Four day trip, weather came in on the second afternoon. Wind picked up, cloud dropped, and the forecast on my phone changed from unsettled to something worse. I stood there for twenty minutes genuinely unable to decide.…
Indoors, lead routes have clips roughly every couple of metres. Outdoors on sport routes the spacing is often noticeably wider, sometimes three metres or more between bolts. This seems backwards to me. Falling in a gym…
Rural place, no mains water, a well for drinking and a pit toilet in a small hut. Every summer the hut fills with flies, to the point where using it means dozens of them going for your face. I have tried the obvious…
Our group had a disagreement at the crag today. A friend climbed a route without a rope that everybody else was climbing on a top rope. Another party objected, fairly strongly. My own position is uncomfortable. I was…
Open any river on a mapping app and there is nothing indicating direction. The line is just a line. For a big river I might happen to know which end reaches the sea, but for a tributary in unfamiliar country I have no…
Broken in boots, about 120 miles on them. Every hike past six miles I get a hot spot on the right heel that turns into a blister if I ignore it, and the left foot is perfectly fine. Same sock on both feet, laced the…
Two nights out last weekend, low was 38F by my thermometer, and I was cold enough by 3am that I sat up and put on my puffy inside the quilt. It's a 20F rated 850fp quilt, less than a year old, stored uncompressed in the…
Started the trip filtering a litre in about ninety seconds, by day four it was taking five or six minutes and my hands were cramping. I backflushed with the syringe every evening with filtered water. The sources were…
Five nights in the Cascades in September, forecast is the usual mix of drizzle and one proper rain day. My current double wall tent is 1.6kg and it's the biggest single item in my pack. A tarp and bivy setup gets me to…
Three trips now and the first night is always awful. I lie there hearing everything, doze off around 2am, and feel wrecked on day two. Second and third nights I sleep fine. Pad is comfortable, quilt is warm enough, I'm…