It's 91 (F) degrees outside and I'm sweating in front of my office air conditioner. So, let's talk about winter camping. It my favorite time of year for sleeping outdoors.
One very important skill you need in winter is how to stake out a...
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Solo Backpacking
I do a lot of solo backpacking. I got started when I hiked the Long Trail in Vermont in 2008. No one I knew wanted to come along, but I still wanted to go, so I did it by myself. I quickly discovered that I liked it more than hiking...
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Two years ago, I wrote a series of posts on how to lighten your backpack, that outlined the basic principles of lightweight backpacking: weighing your gear, cutting the weight of your big three, selecting gear that can serve multiple functions, and eliminating...
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Tent Platform, Guyot Campsite, New Hampshire Appalachian trail
I really hate tent platforms. They are terrible to sleep on if you have an ultralight tent or tarp because you can't stake them down easily. That isn't my tent in the photo above,...
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Major Gear System Changes
I made some pretty big changes to my gear list for The Challenge this year, replacing leather boots with trail runners, swapping in an ultralight cuben fiber backpack, using chlorine dioxide tablets for water purification...
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Learning How to Hang a Bear Bag
If you backpack in bear country, you need to learn how to hang a bear bag (unless a bear canister is required by the local authorities.) No one ever formally taught me how to do it so I developed my own techniques,...
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