Alastair Humphreys » Kit

What is the best expedition backpack?

Al Humphreys — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:00:10 +0000

During my preparation for next month’s expedition to Iceland I did a lot of research into what was the best large pack out there.

Here are some of the good ones I found.

What is your favourite pack? What have I forgotten?

Have your say in the comments.

Top 10 bits of kit for a long walk

Al Humphreys — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 09:20:59 +0000

10 of the best bits of kit that I took to India.

1. Orthotic insoles and trainers
Profeet and Mizuno Wave Inspire 5
£149 (insoles and fitting), £68 / 252 grams (shoe)
I used to associate long distance running and walking with inevitable injuries and pain. No longer. Since I began using Profeet’s orthotic insoles I have had no more shin splints or knee or hip pain.

2. Lightweight Pack
Raidlight Evolution II (19 + 5 litres)
£99.99 / 690 grams
A backpack designed for ultramarathons. Outer pouches and mesh pockets come in really useful, as does the 5 litre pack on the front. It is so small that it forces you to be ruthless with your packing.

3. Lightweight Pan
MSR Titan Kettle
£42.99 / 118 grams
This tiny, lightweight pan takes up barely any space in your pack. It holds .85 litres and comes with a tight-fitting lid for faster cooking times. You may have to cook two portions though if you are really hungry!

4. Water Carrier
Ortlieb 10 litre water bag
£25.50 / 160 grams
I take this bag with me on all my trips. It is very strong and packs down to virtually nothing. Also makes a very comfortable pillow at night.

5. Inflatable mattress
NeoAir Therm-a-rest
£109.99 / 260 grams
A mattress that is as small as a 1 litre water bottle and as comfy as your bed at home. Comfortable, warm and stronger than you fear they may be. One of the first things into my pack on any journey.

6. Audio Recorder
Edirol R-09HR
£216 / 200 grams
Taking an audio recorder on an expedition forced me to really listen for the first time, opening up a whole new aspect to the experience. High quality recordings onto an SD card using just AAA batteries. Consider adding an external microphone if you really embrace audio recording.

7. Digital Camera
Olympus mju Tough 6010
£229 / 165 grams
At last – a camera that is as tough as your expedition. Waterproof, shockproof, freezable. A normal, decent compact digital camera, but one without the worry of having it break just when things are getting interesting.

8. Silk Sleeping Bag
Gelert Silk Sleeping Bag Liner
£34.99 / 55 grams
Sometimes it is too hot to need to carry even a small sleeping bag. A silk bag is tiny and keeps you cool. It is also nice to have when you are sleeping in a hotel where the sheets have not been washed for years.

9. Walking trousers
Mountain Equipment Stretchlite Guide Pant
£60 / 360 grams
If you are going to wear the same pair of trousers every day for weeks on end then they have to be comfortable. These are strong, quick-drying and look quite ‘normal’. Also has a useful zipped security pocket in the rear.

10. Torch
Petzl Tikka Plus Headtorch
£39.99 / 78 grams
A headtorch will always come in useful. You will appreciate this whether you are writing your diary under a mosquito net, fumbling round a hotel room in a power cut or cranking out some late night miles down the road. Powerful, lightweight and the LED bulbs means that the batteries last for ages.

Don’t forget…
…to take an old fashioned diary to record your experiences. Decades from now you will not want to re-listen to your multimedia podcast, but a fireside reminiscing back to your glory days will certainly still be in fashion.

This article first appeared, in a similar form, in Geographical magazine.

Kit selection for a walk across India

Al Humphreys — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:15:18 +0000

The night train thunders past. The vibrations shake the ground I am lying on through my small inflatable mattress. My head rests on my rucsack. From the darkness I snatch glimpses into the brightly lit carriages. As suddenly as it arrived, the train is gone. The darkness and the silence it leaves behind feel more enormous and enveloping than before. Gradually my eyes readjust to the fainter glow of the spectacular cauldron of stars above me. Slowly my ears tune in once more to the tropical sounds of night – insects chirruping, the far-off bark of a village dog. I am alone, in a field beside a railway line in India. My evening meal was rice, just rice, cooked on a tiny fire of twigs. My mosquito net is draped from a small tree. I am hot and sweating. I am sleepy after a long, hard day. Nobody on earth knows that I am here. I feel like the happiest man on earth.

I was walking the length of one of southern India’s holiest rivers, the Kaveri. The plan was simple, like all good expeditions. I would follow the course of the river from the sea to its holy source amongst the coffee and cardamom plantations in the cool hills of the Western Ghats. I was travelling light, carrying only a small pack. I had deliberately done negligible research about the route in order to make the experience as spontaneous and surprising as possible. I had no idea what I would encounter along the way. I had chosen a region of India not often frequented by tourists as experience has taught me that you have an infinitely more interesting, enjoyable and safe experience if you do this. Whilst determined to carry the very minimum of gear I also wanted to carry all that I required to allow me to be able to eat, sleep, navigate and cope even if there were no villages or people around. Everything needed to be lightweight, versatile and high quality.

Perhaps the most important item of equipment for a long walk is your footwear. Having completed the Marathon des Sables ultramarathon the year before I chose to wear trainers for my walk rather than boots. I would be travelling light and moving fast and decided that the comfort of trainers outweighed the support given by boots. I discovered the benefits of using personalised orthotic insoles in my running shoes a few years ago. They seem quite expensive at first but have totally eliminated joint pain and injury. They are worth every penny. I always get my running shoes from specialist running shops: thousands of high-impact strides each day are too important to be borne by cheap trainers.

The choice of rucsack is important. Too large and sturdy means you carry unnecessary weight; too small and you waste time with the irritation of trying to squeeze everything in. I decided to use my 24 litre pack from the Sahara marathon. It is very lightweight with useful elastic meshing on the outside for a few extra bananas or to dry your washing. At the last moment I changed my mind and instead took a larger bag. I would have space to carry several days’ food and water with me, giving me a much larger range of independence. In the end this proved to be the wrong choice: I was never more than a day away from a village on my walk, but I was not to know that beforehand. I had at least transferred the front pouch from my ultramarathon pack onto the front waist strap of the larger pack. Rather than constantly having to take the pack on and off it gave me ready access to my camera, snacks and water bottles.

My choice of clothing for the trek was based on a balance between comfort and cultural sensitivity. I took lightweight, quick-drying trousers and two office-type shirts that I bought from a charity shop for a couple of pounds. My arrival in remote villages caused sufficient amazement and hilarity without me adding to it by turning up in clothing the locals would have deemed at best comical, at worst offensive. I changed my shirt at night when I also wore a pair of flip flops and a locally bought [italics] lungi [close italics], a simple cotton garment wrapped round the waist which also doubled as my towel and pillow. With hot, dry weather virtually guaranteed I carried no waterproof or warm clothing. Such a tiny wardrobe kept the weight of my pack down. Being dirty was a small price to pay for this!

I was relaxed about where I slept on my walk. After walking 20 to 40 miles in 40 degree heat I knew I could sleep well anywhere. Some nights I slept in villages, staying with people who met me and invited me to spend the evening with their family. In small towns I stayed in the cheap lodge that you always find by the bus station. I never paid more than £2 for the night, a price well worth paying for the luxury of a bucket of cold water to pour over your head after a day on the shimmering road. One night I slept on the cool concrete floor outside a temple, another night in the starlit paddy field. Carrying a tiny Therm-a-rest mattress, a silk sleeping bag liner and a mosquito net ensured that I was armed for sleep wherever I happened to be at nightfall.

I packed a tiny 0.85 litre cooking pot that weighed just 118 grams. That, plus a plastic medicine spoon and a flint to make sparks was the total of my kitchen. I lit fires from twigs, using pages from my reading book as kindling. However in the end I hardly ever cooked my own food. It was far easier, tastier, and more sociable to eat in the numerous tiny cafes I passed. I would fill up on all-you-can eat rice meals, served on broad green banana leaves and eaten with your fingers and buy a bunch of tiny, sweet bananas to keep me going until the next village.

I filled my water bottles at village pumps and also packed a 10 litre water bag in case I needed to carry additional quantities. Iodine is becoming frowned upon as a water-purifying chemical for health reasons, though I have used it happily, in small bursts, on my travels for 15 years now. It is reliable, a tiny bottle lasts for weeks, and you can buy additional supplies in any village chemist across the developing world for pennies. A less controversial purifying option would be a filter, though these are expensive, much heavier, and can clog and stop working with very dirty water. Whatever option you choose, anything is preferable to relying on expensive bottled water and the terrible rubbish problem created by the plastic bottles.

I had originally planned to film the expedition. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that I could not afford a decent video camera and that I did not have the skill or technical know-how to do the project justice, I decided that filming the journey would compromise much of its spirit of pure and simple adventure. I always strive when I am in poor countries (and the India I experienced was light years away from the parts of urban India that are currently booming) to try to minimise the obvious disparities in material wealth that exist between me and the people I meet along the way. Flashing a movie camera around was unlikely to help me with this. So I decided to focus on creating audio slideshows instead, using a compact audio recorder to capture sounds from my journey. Using the very simple Soundslides computer software I was able to combine these sound clips with photographs to create, in minutes, simple but powerful stories from my journey without compromising any of the spirit of adventure of the walk itself.

The Kaveri river – my river – led me through varied scenery and scenarios. It was beautiful and it was hard work. I met kind and interesting people. I danced at a festival where men walked with spikes through their faces and ladies twirled with jars of fire on their heads. But I broke no world records nor discovered anything new to mankind. I simply had an adventure. I bought a plane ticket for £300, changed just £200 into Rupees and flew to India carrying only hand luggage. A simple adventure. And as the train raced by through the tropical night air I felt so grateful to be sleeping in a field in Tamil Nadu, self sufficient and carrying on my own back all the essential kit I needed for a classic adventure on foot.

This article first appeared in Geographical magazine.

Advice on packing light for expeditions

Al Humphreys — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 09:43:17 +0000

In this guest post Phil Turner, an ultralight backpacking specialist, shakes his head, tutts, and slaps my wrist for persisting with old, heavy, cheap kit!

“I’ve been corresponding with Alastair for a while now regarding his gear choices for his upcoming walking and packrafting trip to Iceland. I have to admit I was slightly horrified by the picture above, taken from his last trip across Scotland in January with Andy Ward. That’s a big, big pack, and that’s without the raft in/on it!

As the Iceland trek will be far longer, Alastair recognises the need to try to pack lighter pieces of equipment to offset having to carry several weeks’ of food. It is pretty simple to apply some of the basic principles of lightweight backpacking to an ‘expedition’ kit list. There are many fine examples of minimal, lightweight multi-mode adventuring, most recently Andrew Skurka’s Alaska-Yukon Expedition and Hig and Erin’s Journey on the Wild Coast, both travelling several thousand miles over land and water.

The extreme distances involved here aren’t totally relevant when it comes to kit selection – I could use my weekend kit for many continuous months if I were to be able to resupply every few days (many do just that on the TGO Challenge), but this kit would be woefully inadequate for a three week expedition with no resupplies. Three weeks of food alone is a huge weight. This is the key variable rather than distance.

The ‘big three’ items of kit that allow you to drastically cut your overall weight are: shelter, sleeping bag and rucksack. Reduce the weight of these and watch your packweight plummet.

Shelter

A 4-season mountain tent might look pretty cool, and withstand a storm on Annapura, but is it really necessary? There are several manufacturers of small pyramid shaped shelters, ranging from the Black Diamond Megamid to the Mountain Laurel Designs DuoMid via the Golite Shangri-La 3. This style of shelter has the advantage of being able to shed wind and snow well from all directions, as well as having fantastic, flexible living space and loads of headroom. There’s no built in floor, allowing you to dig down into snow (and create a nice living room with integrated sofas) cook and bring wet footwear inside. For solo use a half-floor allows you to maintain this vestibule area whilst having a clean and dry sleeping area.
Many people choose to use a lightweight water-resistant breathable bivvy bag inside single skin shelters to protect against any unexpected wind and/or precipitation that manages to infiltrate the shelter when the edges are raised for ventilation.

A key principle of lightweight travel is relevant to this style of shelter: multi-use items. Why carry tent poles that can only be used as tent poles? Trekking poles make a perfect adjustable centre pole. If packrafting, why not use the paddle? If you’ve got a packraft, why not sleep on the raft to supplement or replace your sleeping mat or groundsheet?

Sleeping

In almost all cases high quality down insulation is the way to go. The dilemma is bag or quilt? I’m a year-round quilt user. But I’d advise caution here – rather than dive straight in and spend £400 on a Nunatak Arc Expedition quilt, spend some time sleeping in the outdoors under a normal unzipped sleeping bag to see how you like it. It just doesn’t suit everyone. Quilts offer weight savings by eliminating all the down that is compressed under your body. It doesn’t insulate, so why carry it?

For sleeping bags you can’t go wrong with a bag from Peter Hutchinson at PHD Mountain Software. Remember the multi-use principle? That applies here too. Why carry a down jacket only to take it off to get into your sleeping bag? By utilising your clothing you can use a far lighter sleeping bag and layer to suit the conditions. Too warm? Take off the jacket. Too cold? Put the jacket back on.

For long, cold expeditions a Vapour Barrier Liner should certainly be considered to prevent the water vapour released by your body from condensing within your insulation. If it’s cold enough, this vapour will freeze within the insulation and accumulate over several days to leave you shivering in a porridge-filled bag. Contrary to popular belief VBLs are not sweaty, and not like sleeping in a carrier bag. See Stephenson’s Warmlite for an admittedly fairly opinionated explanation of the concept.

Rucksack

Until the weight of the contents is known, it is hard to choose an appropriate vessel to carry it all in. Rest assured that for a long trip with limited resupply, the weight of the food will ensure that an ultralight, cuben rucksack just isn’t going to carry comfortably.

In selecting a rucksack, it’s important to avoid all the unnecessary straps, pockets and gimmicks in favour of the features that you really need. There really is no need for complex exoskeleton back systems that weigh upwards of 500g on their own. Again, multi-use comes to the fore – why not use the sleeping mat you’re already carrying folded inside the bag as additional (or even primary) back padding? Something like the GoLite Pinnacle (76 litre) is a superb pack for longer trips, and weighs in at under 1kg.

But the key with rucksacks, as with shoes, is fit – body shapes vary, so it’s essential to try on a rucksack loaded with a representative weight and check for rubbing or if it just doesn’t ‘feel’ right. Choosing your pack is a very personal choice, and one that really shouldn’t be made on the advice of a guy on the Internet. Hike your own hike.

If you are interested in learning more about ultralight backpacking, or if you have any questions, then please do visit my website. “

Review of hammocks

Al Humphreys — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:29:43 +0000

Here jungle expedition leader and trainer Dom Hall from Fieldskills runs through his favourite hammocks for jungle camping:

If you are camping in the rainforest there’s really only one way to do it – in a hammock. Hammocks are airy and cool, light to carry, easy to set up and give you loads of flexibility when camping in jungle environments. They are also the al fresco camping experience.

But having seen people turn up in the jungle with a string hammock like one you might use in your back garden in the summer – its important to turn up with the right kit.

There are a few options out there on the market:

1. The Travelproof jungle hammock – made and supplied by Nomad Travel Store. This is the staple of many a tropical forest expedition – I’ve had mine for over ten years now. It has a twin layer to allow for more insect protection and also if you want to slide a roll mat between the layers for extra warmth. Its used in conjunction with a separate basha sheet and box mosquito net which gives you loads of flexibility. The net can be used when you are lucky enough to get a day in a hostel or B&B, the basha sheet on its own sheltering from the rain for your lunch.
As each bit is separate you can replace / chop and change parts of it easily. Personally I find the newer basha sheets slightly the wrong dimensions – a bit too long and not quite wide enough but overall a great hammock.

2. The Hennesey hammock. In many ways the Rolls Royce of the hammock world – super big and comfy. Once you’ve got used to the slightly concerning velcro fastening and climbing in through the bottom you won’t look back. It’s an all in one – with hammock and mosquito net built in together and a small fly sheet which attaches on top. This I’d say is the only weakness – that it has slightly less flexibility than the Travelproof. I’ve tried to crawl in and just use it as a mosquito net only but it ain’t easy! Also the fly sheet included is a little bit small – it’ll keep you dry but doesn’t give a lot of space to move about or cover your kit. A lot of people seem to resort to an additional basha sheet over the top if they are using it for longer periods. You cannot beat it for comfort though and it is a truly ingenious design.

3. The DD hammock. I have to confess I haven’t tried this in anger yet – a client brought one along on a course and it looked great. A similar design to the Hennesey but with zip shut mosquito net and also claims to be waterproof underneath to the extent that you can just use it on the floor as a bivi when there are not enough trees. Watch this space – I’ll have to try one!

If you’re heading to the jungle you might do well to consider signing up for the Tropical Forest Safety Course.

And if you fancy some hardcore jungle stories have a look at what Ed is up: walking the length of the Amazon.