Sunday 31 July 2011

Looking At Kit (3)

Blaithwaite has been exceptionally busy over the last 10 days or so, our biggest group of the year left on Saturday after a week of wall to wall sunshine (it was such a good week on so many levels) & following a busy change over day we have three buildings in use again this week with the camp field due to fill up as the week goes on.

I've not had any time to get out recently but with Kay away to New Wine today I've done some geeking about with kit again. The headline is that without too much loss of functionality I've got my standard group day weight down from 6950g to 5590g (20%). I've also contrived to lose 5kg in body weight recently which I don't think is a bad result. There is a bit of an explanation, at least about the kit below.

First thing is I bought a new rucsac, after years of good service from an OMM Adventure Light 20 which I used on extended fell runs ( eg. Old Crown Round); as a small day pack & when travelling on hols. I didn't experience any hint whatsoever of the sometimes mentioned  lack of durability -so I opted for the OMM Classic 32.
I reckon that it will:
- get everything in thats needed for a day for myself & a group (could easily fit a rope on top of everything else)
- definitely save me at least 190g in weight depending on how I use it
- possibly double as an overnight lightweight camping bag subject to me makng a few alterations to how I presently camp (the bag is clearly the choice of a lot of mountain marathon runners)



Item

weight



31/07/11




First aid (group)

420
Spare Food

60
Emergency Shelter (group)

650
Survival Bag

440
Crab & Sling

300
GPS

240
Spare Compass

0
Spare torch

120
Spare group clothes

230
Whistle

0








Rucsac

700
Poles

640
Silva 4 Compass

60
Map

260
Head Torch

210
North Face Apex Wind Shirt

0
Knife

120
Montane Litespeed H20 Jkt

220
Montane Atomic Overtrousers

260








Camera + bag + batteries

660















5590

The other main weight saving changes are:
- no whistle (one built in to the chest strap)
- no spare compass (the regular Silva 4 and a GPS sufficient?)
- no Apex wind shirt (just bought a new Montane Sabretooth soft shell so will test for a while the combination of this / thin fleece under it / Montane Litespeed H20 as a clothing combination)

So total kit now looks like this:

From top left: gloves; first aid kit & spare food (red bag); camera / batteries (Fuji Finepix S2000 HD in green bag); buff; Head torch & spare; Montane Litespeed H2O; Montane Atomic Overtrousers; penknife; wooly hat; GPS; long sling + crab
Survival bag; group shelter & spare group clothing (light weight waterproof / windproof; mittens; fleece hat).
Not shown in photos are my trekking poles & a map

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