Wild Camping Kit Whats In My 8kg Rucksack

Good morning, hello I'm Seamus, Outdoors Inspiration. Today I'm going to go through my wild camping kit. I'm going to share with you the equipment that I take out and give you the reasons why I take what I take on the hill. Now the equipment that each and every one of us takes out on the hill is a matter of personal choice and personal preference and I get that. So all I'm going to do today is offer some opinions and these are my opinions based on where I go and what I feel comfortable with taking. I've spent much of my professional life as an equipment examiner looking at search and rescue equipment as a search and rescue specialist. For 12 years I've been a scrutineer for the annual 10 tours expedition here on Dartmoor. Part of our role is to ensure that equipment standards are met for the participants who'll be undertaking a 35, 45 or 55 mile event which involves a wild camp. Now that doesn't make me an expert in wild camping, it doesn't make me an expert in equipment. What it does mean is I've seen a lot of intense boots and rucksacks over my time. So first things first, what do I carry it all in? My preferred option is the Crux AK47. It's a 47 litre rucksack. They're quite tight on space in terms of those litres, I think those litres are pretty small but I feel sort of qualified to talk about this rucksack because I've owned it for the last 12 years. It's still a current rucksack, they still make them, it's in a more modern version, it's got a Kevlar weave, a beautifully supportive back system and it's pretty lightweight as well. But I've carried this all over the place, it's pretty rugged, the Kevlar gives it quite a solid feel about it but it's my preferred style of rucksack. So this, rather than having lots of accoutrements and things hanging off of it, is fairly straightforward. It's an up and down tube, it's got a lid on top with a pocket in the top of that and some cinch straps. I don't want anything else from a rucksack to be honest with you. When I want to stop and get something out of it, I'll stop and get something out of it. I don't want access all over the rucksack or lots of different pockets but that's my personal feeling and how I feel about rucksacks in general. Love this one. So the first thing that's going to come out of my rucksack when I'm pitching up for a wild camp is of course the tent and I'm currently using this. The poles and pegs are separately in there. This is a Hilleberg Anyan 2 and the reason why I like to carry this is because it is so compact. It's very, very lightweight. The total weight is about 1.7, 1.8 kilograms but this, for me it's not about weight, it's about compression. If it doesn't fit in my 47 litre rucksack then I don't want to carry it. Something else has got to come out. So this is a two-man tent and it just compresses into nothing at all and will fit anywhere in that rucksack. Absolutely love it. So, as if by magic, this is the Hilleberg Anyan 2. It's a two-person, three-season tent and it is a tunnel tent design. Now by three seasons that doesn't mean to say you can't take a tent out in winter. What it does mean is that for prolonged periods well above the snow line it is probably not the tent of use or the tent of choice. It is triple coated siliconized nylon on both sides. That is to say the textile here has had a triple coating of silicon on both sides or both aspects of it. To see this tent in its full glory have a look at my other video which is pitching the Hilleberg Anyan 2 in extreme wind and you'll see what this tent is capable of. There was extreme wind and rain and the tent put up with that quite admirably. One of the beauties of this tent is you can actually take the vestibule right up and out of the way those beautiful summer evenings. What I will be doing on one of our Thursday Night Outdoors Essential Outdoors Inspiration movies on YouTube is I will be looking at various constructions of tents and going through in a little bit more depth. So that'll be coming out in the next couple of weeks on one of our Thursday Evening Specials. So next I'm going to look at the sleep mat that I'm using currently. This is the Therm-a-Rest Neowear X-Therm. This is the X-Therm Max. The Max element of it means that I haven't got the corners cut off. It's a full rectangular mat. If I'm going to carry something I want it to be comfortable, lightweight and compact and this is light enough for me. Now with this particular mat I use a little pump. What I like about this mat apart from the fact it's supremely warm and very comfortable is the wing valve system on it. That particular valve if I open it up at the moment doesn't let any air out. To open the air out I have to undo the valve here the larger valve on the side to deflate and that means that there's a huge port when I open it up to deflate in the morning it just absolutely gushes air out and the thing's flat as a pancake within seconds. Let's have a little look at the sleeping bag that I currently use. It's in here. It's a Rab bag. It's a Rab Alpine 600. It's got a comfort rating of down to something like minus six minus seven which is more than adequate for Dartmoor in the winter probably. But if I wanted to replace it with anything I would probably go with some sort of quilt system as a summer bag. It would reduce bulk and weight in my rucksack although this doesn't take up too much space at all. The Rab bag comes with its own stuff sack which is a little bit bigger than this Exped one. It's a really good quality stuff sack that's watertight but I can press it down into this and that means that the size inside of my rucksack is much much much reduced. The bulk just isn't there and that's really what I'm about is reducing the bulk in my rucksack. I don't mind the weight although it's not heavy at all. It's a beautiful bit of kit. What I do have to do is make sure that it's regularly looked after and lofted after each use that it's dried out thoroughly because sometimes you do get condensation in tents. It's the Alpine 600. It has a 800 fill power, 600 grams of European goose down within it. It's the most comfy bag I've ever owned. The thing is with wearing or wearing using a winter bag in the summer is you just vent it. You just open it up, stick a leg out, stick two legs out, let your arms out, whatever it is that you need to do. But it's certainly a good bag. But again in our series on Thursday nights we'll talk about different types of bags, down versus synthetic and the different fill powers as we go along. So the next part of my wild camping system is the is the means of cooking, the cooking system. You're interested in that Petra aren't you? And I've got various stoves and one of the series will look at the various type of stove that I use and what my preferred options are. I don't always use a canister top stove but that's what I've got with me today. This stove was originally marketed as the Primus Micron. You can't buy it in its format at the moment. It's now the Primus Express but when it was originally brought out it had this piezo ignition. I would never rely on piezo ignition. I always have a backup for that but do you know what? I've had this for 11 or 12 years and it's never failed. It's never failed once to ignite with the piezo electric igniter. So it's quite good. As I explained I've had that stove for quite some time so I recently went out to buy a replacement, the MSR Pocket Rocket 2. But I've had a change of heart. There's nothing wrong with the stove that I currently have. This is an improvement. It's a beautiful stove but I'm running a giveaway and this is the prize of our giveaway, the MSR Pocket Rocket 2. Now I've got a separate film running, a separate YouTube film. Please go and search for that, find that, and it'll tell you how you can win this because at the end of the month I'll be doing a draw and somebody will be the lucky prize winner of the MSR Pocket Rocket 2. So now the pan. The pan I'm carrying tonight is an Alpkit 900 titanium mug. I generally use titanium because it's nice and light, quite tough. I don't do any fancy cooking. Generally I'm using dehydrated foods or I dehydrate my own food or I use boil-in-the-bag food. Either that or I'm just using it to boil water to make a cup of tea or a cup of coffee. This one I quite like because I can get my folding spork into there, my windshield. And this windshield was part of a different pan set. I've got my gas canister inside and there's a very good reason as to why I cover it in the toe of an old sock. So what I've done is snipped off the toe of a sock to cover my canister in and that stops it from rattling about inside the pot. What it also stops is corrosion because these canisters are made of pressed steel and you can see this was from one trip where I left the canister inside there wet and there is actually an oxidized layer in there which has left a rust ring inside my pan. So I'm closing it in a bit of old sock, just the toe, snip the rest of it off. It'll actually save you a bit of bother and keep your pan nice and clean. Once I've removed said sock or portion thereof, also inside here I keep my Sea to Summit mug. I thought these were indestructible until recently I was washing my old one which I've had for years and years and years and the black ring just fell off of it. It couldn't be reattached, the silicon wouldn't expand back out to the right shape so I had to order a new one and I was absolutely mortified to find this was about 12 quid for a mug, for a plastic mug at that. But there we go. I've gotten used to using one for years now so you know that's how it goes with OCD I suppose, you keep doing the same things. So that's the mug that I carry and it fits nicely underneath the gas canister there retained with the sock. So now the food that I carry. I just carry a little bag to keep it all secured together. Other food brands are available but generally I use dehydrated food. I can use some boil-in-the-bag food and sometimes I dehydrate my own foods. I'm going to talk about nutrition and the food that I carry and dehydrating your own food at home in a further episode so watch this space and we'll cover that. Right let's have a look at some of the other knickknacks I carry while I'm wild camping. A small first aid kit. Now I'm not going to be performing open heart surgery on the side of a hill. I just need to know I've got enough stuff there for me and any minor injuries that I may come across without having to refer to the next level of clinical care for somebody, i.e. calling an ambulance. So I've got some tiny bandages or small bandages, some dressings for blisters, some plasters, a notebook and pencil. I say notebook, some paper and a pencil in there and a whistle on the outside. That's my first aid kit. It's nothing extensive, it's enough that I need to to deal with minor injuries. Despite whatever else I'm carrying in terms of navigation electronic aids, I have the appropriate map and compass for the area that I'm walking in. Also in my rucksack I carry a personal locator beacon while I'm out for the night. It's very simple to use and if you look at my video on What's Your Emergency, the wet wild camp one, you'll see a further more comprehensive description of a personal locator beacon. This one actually has a full satellite location in it. There's the antenna. I press that button there for one second and that will send an emergency signal straight to a satellite on 406 megahertz. It also has a locator beacon in there at 121.5 megahertz and it will alert the emergency services to an actual emergency taking place and it has to be treated as an emergency signal. Most people don't carry these but because I own one I would feel a bit silly should I fall over and cause myself an injury knowing full well that this was in the kitchen drawer so I might as well put it in the rucksack if that makes sense. Obviously I carry a head torch for illumination. That's generally for navigating and walking about and I carry a hat and gloves in the top of my rucksack in this little lightweight waterproof sack. The head torch is invaluable even if you're not intending staying the night, if you're not wild camping, if you're just out for a walk it's worthwhile keeping one in the bottom of your rucksack just in case you end up overextending your walk. Obviously I need to carry water whilst I'm out wild camping. I carry about a litre and a two litre bladder. I tend not to use drinking tubes or drinking straws from the hydration systems on a rucksack, just my personal choice. I'm not very fond of sucking from the tubes. If I want to have a drink I stop and have a drink. I don't continuously hydrate, it's just the way I am and the way I've always been. But I find that if I do that I can run out of water much faster, not because I'm drinking more but because I'm unaware of how much volume is left in that bladder in the back of my rucksack. So I tend to stop purposefully and then have a drink. Obviously I need to replenish that so I carry a water filtration system. There are many filtration systems available on the market. I carry the Sawyer Mini at the moment. It's a fairly simple system to use. If you look on my last wild camp YouTube you'll see me using that in action. Spare clothing is important as well. So I always carry a little bit of spare clothing with me. Nothing too extensive but a soft bag with I have some, and this is going to depend on the season of course, but I have some long johns, thermal top, spare socks and underwear. That's all I carry. If it's going to be wet I might carry a little bit more so that I make sure I've got some dry stuff to wear the next day. But generally if I get wet whilst walking I will put on my thermal stuff to sleep in. The wet stuff goes to one side and when I get up in the morning the wet stuff is being reworn and I'll walk in wet stuff for the next day because it's probably going to get wet anyway. And finally what I like to call my inside tent bag. I don't know why I call it that. I think it's a hang-up from my days in Antarctica when we had an inside tent box. We used to put all our goodies in that that we would want inside, not in boxes outside with the sledge on the on the outside of the pyramid tent. So in here I keep a microfiber cloth. It weighs nothing and it means that any spillages or any condensation can be mopped up. I've got all my useful little bits and bobs that I'm not going to need whilst I'm out hiking. So I've got additional sanitiser. That isn't about Covid. That's just what we should have been doing anyway before we prepare and eat our food is making sure our hands are clean surely. I also carry in my rucksack, in this current climate, surgical face masks. You never know what's going to happen. You may have to be picked up from somewhere, you may have to enter a building, you may have to be in close proximity with other people. So they weigh nothing and it does nothing at all to just keep it safely somewhere in your rucksack. Toilet paper. I don't carry a whole toilet roll, just enough for the task in hand. That's a repair kit for my for my mat. If it goes down in the night because it's had a thorn or prickle in it, I want to make sure that I can have a comfortable night. So there's a repair kit for that. There's some repair kit for other textiles that will not stick to and nothing will stick to siliconised nylon. That is to say the fly sheet of your tent. If you tear that you are not going to stick anything to siliconised nylon at all. Probably about a third of a toothbrush and the remnants of some toothpaste so that I can brush my teeth in the morning. I don't want to be carrying a whole tube of toothpaste. A little notepad, some, I say notepad, a piece of paper, some fuse matches which are useful in the event that my lighter and my pizza are both failed. I do carry, it's a bit extravagant, I carry a knife. Now some of you might want to carry your Leatherman or you might be into bushcrafting and you've got your Gary Mills you know special, beautiful knives by Gary Mills by the way should you get around to see this. But this is a little Victorian ox. I'm not going to carry a whopping great knife. I can count on one hand, in fact I can count on one finger the amount of times I've had to use a knife. But this is a very sharp little blade and if I need to slice a bit of cordage or do something some sort of repair it's there. It has within it the pair of tweezers and the toothpick and a tiny little pair of scissors and that's all I need from a knife really nothing more than that. This is a Splash Flash. I quite like this it was recommended by Robin from the Dartmoor and Exmoor Wild Campers group on Facebook and I'm really glad I bought it. It's a 360 degree light, works as a lantern and I can just suspend it from the tent there. So I'm not using my head torch, you've got a general light rather than a specific light coming off your head torch really. And that's my inside tent bag with all my my niceties. So all in all when this is packed in the rucksack it comes to about eight kilograms. If I was doing a summer camp and I reduced the weight of my mat, I had the smaller tent in here, perhaps my Hilleberg Acto and a quilt on, I think we would probably be down to something nearer to seven kilograms. Now I'm by no means an ultralight hiker I'm by no means a lightweight hiker. This is quite good quality gear and it's going to keep me very very comfortable throughout whatever I'm doing during my wild camps. So that's a quick whirlwind tour of what I take wild camping with me. I'd love to hear what you take and why you take what you take. Perhaps you could drop me some comments below. Everything's down to personal choice at the end of the day isn't it? What you like, what you want to carry, how much you're willing to tolerate in terms of weight or bulk etc. For me one of the guiding lights is the size of this rucksack. If it doesn't fit within it I don't want to take it, not for a single overnight anyway. I hope that's been useful or at least an insight into the way that I do things. Perhaps you can tell me about your experiences in the comments below. Now I know I've mentioned it throughout but we will be doing regular Thursday night outdoors inspiration outdoors essentials updates. So I'm going to be going further in depth. I'll be looking at a range of tents, a range of sleeping bags, a range of sleeping mats that I've tried over the years and what how I find they work. Sleep systems, cooking systems, types of food etc etc. We'll also look at skills, outdoor skills, navigation skills, perhaps a little bit of night nav that winter's coming upon us. So we can look at all those sorts of things as we go on and the weeks go by. Don't forget the giveaway competition. Look for the video on my channel that talks about the giveaway of the MSR Pocket Rocket 2. You've got to be in it to win it. Just follow the follow the guidelines and I'll be drawing that at the end of the month. Thanks ever so much folks. Thanks for watching. Take care. Get on then Petra. Up up. Off we go then.