wet environment clothing

Woolrich still sells the malone pant and technowool pant and filson has the mackinaw and whipcord wool pants. Ibex and I-rule and all kinds of people sell wool blend “softshell” pants. One doesn’t have to go to the UK to find quality wool.
Ryan, I read all the mind boggling links and I have decided the best piece of equipment for a wet environment is optimism and a sense of humor.

Woolrich, IINM (“if i’m not mistaken” – sorry, too many yrs in the military – they just love acronyms and abbreviations), used to be the prime supplier of the excellent wool garments LLBean used to sell. The number of these wool garments offered by LLBean have diminished drastically in the last 10-15yrs.

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Since i believe those participating here in the Forums like to be as precise as possible: just to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’,…

IINM, it is NOT the actual mites themselves that are the allergen, it is their feces. I know, i’m just “splitting hairs” here for where there are mites, there will be their feces – it’s just a fact of mites. The feces dry and become airborne and inhaled or even rubbed into our skin.

Besides dust mite feces, many people are allergic to skin mite feces (generally from cats and dogs as we encounter these creatures more often than wild animals). Mite feces attached to dead skin cells and sometimes pieces of hair are shed (often referred to as “dander”). Same modus operandi as described above for dust mite feces (i.e., inhaled or rubbed)

Mites are ubiquitous. Hey, we even have mites living in the hair follicles of our eye lashes (IIRC, they are about 1/400 of an inch in size) – think about that the next time you realize that you’ve blinked your eyes!

i haven’t personally studied mites to any great degree, though they were very lightly touched upon in a Medical Entomology course i took over three decades ago. the info i’ve shared here has come from watching “educational” TV some years ago. feel free to dispute it as i generally take what i’ve learned on “educational” TV with a grain of salt. if something posted is incorrect, i’d like to be corrected so that i have a proper understanding in this area and won’t relate incorrect info again – though at this point i don’t know that something here is incorrect or i wouldn’t have posted it.

anyways, way too much said about the topic of mite feces. my apologies if i’ve grossed anyone out.

Vlad, you say… “I read about Paramo in Chris Townsend’s most recent backpacking book. It was very interesting, I had never heard of it. I ordered their literature and it does sound good. I’d like to know more about it and hear from Paramo users as it sounds very unique for the cold, wet, windy type environs.”

Read the thread at
http://www.outdoorsmagic.com/forum/forummessages/mps/UTN/15336/URN/5/dt/4/srchdte/0/cp/1/v/7/sp/ . Several Paramo users’ (including Chris Townsend) views there. If you look at other threads in the “gear” section there is more about Paramo – so much that the name is often shortened to “P****o” and treated as a rude word by users of alternatives tired of reading rave reviews.

Yeah, and dust mites thrive best in moist, warm places. Another reason to wash that nasty sleeping bag in hot, soapy water. Of course, washing a sleeping bag thoroughly is a lot easier if its synthetic fill <grin>.

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Vlad, back a few years ago when i was still selling sleepingbags we had an article in our store stating that mites don’t like to live in down. Current day sleepingbags are always lined with a microfibre material, which, the artical stated, is too tightly woven for the small pieces of skin one sheds to penetrate. Hence, there is nothing to eat for the mites in the down and hence there’ll be very few mites in a quality down sleepingbag.

We regularly got customers stating they had a down allergy, after which i had to explain to them what i wrote above and that there is no such thing as a down allergy. We sold those people down sleepingbags with a money back garuntee (how do you write that?) if they did have allergy problems while sleeping in a down bag. In the some odd three years i worked there we never had a sleepingbag returned under these conditions.

Unfortunately i have no articles to refer to so you can check my statement is bogus or not.

More mite trivia: any adult human being is carrying ~3lbs of organisms. Ie mites, bacteria etc.

Eins

Eeck, mites…I need to get out and wake a real large slumbering bear or trundle some boulders around a cougar.
Actually all of us in snow country are going to be run down by drunken snowmobilers and left for carrion crows and Willie and his band of brothers to snack on.

Old school—
Extra long wool Alaskan shirt with the
cuffs cut off to let the rain drain.
Tight twill pants over wool long john
bottoms with the cuffs tied at the ankles
for stream crossings. Light rubber covered
nylon rain coat.

My favorite for winter hikes in the Olympic rain forests—
Light synthetic long johns
Two layers fleece on top (or three if
you have to stand around with a group
in the inch an hour rain) I like the fact they breath and don’t absorb water, windproofing just takes longer to dry out, besides thats what your parka is for.
Rubber pants and parka, the kind that
is neoprene on nylon twill is light
and dries fast. Stay away from the
cotton lined kind.
I’ve even worn
these over Goretex parka and pants
when in really bad wet snow and rain
for days kind of stuff. The water tend to stay between the layers and leaves
me warmer.
Gum boots with 2 pairs wool socks or neoprene socks inside.

Very light synthetic bag over very light
down bag.

Full length closed cell foam pad to keep
your bag up off the wet.

Large tarp so all your gear stays out of
the rain.

Some tools for getting dry wood from stumps. Hatchet, saw or both.

Sounds like I’m going to have to get a hold of some of these different options you’ve all mentioned and go off packrafting in the Olympic Mtns. this winter…

I’m probably not going to go with Paramo, or any combo insulation/raingear. I like seperable stuff to be more versatile when it warms up.

Drysuit: I’m going to try a new lightweight drysuit that I can hike in (by Sheri Tingey of Alpacka rafts). So hopefully, I won’t get as wet as I’m predicting here.

But this is a 9 month trip that’ll take me through some pretty harsh places pretty far from civilization. If the waterproofing gets trashed, I want the insulation to keep me not hypothermic.

Vlad – the fire-resistance of wool vs. synthetics is interesting. I’ve gotten so many burn holes in my clothing! But unfortunately, the raingear is usually what’s most exposed to the fire, and there’s really no hope there.

David – Does the light down bag inside the light sythetic bag work well? I’ve been meaning to try that, but haven’t yet.
As for tools to get dry wood in the rainforest – if you’re tricky, nothing more than a knife is needed. Anywhere with large enough trees has sneaky spots…

-Erin
Seattle to Aleutians trip
past Alaska trips

Very good question. So stand by, and we might have a large Feature/Technique article soon on this exact subject.