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Works for me! Arrived at Jokkmokk, booked into a hostel for the first night, asked reception for recommendations for forest camping locations, and set off following morning. Simples:) To be fair, I do have a reputation for idiocy to uphold. On my first trip to the Nordmark forest north of...

good stuff lads. Thoroughly enjoyed this thread, and hope you all have a whale of a time. Impressed with all this planning - tends to put my "throw everything in the car, set sat-nav to Jokkmokk and wing it from there" approach to shame:)

Was in a posh Chinese restaurant in Beijing. Asked for a pot of green tea. Got a pot of hot water and a Liptons green tea bag........

Wiggys Antarctic parka. I can personally recommend this. He sells this as "the warmest parka in the world", and based on over 40 years of using parkas, including silly-price down stuff, I would not dispute this. It is as comfortable and snuggly as the very best down stuff, genuinely wicks...

A suggestion on wheels for a proper pulk. A kayak trolley. Big wheels for easy pulling - those little ikea things re a pain on anything other than airport concourses - and by giving you the option of putting the wheels at the centre of balance of the pulk because of the flexibility of their...

I'd second the Alpkit - I used my Brukit in the Arctic last November if I wanted a quick brew in the tent. Worked perfectly. As a "stovie" who loves playing with paraffin, petrol, alcohol and wood stoves, it's almost embarrassing to admit that the Brukit is so good at boiling water so...

Feet sweat - a lot. Biological fact, that is! And socks that keep the moisture out also tend to keep moisture in. And damp feet are cold feet.

Tower of London, perhaps?

For burn-in on my Kifaru 4-man and medium stove, I used some of those hollow fire logs - even Tesco sells them now. Three of those and you got a good 6-ft flame coming out the top of the stovepipe! At night it looked like a UFO, The tipi glowed, the stove was bright red, as was the pipe. One...

One stove not mentioned above is the Liteoutdoors Ti cylinder stoves. Their newest offerings include a full-size door with the vent low down for better burn, and they have replaced the top cables with solid bars for better cooking options. Not tried one personally yet, but give comments on...

There are more than that. The Exped range, for example, includes a variety of insulated mats. I, from personal experience, would rate the Exped Downmat 9XL and the Comfort 10 synthetic mat. The 9 & 10 indicate R insulation level (as well as thickness, as it happens!) The "R" rating gives...

Fair enough - when I run my omnifuels on paraffin I don't use a silent cap. Works great with white gas though. Thing to remember though is that in the US, white gas (coleman fuel) is cheap as chips, and most of their liquid stoves are designed to run on it (Coleman, SVEA 123). Hence...

Cheers Dave - agree of course and look forward to seeing the pic!

Sorry Dave, wasn't trying to ruffle feathers or cast aspersions on your Arctic expertise. My comments were based on the snow coffin Uncle Ray Mears created in that video, which would certainly take more than 10 minutes to build! And the pine boughs are an essential part of that build, to...

I love the bit about "doing as little as possible" as digging out a 3ftx7ftx3ft hole in the snow, collecting a huge bunch of pine boughs, rigging up some sort of snow cover over the hole etc etc. Compared to 10 minutes at most to pitch a tipi! By all means try out the snow coffin, quinzy etc...

Ah - my response was in respect to the sleeping in an outdoor "coffin" video shown earlier. However, the biggest area of heat-loss when sleeping in snow is the floor. Whilst an Exped (or similar) down or synthetic mat will give some protection, a plastic groundsheet will give none. A bed of...

An idle though, for what it's worth, on the subject of pine boughs. A few years ago a group from Bushcraftuk went to Oslo in January to camp in the forest there. Most of the guys stayed in a large (ish) tent. After a day or so the packed snow on the floor turned into an icerink. As result I...

Never had any problem with Omnifuels, although I did make sure to take spare filters with me just in case (never needed them though). Making sure you've got clean fuel is a must though - if necessary run it through a cloth first if in any doubt, and periodically check the fuel bottle to make...

Check out the local regs re cutting down live branches before you go hacking away! To make a decent bed from pine/spruce boughs takes a lot of branches, and pretty much by definition they have to come from live trees.

I have one of those after-market silent caps (can't remember which one now) for my one of my Omnifuels as well. Nice piece of kit. Main thing to remember with these is to let the preheat burn out completely before re-lighting, otherwise there's a risk of underburn which will ruin the cap.