At this point, this thread is downright embarrassing...
At this point, this thread is downright embarrassing...
What has that got to do with "Ultralight Hikers"?Originally Posted by StoneNYC
I just think it is embarrassing that this thread went from what could have been a really great resource for cutting edge light weight field work to a 2-3 man show of grandstanding. You had posts get deleted, fisticuffs, etc.
No one is even bothering to post their ideas anymore because they will get lost in the 2 man shuffle.
And Steve, Stone, have either of you made a stellar new landscape image since this thread started?
This is not what photography is about, it is a waste at this point.
I'll be developing tomorrow ...
I've shot 6 sheets of Delta100 over the past 3 days.
One as a test, everything's ultra light when you're shooing outside your home though...
Don't be down Dan.
Not sure I'll produce anything stellar... But, I've also been playing Legos with a 5 year old the past week, both of which are important events to me.
My lego camera is also ultra light, but it had too many light leaks...
Okay now back to ultralight backpacking. The views that I am about to share with you could be contentious. About ten years ago I bought a Big Agnes air mattress. It was amazingly light and very comfortable. I loved it, but it did not last the season. I kept puncturing it, and I spent a lot of time trying to find tiny holes and repair them. I finally switched back to my other mattress. The following season I bought another Big Agnes air mattress except this time I was told they had made some big improvements. They added insulation so that it was not so cold, and they made it stronger in the appropriate places. So I bought it. It was warmer, light, and comfortable, but like the first one it did not last the season for the same reasons.
When I just recently checkout the BA tent, my biggest concern was the materials they employed. When I benchmarked the BA tent against the MSR tent, I was not surprised to find the BA tent materials used were questionable. In their quest to be the lightest, their fabric weight was just too thin for both the floor and fly. It is my belief that BA went to far to reduce the weight of the tent at the expense of reliability and durability. Based on these three data points, I believe that BA engineering is too heavy handed in there quest for being "ultralight". It is also my belief that MSR got it right and struck a good balance between the weight of the tent without compromising the durability and reliability. The 11oz of additional weight of the MSR tent was a good trade off.
What do you think?
I think for your extreme environment and long term needs, you made the right decision.
Two points ... One, check out exped... I highly recommend their insulated extreme pad, it's easy to inflate and you don't have to use your breath, it has an internal pump built in, and is also light for what you get from it, but seems very good materials wise, I also used a BA pad and found it to be thin and lacking in warmth...
Second, as I said earlier, every company has it's strengths, my mountain hardwear gloves have lasted a long time, but they have never been as warm as I expect and when they are truly destroyed I will get OP instead... But their jackets are the best...
So I don't entirely discount a brand based on a single line they carry.
Good stoves don't = good tents (necessarily) but I think your tent will lastI hope!
Those are my thoughts.
This is an alternative solution to the ultralight LF photography. It is similar to a posting I made earlier.
There are many basins that are very big and five to six miles from a road. They have enormous potential for harvesting many photographs over the entire seasons. You could make an initial hike in to establish a base camp that is tucked away from sight. The base camp would remain in the back country for the entire season from yearly spring to first snow. It would consist of your tent, cook tent, stove, first aid kits, sleeping bag, mattress, film changing tents, and many other things.
You would then frequent your base camp on the weekends throughout the entire season. All you would need to bring is clothing, food, film, fuel and your camera gear. As you build up confidence in this approach, you may decide to leave your camera gear at base camp as well. As an extra level of security, you could collapse your base camp into waterproof bags at the end of each weekend and hide the bags so they would be impossible to find.
You can also buy equipment insurance for a around $100 to $200 a year that would cover any theft as an extra precaution. It would also cover stolen gear from your car, and if you were in a car accident, then it would replace any damaged camera gear as well. I have insured all of my camping gear and camera gear.
This approach would keep you fresher, allow you to bring in more gear to establish a highly functional base camp, and allow you to bring more lenses increasing your yields and capturing a greater verity of images.
Throughout the season, you could easily move your base camp as shooting conditions warranted to adjacent basins and over the entire season to cover an entire range of peaks and basins without having to carry everything in each time.
I have done something similar to this where I establish an outpost five or six miles from base camp. I would toggle between the two camps as weather and shooting conditions dictated. I used my bivy bag for shelter. I never had any problems with people coming into my camps and taking equipment. Of course, I was fairly far in so there were not many people in there.
If anyone decides to do this, then it would be very interesting if you maintained a string on this website and post your successes, failures, and learnings as you perfected this approach of doing back country filming without packing animals. It would be fun to track your progress as time progressed. You could post on a weekly basis. Indeed, this would be a very cool project that I think many people would be interested in.
Hope this helps...
I'd just reassert that the Bib Agnes IS and ultralight, and that does imply a very thin floor - and floors are a significant weak point for leaks in rainstorms. I'd normally
velcro something heavier to the bottom to reinforce this, but I deliberately use my own BA tent as an ultralight, over the groundcloth, and am very careful about
nothing sharp where I pitch it. When things get rough, I take the Bibler. And let me add that Tyvek might seem light and waterproof, but contact with dissolved
tannins (very common in the woods) will break the surface tension of the water and let it through. But the BA tents are very popular here, have a known track
record, and no, they are proabably not rugged enough for the kind of use Stephen gives them without some supplementary reinforcement.
Thanks for the word on Tyvek. Oodles of tannins where I camp. X that idea. I am super-careful to scan the site and pick up offending sticks and other objects before I pitch the BA UL. Hey, I got fancy and just bought a Caldera Cone (fancy design windscreen-pot holder with vents, the alcohol stove sits inside) and new Ti pot, my first Ti anything. I got sick of the old aluminum one with the fixed handle, also sick of scraping Esbit blackened leavings off the outside of the pot. Esbit cubes and emergency stove may be the lightest of all cooking set-ups, but the smell is a bit off-putting at the end of the day.
Alcohol stove? That's a warm weather option. Haven't used one of those since I was sixteen - an old Sterno thing during a memorable misadventure. A friend and I
descended into a particularly rough part of the canyon and were looking for some ledge to sleep on, climbing thru the cliffs. Then we stumbled onto an almost unbelivable campsite - a perfect room-shaped cave about thirty by thirty feet, with a nice flat floor, and straight above the river where we could lower our canteens
with a rope. Set up that little Sterno stove (it was actually hot summer weather). Had dinner. Too warm to crawl into the sleeping bags, so just lay atop them and
drifted off into sleep. Then the entire little cave suddenly filled up with freetail bats, which were having an orgy all nite on the roof, while pooping all over us. No place to go because of the cliff, so had to crawl inside those hot bag to survive the bombing, not to mention we weren't welcome at their wild party, so some would fly right smack over us all nite squeaking in protest. Worst nite I ever spent. Bags were so filthy the next morning we just left the there. Meanwhile, the
bats had moved on, and we still had to climb out of that substantial canyon exhausted.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks