The Ridgeway - Ultralight 2008: Post-Trip Kit Analysis

A typical day was sunny, cool and windy. On a few days there were showers including hail and sleet. Nighttime temperatures were close to freezing and one night did have a hard frost.

The Ridgeway is a well marked trail. There are a lot of broad tracks and there are also a lot of areas of the path which are muddy and rutted - due to 4x4 traffic. The mud on The Ridgeway tends to be based around chalk. This means that it is very sticky - like wet concrete and when it sets it will set hard.

The ruts on some sections of the path meant that you found yourself hopping around like a manic bunny from grass stump to grass stump.

Mostly however, it's just mile after mile of easy walking. Only in a couple of places was it necessary to check a map to confirm that you were on the correct path. Most of the time it was obvious.

Footwear

On previous trips I've hovered between traditional boots and trail-running shoes. For this trip I opted to wear a pair of broken-in Vasque Mercury's. These are a fabric lightweight shoe that are not waterproof.

In order to commit to trail-running shoes for this trip I've been working on all the reasons for not using them - mainly by a radical review of how I carry kit so that my balance is not affected by a pack. This means that my feet are not being stressed in any way different from normal.

For the first couple of days I was conscious that the tendons for my big toes were a little sore. The big toes provide stabilisation to the foot and on the initial rutted path they were working quite hard over an uneven soft surface.

After an initial settling in with the terrain I found them to be great for walking. It allowed me to move in a very natural way and were comfortable.

I was very conscious that if the trail had been muddy the shoes would have been unsuitable - not enough grip and easily drowned in deep mud.

By the end of the trip the footbed had collapsed on the right shoe and that was to be a source of blisters around the edge of the footbed on the heel.

The shoes themselves are now worn out - the central studs are on the sole are flush.

So after a few pack-carrying hikes and a few pack-less hikes and moderate everyday use the shoes are dead. They've lasted less than a year.

Because of my own personal fitness I was happy with the lack of ankle support simply because it allowed me to move in a much more natural way.

However, I have to be honest and say that since they now need to be replaced I will seriously consider some sort of fabric boot instead. I know that the next trip will involve mountain terrains and peat box and will easily contain conditions that I think would be unsuitable for these types of shoes.

The fact that they've worn out after only a few hundred miles of hiking does suggest that they are being used beyond their design limits. It's a real problem - I love the lightness on the feet but know they are probably not going to be suitable for the next trip...

2-May-08: Update
After much deliberation and a little research it would seem that in America people just budget on any sort of lightweight trail shoe lasting about 500 miles (tops) before they need replacing. In fact if you read the details of people doing the long-distance trails you'll note that they make sure that they have replacement footwear scheduled in at various stops along with essential supplies.

What I've decided to do is two-fold. Firstly I've bought an identical pair in a sale for £35. For many trips their benefits outweigh the extra cost of replacing them every year. Secondly, I've replaced one pair of walking boots with a lighter equivalent pair - this will do for those trips where boots might be better.

Socks

It's probably worth talking about socks. I actually had 4 pairs which in UL might sound excessive. In fact it wasn't THAT excessive!

I had with me 1 pair of liner socks and 3 pairs of Bridgedale X-Hale Trailhead. One pair of the Bridgedales would be worn, one pair would be nearly dry and one pair would be dry. In the UK it can be difficult to dry stuff out on the trails and last year I sufferred by not having dry things to change into.

The liner socks were carried so that they could be worn in the sleeping bag - to protect the bag AND they gave me a thinner pair of socks to change into in the evenings to allow my feet more space in the footwear. In the evenings it was very nice to be able to change into a nice pair of fresh socks.

Pack and Front-Pouch

The pack is shown here at the end and at the start of the walk. It has a rigid internal frame and is made of mostly SilNylon with 4ozPU Nylon and Cordura for stress-points. The Lid is a double-layer lid of 500d Cordura and SilNylon to produce a lid that is both tough and weather-proof. You can see that the pack is wide and thin with it being widest at the top. The lid has two straps on it to close it and another two on the top of the hood to compress it. That combination of straps compresses the whole pack against the internal frame - which is tough enough not to distort.

The pack has a stuff-pocket on the back so that I have easy access to things that might get damp such as a windshirt or coat.

In the end the front pouch was used for on-trail essentials such as food, hygiene essentials and camera-phone. When I was wearing a Kilt I also wore a pouch (not clearly shown) that was used for holding the map (which was too tall to fit into the pouch.

You can see that my stance in all the pictures looks pretty upright and natural. I'm not bending over to compensate for the weight of the pack. At the start of the walk the pack weighed 8.5Kg and at the end it weighed 6.5Kg. My stance is the same.

I was very pleased with the way that the pack worked. It proved to be very comfortable at all the weights carried. If anything it was MORE comfortable with the heavier supplies of food and water (that went at the top of the pack).

It did take a few days for my body to get used to the way the pack carried but once that had happenned the pack always felt light - to the point that on some days I'd fret about what I'd left somewhere.

The shoulder-straps on this pack are a little unusual. They are shoulder-width at the top and then taper very sharply to 25mm. There is padding on the top and part of the front.

Since this pack puts a good proportion of the weight into the shoulders and upper-back area I decided to make this load-bearing area as efficient as possible by making most of it load-bearing and ensuring good fit and comfort. It might have benefitted from using foam that was thinner than and softer than the 10mm stuff I used (ex camping mat) but it did work well and help to minimise pack-bounce when the waist strap was not in use.

The best thing for me was that I never gave a second thought about whether or not I should add food or water into the pack at various resupply points. I knew the pack was going to remain comfortable and so I just ended up carrying what I felt was needed.

For the next trip I think there might only be the smallest of tweaks to this pack - to beef up the internal frame and tauten one of the internal pockets. That's about it.

For me this pack completes the other half of the ultralight equation. In the first instance you work out ways of reducing the weight that you have to carry and once there you work out ways to make what you have to carry as comfortable as possible.

At the end of a day's walking I was still happy to carry the pack and when on the trail I was not seeking to drop the pack at every opportunity.

Most important of all however was that the pack was not a source of joint, muscle or balance related issues. It just did it's job.

I hope one day to publish plans on how you can make a pack like this. Until then you can read about it's predecessor (which is almost as good but heavier by 150g) - a GoLite Jam with Internal Frame and the load-carrying theory which was the basis for design.

Tent - Flysheet

This is an enhancement (and rough prototype) of the original ultralight tent flysheet with internal carbon fibre poles and a bell-shaped front porch with a side-entry zip.

It's much more livable with day-in-day-out but still very cramped. I found in practice that the poles do get in the way - one is very close to your feet and the other close to your head.

I think for the next trip I'm going to work on increasing the headroom and porch-space. I'll probably build it in SilNylon - it weighs less but is also less stealthy.

I'm happy with the general shape of it and I'm happy in principle with internal poles providing there is more space between me and them.

Tent - Bathtub Floor with Pertex

For this trip I took the standard bathtub floor pattern with short 4cm side-walls and about 1.3m of Pertex 5 covering 2/3 of the total groundsheet. The other major change is that the mat fits into an internal pocket on the groundsheet - the whole thing rolls up like a bed mat.

The side-walls were too short and so I will move back to using 5 or 7cm walls with corner stiffeners. The short walls were collapsing without support and on wet ground that would be an issue.

The pertex was there to solve a known issue with sleeping bags in single skin tents - it's almost inevitable in the UK that the footbox has dew on it in the morning. The idea of adding pertex to the bulk of the groundsheet was to create a lighter version of a bivy bag with pertex covering the colder area of the bag and the hotter shoulder and upper-torso area of the sleeping bag being exposed as before.

The results were mixed.

On the first night there was a hard frost and no wind whatsoever. This is worst-case scenario for down and it did suffer from moisture retention. The pertex made little difference - it just couldn't work under these conditions.

On subsequent nights (that were above freezing) the results were much better. The footbox and lower sleeping bag area were very slightly damp to the touch as was the rest of the sleeping bag but was not showing signs of loss of warmth or down collapse.

I don't think the performance is as good as an inner tent but I have not yet worked out why!!! I've not yet measured moisture content accurately after a night under pertex and so this is subjective.

Regardless, I think that on average down is still a better choice than synthetic it's just it might need a little more TLC.

One thing I did find exceedingly useful was to be able to partly unroll the mat and use it as an adhoc seat for resting on or lying on during the day.

For the next trip I think I'm going to go for larger sidewalls and of course make provision for some noseeum mesh. I might see if I can make a light 'inner' tent using some 40gsm nylon that I have. I'm conscious of the need to weight-watch on this. The current groundsheet with pertex is already at 200g and a full inner tent weighs 400g.

Tent - overall

The total weight of the tent is around 840g and even though it is a tough tent for the weight it is still very close to commercial ultralight tents. I think the design changes I have planned to do - to create a lightweight 2-man mountain tent will push it to around 900-950g which is no longer so light. The only problem is I that I think that is the size of tent that I'll need to carry to be comfortable if the weather is rough in the future.

I think it will be useful to have some sort of sacrificial groundsheet for the front porch area. I was using my SilNylon coat and various (now-empty) stuff-sacks but it wasn't very satisfactory.

Sleeping System

I deliberately took a high quality 3-season down bag with me because I knew the weather might turn cold on one or more nights. The extra warmth was appreciated on the first night - it was cold but tolerable.

Before I went I did analyse whether it would be more weight-effective to take thermal underwear and a summer bag but in fact the down weighed less and so I went with down.

In the future I think I'm tempted to take a 3-season bag over a 2-season bag unless I am certain that the temperatures are going to be warm. I value the extra performance over the marginal weight difference. Wearing your day-clothes in your sleeping bag quickly sucks.

Cookware

My primary fuel was Hexamine/Esbit tablets but I also took with me a small alcohol stove. One of the things with Hexamine is that it does tend to soot up your pot with part-burnt fuel. This can be a sticky mess.

I took an alcohol stove so that I could have a backup if I ran out of fuel and also to clean the pot (mug). I found that it was beneficial every so often to just heat some water with the alcohol stove and then just let the stove burn itself out heating an empty mug - this burnt off all the gunk and meant that the pot only contained a layer of soot on it.

I found that the Hexamine was difficult to light at times. I think in the future I will try lighting it with windproof matches.

The ultralight windshield definitely needs a redesign since I managed to light it when using a large hexamine tablet. I do want to persist with the hexamine stove because the fuel weight is so much better. If you think that the 80ml bottle of Alcohol was good for about 4 mugs of water and that the 28g hexamine tablet was good for 4-5 you can see the huge difference.

At the moment I'm not entirely sure that I'm prepared to put up with all the fussyness that this setup requires. In comparison a gas stove is a lot simpler (and a little faster). I think for a 2-3 week trip a gas stove might just justify it's weight if I took with me a 250g fuel cylinder.

The Orikaso mug did let me down on one day - after a night spent in a hard frost - it didn't quite want to stay folded and wanted to return to its flat state. Since it was full of hot water at the time I found this a little worrying. It's not done this before. I just love the concept of a mug that is 100% flat when stored - it just gets shoved down the back of my pack. Its weight is good to at around 39g but if it's let me down I'd rather get something that will not.

Camera-Phone

On this trip I tried something radically different - taking a camera-phone instead of a camera + ultarlight phone. I also took with me a AAA-based emergency battery charger.

This particular phone has an in-built radio (used) and an MP3 player (not used) as well as a halfway-decent camera.

I've bought a cheap plastic case for the phone and then modified the case to add some velcro in order to create a pack-proof lens cover.

The phone battery lasted well over six days which included one or two long phone calls and a few days of listening to the radio for a few hours.

At the end of day 6 I did decide to charge the phone using the emergency charger. A set of 4 AAA batteries was required to bring the phone to 50% charge and another set brought it to full charge. That makes it quite an expensive way to charge the phone.

The empty charger weighs around 25g and a set of AAA batteries around 40g. Lithium batteries would weigh less and probably be able to do several full phone charges (Lithiums tend to be around 6x better than Alkaline).

However, a spare phone battery only weighs 18g and so for the weight of the charger and a set of batteries I could have carried 3 spare batteries each of which would still be close to full charge after a week in the field. So, 3 spare batteries could well give me 3 weeks of carefree phone use....

In contrast a mains charger weighs in at 65g and so if I had an option to recharge every 5-6 days that would also work well.

I think the bottom line is that the camera-phone is now a viable way to replace several luxury items - camera, phone, radio and that battery life is certainly sufficient for shorter trips and can be managed on longer ones. The total weight saving is too large to walk away from.

The photos taken are not as good as those taken with a 'proper' camera but they are good enough and the phone radio is actually a lot better than the one it replaces in terms of signal locking if not in audio quality.

The camera-phone is a compromise device - it replaces several heavier (and perhaps better) items for one integrated item that is good-enough and weighs a lot less.

Hydration - 2L Source Bladder

The first time that I weighed it was when it went in the pack. I was a bit shocked to realise it weighed 200g. However, I wanted to take a bladder because it encourages better water consumption patterns and produces better load distribution in the pack.

I did have a problem with the bite-valve. It started to weep during the walk and by the 6th day was weeping very badly. In the end it was soaking my shirt and so I mailed it home at the first opportunity and resorted to my backup water bottle - A Platypus.

I was carrying a platypus 1.5L bottle. This was to give me more water-carrying capacatiy and as a 'just-in-case'. I also tended to find it more convenient to have a bottle of water that was easy to grab if I wanted to make a cup of coffee whilst en-route.

Platypus are very light and strong but not the easiest of things to drink from. For the next trip I've bought a 2L Platypus bladder which weighs in at 100g. I want that weight saving to spend elsewhere....

Rainwear

This time I was carrying a knee-length SilNylon anorak and some chaps. I saw very little rain and so did not get to test the rainwear much. I did find that for light rain just using the anorak over the top of the kilt and so on was just fine.

Clothing

Most of the time I wore an ultralight walking kilt of which there is a greatly simplified DIY walking kilt pattern. I found it to be exceedingly comfortable even at relatively cool temperatures. I tended to compliment with either a Rohan shirt or an Icebreaker Merino T both of which were also very good and still relatively fresh after a week of walking.

In the evenings I did tend to change into a pair of Kathmandu cordura walking trousers simply because they were warmer. They are also quite heavy and so I might look at what I can find that is lighter.

On this trip I added pockets to the kilt but on the next trip they are coming off!!!

My focus on clothing was to be comfortable - with minimum resistance to movement and to minimise sweating.

Sweat is an expensive waste of water and if your body is visibly sweating it is because it is too hot and cannot get rid of the heat any other way!!!

Most of the time when I was walking in just a T and a Kilt I'd pass people who were wearing the full 3 layers - coats and fleece were visible. I was comfortable and moving faster!

With wearing clothes for the conditions I was able to minimise the amount of water that was needed which saved weight. A Kilt provides virtually no resistance to leg movement and allows full ventillation and so my legs were able to work at peak efficiency.

Of course, if I had been passing from peat bog or grassland where ticks might be I'd have had to change into something less comfortable - trousers; but for trail-walking it was fine.

I had sufficient underwear with me so that I could also be sure of a clean pair to change into whilst others are in the process of drying out. I also took pains to wash underwear as often as possible to maintain hygiene. Other clothing was much less important to keep clean and was specifically chosen for its resistance to odours!!!!

The basic focus was on clothing that was functional, low in weight and low in maintenance. The clothing taken is generally what I take all year around - temperatures can be that variable!!!

I didn't take a sun hat with me and wished that I had. I can suffer quite badly from sun - both through skin burning and loss of concentration. Next time around I plan to take a sun hat with me - but one based on a medieval hood that will cover all my head and my shoulders - to prevent a burnt neck.

Personal Hygiene

Prevention is always better than cure!

Before I go on a trip I check that finger-nails and toe-nails are trimmed and that my hair is a sensible length and of course that there are already no issues that might cause problems on the trail.

My dental kit is minimal but sufficent. 15ml of toothpaste will comfortably do 1-2 weeks of walking.

I carried a 50ml of travel wash which was used almost exclusively for washing underwear and only once for other clothing. It comfortably did a whole week. I could be more stingy with soap to make it last two weeks.

The Hand Gel was carried in a recycled 15ml Theramed bottle (from Nomad) and this small bottle was used both post-potty and for general skin hygiene - there were a few skin issues that benefitted from regular 'washing' with an anti-bacterial gel.

Finally, a small pot of vaseline was carried to assist with chafing and blisters.

Vaseline was used to manage some chafing issues and also to help heal/manage blisters on the trail.

Misc. thoughts

One problem that I did have is that a large chunk of my kit is now made out of exactly the same shade of green silnylon and so it became quite difficult to identify bits of kit. For instance I lost a stuff sack because it had been stuffed in with my coat - which was green silnylon.

When I stuck a water bottle in my belt-pouch it had no noticable effect on me. I think that carrying water around the belt might be a way to do it effectively if you are bladderless. A suitable pouch is going to weigh in at something under 20g.

I took more stuff-sacks than were absolutely necessary so that it was easier to organise things.

I lost my potty trowel somewhere :-( and so will need to make a new one.

Ideas - going forward

A Larger tent in SilNylon
A Stuff sack that can be used as a daysack for supply pickup
A small square of Silnylon (again!) that is just for use as a general-purpose groundsheet in the tent. I'll edge it in not-green.
Lightweight bottle holders for clipping onto a belt.

Summary

This is my best attempt so far at using ultralight kit realistically in the UK. I think it's been a qualified success.

I think the biggest benefits have flowed from changing the load-carrying dynamics of my pack so that the load I am carrying is comfortable and has minimal impact on my body.

I think that a lot of the constraints that we have in the UK with UL gear are really to do with what we consider to be normal - mud, rain, wet ground and cold with high humidity.

Typical conditions outside of summer do seem to justify some sort of boots be worn. Likewise with the tarp vs. tent dilemma I am in practice finding that a tent seems more suitable for the conditions that are typical outside of summer.

I think my base weight will actually increase a little as I prepare for the next trip but this weight will be carefully chosen - a bigger tent and so on. Things that are still light but maybe more durable and suitable for typical UK conditions.

For me the bottom line is that I now have a set of gear that allows me to go through hiking. When I was much younger my base pack weight was over 30lbs and typically 35lbs with food and water. It is now with ultralight gear hovering around 12lbs for long trips with very rare peak weights of 19lbs. That's almost a third of what I used to carry and is allowing me to through hike in comfort.

I'm still not doing great distances each day but I am doing them!

My objective when I started this stuff a few years back was to return to through-hiking. The measure of success was that I could. Whether my pack hit one magic number or another was much less important than being able to do the hiking in comfort and safety in the first place.