Gear List 2014

Dear followers,

Whilst Fran and I have both spent a great deal of time out of doors in our life, we are what could be described as amateur hikers.  This has meant that not only have we needed to source most of the gear for this journey from scratch, but also had to put in many hours of research to make practical and economical choices.

After reading many internet pages, blogs and books, and watching endless YouTube videos from keen hikers I am now fully aware that most of it comes down to personal choice.  As such, the following list is purely guess work, albeit reasonably well researched!

Sleeping System

Tent: Easton Kilo 3P – £250 (At 1.4 kilos and with a berth to spare for our bags and generally a bit of space to move around in, the Easton offers a lightweight and comfortable solution).

Sleeping mat: Thermarest Z-Lite £30  (Cut in half to make 1x torso length mat each).

Sleeping Bag: Rab Ascent 500 £125 (Down sleeping bag rated for comfort to -5, extreme at -21 should be perfect for  the chillier March to May but could be a bit too warm come the summer).

Pack

Osprey Exos 58 £105 (An extraordinary looking bag with lots of bells and whistles including a high tension external frame that seperates your back from  the bag to allow air to flow and keep the sweaty back syndrome down.  At 58 litres in volume it should be perfect for keeping our world on our back without getting too big.  Overall it came very highly recommended, especially for the AT though is startlingly small when you consider how many months you will live out of it).

Cooking System

GSI Halulite Micro-Dualist £48 (A lightweight option and beautifully stackable, it comes with a 1.4l cooking pot for boiling water, 2 cups, 2 bowls, 2 sporks, and the carry bag doubles as a sink).

Stove: Homemade alcohol stove £free and an MSR Pocket Rocket £22. (Whilst it may seem against any lightweight principles to start with 2 different stoves, they both fit inside the Micro-Dualist including the homemade pot stand (coat hanger) for the alcohol stove (tuna can) the windscreen (folded aluminium foil) and the pocket rocket sans fuel canister).

Fuel-wise, the denatured liquid alcohol for the tuna can is exceptionally cheap but doesn’t burn that hot meaning it takes a bit longer to boil water and it’s relatively heavy, though easy to get hold of.  The pocket rocket attaches to the top of $5 fuel canisters which burn for about 26 minutes at full steam.   This can boil our pot of water in 3 minutes giving us just under 9 full boils for $5 and should be enough to get us from town to town.  Which is better on the trail for us is still impossible to guess without getting out there but being that the can option was free we could ditch it without feeling too bad. The pocket rocket comes highly recommended and has been tried and tested by many a hiker so we’ll eat hot meals at least until we work out which is going to be best in the long run.

Footwear

This is probably the most contentious can of worms out there.  Some people wear flip flops the entire way, some full leather boots, some people wear trail runners (ultralight running shoes with improved grip for outdoor/ trail use) and some use synthetic Gore-Tex based waterproof hiking shoes at various ankle heights.

The only consensus is that you are very unlikely to end up wearing the ones you start with when you finish.  They may not even last the first few hundred miles.

For this reason I am choosing to start with a pair of North Face Gore-Tex waterproof hiking boots that I’ve had since my ski season for stomping in the snow around town.  They were about £80 about 4 years ago but I’m treating them as a free option for the purposes of this trip.  I gave them a run out around the extreme edge of Richmond Park in the mud and occasionally up to 2 or 3  inches of water for over 3 hours and they were comfortable, dry and to be honest I didn’t think about them too much whilst walking which is a very good sign. I’m expecting to update my footwear on the trail so am happy not to spend the money now in favour of some field research when I can make a more informed decision.

For camp/ river fording footwear i’m going for a pair of crocs. Comfy, waterproof and easy to slip on for midnight toilet runs whilst my boots are drying out.  Simple, light and free as my Dad over the years had managed to accrue quite the stash.  One of the 8 pairs in our house wont be missed…

Water System

Hydration Bladder: Osprey Hydraulics 2 litre water reservoir with magnetic drinking straw that attaches to your bag strap and slots into a special pouch in the main body of the pack. £26

Purification: Sawyer Squeeze £21 (A water filter that you squeeze water through from a dirty bag into a clean one.  Highly effective at removing just about everything apart from viruses.  Once we’ll get there we’ll see about getting Aqua Mira drops which you simply drop into contaminated water and 30 minutes later the magic has happened and you’ve got drinkable water! Or maybe a combination of the two.  Seems silly to carry both and i’ve heard reports of people just drinking the water from streams without anything.  Not that i’m recommending we do that by any stretch, not least because water conditions will change year on year.  Clean water is life though so getting this sorted early is a must.

Clothing

Rain jacket: Marmot Precip £60 (Waterproof outer shell, super lightweight and highly recommended for over 10 years by hikers)

Thermal Layer: UniQlo Down vest £40 (A bit of a punt as UniQlo aren’t renowned for their outdoor gear but an ultra-ultra light piece of down that fits in between t-shirt and jacket that adds incredible amounts of extra heat and compresses down into a tiny bag.  The down-side of down… is that it really doesn’t like getting wet.  Not only does it take an age to dry out but also loses it’s insulating properties thus rendering it a soggy, albeit small, bag of feathers).

Socks: Bridgedale Merino wool, Cotswold outdoor sale for £7.50 a pair. 3 in total.

Underwear: Tight boxer briefs to avoid brutal chaffing. 2 in total.

Base-Layer: H/H Dry Twin pack from Helly Hansen £40 (1x Long sleeve thermal top, 1x thermal trousers)

Running shorts: Karrimor gym shorts £12.50 x 2 (What I expect to hike in most days on the trail.  Combined with the thermal leggings underneath when it gets super cold.  Mesh banana hammock removed from both pairs to prevent chaffing.

Head Torch: Princeton Tec Remix £25 (100 lumens and a massive battery life in its most modest setting all for a very modest price and a quality brand. Perfect for night hiking and camp chores one hopes!).

More to follow…