From The Trail
For years the obvious solution for ultralight hikers was to make the simplest, lightest food available: instant noodles. But with the introduction of more Mediterranean foods to European and American diets, couscous is taking over as one of the most popular ultralight foods.
For me personally, couscous always made more sense than noodles: I come from a Moroccan family where couscous is truly a staple, not just an addition. I'm pretty sure that as a kid, I had more couscous than rice, but that is beside the point; couscous is an excellent meal, specifically ultralight backpacking food.
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For me personally, couscous always made more sense than noodles: I come from a Moroccan family where couscous is truly a staple, not just an addition. I'm pretty sure that as a kid, I had more couscous than rice, but that is beside the point; couscous is an excellent meal, specifically ultralight backpacking food.
With the thru-hiking season around the corner and rain and snow still very much part of the PCT landscape, the repeated question around water filtering comes up. When you are out in the middle of nowhere, in the backcountry, getting water from a stream, do you really need to filter that water?
To jump to the conclusion: yes, you need to filter water on the PCT.
We often hear how much people love their Vecto and how it has made water collection so much simpler for them. Lately, though, we have seen a number of conversations that look something like this:
"I have a Sawyer bag/Smartwater bottle water and know that I will need something to scoop water with.... I don't really want to buy a Vecto bag now. What do you use to scoop water?"
Before the 3L Vecto was available to the public, Nick Ferry was invited to give it a try. He rigged up two innovative methods of using the 3L Vecto during his two testing trips. One was to turn his 3L Vecto into a shower, the other was to use a trowel to guide water from a very low stream into the wide-mouth opening.
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Getting into four season gear can be pricey: warmer sleeping system, more complicated layering, new footwear solutions, etc. In reality, if you have a solid three season system, getting to four seasons (for snow camping) doesn't have to cost a fortune or be very complicated.
Let's break this down into steps.
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Let's break this down into steps.