Water Shoes for Summer – Keen and Wolverine
Sometimes backpacking requires watershoes. Here are two options for your adventures in fording streams and sloshing through the wetlands along your trips.
Sometimes backpacking requires watershoes. Here are two options for your adventures in fording streams and sloshing through the wetlands along your trips.
One of the benefits of the Trail Crampon Pros over the Hillsound’s stretch Trail Crampons is the Anti-snow or anti-balling plates. You probably remember as a kid having your snowboots fill up with snow and making them no better than the slippery sled you were dragging uphill.
Our last day of traversing the Choro trek in the Bolivian Andes dawned. Suddenly it didn´t feel like the third day. I had slept very well the previous night.
Close to an hour later, with all our water gone, we stumbled onto a level spot where some very smart local lady had shrewdly decided to set up another tienda (store), selling that blessed Coca-Cola and other beverages.
Within an hour we were in a large bus heading towards “La Cumbre”, the high mountain pass where the buses cross from the high-plateau La Paz on their way to the tropical “Los Yungas” foothills. The bus was cold and packed. There were even people sitting on the floor in the aisle. Sooner than I was ready for, the bus pulled over and I hauled myself and pack over and around bodies to the exit and into the fresh iciness of the mountain day.
I took it on a survival trip for three days, and when I was in dense woods, it took me a bit of time to find a spot where the GPS would flash green. In the end, I was able to find an area with a bit of light and sent my OK message in the evening and morning to let family know all was going well.
I know filtering is faster than chemical tablets and even boiling (taking into account cooling after the fact), but it also takes work. The last thing I want to do when taking a “break” on the trail is do more work. When it was my turn to pump I found that you couldn’t pump too quickly or the pump would slip and add to that the number of people who wanted water and your 15 minute break turns into 45 minutes! That was 10 years ago and now the options are pretty good and getting faster. There are even super compact filter units that will do a liter a minute. I still prefer the Sawyer 7/6/B water filter and here’s why.
Every trip I go on, I take this base layer with me. It’s found a place amongst my essential backpacking gear and I suspect will soon be accompanied by more Icebreaker gear.
Follow Us!