EQUIPMENT IMPROVEMENTS - 2

This post is a good example of how...


a) you do not necessarily lose comfort by choosing light gear
b) useless it was to carry all this stuff with me.


The picture below shows my Master Hunter knife I took with me on the recent trips. I love it, it's a good knife, but it's heavy. 260g! And to be honest: when in presence does one have to kill a bear? Most of the time you just have to open food packages, cut salami or do small repairs. So right now I switched to a baladé jackknife. It comes along with just 22 (TWENTYTWO) g. That's cool. As you can see the blade length is okay to cover all my requirements. No decreased comfort - but less than factor 10 of the weight. I'll sew a case for it, but in sum it won't be more than 40g.


Secondly I switched to the Mammut S-Lite Headlamp. It's weight is 48g. There are lighter ones out there. But I wanted to have the chance to use standard AA batteries and to have enough power to use it as emergency signaling light. It gives you 80hrs of light in the lowest power mode by just using 1xAA.


So my savings are:

• knife: [260g > 40g] / 220g saved
• headlamp: [76g > 48g] / 28g saved

With my recent achievements I saved 2.508g so far.

Switching from a big (260g) to a small (22g) knife

JOTUNHEIMEN / EQUIPMENT IMPROVEMENTS

Okay. Also this year's tour to Jotunheimen was fun. But since we had a couple of trips up to now I realize what stupid things we did in terms of carrying useless stuff with us. Or in another way: we could hike light!
What I'm currently doing is to review the equipment list and search for weight improvements. In step one I'd like to just leave things at home or reduce / redesign stuff. For sure more weight can be saved by replacing the heavy weight gear like tent, sleeping bag, matress etc. But that'll cost and will be left for step 2. I'm looking for the easy achievements here.


Here is what i gained so far:

• belt: replace leather by self made belt strap [200g > 64g] / 136g saved
• sleeping pad: reduced size [156g > 68g] / 88g saved
• pillow case: leave at home [178g > 0g] / 178g saved
• sandals: leave at home [370g > 0g] / 370g saved
• second trouser: replace by long underware [600g > 100g] / 500g saved
• spats: leave at home [270g > 0g] / 270g saved
• towl: reduce size [100g > 60g] / 40g saved
• nasal spray: leave at home [34g > 0g] / 34 saved
• USB Handy Adapter: leave in the car [18g > 0g] / 18g saved
• torch: leave home and use headlamp [136g > 0g] / 136g saved
• Gorilla pod: leave at home [46g > 0g] / 46g saved
• emergency battery tank: leave in the car [188g > 0g] / 188g saved
• knife: use smaller one [260g > 68g] / 192g saved
• walking stick: just use one [512g > 256g] / 256g saved

Sum = 2.452g !!!

The simple rule was to leave stuff at home I never used so far and reduce some parts to their minimum size. So finally I do not lose too much comfort. Taking into account that a rough rule of thumb tells that 1 saved kg gains 1 additional km of way that's a great result. And I just spent 30€ for a new knife. It also shows nicely how small things sum up. And it is an inspiration to work on further improvements. It just does not make any sense to carry more gear than needed.

self sewed belt saves 136g

HH KARO

Saw some streetart in the Hamburg Karo-Viertel.