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Homemade Esbit Stove and Windscreen
Just two months ago after a miserable, rainy trip on which we only brought a Solo Stove wood burning stove and had a terrible time trying to cook on it, I vowed off experimenting with stoves, and I vowed to keep my backcountry kitchen simple by just using a MSR Pocket Rocket from now on. My memory of how terrible the experience was must have been short, because I’ve decided to give esbit a go again. For this experiment, I decided to use the smaller pan and lid from my Snow Peak Ti Multi Compact Cookset, a homemade esbit burner based on Brian Green’s design and an experimental conical windscreen…
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Rough Water Kayaking in Norway
It’s that time of year where I don’t get out paddling very much. Devil Track Lake, which I live on, just froze over completely and while the big lake is open, I just ain’t all that motivated to go paddling on it. I’m in that mode where I’ll get out once a month on Lake Superior to try and continue my record of paddling once a month, every month, on the big lake, but I’ll grit my teeth when I do it. Here’s an image from this month’s paddle: I do need to get out paddling in the next couple of days though, because I bought a Nikon AW1, which…
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Where to keep your kayak pump?
I consider a kayak bilge pump an essential kayaking accessory for all levels of kayakers. I know that there’s a movement out there that says that you don’t need one, but I’m not in that camp. At some point, if you leave swimming distance of the shore, you’ll need to pump out a kayak, either your boat or one of your paddling partners. The key about a pump is that in order for it to be useful, it needs to be accessible when you need it. And, that means that it really needs to be close to the cockpit. There are a couple of ideas about where exactly to store it,…
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Sawyer Mini Water Filter Review
When a 1.6 ounce, $24 Sawyer Mini water filter showed up at my door, I felt hopeful that it would be all that it claimed to be, but skeptical as well, because of an experience I had testing another lightweight water filter over the summer (one which the company withdrew from review after I told them it was like sucking concrete through a straw). I also knew that by getting a chance to test the Sawyer Mini Water Filter in the fall, I’d be one of the first people to review it and because it stands to be a revolutionary water filter in the way the bigger Sawyer Squeeze Filter…
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Navigation: Leave Your Compass at Home and Use Handrails and Fences
Although it’s best to always have a compass with you, if you have a detailed chart or map, you don’t always need to use it when you’re navigating. If you use handrails, fences (also call catches) and checkpoints during the day, you needn’t check your compass often. Handrails and fences are techniques and features that do exactly what they sounds like they do; you follow a handrail and a fence keeps you in. A checkpoint is just like a checkpoint on a road or race. It’s a known point on the chart. A handrail is a feature or landmark that leads towards your destination and one that you can follow or…
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Sawyer MINI Filter Preview
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to review Sawyer’s Squeeze Filter (see: Sawyer Squeeze Filter Review). The summary of that review was that I loved it. It completely revolutionized the way I filter water, because I no longer have to pump. Since then, Sawyer has been working on a new water filter called the Sawyer Mini Filter, and I’m going to review it during the next month. Here’s a note I got in my email the other day: A 0.1 micron absolute filter, that weighs 2 ounces, is rated up to 100,000 gallons and costs $20???? You might think we’re crazy but we’re not (well maybe just a little…
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Lightweight Stoves: Rated for Ease of Use and Weight
Over the years, I’ve used all kinds of backpacking stoves for my kayaking and canoe trips. Those stoves have burned a variety of fuels, including white gas, alcohol, wood, propane, isobutane and esbit — I’m probably missing a few. I’ve used different configurations of stoves from systems designed specifically to work with one stove and one pot, such as Jetboil’s stove to systems that I pieced together to systems that I built myself. After spending a weekend using a stove that just wouldn’t work, I decided it was time to stop messing around with my stove systems and just pick one variety and stick with it. Life is too short to…
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It’s All in the Knot
Earlier this year, I was guiding a trip in Pigeon Bay, which is on the border of Minnesota and Ontario on Lake Superior. It was a windy day, but the wind was from the southwest, which, because the bay runs east northeast, usually means that it’s going to be calm in the bay. The bay itself is about 4 miles deep from Pigeon Point to the furthest west point of the bay, so it escapes the fury of the lake on any winds except from the northeast. The bay is formed by the Canadian mainland and Pigeon Point, a slender peninsula with a maximum width of about half a mile and…
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Review: Sea Kayak with Gordon Brown Volume 3
I’ve been a big fan of the Sea Kayak with Gordon Brown videos. I thought that the first volume was innovative in its approach in that it intermingled the instructional aspects of the video with a journey narrative. The approach kept the instructional components fresh and although you could watch each section separately, it was fun to watch them together. Volume 2 took the same approach and applied it to rescues and towing. I thought Volume 2 was a big improvement over an already great volume 1. In Volume 3, Simon Willis and Gordon Brown take the series a different direction; the journey narrative is gone and the instructional components no…
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Comfort Paddling Tuilik Review
I’m a huge fan of tuiliks (read The Tuilik: a Perfect Bit of Kit for Winter Kayaking), which are a combination of a hooded paddling jacket and sprayskirt. I like them because they’re warm, they give you a larger freedom of movement vs. a neoprene sprayskirt, which helps with torso rotation. They make rolling easy, because they’re buoyant. They keep your head dry, which in the cold water I paddle in (usually doesn’t get above 55°F), makes rolling more fun and warm!. Until this spring, I had only used neoprene tuiliks, but this spring, Paulo from Comfort Paddling approached me about his waterproof/breathable tuiliks. I was excited to try one and write…
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GoScope Extreme Review
One of the problems with the curved and flat GoPro mounts is, because they don’t move they create a static scene when kayaking. The video ends up showing only one direction, often pointing at the kayaker, which is boring. In a video, about 15 seconds or so of the same angle, especially in action videos, is about all a viewer can handle. If you doubt this, search Youtube for sea kayaking surf videos and see how extremely boring watching someone surf is when the same angle is shown during every ride. To make an interesting video, it’s nice to have multiple GoPro units mounted all over the kayak. If you’re…
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Grand Portage National Monument Rendezvous Days and Powwow
Every year during the second weekend of August, Grand Portage and the Grand Portage National Monument hosts Rendezvous Days and a Powwow. During the event, 1000s of people and 100s of reenactors show up at Grand Portage to experience what life was like for fur traders, who used canoes. The event celebrates the cultural heritage of the Anishinaabe and the history of fur trading in the area. The Rendezvous Days celebration harkens back to a different time, when beaver pelt was one of the most important trade items in the world. All across North America, the canoe held a central role in the trading of beaver pelts. It was easier to…
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Grand Trunk Double Hammock Review
I recently received a Double Hammock from Grand Trunk Goods to review. Grand Trunk Goods claims that the Double Hammock is “The world’s best portable hammock.” So, in this cursory review, I set out to find out if that claim was true. I’ve used these simple fabric hammocks before and currently own three of them. They occasionally get put up in the backyard (although this year has been too buggy to enjoy them), and now and then I like to take them along on trips into the BWCA, especially on trips to Brule Lake. There are a bunch of island campsites on Brule Lake and it’s great to paddle to…
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National Hammock Day Giveaway
Did you know that there’s a national hammock day? I didn’t either, but, whether or not this is a made up holdiay, it’s one that I’d like to celebrate. You can easily celebrate it by kicking back on July 22nd in a hammock. If the bugs in northern Minnesota aren’t too bad that day, I’m going to. To help you celebrate Grand Trunk Goods is giving away $3000 in prizes — that’s a lot of hammocks. To win you need to upload a photo of your Grand Trunk gear or a photo of where you want to go with your Grand Trunk gear and then you get your friends to…
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Kayak Deck Slates
Over the past few years, I’ve run into many kayakers who see my sticker deck slates and ask where they can buy them. Unfortunately, they were only made in England and were was hard to get them and then they stopped making them. Over the last few years, I’ve toyed with getting some manufactured and offering them for sale on PaddlingLight. I even went so far as to have a graphic designer draw slates up, but then sat on it. This year, I took the plunge and had it done. I did an initial run of 100 slates to see how well they sell. Before I put the offer up…
