About 3 years ago I bought a Celestial Jacket from Outdoor Research. It’s a very lightweight hardshell made out a 15 denier Gore-Tex Paclite material. When I first got it, I was surprised at how thin it was – paper thin – and had many doubts about the jacket’s durability. But I found myself pleasantly surprised: in the 3 years that I’ve had it, the jacket sustained only one small rip in the lower back area. This was easily patched.
About a month ago, the jacket failed at another point. The hood has an adjustable shock cord going through it behind the brim that helps to frame the face. This channel that the shock cord goes through (made of a lightweight nylon material, not Paclite) ripped out. I had heard of OR’s Infinite Guarantee, which claims that any product can be returned or exchanged “forever”, but had never before used it. I figured there would probably be some sort of catch or fine print, but thought it worth the try.
So today I went into the Outdoor Research Retail Store to see what would happen. I showed them the failure in the jacket and asked if it could be repaired. No, they said, they didn’t think that part of the hood could be fixed and they didn’t make that same jacket anymore, but they could give me credit for it or I could choose to trade it for any jacket in the store. Well then. That was easy.
I spent about an hour going through all of their hardshells. They didn’t have anything equivalent to the 10oz weight of the Celestial Jacket. Their Helium Jacket was even lighter at 6.8oz, but the hood wasn’t very adjustable and the jacket lacked pit zips. Most of the other jackets were ruled out because of being too heavy and not breathable enough. Eventually it came down to the Revel Jacket and the Foray. At 13.7oz the Revel is the lighter of the two but it’s made out of Pertex Shield which I have no experience with. The Foray was heavier at 15.7oz but made out of the same Gore-Tex Paclite as my old jacket – though the Foray uses 40 denier material, so is a good deal thicker and more durable than the old Celestial. I was having trouble deciding if I wanted to get the lighter jacket and risk trying the Pertex material or if I should stick with tried and true Gore-Tex. I already have a Marmot Precip jacket, which at 11.6oz fills the lightweight niche nicely, so I eventually decided to get the slightly beefier Foray jacket.
The guy who was helping me cut off the tag, handed me the new jacket, and I was out the door. In my book that’s a free $200 jacket. It’s refreshing to find a company that stands behind their products 100%. No partial refunds, or limited warranties, or memberships required. After today’s experience, I will certainly be doing more business with Outdoor Research in the future.
Update
And now I find that the Foray Jacket actually weights 13.9oz on my scale. An even better deal!
When I purchased my Trail Designs Ti-Tri Titanium Stove System, I bought it with a 900mL pot from Titanium Goat. I like the pot, but it has one shortcoming: there are no measuring marks on it. I’m not comfortable just pouring a little water into a pot and saying “Well, that looks like 2 cups.” I prefer a slightly higher level of accuracy.
Originally I addressed this by scoring the handle of my spork to mark 1, 2, and 3 cups measured in the pot – an idea which I think originally came to me from somewhere on the BackpackingLight Forums. This method works ok – though making the marks deep enough to be visible on the titanium was a bit tough with my knife – but I’ve never felt that it is very accurate. It will tell me if I have roughly 1 cup of water in the pot, but I could really be anywhere between 3/4 of a cup to 1 1/4 cups. That’s the difference between nice, fluffy couscous and overly soggy (or dry and undercooked) couscous, you know.
As a more accurate replacement, I came up with the idea for the Water Measuring Doohicky: a piece of paper with marks on it. Ingenious, isn’t it?
For the paper, I chose a cut a piece out of a page in one of my Rite in the Rain notebooks. Then I put 1/2 cup of water into the pot, set in the paper, noted the water line, took out the paper and marked the water line. This was repeated at 1/2 cup increments up to 3 cups. (The pot holds 4 cups when filled to the rim, so 3 cups is the most I would ever want to cook with.) After I had all the marks determined, I cut an identical piece of paper and put marks at the same levels. Then I tossed the soggy paper and was left with a fresh, dry piece of waterproof paper with the appropriate marks.
As a poor-man’s lamination, I wrapped it with clear packing tape. Even though the Rite in the Rain paper is waterproof, it gets a little soggy when submerged and takes a while to dry out. Water doesn’t cling to the tape at all. I can give it a shake or two after taking it out of the pot and it is immediately dry. The tape also adds a little stiffness, which helps achieve more accurate measurements.
I made two of these doohickeys at the same time, but have been using only one since last Fall. It works great. I am somewhat embarrassed it took me almost a year to come up with the idea. Even though I only made marks at 1/2 cup increments, the grid on the paper allows me to easily measure with 1/4 cup accuracy. As opposed to the marks on the spork, this paper is one extra thing to carry, but when placed on my scale it doesn’t register. I don’t think it weighs me down any.
I had done the lamination before I thought of this, but next time around I think I will write common cooking ratios on the back: water to couscous, water to dehydrated brown rice, etc. Usually I write those ratios on the ziploc freezer bags that hold my food, but the bags get replaced and rotated fairly frequently. The Water Measuring Doohickey has proved that it will last for a longer period of time.
Here’s an idea I stole from the excellent BFE Labs: hacking a Rite in the Rain notebook to include a retention strap. The original idea at BFE was just a strap to keep the notebook closed and contain loose leafs that were shoved inside, but while making the strap he accidentally cut the webbing too short. To solve this he sewed on another piece of webbing as an extension and found that the overlap between the two pieces made a good pen holder.
I thought this was a neat idea, but the tri-glide fastener used in BFE’s version seemed a little cumbersome. I knew I would want some sort of quick release buckle. A traditional side release buckle would be too bulky for my tastes, particularly when the notebook is shoved in a pocket. The other thought I had was that using elastic webbing for the pen loop might increase the versatility of the strap, since it could expand to fit different sized tools.
I didn’t have any 1” elastic webbing hanging about, but I did have some spare webbing and an old buckle from a previous project. With those two things along with a knife and my repair kit, I set out to see what I could do about whipping up some kind of strap.
My initial intention was to create the pen loop the same way as the BFE strap: cut one strap short and sew on an extension piece with a bit of an overlap. But before I got to that part, I had to sew one end of the buckle onto the webbing. In preparing to do this, I realized that I would already be sewing a loop right there. I could just pull a bit more webbing through the buckle to create my overlap, throw in a stitch to hold down the end of the webbing, another stitch closer to the buckle, and between the two I would have the perfect loop for my pen. Simple.
On the back of the notebook I created two slits for the webbing to pass in and out of, just like in the BFE hack (except I used my knife rather than a Dremel tool).
I’m happy with how this hack came out and will probably perform it on my other Rite in the Rain notebooks. The whole process takes only a few minutes and does not strain my juvenile sewing skills. My one complaint is with the buckle that I happened to choose. I appreciate the low profile, center-release design, but the male end of it doesn’t grip the webbing very well. This means that while it is adjustable, it doesn’t hold much tension, and so the buckle doesn’t snap open as much as it should when I release it. I’m thinking of sewing the webbing down on the male end of the buckle just like I did on the female end. The strap would no longer be adjustable, but I could be guaranteed the proper tension and that the buckle would open with the speed and ease which I desire. This would also present the opportunity for me to create another loop to hold a second tool. Perhaps a pencil or a highlighter to go along with the pen.
I bought one of the newer 27oz wide mouth Klean Kanteens back in March. My favorite bottle is still the old 40oz Klean Kanteen that I keep in my EDC bag, but I’ve been wanting something a bit skinnier that could fit in the bottle cage on my bike. I also was looking for an excuse to try out one of the newfangled wide mouth Klean Kanteens. I prefer a wide mouth opening on my bottles, but my 40oz Klean Kanteen (despite being beat on fairly heavily for the past few years) is in too good a shape to justify replacing it with a 40oz wide mouth. A new 27oz wide mouth bottle that would fit on my bike (not to mention in most car cup holders) and so supplement the 40oz bottle was easier to talk myself into!
To go along with the wide mouth bottle, I also purchased a humangear capCAP. This product of questionable capitalization addresses the same problem as Guyot Design’s Splashguard: how to drink from a wide mouth bottle while moving without ending up with half the bottle’s contents on your face and the other half up your nose. The capCAP allows the user to take advantage of the wide mouth for filling and cleaning (as well as water filter integration), but also provides a smaller opening for drinking.
The wider cap has indentations on it making it easy to grab and turn. The smaller cap, in addition to the indentations of the larger cap, is made of rubber, which makes for an easy grip while wearing gloves. The rubber has a tendency to pick up small amounts of dirt and sand, but so far I have not found this to be an annoyance.
My habit in unscrewing bottle lids is to hold the body of the bottle in my left hand and unscrew the lid with my right. The problem with doing this with the capCAP is that attempting to unscrew the small lid tends to start to loosen the larger lid as well. All that’s needed to rectify this is to hold the larger cap in my left hand rather than the body of the bottle itself. This forces a change of habit, which took me a couple weeks to get used to, but I now grab the larger cap with my left hand while unscrewing the smaller cap without thinking. I haven’t had a problem with it since.
When using the capCAP with my wide mouth Klean Kanteen, I find that it does leak slightly. If the bottle lays down on its side for a bit, a couple drops of water will escape from underneath the larger cap. The threads on the bottle’s lip must not match up perfectly with those on the capCAP. If the bottle was to be thrown loosely into the body of the pack where it could shift around and potentially get a drop or two on some form of paper, I would opt for the more secure closure of the standard Klean Kanteen lid. But when the bottle is in the cage on my bike or stored upright in a pouch on my pack’s waist belt, this small leak is no problem.
The capCAP can of course be used on other wide mouth bottles. I also use it on my 32oz HDPE Nalgene as well as my 32oz Guyot Designs Backpacker and have not noticed any leaking with those bottles. It’s a pretty neat product that I think makes a great addition to any wide mouth bottle.
Here are the weights of various lids, measured on my scale:
My last trekking poles were a pair of REI Peak UL Carbon Compacts. I was quite fond of them. At 11 oz for the pair, they were one of the lightest pair of telescoping poles available. Sadly, I broke them last January. A lot of folks who have only used aluminium poles cast a critical eye on those made of carbon fiber, thinking them flimsy and weak, so I think it is important to point out that it was a piece of the plastic locking mechanism that broke, not the carbon fiber pole shafts. I think that carbon fiber is a perfectly adequate material for trekking poles and should stand up to all reasonable abuse.
When my old poles broke, I took them into REI hoping that there might be some way to repair them. We spent an hour or so going through all their spare parts and trying to hack something usable back together, but in the end we couldn’t come to a solution that I was satisfied with. The fellow I’d been talking with mentioned that he could give me credit for the broken poles, which surprised me. I’ve returned plenty of used gear to REI, but never an item that was actually broken (and broken, as far as I’m concerned, due to user error and not any fault in the product itself). I guess they’re serious about that guarantee.
The credit was certainly welcome. I took it, but now I had to decide what to replace the poles with. REI no longer makes the Peak UL Carbon Compact trekking poles, so I couldn’t get another pair of the same. I started to look around to see what was on the market. My first limiting factor in the search was that I needed telescoping poles. I use trekking poles to pitch my Kifaru Paratarp. For the tarp, the needed height of the rear pole is 26”. This rules out a lot of poles that only collapse to something closer to 30”, such as those from Titanium Goat and Gossamer Gear. The other big factor was weight. Ideally, I wished to stay as close as possible to the 11 oz weight of the old poles. A quick look around told me that I would have to come to terms with at least some weight gain, as there didn’t seem to be anything to compete with the weight of the Peak UL Carbon Compacts. Some poles weighed 20 oz or more for the pair, which was just ridiculous! Leki had a few poles in the 14-16 oz neighborhood. A decent weight, I thought, but none of the poles really jumped out at me.
Eventually I came upon the offerings from Black Diamond. Their poles use the FlickLock locking mechanism, which I had heard of before. It had always intrigued me but I’d been turned off by the extra weight associated with it. Most of the big names in trekking poles, like Leki and Komperdell use a twist-lock mechanism which, as anybody who has ever used such poles can attest, is finicky at best. 1
After a bit more research, I decided that the greater functionality of the FlickLock system would be worth the weight gain. I landed on the Black Diamond Alpine Carbon Cork trekking poles. At 17.5 oz they were a good deal heavier than my old poles, but I thought I would give them a chance.
As the name implies the Alpine Carbon Cork poles have a cork handle and three shafts made of carbon fiber. They collapse down to 25” and expand to 51”.
FlickLock
The FlickLock mechanism operates as basically a clamp. When shut, it compresses the outer shaft, which prevents the inner shaft from moving. The tightness of the clamp can be adjusted with a single screw. It is simple, effective, and works in all conditions. There is no messing around with twisting one shaft to expand some little doohickey that you can’t see in the hopes that pressure will be built up against the inside of the outer shaft, no sitting around twisting one pole in the proper direction for 5 minutes wondering if the thing will ever lock, and there is little chance that shafts will accidentally collapse while in use. 2 Beyond the fact that the FlickLock mechanism actually works on a reliable basis, the next advantage is the speed of use: flick it open, adjust, and flick it closed. The main idea behind adjustable poles is that you can alter the length to meet the terrain: make the poles shorter for going uphill, longer for going downhill. With my previous twist-lock poles, I never did this. I only set the length once before setting out for the day. Periodically adjusting the poles was too risky (there was a likely chance I’d unlock them to adjust and spend countless minutes trying to get them to lock again) and even if I could be assured that the locking mechanism would work it still took a few seconds longer than I liked. Now with the FlickLock poles, I find myself merrily adjusting the poles to suit the terrain all day.
Baskets
As with any decent trekking poles, the Alpine Carbon Corks come with both dirt and snow baskets. The snow baskets are nothing special, but I was surprised at how small the dirt baskets were. I’m not sure why they chose to make the baskets with so small a diameter. So far I have no noticed no difference in how they work. I’m probably not the best judge of that though, as I find all kinds of baskets to be unnecessary when there isn’t any snow. (I had a habit of losing baskets with all my old poles, but since I noticed no difference without the baskets I never spent the money to replace them.)
Rather than just sliding on the pole and being secured with a nipple and indentation, the baskets on the Black Diamond poles are actually threaded. You slide them on and then screw them down over the threaded area. This seems like a much more secure system. I think it unlikely that I’ll inadvertently loose these baskets.
Handles
The cork handles on these poles are new to me. My previous poles have always had foam handles. I’ve heard claims that cork handles are more comfortable than foam, but so far I have noticed no difference in that department. Still, I have only had these poles for the cooler part of the year. Perhaps in the summer heat with sweaty palms I will appreciate more of a difference. I am curious to see if there is much difference in the durability of the cork. I’ve already had a couple small pieces chip off – not enough to raise too much concern, but I’ll keep an eye on it.
The ergonomic shape of the handle is fine, but I don’t use it much. Rather than grasping the poles properly, my preferred method of use for trekking poles has always been to rest my wrist in the strap and lightly hold the lower part of the handle in the fleshy part of my hand between thumb and forefinger. I don’t think this is the most efficient way of doing things – placing all the weight on the wrist doesn’t seem the best thing to do – but it has always been most comfortable and natural to me. It allows me to freely swing the pole back and forth as I walk without much movement of the arm. (I say pole, not poles because though I always carry two to setup my tarp, I rarely hike with more than one pole. I like to have one hand free and find two poles cumbersome and unnecessary except for going down the steepest of hills.)
Below the cork handle, the upper part of the shaft has a foam grip, which I appreciate it. My old REI UL Carbon Compact poles lacked this (because of the extra weight it would entail, no doubt) and I found that I missed the feature. It’s nice to have a comfortable spot to grip when you are climbing up a short steep hill and don’t want to adjust the length of the poles.
StickPic
Of course, with a new pair of poles I needed a new StickPic. My old models wouldn’t fit on the tip of the Black Diamond Alpine Carbon Corks. I tried to buy a new one, but Rodney Java refunded my money. That’s three now he’s given me for free. Someday I’ll track him down and shove the money under his door.
Impressions
I’ve been using the Black Diamond Alpine Carbon Cork for about 4 months now and they have exceeded my expectations. I was wary at first about not getting a return for the significant increase in weight. Of course I still would like them to be lighter, but I feel that the increased functionality has justified the increased weight. 3 I am very pleased with the poles.
Notes
↵ I had heard that Leki would be releasing a line of poles this spring using a new external locking mechanism similar to Black Diamond's FlickLock. They since have, and call it the SpeedLock, but this was back in winter and I couldn't wait the few months till the release. I haven't seen the new SpeedLock in person yet. It sounds like a good replacement of the old twist-lock system, but I'm not sure how it stacks up against Black Diamond's FlickLock. The closest Leki poles to compare with the Black Diamond Alpine Carbon Corks seem to be the Corklite Aergons.
↵ Ok, ok, the twist-lock isn't really that bad. It works most of the time -- but we're talking like 75% of the time, not 99%. Sometimes it made me want to beat the poles against a tree.
↵ The weight I gave for the poles includes the straps and dirt baskets. The straps weigh about 1 oz and the dirt baskets 0.3 oz, so a bit of weight could be saved by ditching those.
This kit is kept in the lid of my rucksack, which also functions as a man-purse for short trips away from camp. It is intended for emergencies only, and so is secondary (or even tertiary) to my normal fire starting equipment: ferro rod(s), rubberized BIC lighter, matches, and a fair amount of cotton balls covered in petroleum jelly. The kit here is to be used only when these other methods of starting fire have for some reason failed.
It is quite simple and is probably nothing unique. Everything is kept together and dry inside of a small aLOKSAK (measuring 5”x4”). It weighs 2.8 oz. The contents are as follows:
That’s a whole lot of fires that I can start with just this small kit, and I don’t even have to start messing around with natural tinder or making char-cloth yet!
Previously the envelope held a small ferrocerium rod and striker in lieu of the Spark-Lite. I’ve never been too impressed with the Spark-Lites: the sparks produced are relatively small and weak. They are fine for starting a fire with prepared tinder such as cotton balls or those commercial products included in this kit, but trying to get a natural tinder to take with them can be a bit of a pain. As for the whole one-handed fire starting thing – well, I have never broken my arm or hand. I have been cold enough to not have the fine motor control needed to reliably operate a Bic lighter or Spark-Lite. So for me, given the choice between a normal ferro rod and a one-handed Spark-Lite, I’d go for the normal rod. It requires a gross movement that I know I can always achieve, even when cold.
I decided to remove the ferro rod and add the Spark-Lite to this kit because I figure that I have enough ferro rods stashed here-and-there (including at least one tethered to my body) that the chances of me losing all of them are very slim. (I would be more likely to lose this kit, which is kept in my pack, not on my body.) I should never have to depend on whatever spark-making tool I keep in the envelope, but by opting to make that tool a Spark-Lite, I do give myself the possibility of one-handed fire making (without depending on lighters or trying to light a match held in my teeth). Doug Ritter would be proud.
Occasionally I get asked what motivates me to run on a regular basis. For me, running is fun. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t. During the run, I take pleasure in partaking in an activity that I believe Homo sapien sapien was designed to do, and after the run my body feels better.
If that’s not enough, try this: In his autobiography Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know, Sir Ranulph Fiennes said that, now in his late sixties, the only way he can manage to keep up a decent level of fitness is to run at least 2 hours every other day. I’ll not be physically bested by an old man, even one such as Fiennes!
Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those god-damned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not? Jesus Christ, lady, roll that window down! You can't see the desert if you can't smell it. Dusty? Of course it's dusty -- this is Utah! But it's good dust, good red Utahn dust, rich in iron, rich in irony. Turn that motor off. Get out of that piece of iron and stretch your varicose veins, take off your brassiere and get some hot sun on your old wrinkled dugs! You sir, squinting at the map with your radiator boiling over and your fuel pump vapor-locked, crawl out of that shiny hunk of GM junk and take a walk -- yes, leave the old lady and those squawling brats behind for a while, turn your back on them and take a long quiet walk straight into the canyons, get lost for a while, come back when you damn well fell like it, it'll do you and her and them a world of good. Give the kids a break too, let them out of the car, let them go scrambling over the rocks hunting for rattlesnakes and scorpions and anthills -- yes sir, let them out, turn them loose; how dare you imprison little children in your goddamned upholstered horseless hearse? Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs , get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk -- walk -- WALK upon our sweet and blessed land!
-Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
