adventure gear

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Inflatable Summer

December 7 of 31 December-ish posts

Following my (un)inflatable winter, when last spring finally rolled around I was able to unpack my inflatable kayak from it’s box, spread it out on my small backyard lawn, and figure out how to work this fabulous new toy that had spent the winter taunting me from my basement storage room.

What excited you most in 2022?

We took the new kayak out multiple times over the spring and summer.

Our inaugural trip was a twelve klick journey down part of the river that winds through the middle of our city, the dog perched with her paws on the edge of the craft and all of us watching the world drift by as we slowly paddled downstream to where we’d left our truck.

The rest of the season had us carting the gear around the province in the back of our car wherever else we found ourselves travelling. To the lake with friends where the boat rarely left the water for the entire day as everyone took turns, or out to the mountains for a chilly traverse of an expansive reservoir, we pumped, paddled, and deflated our new vessel on many of our little local adventures.

Enjoy some photos I didn’t get around to posting earlier this year.

Our not-so-new-anymore kayak is all dried and folded up for the winter, now, but I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of it next year again.

Posted on episode 238

(Un)inflatable Winter

At the risk of writing a (slightly) political article alluding to some opinions about supply chains and the state of the modern world, I wanted to share what (finally) arrived on my doorstep yesterday.

A box.

In fact, it was a large box, and a box I’d ordered … in June.

In June, we were undergoing record heat, the days were long, and ahead of us were all sorts of free summer weekends filled with plans and potential for getaways to the mountains or nearby lakes or anywhere our pandemic lockdown selves could reach in a car without crossing borders.

We optimistically ordered an inflatable kayak. And not just any old blow-up boat. We did some research, trialed some rentals, talked to people who know about these things, and ultimately invested in a fairly mid-to-high-end kayak made of sturdy materials and meant for real, practical outings.

It never shipped.

We received a notice about it being low in stock, then out of stock, then anticipated back in stock any day, and then a simple we’ll update you about your order when we have more information.

After a month of waiting we cautiously ordered a second (much cheaper) inflatable kayak … if only because we had lodged it into our hearts that we wanted to get out on the water in one form or another. Summer was short. Summer is always short. Had the first one shipped in the meanwhile we would return the second. Or, alternatively, keep it for the kid (there are three of us and a dog, after all.) But it seemed like summer was slipping away while we waiting for an invisible manufacturing or shipping problem to resolve itself.

The replacement arrived quickly, and so July and August were peppered with outings in our bright yellow inflatable dinghy-come-kayak, more of an oblong boat or a canoe-shaped raft toy than a proper adventure tool.

No word on the first kayak.

We went out once in September but already the weather was starting to cool and the risk of falling in the water and chilling too much was not sitting well with my practical sensibilities on the noob kayaker front.

Still, no original kayak arrived.

October came and dwindled. On some of my morning runs I noted that the creeks had a layer of ice on them already as the overnight temperatures consistently dipped into the sub-zero freezing range. I packed up the big yellow kayak into our winter storage space and resigned myself to start thinking about snowier sports.

Then on Halloween, a shipping notice arrived in my email, and a few days later a big cardboard box was dropped off on the front step.

The original kayak had arrived.

Just in time for winter.

Just in time to drop it into my storage space … and dream about next year’s kayaking adventures.

Posted on episode 177

Toys, Tackle and Fish Stories

Another story thread I may have seemed to have dropped is that of my slowly simmering plans to do a little fishing this summer.

Back in my previous Gone Fishin’ post back in March I was revelling in the notion of the snow melting soon so that my brand new fishing permit and soon-to-be-mended rod would see some open water action.

Alas, things didn’t exactly work out as well as I’d hoped.

Of Old Equipment

The last time I’d used my fishing rod was a couple years ago and when I’d pulled it out of storage to evaluate it’s condition I had been quckly reminded that the tip had shattered and snapped off. Back in my last post I’d said that I’d ordered some replacement tips and was planning to fix it.

Not so quick.

The tips arrived and were fine, but the problem wasn’t so much the quality of new parts rather that the old rod was just generally brittle.

That particular rod had been equipment my folks had bought me back when I was just barely a teenager. Best case scenario, I was trying to repair a thirty-year-old fishing rod that was showing it’s age. And it turns out I was right. My attempt to replace the end was all but futile and the rod wasn’t up for even the stress of the repair, let alone some casting and (hopefully) catching.

Of New Equipment

Plan B turned into a research effort and eventually a shopping trip.

I won’t put too many details here because what I finally ended up buying (just this afternoon, in fact) was a compromise between quality and price, in that somewhere around the one hundred and fifty dollar mark I got myself a reasonably middle of the road setup that will let me toss a line out into the water a few times per year but not invest too much into a new rig.

It seems as though fishing equipment follows a similar rule as my rule for other sporting gear: for every hundred bucks you spend on something, you should spend roughly one hour per week using it. In other words, as I once told my university roomate, if you’re gonna spend two thousand dollars on a new bike, I would hope you spend about twenty hours per week with your feet on the pedals. (He didn’t.) Likewise, now that I’ve spent a hundred and fifty bucks on a new fishing rod, I should try and put it out into the water for an hour or two every week. (I’ll try.)

Have strung my new rod, I also had a long, hard look at my tackle box. That was deeply lacking as well. The remains of a distant-past spent along the river bank resulted in barely a half-dozen servicable lures and spoons, and at some point before I do any serious casting I’m going to need to refresh my collection of fishing hooks.

So, I’ll write it one more time before I actually work up the motivation to drive down towards the river and find a bit of sandbar to fish from: get ready summer, I’m going fishing… soon.

Posted on

Gear: Collapsible Cookware by Sea to Summit

This week in my Thursday Tuck & Tech post (where I’m making an inventory of the gear I use or would like to add to my collection) I’m looking at some of my essentially un-cast iron cookware.

…because apparently cast iron is too heavy to haul up onto a mountain on a four day backpacking trip.

Yet, we still gots-to-cook.

An elaborate backpacking camp stove and fuel bottle is set up on small table.

When I was in the Scouts in my youth our troop spent many weekends in the woods. Looking back we ate incredibly simply: oatmeal, sandwiches, hot dogs, and other things that could be boiled or suspended from a stick over a fire.

We had some go-to cookware that was worn and battered by years of use. It was a nesting-doll set of thin steel pots and pans that all wrapped up neatly into a pack a little smaller than a football, tucked into a mesh bag, and rattled around from the backs our packs as we hiked in and out. They were light(ish) and a simple way to get things cooked outdoors.

So, naturally, when I moved out and started buying my own camping gear, decades ago now, one of the first things added to my collection was that identical set of steel pots and pans. You go with what you know. And they followed me up more than one mountain in my twenties.

But they were pretty simple and underwhelming as far as modern backpacking technology.

We’ve since ramped up our adventure gear game and invested in a collection of much lighter, much more compact cooking pot… and matching cups, bowls, plates, and a pretty slick collapsible coffee strainer (which I’ll likely be writing about at a later date!)

This set has followed us up on a couple of long multi-day hikes. The pandemic put a cramp on our plans for 2020, but in the couple years since we built this collection I’ve had enough practice with it to give an honest evaluation.

The silicon design has a weight that is competitive with any metal pan, and while they’re not cheap, they’re not titanium-expensive either.

Our firefly stove was able to boil up a pot of cold filtered stream water in less than ten minutes (good heat retention!) though with the silicon sides not being flame friendly, I couldn’t run the stove at full blast else risk some side flames creeping up past the metal bottom plate.

One of the negatives is that it would have been nice to pick these up as a complete set instead of piece-by-piecing our set together (from three different camping shops.) Now that our set is relatively complete that was really a small thing that I won’t need to do again. I write that only because we opted not to buy the frying pan (which I assume would likely have been part of said set) as our go-to meals on multi-day hikes tend to be rehydrated food. A pot of boiled water and some bowls serve for nearly all our adventure meals. Yet, a reliable frying pan could probably inspire some backpacking-friendly ideas in those meal plans… especially for the cast iron guy.

Overall, this set can’t compare to camping with a cast iron dutch oven, but my back routinely thanks me for the lighter approach to our adventure cooking.