[at-l] Feedback Please!

[nightwalker.at at gmail.com]

My sleeping bag is something I won't "try to make work"  (15 degree down). I start with a warm enogh bag and finagle the rest... Been there, done that

HotDog AT 03
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Make that 2 votes for "best bag you can afford." My 30 bag is the same brand as H. Dog's 15 (Mountainsmith). I am comfy in it at 20. My 10 bag is a real Cadillac, and I am comfy in it at zero. The 30 weighs 1.5 pounds. The 10 bag weighs 2.

There are other opinions and options. The bag I mentioned to you earlier is in the Toyota range. Some like Chevies. My 30 is Buick level. I would have never bought the WM 10 for myself, but my wife gave it for me and I didn't want to hurt her feelings. :-)

But truthfully, that $100.00 TNF I mentioned earlier did me just fine. It was just something I eventually upgraded. No way I could buy all the gear I have in 1 or 2 years. Backpacking is my obsession and I just try to improve a little bit every year. This year it was the 3-season EtaExpress from Appalachian Outfitters and the Winter Simmerlite from Sunrift. As to the Simmerlite, it blows my mind that there are now liquid-fuel stoves that only weigh 5.5 ounces and are actually usable to simmer with. Amazing.

The EtaExpress is really just an extremely light Ti coated pan with a heat exchanger on the bottom mated with the best Optimus canister stove. The pot takes the Jet Boil idea one step further by being really light and big enough to cook in. Also, the heat exchanger is very unlikely to break or bend because of an engineering change associated with that section. And the Ti coating is as non-stick as teflon, but without the side effects.

Anyway, some people hike with the same gear forever, some people replace everything in their pack over a 5-year period and some people just read hiker mailing lists and save the whole "spend money, get cold/hot" thing. In the end, it's all up to you.

Now, back to packing. I have 5 days before the podiatrist puts my left foot in a cast for two weeks, and I intend to use 4 of them to hike. :-)

FrankenLooper the Nightwalker