Thanks, its always interesting to hear why people bought what they did, and why.
Being pretty new to the rough camping/bushcraft thing, Im still in the kit gathering phase (does that ever really stop?
). I still dont have some of the basics. Ive got a Swedish army LK35 rucksack (35litres) which is superb, both in price and utility (used the detachable external frame as a load-carrier the other week to bring back a piece of log to my apartment to use a firewood chopping block for the hatchet. The piece of log is some sort of hardwood, 40cm dia and 30cm long, it was saturated with rain water, and weighed a ton. The rucksack frame held-up a lot better than I did!
).
With a bit of luck, Im hoping to get an LK70 (70 litre version) soon. Ive been trying to get one for about a year, now. 70 litres is about as large as I want to go, as an unfit 49 year old, I really dont fancy carrying a loaded rucksack much larger than that. I know that a fellow forum member uses an LK70 to camp out in Scandinavian extreme sub-zero temperatures, so I imagine that the LK70 would do me just fine, at least for my intended uses at the moment.
I really cant imagine myself being able to carry a rucksack/bergan of 100 litres at my level of fitness and at my age. I can only envisage using a rucksack of this size for an extended jaunt to sub-arctic or arctic conditions, which if its likely to happen at all, isnt going to happen in the near future.
So, its simple and essential kit only for me, and preferably inexpensive too, thought it still needs to be of high quality and highly dependable.
Sourcing this kind of kit provides me with a great deal of fun.
Cheers,
Paul.