GEAR

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February 21

If I only traveled with a backpack, I probably wouldn't travel much. Backpacking in the Arctic is hell. You have to carry so much. By default, I'm toting 18 pounds of camera gear (close to 30 pounds in the film days). An 8-pound shotgun for protection from polar bears. Big-load packs weigh 6 or 7 pounds themselves. That's 33 pounds before a single item of camping equipment or food. Figure 25 pounds of food for even a two-week trip. Little wonder that my load is rarely under 90 pounds. At least, I don't have to carry a headlamp, because the sun's above the horizon all the time. Small favors.

A little over a year ago, I pointed out that the Bora 95 pack from Arc'teryx carried big loads well. Few backpacks do. Realistically, how many backpackers carry 100-pound packs? Manufacturers have little incentive to develop such products.

My first expedition backpack was an external frame pack from The North Face, called Back Magic. It supported humongous loads so well that with rare foresight, I bought three of them. I still use it. Trouble is, it doesn't have much volume, so half the load ends up being strapped on to the outside of the pack. It's a little inconvenient, but it works.

Eventually I found a Gregory pack that I hoped would replace the Back Magic. It was a truly gigantic storage locker, 120 liters in the Large size. It held everything that I could possibly fit into it for a month on the trail. Unfortunately, it didn't carry the weight well. Like most internal frame packs, its support system turned to mush after about 80 pounds. It was like carrying a potato sack. It was disappointing, because unless you plan on using it to transport 120 liters of foam peanuts, such a high-volume pack should be expected to bear more than 80 pounds. So it was back to the Back Magic for a few more years.

I'm not particularly good at big loads. Those who are, I've noticed, tend to be more barrel-chested mesomorphs than ectomorphic beanpoles. But a lot of hard travel has to do with the ability to suffer cheerfully, and arctic travelers are pretty good at that.

Hiker crossing stream in Kyrgyzstan with the Back Magic

February 3

I don't write much here about expedition food, because taste is so personal. One sledder I know loves cornmeal bread; I can't abide it. Another enjoys pemmican, and makes his own. A third can't live without coffee. Unless you do instant, that's a real commitment on a winter expedition. So although I drink espresso at home, I leave the habit behind when I set out. Incidentally, out of all the brands I drink, only Starbucks leaves me with withdrawal headaches. Clearly, they spike their beans with extra caffeine.

My favorite expedition comfort food is hot chocolate. It's portable, quick and caloric. Unlike tea or coffee, it's not just flavored water. I've tried a dozen kinds, from the thin, watery Carnation variety you get at diners -- and which most campers also use -- to the mostly milk in some good restaurants, to the admirably rich hot chocolate served at a backcountry lodge in Quebec's Chic-Choc Mountains, made from hot milk and 50 -- count 'em -- disks of melted chocolate per mug.

Here's a near substitute to the Chic-Chocs variety, in a form that's usable on expeditions: Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Hot Chocolate powder. One 16 oz. tin makes 11 mugs of hot chocolate. To two heaping tablespoons of hot chocolate powder, add 3/4 tablespoon of whole milk powder. I premix everything beforehand; it adds up to 5.5 lbs of hot chocolate mix for a 50-day expedition. Two super-heaping Mount Everest-shaped tablespoons of the mix go into each mug.

Because of its fat content, whole milk powder doesn't reconstitute well in boiling water, so first you have to add a small amount of cool or warm water to the powder in the mug and mix it into a thick slurry. Then add the boiling water on top of that.

The concoction won't suit everyone -- it's very rich. One ascetic friend stretched out the two-day sample I gave him over 10 days. But it comes close to the 50 discs of melted chocolate.

January 31

Icebreaker has become one of my clothing providers. I don't seek out a lot of sponsors, and the ones I do all make gear that I would buy retail if I had to. I'd rather pay the full price for something that actually works in extreme conditions than get an inferior item for free.

No one manufacturer makes gear that's perfect for all occasions, which is why my arctic kit has competing manufacturers' products. It includes clothing from The North Face, Patagonia, Outdoor Research, Icebreaker, Banff Designs and Chlorophylle. Some stuff, frankly, is pretty interchangeable; and every company has a couple of signature items that are just great.

Icebreaker clothing is warmer than synthetic stuff of comparable weight, and I'll be using it in colder conditions while continuing to rely on synthetics for spring expeditions. Around home, my favorite item is their Tech T Lite T-shirt. Anyone who likes T-shirts knows how quickly the neck on most of them becomes loose and floppy, relegating otherwise perfectly good T-shirts prematurely to the rag cabinet. But I've put a couple of solid months on these Icebreaker T's already and the neck is like new.

January 27

When I began doing expeditions in the mid-1980s, the most recherche equipment catalog was not the early Patagonia one, with its high-quality grunge look, but one put out by a quirky ex-NASA engineer named Jack Stephenson. He had a cottage business called Warmlite specializing in ultra-lightweight gear, and he was an early proponent of vapor barriers for winter use. What made the catalog so intriguing was that Stephenson and his family and friends modeled the gear buck naked, illustrating his company motto, "We can bear anything nature gives us." The text-heavy catalog showed wholesome New England girls with names like Billee, wearing his backpacks and nothing else. They seemed to have come fresh from a 1970s commune.

A nudist's equipment catalog sounds like an oxymoron, but the gear was very imaginative -- two-pound tents, vapor barrier shirts and a sleeping bag so good it became the one I've used on all my cold-weather expeditions. His son now runs the business, and you can still get the catalog here. The online pdf is a little toned down, but the print version may well be the original.

January 18

On April 3, I'm giving a seminar in Calgary on Top Ten Tips for Expedition Photographers, presented by The Camera Store. Here's the link.

January 16

In the FAQs at the bottom of this page, I talk briefly about the issue of getting sleds. Here's more detail: there are simpler solutions than spending $5,000 for an Acapulka.

My first sleds came from Nord Hus in Minnesota, and I learned recently that proprietor Erling Hegg, now 85, is still producing them. Good on him. For years, I used his six-foot sled, which holds up to a month of supplies comfortably. The sled costs $690 + shipping and can be ordered here. The only reason I moved away from his sleds is that I do a lot of 6 or 7-week expeditions, and the 6' sled is too small for that length of journey, while his 8' model, at 33 pounds, is unnecessarily beefy. My current 7' sled carries 50 days of supplies easily and weighs only 19 pounds.

Erling built a lightweight Kevlar sled for me once, but he wasn't used to working with that material and the gelcoat kept flaking off. Then a polar bear cracked the hull one night. I've stuck with fiberglass since then.

The major expense with sleds, besides the purchase cost, is flying them north. Because of their volume, they cost as much to ship to the Arctic as they do to purchase! So while some guys have a girl in every port, I have sleds in every port. It's more cost-effective to buy a new one for a trip to a different destination than to ship an old one south again from somewhere like Resolute.

FAQs

1. What sleeping bag do you use for winter arctic travel?

The Stephenson Triple Bag, with 20% overfill and their 2" open-cell foam pad. See warmlite.com. In 20 years I've never had a cold night, and I've accumulated about a year in it at -40 or colder. It's bulky - stuffed, it's about the size of a big green garbage bag full of leaves - but I can squash it down to a little bigger than a medicine ball with a custom-made compression stuff sack. Still, its bulk makes it more suitable for sled travel than winter backpacking or ski mountaineering.
It includes an integral vapor barrier liner that doesn't make you feel soggy but which works best when new. But its smartest feature is that it has no goose down on the bottom, just that slip-in foam pad. As one manufacturer admitted to me, goose down on the bottom of a winter bag is a design flaw, but people buy them, so they keep making them. Why on earth would you want to have down on the bottom of a bag, where it gets squished? Besides bulk, the Stephenson bag's only disadvantage are its microscopic zippers. Stephenson is a lightness junkie, but those zippers make it hard to close the unusual hood.  

European polar adventurers often use the Tempelfjorden bag from the Norwegian company Helsport. I have no experience with it but although it's a classical bag with down on the bottom, enough people have used it in extreme cold that it obviously works okay.

2. What tent do you use?

For years, I used a North Face VE-25. Recently I've switched to Hilleberg's Keron 3GT, which sets up faster and resists wind better. It's hard to get those third and fourth poles into a dome tent like the VE-25 during a gale, especially if you're traveling solo. The Keron is a little narrower for two big guys with winter bags, and like most tunnel tents it's not free-standing, so it needs secure anchors. But it's especially good in places where the wind can rip. And its vestibule is gigantic.

3. What boots do you use on sled trips?

Equipment choice depends a lot on personal style and abilities. My feet don't get very cold, and Steger mukluks, Expedition style, from mukluks.com are as warm as I've ever needed. Some travelers prefer big Sorel-type boots, but for me they're too heavy and unnecessarily warm. Since I prefer to walk, not ski, while hauling a sled, I need footwear that is as light as possible. Most of the time I'm sledding in Inuit sealskin kamiks that I buy in the Arctic. I have light nylon overboots made for them that add warmth in a wind. The kamiks are fine down to about -25º or -30ºC - in other words, from mid-April through May.

4. What about skis and bindings?

Fischer Europa 99s and Berwin bindings. I don't use kites - the eastern High Arctic is not windy enough: A couple of years ago, an ill-prepared expedition that imagined they were going to kite 1000s of kilometres in a couple of months got a rude awakening. It was the most slapstick arctic expedition since two guys from France decided to gallop a couple of glue horses around Cornwallis Island in 1990. In short, you don't need technical boots & bindings up there. They're overkill and they give you blisters.
       Berwins are made for shuffling. They're not great - one guy designed a superior style that lifts from the toe, like modern racing xc bindings, rather than under the ball of the boot like the Berwins. Unfortunately, they're not sold commercially. So Berwins are okay until a better model becomes available. I replace my Berwins every couple of expeditions and have never had a problem with breakage. They're available from Akers Ski in Maine.

5. Where do you get your sleds?

If you live in Norway, you have it made, because that's where the two main manufacturers, Acapulka and Fjellpulken, are located. Acapulka sleds are great, but some of them are the cost of a second-hand car -- a good second-hand car. Then there's the shipping from Europe. There are a few molds floating around North America, though, and I use one of them. It's not my mold, and I'm not sure how public it is, so I can't be more specific. But a fiberglass sled shell, with runners, costs me $600. I then have to custom-make my own cover, then pop-rivet it on the sled. Finished, the sled weighs 19 pounds, heavier than the primo Acapulkas. It's about seven feet long and holds enough for two months. The harness is pretty easy to make: a backpack waist belt worn backwards, its buckle replaced by two loops with 'biners, plus adjustable chest straps. You don't want a pulling belt that fastens in front, because that's where you want the padding.

6. Where do you get your custom sewing done?

Ninety percent of my gear is store-bought but about 10 percent is custom-sewn. There's usually someone in your area who can custom-sew outdoor gear. I even found somebody when I lived in Toronto. Custom work tends to be an aside for them: Usually their main business is warranty repairs or making outdoor clothing for local manufacturers.

7. I'm planning an arctic expedition. Can I ask you some questions?

I don't mind answering the odd question, but for more elaborate consultations, I have to charge.