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Lighten Your Load

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LIGHTEN YOUR LOAD, Part 1 of 8 Hi everyone. I hope you are all well. As many of you know, each year I host at least one “Lighten Your Load” meeting in person to help new and existing members of our group find ways to make their hiking experiences more enjoyable by giving pack weight reduction tips. Since we are unable to do that because of our current situation I’m using this downtime to post some information about it here. I'll approach this over eight posts, focusing on principles and specific areas of your packed gear such as cooking/hydration, sleep system, clothing, miscellaneous items, etc. Feel free to ask as many questions as you would like. Your questions will fill in blanks about things I may forget to address and will undoubtedly help someone else, so please don’t be shy. First things first: Why would you want to lighten your pack weight? There are many reasons but here are some major ones: to increase your enjoyment, to reduce pain in your back, legs and feet, to allo
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Jeep Galley Build

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It has taken about two leisurely weeks to build Roscoe's galley so far.  I'm basically finished with the big stuff and now just need to get a second coat of polyurethane on it and secure it down in the back of the Jeep. What problem does this solve?  No real problem, just one step toward a nicer way to car camp and explore and have fun while minimizing in-camp set up time. This post is about the galley system I have built.  It's not an original system...I have basically ripped off the ideas of several I have seen online and built my own to suit our needs.  You can buy them if you want but they cost about $2500 and I say no to that, so I built one for $425.  Sure, it's probably not going to last as long as a professionally built one, and it's a lot heavier, and the drawers will surely sag and bust prematurely and the entire unit will most likely become a deadly projectile in a high speed collision, but $1600 in savings and the satisfaction of a wood-working job d
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Rhino on the Roof

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Winter is for working and making $ for summer adventures but my current job is only giving me 30-33 hours a week so I find myself with more free cold-weather time than I care for.  My current job pays by the hour and is supposed to be full time but it turns out it's really not.  Sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes not so much.   I've got a kitchen staff of three people who need to pay their bills.  They're young and poor and mostly hard workers so I often leave work early to give them the hours I would use up if I was there. I'm essentially a low-rent Oscar Schindler. I've got some passive income so I can handle skimpier-than-I'd-like paychecks for a little while. Skimpy paychecks--that's not so good.  On the other hand, my employer is cool with giving me July off to hike the Sierra Nevada, so that's great! Balance.  Try to find it when you can. So with all this time I got Roscoe's roof rack installed.  Rhino Rack Pioneer syste
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Vehicular Blogicide

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Jeep build update: I bought Roscoe new in 2011.  It's a Jeep Wrangler JKU Sport. The "U" stands for Unlimited and means nothing more than the 4-door model. I negotiated a hard top and a soft top during the original purchase of Roscoe but sold the hard top two years later for lack of storage room at the house.  I will soon install a roof rack and roof top tent, but in order to do that you have to either install one of those external racks that look like they are caging the Jeep or get one of two available systems out there that connect internally, to the roll bars, which require a hard top to be in place.  I don't mind the cage look but I am skeptical of the rattling they will invariably develop at some point so I re-bought a used hard top a few months ago (exactly the same style and condition as the one I sold in 2013) for $200 more than what I sold it for.  The Rhino-Rack backbone system roof rack is what I'll be installing.  Example of external rack cage
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