stg-sectionhikercom-buttons.kinsta.cloud Backpacking Gear Reviews and FAQs

Cooking with wood gas If you’ve always wanted a jet engine to cook marshmallows with, this baby might be for you. What this is about? It is about a “batch-loaded, inverted down-draft gassifier”. Also known as a wood gas stove, it works with one charge of fuel at a time to produce a hot, smokeless fire. I designed this. It …

Slides, short for landslides, are common landscape features in the White Mountains and Adirondacks. These landslips occur when heavy rainfall weakens the soil on higher angle slopes, letting loose a slurry of water, mud, and boulders, that barrel down the hill like a derailed freight train destroying everything in its path. Slides can be quite dangerous to hike over because …

Many outdoors men and women measure distance in the backcountry by using a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. GPS receivers are reasonably accurate, real time, and provide distance traveled and distance to a destination. But what does the hiker do if they don’t have a receiver, the GPS fails or batteries die? A proven method for estimating distance is known …

The world became alarmingly smaller when I discovered I had cell phone service in Maine’s 100 Mile Wilderness. You have mail!  I immediately regretted turning my phone on. That was two summers ago. When I’d first hiked this remote section of the Appalachian Trail a few years earlier, I’d been warned not to expect any cell phone service by the locals, …