I use 1kg gas cylinders or about 700g of gas. bacon eggs cornbeef hash nice n crispy. Alot of salt in those brings me back to being thirsty. Two 500ml cups of tea with breccie and three at night.
Am I the only one thinking that with 1L of tea in the morning, and 1.5L of tea at night, how far do you get between toilet stops?
I will say that the jetboil does work better for small girly portions though!
*Grumble* at your "girly portions". That said, I think anything I eat will mostly be girlie portions...
I have never found it difficult, its really rather like your argument of "you can buy gas anywhere". Trust me, you really can buy food anywhere. Plenty of farms will still, with pleasure, supply eggs, veg, etc. Almost every tiny hamlet has a shop where you can get some veg, some fresh meat etc.
I am not so sure I agree with you, I think in low land Britain I would agree, but in the North of Scotland? Or Iceland, maybe not.
If I had to ultralight and eat freeze dried, I'd rather stay home to be honest. It strikes me as very poor planning to think that there would be no resupply possible for 14 days - there are very few places where that would be the case. Even 30+ years ago I could spend three weeks on Skye occasionally looping past a Youth hostel for a shower and to pick up a parcel with more fuel etc. in. I could also nip past a shop every few days for fresh veg and meat and a few dried or tinned items. Its really not difficult and people shoouldn't think that that they have to buy expensive rations to get out and about.
Here's a video from a trip:
http://vimeo.com/16580852
Write up about the trip
here
25 days without resupply opportunity, 25 days fuel and food needing to be carried.
I've not judged anyone, i'm merely giving my opinion based upon my experiences, if someone finds a better solution for their type of activities good on em.
Are you sure?
What you are doing is arguing against and belittling peoples opinions even though you have absolutely no experience of the type of terrain, weather, and difficulty levels.
[post=1525532]You sure?[/post]
I don't enjoy freeze dried meals, i do enjoy a 8 hour hike slightly more if my pack is lighter though.
I've never once restricted myself on cups of tea, neither have i ever rationed my fuel.
Again if you try to cover 20 miles in a day and do anything over 1000m of ascent it IS a slog.
I don't care if you are a marathon runner, carrying 12 to 14kg over that sort of distance over that sort of height gain you ARE gonna feel it.
It's only after you've suffered that you start to look towards saving weight were practically possible.
Yep this is why I am trying to get my pack under 8kg before I add food/water/camera gear.
With regards to hygiene, again 5 days hiking on and around rain soaked mountains what are the options in your opinion?
You can't wash the clothes as they simply won't get dry.
I keep myself clean, but there is not a lot you can do with regards to cleaning your clothes.
If i take a fresh set of clothing for each day that's about 300g per top and 400g for trousers, 5 days would mean 3.5kg in extra clothing.
Again no real problem when walking canal paths or over Lincolnshire "mountains" but when putting in any distance or height it's a major load to carry for no real reason, cause you're going to sweat your togs off anyways.
There are options available. In that situation I would adopt jungle procedure, a dry set of clothes, and a wet set. Wear the wet set in the day, dry set at night. Take a pair of underwear for every day, choose the right pair and this should be in the 20-40g each region. Done.
Lastly,
Who are you to judge what i find pleasurable?
You have absolutely no idea who i am, you have from zero to very little knowledge of Greece and the areas i hike, yet you making a sweeping statement to infer that i'm looking at it as some sort of macho endurance test.
To be fair, you have made such judgements in other threads and in this one about my own personal choices and ideas. You don't know who I am and I don't know who you are. I have on desire to acquire an enemy, or to get into a slagging match. Nor do I have any wish to exchange insults. I would however draw your attention to how you have replied to my various posts and ask you to perhaps reconsider the above paragraph.
It's also my legs and back that is carrying the weight in my rucksack, so again as a grown adult it's my choice what i pack, what i eat and what i cook with.
Yep, that applies to all of us.
If you did the same route with tinned food and fresh veg i'd happily re-evaluate my choices.
As it is you're trying to tell other people how to live their lives with absolutely no experience or knowledge of the efforts or experiences involved.
Remind me, what colour is your pot?
Guys, cb6fs seems to be taking some knocks here. I am just transitioning to lightweight backpacking (slowly because it's not cheap to get set up) have about 40 stoves (really) of all fuel types. You have to rely on net reviews otherwise I would have 140 stoves! I was totally against the Jetboil for instance, but got one free with a magazine subscription. It DOES cook, from simmer to boil and the whole food range except pancakes with the stock pan. It's not heavy but I can get a better and lighter pan with a Ti burner that is more versatile but it's not as protected from the wind etc so needs a windscreen. The point is that I would never had bought a JB despite the good reviews.
I too am transitioning to a UL setup. So far in the last month I've managed to get 2kg off my weekend pack base weight (13kg -> 11kg). I have planned savings of another 700g in the coming weeks, and this is before I start to really scrimp and save on the grams.
I have 4 stoves. Catcan stove, MSR Whisperlite, MSR Dragonfly, MOD issue Hexi burner.
5 if you also count the crusader cooking system.
I now measure and weigh my kit. When I was in the mob I thought nothing of throwing what I wanted in a rucksack and bimbling off; on one occasion with a bag weighing 27kg. A 3 day trip, I now can do with 12kg INCLUDING food and 1.5L of water. There could be more done but I can't afford it.
I think I topped out one trip at 45kg. That was utter madness. Never again.
The point is; and I poo pooed this before, is that the days walk really is more enjoyable. I recently did a 50 mile walk over 3 days without a single blister and I wasn't dreading the next day when I awoke each morning. The journey before that I carried 18kg and whilst it was a a good walk, I was knackered and it was hard.
Completely agree. The walk back today was so much more enjoyable than the same trip a month ago. Less weight, less fatigue. Also a more comfortable pack. BPL have it right, less weight, more fun.
It's taken me decades to get around to going lightweight and I can't understand why I didn't do it before. cbr6fs seems passionate about his ethos that's his choice and from my pov it makes perfect sense, I don't see it's worth knocking an individual or a group of people who enjoy doing it another way. Just like some can't fathom why you don't want to carry tins, I can't understand why you would, or an Optimus 123R stove for instance (which I have). Likewise, you CANNOT do some of the walks in the UK using fresh food and resupply unless you walk out of the way to visit places off of the route.
Agreed. I have plans for a 3-4 day trip in lowland Britain, and in 60km, I will pass exactly 2 shops, to visit any more would require a significant diversion.
Anyway I/we have gone way off topic and a multi fuel burner will never be light but it will be convenient. It's a judgement call.
That it is, but given how little weight the Omnilite TI actually is, compared to the likes of a Dragonfly, seems ideal. It has certainly gone on my shopping list.
Now you seem to have a agenda against me and you seem to actively seek out posts of mine to get outraged about.
Even worse, when i post explaining my opinion in what i feel is a non offensive calm way, you answer with snippy comments and nit pick to try and take the thread off track.
I'm sure I've felt like that on at least 2 threads...
Actually it's an optimization problem, but this is as far as I got in this thread before running out of steam. There's a lot of good information here but it seems to be meandering.
One point I thought hadn't been sufficiently aired is that it's the efficiency of the entire heating system that matters if you care about weight on a trip, not just that of the burner.
One poster claimed to use 30ml if meths to boil 500ml of water (from some unknown starting temperature) but that seems excessive to me. In a Trangia 25 I would expect to be able to make a brew or a meal with that sort of quantity of water using half as much meths.
Still less meths in a more efficient setup, if you can find one.
Yes, but Meths is not that easily available. Down here in Kent the moment you leave a town, you won't find it. You're lucky if the village shop has biscuits and a bottle of drink, The ole traditional hardware shop or aladins cave village store just doesn't seem to exist anymore.
And this is where the balance tips. Meths or gas, I may have to carry the whole trip's worth of fuel from day one. Where as Petrol or multifuel stove I could actually get away with carrying half the trips worth, because at a petrol station, I can get petrol. With a multi fuel stove that will take petrol *AND* gas, I can even carry the petrol bottle empty, and use the gas bottle until the petrol station at day 7... Lots to think about.
As has been noted, road fuel (petrol/gasoline) is awful stuff - my most recent experience of how awful was two nights ago when the a fuel pipe on the Hayabusa came adrift, and my hands have only just stopped smelling of it.
It kinda baffles me how anybody can talk about filling up a half-litre bottle from the pumps and then grumble about hexy. All you need to do is set the stove downwind. It says that, or something like it, right there on the packet.
Fuels don't get much safer than hexamine, and if you can grumble about hexy you can live without cooking.
Interesting point of view. Hexi is considerably more expensive, hard to find, and smells aweful. You also have exactly zero control over how much you use. You can't really put half a block out when you're tea is ready...
In my (regrettably now very long) experience the most pleasant hydrocarbon fuel to use is aviation spirit (Santaman's avgas), which unlike road fuels leaves practically nothing behind when it evaporates. Not even a smell.
Unfortunately because of regulation it's not all that easy to buy in the UK, but if you fly (unless of course you fly a jet) you can save the bit that you have to drain from the tanks on the pre-flight check instead of letting it slop on the grass.
And you can make especially sure there's no water in there by draining more than might strictly be necessary.
One of the interesting ones these days is Aspen. It's rumoured to be much nicer than petrol in it's odour. I've not tried it yet. But when I run out of petrol for my MSR stoves, I will certainly be replacing it with Aspen.
Thank you everyone for your contributions on this thread, I think I've reached the conclusions I need for the trip.
Thanks
Julia
