Stories of family, creativity, and diverse distractions.

Tag: gear chat

Posts about camping and backpacking gear.

Water Purification in the Backcountry

Backcountry streams may look crystal-pure, but they often harbor microorganisms that can make you sick. Whether you’re surviving a plane crash or out in the wilderness deliberately, you need water purification. There are a lot of water purification methods available. Today we’ll talk briefly about them, and see some examples.

Survival Kit: Fire starters

Private pilots flying to Alaska must to care a survival kit, including means to start a fire. This could turn into a huge rabbit hole, but we’ll try to avoid that. Today we’ll focus on practical survival kit fire starters.

How to Fix Your Tent Shock Cord

Has your tent shock cord lost its strength? If it hasn’t happened yet, it will eventually. And your tent will suddenly become much harder to pitch. Luckily, you can fix it pretty easily. Today I am fixing the poles of my 3-man tent. Follow along and see how to do it!

Survival: Signalling For Help

You can’t get rescued until somebody knows you need help. So, carrying a means to signal for help is critical to your survival. Most of us live and work in places where help is just a phone call away. But out in the wilderness beyond cell coverage you need something else. Your survival kit needs ways for signalling for help. Today we’ll look at various means, from traditional to high-tech.

Pocket Items for Survival

Today we’re going to keep exploring survival kits for private pilots heading to Alaska. As I mentioned last week, it’s possible you might not be able to grab your big survival kit in the midst of whatever disaster left you stranded. You might have nothing but the clothes on your back and whatever is in your pockets or otherwise on your person. So what might you carry?

What’s In Your Survival Kit – Alaska Version!

Did you know that private pilots flying in Alaska must carry a survival kit? It’s actually a state law. Canada requires one as well. Let’s take a look at what they require, compared to what you see in a typical survival kit.

Car camping? A mini kitchen to go

We have talked a fair amount about cooking when backpacking. We aren’t always carrying things on our backs, so when we aren’t limited in that way, we like to have a bit more to cook with. Here’s a look at some of things we take when we are car camping or cabin camping.

Let’s Take Apart A Survival Kit!

Commercial survival kits seem like a great idea. You can buy a little kit that has everything you need to survive! Or does it? Since I happen to own an inexpensive survival kit, I figured we should take a close look at its contents. Is this the right stuff to survive an emergency?

Let’s Make an Ultralight Lid

A while back I found a really light titanium bowl, and I intended to use it as an ultralight cooking pot for solo backpacking. But it didn’t come with a lid, and you really need one to cook efficiently. So the project went to the back burner, so to speak, and I used the pot I already had. But today we’re going to finish the build.

Requiem for a Trusted Companion: The Missing Link

Backpacking places huge demands on a tent. It has to be absolutely watertight, even in ferocious storms. It has to stand up to strong winds. But it also has to be really light and compact. It’s no wonder, then, that if you find a tent that does all these things, you’ll stick with it. And as the years and memories accumulate, you’ll feel pretty fond of it. Such was the case with the MSR Missing Link.

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén