Gear Freak

menu_book picture_as_pdf book Tim Macartney-Snape Gear Australia

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I used to chuckle when people went to extraordinary lengths to lighten their packs for an excursion into the wild, such as shortening toothbrush handles, cutting matchsticks in half and drilling out their spoon handles. Why sweat the small stuff I would think, what’s a gram here or there?

Gear Freak

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Now that I’m older and wiser, I’m a lot more conscious of the discomfort of a heavy load and notice the insidious downstream repercussions of a day over-burdened by having lugged a heavy load, so I have more sympathy for the gram shaver. I even try harder to lighten my own burden because, yes, heavy stuff does tire you more - fancy that!

But to be fair to my younger, gung-ho self, there are many things you can do to lighten your load before having to resort to cutting your toothbrush down to an impractical length.

The most obvious thing of course is to more ruthlessly cull what you take, which is more easily said than done because while less is

often more in terms of the experience you’ll get, sooner rather than later, by leaving things out, you will be sacrificing comfort and perhaps safety.

Musings on Outdoor Gear

Tim Macartney-Snape

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But counter-intuitively, the most effective thing you can do today is go out and buy more stuff! By systematically replacing all that old, heavy, uncomfortable stuff with new, better stuff you will be doing yourself a favour. This will of course lead to more agonising, like “Do I really need that really cool looking piece of gear?” The truth is that in almost every way, gear is better than it used to be.

Any bit of gear that I would take now is lighter, more comfortable or functional and mostly better looking.

Better looking?!

Well yeah, given a choice between a thing of beauty and an ugly alternative why choose the ugly? Form does follow function and it’s generally true that the more perfectly an object performs its intended function the more aesthetic it will look and the more pleasurable it will be to use. This is also true because of the opposite – if a piece looks good it’s an indication that it had plenty of attention devoted to its design. All designers aspire to a point in the design process where function and aesthetics meet in a sweet spot approaching perfection.

For example, take something simple like the Sea to Summit alpha series spoon. The hard anodised alloy-tumbled body isn’t chrome shiny but it’s easy on the eye, smooth all round for easy use and cleaning, with a curve at the business end perfectly matching the inside wall of the Delta series bowl or plate. The holes in the handle are hex shaped to perform adequately as 3, 4 and 5 mm ring

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Tim is a co-founder and part owner of the Aussie outdoor adventure gear brand Sea to Summit, named after his second climb of Everest, which he climbed without bottled oxygen or Sherpa assistance, from sea level in 1990.

spanners. Consequently, it’s a simple tool that’s a delight to use, especially if you’re hungry or if your stove jet needs cleaning! So as a general rule, aesthetics in an original product are a good indication of quality. Occasionally, imitations can be as good as the original product but it is rare for a copy of a premium product to be as good as the original because the temptation to cut corners with cheaper materials is so hard to resist.

Most people aren’t going to go out and replace all their gear in one hit, but having lighter, better performing gear is probably a more compelling reason to buy a new piece than because their old piece wore out.

When I started out as a teenage bushwalker, the closed cell foam pad was the latest innovation for those sensible enough to avoid sleeping directly on the ground, having recently replaced felt, which was usually made from compressed, matted wool and fur. But my pack was made of steel and canvas, my tent was of a lighter cotton, as was the shell of my “down” (feather) sleeping bag and my clothes were of cotton and wool. Down and wool are still around but in more refined “premium” forms, while for everything else, synthetics and high-tech alloys rule.

Once just an irritation in its oxide form because it always ended up inside your volleys, silicon has turned indispensable. In integrated circuitry form it has transformed the night with LED lighting, brought safer communication with satellite beacons, made navigation easier with

GPS devices (always take a compass as a back-up and the knowledge to use it) and delivered the convenience of digital cameras. As a polymer, silicon has spawned a range of collapsible pots and crockery for compact packing, and as a coating to super-fine filaments of nylon it has brought us super-light but surprisingly strong fabrics.

The success of Sea to Summit’s world-leading stuff sack and dry sack range which relied so heavily on that siliconised nylon not only gave us the resources to develop our award winning X pots but also our award winning Air Sprung Cell™ technology for sleeping mats.

Passion for developing better gear combined with market forces will ensure that gear will continue to get lighter and be made more efficiently and sustainably Let us hope that enough young people will continue to discover the joys of being outside and that there will always be places worth visiting.

“Do I really need that really cool looking piece of gear?

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