At this time of year, many outdoors enthusiasts have new outdoor clothing and gear that they either received as gifts or bought for themselves at post-holiday sales. What a wonderful excuse to get outdoors and play!
The desire with anything new is to get right out there and try it. It’s natural, I think, to automatically assume that new stuff is going to be better than what you already had. Why else would you buy new? And since the new is obviously better than the old, there’s no need to worry. You can just jump right in at the same level you always do. Right?
Ummmm, maybe that isn’t such a good idea . . . . especially in the winter, which is a much harder test of clothing and equipment than the other three seasons. Equipment problems in the winter can, at best, be annoying. At worst, they can put you at real risk.
A simple example: Long time friends of ours, Sharon and Tom Callahan, got new snowshoes recently. They chose solid, moderately-priced models from Yukon Charlie for the trail-walking they do with their new puppy, Paddy. These shoes did very well in last year’s snowshoe test. We all went out together on New Year’s Eve Day for a short hike on the snow left after the post-Christmas blizzard.
The day was warm, the snow was soft and sticky. Tom, Marilyn and I didn’t have any problems but Sharon did. The sticky snow balled up in the claws of her snowshoes with every step she took. I can only surmise that she had the shoes near the heater in her car, and the aluminum claws glazed with ice when she set them in the snow. Once the sticking started, it was impossible to stop.
We’d chip it out with a trekking pole, but then it would happen again in a few steps. Because this was a short hike, it was an annoyance, not a real problem. The puppy tired out before Sharon did. But if we’d been trying to hike many miles to reach a destination, this would have been a major obstacle. It might even have forced us to cut the trip short. Sharon learned an easy lesson. That’s the way it should be done.
This sticking problem is more common with aluminum cleats than steel, by the way. It’s easily prevented by spraying the claw area with silicone every once in a while, and making sure the shoes are cold before they are placed in the snow.
Nobody had any troubles with their snowshoe bindings on this trek. Always try things like new snowshoes out in the comfort of your home before you even think of taking them outdoors in winter. Always. Don’t ever rely on other people’s recommendations without testing something yourself. Don’t even assume you’ve read the directions correctly. (You DID read the directions, didn’t you?) Don’t assume that putting something together once in the warmth of your living room means it will go together as easily and work as smoothly with cold hands. You may be lucky and have everything go right. Or not.
Even with stuff you’ve tried at home, start out easy with it. Short day trips with new gear are fun. Longer trips sometimes not so much. The potential seriousness of problems increases exponentially with time and distance.
You want to be able to escape easily if something goes really wrong. Never be ashamed to retreat if you have to. New gear is sometimes wonderful right out of the box, but sometimes you have to learn its quirks, and sometimes, it’s an utter failure. Find out before you have to rely on it.
Murphy Goes Camping
A few days later, my buddy David and I were out testing a bunch of new winter camping gear prior to our Lightweight Winter Camping Seminar. Little did we know that a prominent legal theorist named Murphy was tagging along with us. His buddy, O’Toole may have been along, too. But, following our own advice, we only hiked a mile from the road before setting camp. So Murphy had minimal chance to do harm.
I’d set up the brand new tipi and woodstove from Titanium Goat in the backyard and it had seemed to performed well. David had fired off two new white gas stoves, one from Primus, the other from MSR, that we wanted to try for cooking. He and I each had a new pair of boots worn only around the house; I was trying a new sleeping bag from a proven manufacturer that I hadn’t even unpacked, and a new kind of traction cleats. David had new trekking poles designed for snowshoeing.
You get the picture . . .
The boots were comfortable, the cleats worked fine and the tipi went up easily and solidly and had plenty of room.
The new sleeping bag, however, turned out to be a disaster. It was much shorter than advertised — way too short for me. The footbox was too small for my feet. The hood and draft collar were poorly designed. Fortunately the bag kept me warm all night, even if I couldn’t stretch out comfortably. That’s the last time I’ll ever take someone else’s word on a sleeping bag.
Beyond that, I can’t even begin to list all the little things that went wrong on this trip. The internal cam lock on one of David’s poles failed. Thanks to various combinations of operator error and long learning curves, we had problems with all three stoves. We got dinner heated — barely; got tea heated in the morning — barely. Then we decided to skip breakfast before the short walk out . . . which we couldn’t have done if we’d camped farther from the road. That easy mile out was the perfect way to work up an appetite for the local diner’s breakfast special.
Because it was a one night trip, none of these problems really mattered. We had fun anyway.
Now the sleeping bag and trekking poles have been returned, and we’ve figured out what had gone wrong with the stoves (learning curve; they both work perfectly when set up correctly). The next trip should go much more smoothly. But we’re still going to give everything one more easy, close-to-the-road try out before we rely on it for a real expedition.
That’s the way new gear should be approached, especially in winter. Try it out before you have to rely on it. Then try it again. Make absolutely sure it fits you, that it performs as promised, that you can operate it in the dark with gloves on. The winter wilderness is no place for surprises. The more you try that new gear before you’re in the woods, the more fun you’ll have!