care and feeding of graduate students (life as a professor)

Last weekend, I went with the scouts to pine mountain.  We did a loop I’d done before . I expected about a twelve mile loop based on an old GPS track I’d made. The new GPS gave 10.1!  We stayed at the new Jenkins Spring campsite which was excellent.  One the chief volunteers in the Pine Mountain Trail association came by and said that there were a lot of Eagle projects to be done on the trail (which is entirely built and maintained with volunteer labor).

What’s going on?

The new GPS uses both the Russian and US satellite systems as well as having a more sensitive antenna and thus simply more satellites.  Therefore the distances are more accurate – with less wobble. Also the two systems have different and less correlated systematic errors so that the estimated precision is more accurate with the combination than with either. Thus the ruler used to measure the distance was smaller than before.

On the surface this is sort of an “anti-fractal”. It’s well known, or at least should be, that as rulers get smaller the distances measured gets larger. One simply measures more of the little in and outs on the curve and hence arrives at a longer distance. With the GPS estimates, which depend on point measurements, the idea is a little different. Here there is a swarm of (we can pretend in the limit of large numbers) normally distributed points drawn around a true track. Hence the calculated distance includes the sum of a bunch of random “wobble vectors”. The spread of the wobble is smaller with the new system and so the distance is more accurate. So the fractal measure in this case is actually in the statistics of the sampling and not the curve being measured.

I’ve begun to think about what light-weight backpacking means.  This is partially because I’ve been helping to teach scouts about it, and partially to help myself understand what is special about it.  I’ve never been an especially ultra-light sort of backpacker – usually due to what I call “leader tax”, but have used many of the techniques and equipment quite successfully.

It occurs to me that light-weight is not the issue, in reality, but that it is a by-product of a different design process. Low-complexity implies that the kinds and numbers of things you bring are small.  If you bring fewer things then you automatically have lighter weight.  (well at least if you are vaguely careful.  One dutch oven is a highly multi-purpose item, but no one would ever consider one a part of light-weight backpacking (even if they were made in titanium)).

A good example that comes to my mind is the guy I teach backpacking with to scout leaders.  He’s a great guy, but a conventional backpacker.  His tent is light, only 3 lbs or so, has 2 layers, a complex pole system and so has a raw parts count of 14-15.  While he may be able to get away with leaving a few parts  behind, most of those are critical parts.  I use a trailstar or a luna solo (depending on whether I want space or need to worry about bugs).  So my parts count, including hiking sticks, is 7-8.  Here in the southeastern United States, my critical parts count is one (the tarp) as everything else can be improvised.  He carries very light weight camp shoes. I just loosen my hiking boots.  He has a neat stacking plastic bowl and lightweight cutlery.  I use the same titanium pot and plastic spoon to cook and eat. He has a crazy creek chair for his pad (2 parts). I have a small pad from my pack (1 part).  However we both carry very similar first aid kits because it’s hard to skimp on those.

The point behind this is that we’re both very comfortable in the woods.  I just bring fewer things, and therefore carry less, have a lighter footprint, and have fewer things to lose.

I was recently reading about vapour barriers (Andrew Skurka’s site and Section hiker). It sounded impressive.  The gear is not very expensive from Stevenson’s Warmlite (possibly the only R-rated outdoor gear catalogue in the world), so I ordered a shirt, gloves and socks. I’m nominally an XL, but L would probably fit better.

It wasn’t that cold over the weekend with temperatures into the low thirties, but I gave it a try. What seems to work is a wicking shirt like a polypro top, followed by a vapour barrier layer and then insulation.  It was surprisingly warm with even a thin outer layer.  Stevenson’s says it adds 15 degrees F when sealed up, and this seems realistic.

This got me thinking about cheaper ways to test out vapour barriers – I could have just worn my frogg toggs underneath and seen how that worked.  But then what would I have done for rain (if it rained?). I’m tempted to try using a bivy sack inside of a sleeping bag (well sleeping quilt) to see if that works before finding a real vapor barrier liner.

My trekking poles are feeling their age. They’re twist-locking springy poles from REI and have (as long as I periodically clean the mechanism) served me reliably for 4 years or so (and something like 400 miles of backpacking or walking). However one pole received a slight bend at Philmont, trying to hoick down a bear bag line, and it has gradually increased to where it interferes with opening and locking. (It took more than a few more miles to happen – so the pole worked very well).

So it is time to replace them.

I’d read good things about some of the relatively cheap poles found at places like W******t and C****o. So I took a look. They looked the part and were about 1/4 the cost of an REI set. The locking mechanism felt a bit sloppy – so I read the warnings on the package. There was a warning in slightly larger than normal fine print – these poles should not be expected to hold your entire weight. In other words, they look the part, but aren’t likely to be reliable. It really is important that the poles hold most if not all of your weight, at least transiently, because you will put a lot of load on them on the downhills.

Disappointed, I looked at some of the other gear. The 48-cent lexan spoons were good value, and I like their inexpensive water-resistant bags, but there were other traps for the unwary. Water filters that “improved the taste”, but didn’t filter microbes. Water purification pills that were not particularly effective. Steel tent pegs, heavy tarps and inadequate tents. (on the other hand if you know what you’re doing these can form the basis for re-engineered gear).

So it is critical to look carefully at the gear – sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it isn’t.

Based on a review from section hiker, I wanted to test out the olicamp heat exchanger pot. While I’ve found esbit stoves to be the lightest for a solo weekend, they just won’t work as well for a group. In my hands alcohol stoves have been too touchy, and white gas – while very good – is a bit complex and heavy. I’ve never been keen on canister gas as the canisters are a pain when empty and the stoves I’ve seen have been, to put it politely, rubbish.

I was wrong.

The combination of an olicamp heat exchanger pot with an MSR microrocket worked extremely well. It took about two minutes to boil 3/4 of a liter of water for dinner – on the trail. It took less than a minute for smaller amounts for tea. Everything folds up and can fit into the pot. (though I did wrap the stove in a bandanna rather than the case MSR supplies).

The pot itself is not particularly expensive (about $20 from Amazon), nor is the stove. There are less expensive stoves than the MSR one that have similar heat outputs, but I needed a stove and it was what REI had.

This system is robust enough to be useful for scouts and is safer and lighter than white gas.

Last weekend I helped lead a backpacking trip for scouts from my son’s and my new troop (which is much better run than the old one – but that is the subject of a different post). This troop, being huge, splits up into patrol-based or crew-based activities occasionally and this was one of them.

The younger scouts and most of the adults base camped at the chief ladiga campground which sits astride the intersection of the chief ladiga bike trail and the pinhoti trail in north east alabama. Another crew (mostly the Moose patrol) went backpacking on the pinhoti.

We walked just about 6 miles (5.92 by the GPS) to a campsite by the Terrapin creek flood control lake. There is a big field for camping there – so that several crews could camp at once. Fortunately, since we had a scout injure himself with a knife, there is good road access in an emergency.

It is not an insignificant climb as is shown in the profile.

This hike is a good simalcrum of the trails in Philmont, although it is generally less rocky and a bit more of a single track. There is a fair bit of poison ivy and poison oak so some care is needed – though I wore shorts and didn’t get any so it isn’t too bad. There are a couple of places to pump water.

There were no bears, despite seeing plenty of “sign”, but we did see a yearling timber rattler perched on a small hickory.

I’ve posted the occasional trail map on this blog. The paths were determined with a Garmin GP60csx, which is a fairly nice unit. However, it doesn’t come – in the US – with baseline maps for Europe or the UK. The maps are available, for a price, but the price is comparable to buying a new unit.

So it was time to retire the venerable old GPS and try a new one. The Etrex 20 is about 1/2 the weight (a significant savings) and uses the new Russian Glonass system as well as the US GPS satellites. This dramatically improves the accuracy as the errors in the two systems are uncorrelated – thus allowing accuracies of about 10 ft. To put this in context, the 10 year old etrex units could put you on one side of a football field or soccer pitch, the 5 year old 60csx could place you to about 15-20 meters, and this does about 3 meter precision. Not bad. The sensitivity is much improved as is the accuracy of the estimated track distances. (GPS units tend to creep up in distance due to shifts in estimated positions – so even standing still – you can add mileage).

That’s fine, but what is really exciting is that the Etrex actually can be used with linux! Not using Garmin software, mind you, and not directly, but in a really useful way none the less. When plugged into a USB port the unit acts like a mass storage device and the garmin/gpx directory contains the tracks you’ve saved. I suspect, but haven’t yet tried it, that you can put a track there as well. There are some files that contain the current position, but I’m not sure that it will update in real time.

The tracks can be read from the unit, and then displayed in a mapping program like Google Earth or FoxtrotGPS. This is amazing – now I don’t need a windows machine with my GPS!

A glock 17/22 (22 caliber conversion) with a holster and 10 rounds of 22lr weighs 753 grams. (the 9mm version would be about 200 grams heavier)

My crew-sized first aid kit, which has everything needed to stabilize some fairly severe injuries (though not gunshots) and treat minor injuries for a couple of weeks, weighs 506 grams.

So which is it that I should carry in the backcountry?

The BBC had an article about the benefits of walking for depression. More evidence, if any were needed, that getting outside is good for you.

I’ve had a chance to play with a scanner – to save some of our old slides and negatives so that they can survive the digital transition.

The Epson v600 photo scanner is supported under Linux and the drivers/programs load easily.  I found xsane to be easier to use that the Image scan program that comes with the drivers, but that is a matter of personal choice.

What is fascinating is the quality of the scanning.  Color slides worked reasonably well, but the quality of the black and white was impressive (even as a 256 level scan). Almost makes it worth using film again.

Since I write about outdoor gear more than a little bit, this shows what it looked like in the 1970’s.

This picture of one or my friends on a spring break scout trip (sort of what venturers do today) shows what we looked like.

We did about 50 miles in a week (Penmar to Mt Holly Springs). Less than I’d do today, but not bad given the gear and our experience. None of the packs were the huge conventional “backpacking packs”, and we were glad of the shelters as it snowed. (you can pack 10 people into an “5 person” shelter).