my funeral directions!