What do you hike with that nobody else has?

Best. Hiking. Dog. Ever.

:)

Works perfectly efficiently with either fuel in my split MYOG cone

well, nobody else has one as far as I am aware – yet ;)

Two or three vintage stoves, just on weekends. :)
Duane

…

Gives me a lot of pleasure, in equal parts that I put if all together myself, and that it hits a long distance cooking sweet spot for me. There are a couple of other strange folks that have cut them down, but I'm guessing this exact config is unique.

Also hard boiled eggs.

My tea flask with fun foam cozy.

A: Sentimental
B: Completely custom
C: MYOG
D: Especially Unique?

My wife? Other than MYOG, she fits all the categories :)

She has a titanium knee too— that is a $50k upgrade that makes me work much harder to keep up!

Dale, you romantic!

For Max, that would be a couple of pair of used wool briefs, it seems, though he's trying to change that…..

ONE earplug — because in one ear I can't hear much anyway. And damn those things are heavy.

Piece-of-string steady-cam — wasn't happy with panoramic videos I took, too shaky as I try to turn my body, so I got about 2.5' of everyday cotton string and tied a permanent loop in each end. Screw my SticPic to camera base, put string through SticPic hole, then one end of the string thru the hole in the other end of the string so it is secure on the SticPic. Then, unbuckle my hip belt and slide the string's free loop onto the belt and re-clip. Now, my camera is tethered to my hip belt. I hold it with a little upward tension and voila, no more shaky video. Weighs nothing.

I didn't make it, but I did help design it. It's basically a thing that works as a pillow, muff, face mask, sit pad, mini pack etc. The photo here is using it as a mini pack for snacks and whatnot during little excursions during the day.

Then a photo of it in pillow mode:

Not sure what to call it, but it's super handy, esp. in cold weather camping.

A couple of years ago, I was looking for a tripod that was light enough that I wouldn’t be tempted to leave it at home, but that would keep much of the function of a “real” tripod. It also had to be inexpensive, as well as tall enough to keep my camera above the weeds. After coming up with a 4 oz. MYOG carbon tripod and a tripod using trekking poles, I finally put something together that hits the sweet spot for me between weight and function. Much to my surprise, this one has turned into a perennial favorite on my blog, and is still getting hits from lightweight backpacking photographers around the web more than two years later.

12.3 oz. backpacking tripod

The photos in the article show the tripod with a small DSLR. Since then I’ve moved on to a micro 4/3 camera and have found that the tripod works even better with that.

A. Sentimental
B. Unique
C. Pretty darn geeky?

I've brought a 6-inch slide rule on a 9-day trip. (I'm being UL, I leave the 10- and 20-inch ones at home). Somewhat like the zen of sharpening knives, there is a pleasant focus and precision in doing a long calculation to 3 sig figs.

I think David wins. A slide rule. OK. I don't even know what 3 sig means. Hats off to the math geeks.

Cut-out articles from my favorite newspaper. If i can't find suitable TP replacement from nature, i'll use one of the finished articles. I burn the finished articles.

Sorry, Ken. 3 significant figures.

or does it mean 3 sigma? as in 3 * standard deviation…

Now if there was a stiletto blade hidden in that slide rule – awesome! Now THAT would be "revenge of the nerds", Brian de Palma style.

"Sorry, Ken. 3 significant figures."

What's an insignificant figure? Besides mine, that is.

Aren't bears attracted to slide rules?

Custom EE quilt set with cuben liner, everything snaps together to provide for a very wide range of temps with only 3 pieces (30 and 50 degree quilts and the cuben liner).

Cuben hammock UQ.

either a fork or spoon (rarely both) from Karl Marx University, E. Germany.

and this little guy

"Aren't bears attracted to slide rules?"

Perhaps Golden Bears.

If you want to trim weight, you can discard the cursor and the slide rule parts will still work. You can use your fingernail in place of the cursor.

–B.G.–

"Aren't bears attracted to slide rules?"

Perhaps Golden Bears.

And Polar bears who need to convert from Cartesian coordinates.

"If you want to trim weight, you can discard the cursor."

But with a magnifying cursor, you can start fires with sunlight and thereby avoid the weight of the mini-Bic.

SUL: just memorize the log of 2, 3, and 7 (the other integers being self-evident from those) so multiplication and division becomes just addition and subtraction. 0.3010, 0.4771, and 0.8451. But you knew that.

Whoa, slide rule humor!