platy – HikeLighter.Com

Greetings Hikers,

How to carry water while hiking… this is one of those issues that very much falls into the HYOH factor, and I have never been a huge advocate for one specific method over another.

When I first started hiking I used the Everyday CamelBak bottles. Those got replaced with the CamelBak 70oz Antidote Reservoir which got replaced with the Platypus Big Zip 3 liter, which got replaced with a Hydrapak 70-Ounce Reservoir and so on and so forth. I even bought myself a Camelbak HydroBak 50 oz Hydration Pack somewhere along the way. One of the few bags I never did buy was the MSR Dromedary Bag.

When I got close to reaching the SUL weight I knew that none of those were going to be able to keep being used so I made the switch over to using water bottles such as Gatorade, than to the Smart Water bottles which were a bit lighter and proved to be durable enough. This meant that not only did I get to reduce the weight of using a reservoir but I also no longer needed to weight of the reservoir sleeves within backpacks. (extra perk: no longer needing a backpack with a hole in it to push your tube through, thereby making it just a weebit more water resistant)

Through a set of events I never saw coming and I did not realize until after it had all happened, I am now back to using bags to carry my water in… Continue reading “Evernew “Water Carry” Bags” →

I have to be honest to my readers… this whole “No Gear For 2012” is just soooo not going to happen for me! I do not want to get into whether it is a good thing or a bad thing – that is something only each of us as hikers can answer. I sort of think it is great that hikers are out there trying to commit themselves to it, but for me, it is just never going to happen.

With the exception of a few pieces of cold weather gear I could take my existing hiking gear setups and do almost any hike anywhere in the world. But the thing is, I just love checking out new gear and I so love supporting the outdoor cottage gear companies it would be hard for me. Even though I already have all the gear I could possible need, there are a few items out there that I still really want to buy. Some of them to make my hiking life better, some of them to simply try them and see if I like them enough to use, some of them to see how they perform against existing gear that I already have, and some of them because they are just down-right awesome looking. Continue reading “Yes-Gear For 2012!” →