Hi all. I just came back from 3 weeks camping. I loaded up the SUV with about 90% of my gear! (Sheesh!) My thoughts were that I would get to practice and try out a bunch of new stuff and combinations of gear. I didn't actually use all my gear that I brought, I simply didn't get around to it all. Luckily I had the room for it all. Unfortunately, I didn't take a whole lot of pictures or video to share my trip experiences. Most of time I was car camping in National Parks (Jasper/Banff) with a lot of day-hiking and kayaking and other activities like geocaching. Later in the year I will have to do some backpacking too. The first few days were extreme fire hazard and they didn't allow any type of stoves, even canisters in the back country so that put a damper on the overnight trip plans and confined me to base camping in a campground.

The weather was mild and sunny at first and then mostly cool and in the second half of my stay, for several days it rained, snow-showered and snowed at higher altitudes. It seems winter has lingered on and on for far too long this year.

One of the first things I did was take a couple of navigation courses from Boreal Wilderness Institute (Bruce Zawalsky, another ETS poster). That was 3 days of excellent instruction and as it turns out I replaced my Suunto MCA with a Brunton 15TDCL (previously marketed as the Silva Ranger CL) compass which is overall a more useful tool. The price was reasonable $59CDN but added to my overall vacation budget. I am much more confident in the use of my compass and the use of pace beads for navigating and fine-tuned the use of my GPS.

I've also used a couple of wood stoves (Bush Buddy and Firebox), my alcohol stove and backup which happened to be a mico-rocket canister stove! I think the BB is going to be my companion from now on, I liked it that much! At only 6 oz, it fits into my Primus pot perfectly and then I also nest my .5 oz alcohol stove , folding spork, a couple oz. of alcohol in a small bottle, MicroPur water purification tablets, some tinder and mini-Bic. Having it all nest together is a big plus. The Firebox is OK but better suited for kayak or car camping due to its weight. It can use larger thumb sized wood than the BB but it literally uses 2x the fuel. The BB requires smaller twigs or pencil sized wood chopped down to suit. Both stoves burn so completely and quickly that they leave little ash.

I literally brought my entire fire kit and experimented with various tinders, lighters, ferro rods, matches, etc. I was checking to see the burning behaviour of different types of tinders (everything from pre-made stuff to natural tinders to more household items).

Most of the time I split duty between my Mora Robust knife and Spyderco Tenacious for all my camp duties, although I did use my hatchet to split the largest logs and my multi-tool to do some zipper repairs. I just never got around to using my saws and shovels.

As usual, I lost yet another pair of sunglasses that for some reason I put on my Tilley hat when they are not needed and then it disappears when I walk into the bush! I seem to loose one pair every year to this habit! Actually, I lost 2 pair on my Yellowstone/Rushmore vacation! So I switched to using eyeglass croakies. Maybe, just maybe I will keep from losing another pair?

I did get time to practice my knots and had several types of cordage with me (paracord, fishing line, string, tarred seine line, etc. During the rain it was easier to just hunker down and play/practice with these types of things.