A great lightweight cooking system should quickly and efficiently boil water, set up easily, and pack up into the system’s largest pot. Lately, because I’m preparing for a seven-day two-person canoe trip, I’ve been looking for cooking gear that meets this criteria. I’ve looked into lightweight commercial cooking gear, like the Caldera Cone and the [...]
GearPods, a company based out of Polson, Montana, manufactures “modular, lightweight adventure and survival gear to help the outdoor enthusiast to prepare for the unexpected.” Their gear systems combine interconnecting, waterproof containers with pre-built survival kits. Users combine any number of containers and gear to arrive at a customized kit, something like my emergency ditch [...]
I was walking through an REI store, and I noticed that they offer a plethora of different camping cups. They caught my eye, because when I’m traveling lightweight, I tend to just carry along lightweight platypus bottles, but I like to drink a cup of hot chocolate spiked with a little Baileys Irish Cream and [...]
An easy way to drop weight out of your boat is to switch from a tent to a tarp. Even using a tarp with a bug bivy will save over 2 pounds for the lightest tents and over 4 pounds for average weight tents. Besides saving weight, tarps provide more usable space, less parts to [...]
Lightening the load in your kayak or canoe saves you energy, makes your load easier to portage, and ends up making camp life easier. These 8 easy tips are a few ways that you can reduce your load. Store your composite kayak or canoe upside with the hatches open. As composite materials age, they can [...]
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Talk about going light, Brian Schulz of Cape Falcon Kayaks lists his standard kayak camping list in a thread at the Qajaq USA. His basic camping list: Clothing 1 set of quick dry clothes, no underwear, a warm sweater a hat Shelter System foam pad sleeping bag tarp Cooking System 1 qt pot a spoon [...]
Eskimo Tom Gerds, professional wooden boat builder and owner of Finewoodwatercraft.com, writes about using stitch and glue boat building techniques to create canoes and kayaks that Nessmuk would have been proud to paddle. Learn about his lightweight building secrets as he presents a great overview to the S&G process.
A lightweight weather-proof tarp set-up to use when you want to stay dry. This article was hidden for the last three or four years on a climbing website, so it’s about time it migrates to Nessmuking. This is one of the best ways to set-up a tarp for camping under.
Most paddlers would sit up and listen when told they could actually travel the same distance without working any harder in less time. They’d lean in much closer when told that there was a secret that could allow them to travel an additional 24 miles in a ten day trip without any additional hours on the water, and most would be surprised to learn the secret is actually simple. Learn the secret in this article.
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Learn about lightweight gear systems and how to reduce the weight of gear that you carry.
Every philosophy, even those grounded in skills, like Nessmuking, must evaluate the gear that they utilize. Even Nessmuk produced a core list, evaluated gear, and added up the weights. For most philosophies, this is where you are left. As stated before the Nessmuking philosophy doesn’t start and end with the discussing of the merits of [...]
The simple question is why? Why Nessmuking? Many wilderness travelers who’ve spent time in the woods using conventional gear and methods, upon seeing someone traveling with just a light bag on their back, a feather light boat, and a smile, often ask why travel so light. Here are some answers.
The article that started it all. A brief look to the past to see what we can learn from Nessmuk, a writer from the late 1800s. Bryan Hansel examines Nessmuk and formulates a philosophy that can be used by modern wilderness trippers.
Lightweight Canister Stoves
Recently, I’ve been preparing for a seven-day two-person canoe trip by reorganizing my cooking gear. I’ve settled on taking a Penny Stove, made from beer cans, but what if I wanted to use a canister stove? There are lots of reasons to bring a canister stove, but I find the most compelling reason is its [...]