I head off soon for a backpack in the Granite Chief Wilderness near Lake Tahoe. With some snow still on the trail and nights at 8,500 feet expected to dip into the 30′s, a hand warmer isn’t such an odd suggestion as an added comfort for very little weight. As a kid, I had a , small polished metal heater that comes with a felt bag and lasts all day on a single fill of lighter fluid. There’s no flame, but lots of heat. What got me thinking about this was when I donated blood yesterday and the nurse gave me a disposalable hand warmer — a tiny pillow filled with some unknown material — to keep my hands warm so she didn’t have to squeeze a cold finger really hard to get that drop of blood needed to test my iron. A smart idea and made me think that it would be ideal for the “essentials bag.” If nothing else, you’ve got them for an emergency.
Be light. Be safe. Be one with the pack.
I love gadgets. The latest, from a newspaper clipping my wife dropped on my desk, is a cap with four LED lights built in (sample at left has only two, but the Amazon.com version below has four). One of the reasons I became a ultralight backpacker, besides the weight reduction, was the elimination of stuff from my backpack. It would take many paragraphs to describe all the items I carried when I first started backpacking in 1998. Let me assure you, you can put huge amounts in a 5,800 cubic inch, 7.5 pound Dana Design Terraplane: 60 pounds or more, in fact. As they say, less is more. Be light. Be safe. Be one with the pack.