Everything Weighs Something

Great Article. Like others I felt like I was reading my own overnite conversion story back in 2006, after years of old school boy scout overpreparedness mentality backpacking/camping. (No bashing intended!). Once you get the concept, the wheels start turning and the addiction begins.

Perhaps this is a good short starter article to offer to newcomers to "Spread the Word", "Share the Gospel" of UL Backpacking. It's short enough to "set the hook" and packed with enough details to illustrate the benefits to a newcomer. I also like that it illustrates the concept of individual choices and lightening your load need not mean immediately going to extremes. Nice Job!

"…but why be in such a hurry? You're at camp, you're not going anywhere, what's the rush?"

I'm hungry!!! Even though I'm snacking properly, the last one was two hours ago. Time for dinner. After setting up camp of course.

Eins

PS. I cook on ESBIT, so no priming whatsoever for me.

Very enjoyable!
Like others have mentioned, this was like reading my life story. I started backpacking in high school in 1972 and still have my SVEA stove. Don't use it backpacking, but still use it family car camping. Last summer my nephew and I hiked from Tuolumne Meadows to White Wolf via Benson Pass. Thought I had lightened my load sufficiently to a base of 35 lbs (including food), but I was wrong. A work in progress!

Charles, Great article! nicely written depiction of how the transformation takes place.

thanks!

Thanks, Charles. Great article and very inspiring. I've got a walk on this weekend and I'm going to be going over my gear with a fine tooth comb today. I'm about halfway through the transition and, like you, still can't cut loose the "old faithful" stove mentality. Thanks for sharing your insights. Regards.

An XGK with gray pump, huh? I even have the older Model G and GK stoves with yellow pump.

Nice! I've got a little collection of older MSR stoves, but no G or GK (and certainly no Model 9). My old Firefly and my original Whisperlite both have yellow pumps.

Larry Penberthy was kind of a weird guy.

Maybe. But his stuff worked. The old yellow pump is a much better pump than the four generations of pumps that followed it including today's "duraseal" pump. He also revolutionized stoves. Stoves then were generally made of brass and had an integral tank. The integral tank was small, so everyone carried extra fuel in a Sigg bottle. Penberthy, in a flash of genius, got rid of the integral tank and just used the Sigg bottle that everyone was already carrying.

Recall that, in it's day, the unpressurized Svea 123 was considered a lightweight stove, unsuitable for high altitude use. Mountaineers were carrying huge things like an Optimus 111 which was a brass stove that came in a steel case. Imagine lugging that up the side of an 8000m peak.

Penberthy, with his flash of genius, changed all that. In a way, he was a forerunner of today's UL movement.

HJ

Yes, Larry Penberthy was the guy who thought up and founded MSR. Some of the early hardware products were really innovative, like the MSR stoves. The MSR newsletter was a periodic "applications note" to customers. He tried to solve the problem of altitude sickness, but his methods were considered wrong. I mean, Rainier climbers reaching Camp Muir were being asked to urinate on pH test paper! That's OK. He wrote it up in his next newsletter.

I still have pieces and parts from MSR stoves going back to about 1978. At one point in time, I believe I had purchased six of them in all, and I was cannibalizing them to keep three in operation for group trips.

In those early years, the complexity of an MSR stove was too much for the average backpacker, and any user who was thermodynamically challenged would throw it against a tree out of frustration. But after you had used one for a week in difficult conditions, you had it figured out.

Once in the early 1980s, I led a ski group to a snowy backcountry hut in the middle of winter. This hut had an indoor sink, but no water source. Once we started cooking, we discovered that the sink drain was clogged or frozen or something. No problem. I set my hottest MSR next to the cast-iron drain pipe at floor level and turned up the flame to "blowtorch" setting. Twenty minutes later, "gurgle, gurgle" and the frozen pipe was frozen no more.

–B.G.–

I still have many of Penberthy's catalogs/application notes. He championed Lithium batteries before anyone else, and had many other good ideas. Not all of his ideas were good, however. The MSR single-use climbing helmet harness, and his ice climbing tools (Ice Hawks?) come to mind, although I expect some people will defend them.

He famously tested ice axes and came down very hard on unreliable wooden shafts and poorly designed picks (as far as self-arrest was concerned). I suspect many lives were saved due to his innovations.

I still have an Optimus 111B, and take it car camping. I used to haul it around winter camping. It worked great, was a veritable blowtorch, but boy did it weight a lot, maybe four pounds!

The 111B is a great stove. Careful though with one thing. If the rubber pip in the valve at the end of the pump shaft hardens up, fuel can leak into the pump shaft, possibly causing a fireball. If you ever see the pump handle start pushing out on its own, even slowly, shut 'er down immediately.

They're awfully good stoves though; extremely dependable and rugged. (but darn heavy)

I've still got an old MSR Ice Axe ("Thunderbird?") — all orange. It's actually a good axe, but pretty heavy by today's standards.

HJ

Very nice article.

I enjoyed reading it so much as I have been going through the same process for the last year. Selling old, heavy stuff on E-BAY or just giving it away or throwing it out. I have had such an excellant time researching the newer, lighter, more compact etc. gear now available for backpackpers (including the new mini-titanium tent stakes that come with Nemo Meta Tents and the Terra Nova Laser Photon Elite—WOW. Have you seen these ?).

Thanks again and now no more 65 pound packs for me. Mike

i agree with the previous poster about bodyweight, just as much a factor as pack weight, seems kinda silly to cut off grams from a pack when you could cut more significantly more off in other ares. For example, i used to be a powerlifter, weighed 205 at 5"8 shredded, was a tank. Had a low baseweight, but still found it difficult to keep good mileage. Now im 155 with a pack that weighs about 22-23lb with 4-5 days of food, and i fly.

re priming the 123 I too never use (indeed don't own) the pump; after all the only thing that's ever failed on my nova is the pump, it's the simplicity I love.
I carry fuel in the Trangia 0.5L bottle. a. it's light compared with metal (pressurised) bottles and b. with that handy little safety top it's ideal for fueling the svea. My prime: trickle just a little bit of fuel on the top of the burner, just enough to half fill the indentation on top of the tank, light, and wait. About 10 seconds later open the valve and you're cooking on gas!
It's quicker to get going than the XGK / nova (no pumping) though about 10 seconds slower than gas. I can live with that!

Anyway going back to backpackinglight esbit (actually hexy) is the lightweight option for me too, again for the simplicity (a 3"x3" square of baking tray, a Ti metal stand from Ti Goat, a Ti windscreen also from them and a SP900). It's rubbish for melting snow, rubbish in strong wind unless you really shield it in addition to using the windscreen, but it does save about 500g.

This article along with Ryan's have inspired me to sell kit. What am I thinking?

Nice article Charles. It mirrors a lot of what I went through.

Isn't it ironic that so many people here (including me) are devoted proponents of trekking poles while Jardine has always railed against them? IMO that was (is?) one of Ray's big problems: if it worked for you but not him, you were wrong.

There is no proper answer to the question what is the right it?

For me poles have been a big help. I do find Jardine's extreme stuff a bit over the edge. After al, this is the man who thought the world would have ended by now!

You folks are a total inspiration. I have begun again after being away since the 70's myself. It will take so doing but what fun.

Interesting story behind the first MSR stove, as told to me by Penberthy himself. It seems that he was on top of Rainier with a friend when the friend developed altitude sickness that turned into pulmonary edema. The friend died & Larry became somewhat obsessed with finding a way to avoid altitude sickness.

He decided that dehydration was the major problem and that climbers became dehydrated because carrying enough water to stay hydrated was way too heavy, but the stoves of the time were too slow to melt enough snow to keep a team in water. He designed the original stove to be a quick snow melting machine, not a camp cook-stove, although many of us used it for both.

In 1978 I climbed Rainier as part of a group that he put together to test his theory of the cause of altitude sickness. By that time he had decided that the problem was a combination of dehydration, acid buildup in the blood, and loss of electrolytes. So we all drank lots of water, peed on litmus paper & ate Rolaids to keep our urine alkaline, and popped salt tablets.

One of the other climbers was a Doctor and he confided to me that he thought Larry was right about the dehydration, but full of it regarding the other stuff. All I know for sure is that I made the summit feeling better at 14,411 feet than I had on St. Helens at 9,677 feet. These days it's widely accepted that a climber needs to stay well hydrated & replace lost electrolytes.

Penberthy was a little different, as others have noted. It's a good thing there have been and are people like him though. If not we wouldn't be posting opinions on web pages; we wouldn't even be using fire or the wheel.

Great article the only thing that gives me concern is the rather large camp fire contained in the attached images. Is it a case on marked trails in the US of wood supplies being provided for, or is it case of foraging close to the track for fuel? Many of us in Oz are keen to follow a leave no trace philosphy, as well as a lighter and subsequently more pleasant approach to walking.
Phil

Phil, in the US, it depends.

I'm a big LNT proponent too, and I feel that sometimes it's ok to have fires. This guy was in the east, in a forested area. But he's also at very heavily used campsites. I'd suspect that big fires are inappropriate in such a situation. Many hikers in the US don't know or don't care about reducing fire impacts. The camps that he was at probably see to many people collecting wood.

We also have large forested areas that see few people and can definitely support fires. In fact, the government spends huge amounts of money to clear out wood and do controlled burns to help forest health. Sometimes I feel like I'm helping the forest by having a large fire. Surely not helping the air though. Nor do I build new fire rings, or create new fire pits that will ever be found.

Regarding the wood fire…you may want to consider the Emberlit wood stove at http://www.emberlit.com . It weighs 5.4oz, folds flat, is very efficient and best of all it does not require carrying fuel. I'm amazed at how long it burns with just a miniscule amount of wood. Nothing is burned that can't be broken easily by hand. I can bring two cups of water to a full boil in about six minutes from lighting it.

I've recently switched from alcohol and have used it successfully in both dry and wet conditions. It's great for melting snow etc because you don't have to worry about running out of fuel under almost all conditions. You can burn fuel tabs in it and it also acts as a great windscreen for any alky stove.

I've even used it as a mini campfire under my hammock tarp when set up in porch mode. It's one my most favorite oieces of new gear. No more trying to judge how much fuel to bring or where I'm going to replace it on a long hike.

It's worth a look.

"We also have large forested areas that see few people and can definitely support fires. In fact, the government spends huge amounts of money to clear out wood and do controlled burns to help forest health. Sometimes I feel like I'm helping the forest by having a large fire."

Jack,
Most of the ADKs is like that.

There are simply not that many people out in the woods. Mostly they are at state campsites or on the more well known trails: The High Peaks Area's(east and west), the NLP, The Finger Lakes Trail/North Country Trail. Many are out for the day from a state campsite, but, most of these campers BUY wood.

Look at all those great posters from the past. Where did everyone go? I haven’t been on for quite a bit. Things sure have changed around here.

No idea where everyone is at today.    Sam H made a post yesterday. That was cool.

I’m sort of over focusing on every gram. So I understand why nobody posts in a gear list p*ssing contests. But I get the feeling the new guys would not help someone out if they brought an anchor for a packraft.

There was something about pack weight and how far, how fast that was a bonding factor. The members were active outdoors, and the gear was what they used. Maybe there is no new generation, or they are on Facebook, or whatever kids do.