I’ve added the super ultralight (SUL) Hyperlite Mountain Gear Summit pack at 12.7 oz, with correspondingly light MSR Carbon Core /titanium skewer stakes for shelters.
My current pack for an overnight trip including water, food, and an alcohol stove system weighs about 10 pounds, so I wear my Nikon camera under one shoulder strap- pull out 2 trekking poles- and go. This setup will allow me to stay out to conditions of about 25 degrees F.
At 7400 ft in the San Gabriel mountains, I finally got a chance to experience snow with this new shelter and it was all too brief, but great fun.
Used the ULA Catalyst pack, snow anchors instead of regular stakes, and 20 deg F Western Mtg Alpinlite 850 down sleeping bag/Vapor jacket.
Stayed on a torso length TR Neo Air pad atop Gossamer Gear groundsheet. This pack seems to be the winter ticket for my use- enough carrying capacity for what I usually use, and very light, well built. Setup was very easy, for both the shelter and the packup.
Light winds, clear with patchy clouds, about 30 deg air temperature…. sweet. If I didn’t have to work this evening……and I ‘ll be sure to bring bright wands to mark the location of this tarp in winter, since it blends with snow environments.
I’m finding that using trees at one or both ridgeline points as anchors yields very strong, versatile attachments for a wide variety of tarp rigs (especially more complex setups also using poles) and sticks easily exceed the heights of my trekking poles where I want to pitch a flying diamond, for example.
These shots demo my default tarp setup: storm mode, with 2 long guylines on the rear panel anchors staked through the back trekking pole.
I ‘m using 14 stakes as a standard: 8 MSR Carbon Core stakes for the corners, each ridgeline, and 2 additional points as needed; a single MSR mini-Groundhog stake which can take a great deal of pounding; and 5 aluminum stakes with similar form factor to the CC stakes and large pounding heads.
A nice bonus is that when using the REI clothesline as shown, there’s enough spare cord to use for rigging my vertical hoist to raise the netting of the biv sack off my face.
Today I was using both the ULA Catalyst and HMG Windrider 2400 packs, which are in the foreground.This setup allows cooking safely from within the tarp, with even better ventilation if opting for the A frame setup.
I’m finding that rather than super UL (SUL) style, I seem to gravitate toward UL setups.
My most recent estimate of base carried pack weight is approximately 8 pounds, including the new addition of a Hyperlight Mountain Gear 8.5 oz 8.5×8.5 ft square cuben fiber tarp. I plan to post a comprehensive review of this shelter later this month.
Given this foundation, I ‘m usually taking about 12-13 pounds total weight including fuel, food and water.
In 2015, I may begin to explore packrafting to exploit river and lake travel as well as cooking over open fires. That way, no fuel to take…. but need to be very cautious in California about fire control and regulations these days. The same caution is justified regarding alcohol fuels in my opinion.
Happy holiday season, and here’s to many more.
William Hooks
maximpactphotography 