Thoughts on gear

Great feedback on your gear from 2010. It sounds like you were thoroughly satisfied with your choices and their performance. I'm really wishing the Trail Designs Ti-Tri was available earlier in 2010 when I picked up my Ti-Tri Inferno kit for my MSR Titan. Russ and Rand are top notch to work with like you said, they get my vote for Cottage Gear Makers of the Year if their ever was one. I have only praise for the kit as a whole, but the ability to leave the caddy home despite it's versatility is still alluring. What .6L pot did you have for your Ti-Tri pot? Did you pick up all these items this year? How was the learning curve for you trying out a quilt under a tarp?

On the subject of dehydration, I try to drink as much water as I can when I finally arrive at a watering hole, especially if I know it might be a while until the next source. It sounds like you were pretty dehydrated. When in doubt, carry more water than you think you'll need. Carrying an extra 1L or 2 is far safer and worthwhile than getting behind on your hydration.

I used the Evernew .6 pot. I've used a tarp for years in the BWCA so using my Spinn Twinn was pretty easy. Yeh, I got all the gear this year.

Hi David, you should give the Aquamira Frontier Pro filter a try. Weight is 2 oz, and when used in conjunction with a chemical treatment, allows for drinking with only a few minutes of chemical contact time. The filter removes the big, hard to kill protozoa like Crypto and Giardia, while the chemicals neutralize smaller bacteria and viruses, and can do so with very limited contact times. The carbon element in the Frontier Pro also removes the chemical treatment from the water, eliminating for the most part unpleasant tastes.

You may need to buy new water containers which are compatible with the Frontier Pro. I'm partial to the tall, skinny Smartwater bottles. ~$1.70, and they come with free water inside! ;)

Hi David,

My wife and I are a fan of the Haven as well. We even used it in the Bridger Wilderness/Wind River area a few nights.

It is my wifes preferred shelter when we do two person trips. We have had some splash and spray in extreme blowing rain, but never enough to get uptight about.

I use various tarp/bivy/bugnet combinations when I solo, depending on my whim at the time. All shelters have their plus and minuses.

If I look back on most of my nights outdoors, they were without any shelter, but I lived in Utah at the time, where even the snow is dry:-)

Now that I live in the North East US, where it rains or snows every other day and dry air doesn't exist, I always bring a tarp and usually some kind of bugnet or bivy.

On the subject of waiting out the chemical treatments, I have used the Frontier pro with chemicals and it does make the water safer after a short treatment and then filtering.

I have also used just Aqua-Mira alone. When time I boiled a cup of untreated water when I was too dehydrated to wait for the treatment to work.
A nice hot cup of tea when you are dehydrated, even in summer heat, tastes fantastic and will get you by while you wait for the chems to do their thing.