Thursday, April 30, 2009

Backpack!

I have the older version of the Gossamer Gear Mariposa Plus, the one that came with carbon stays. The carbon stays weighed only 0.4 ounces apiece and brought the total weight of the pack up to 1 pound 1 oz, but were fragile, and I managed to break one of them. So I went over to Gossamer Gear's site and noticed that they weren't shipping with the carbon stays anymore -- they now have curved aluminum stays. At a weight penalty of 3.4 ounces per stay. Ouch!

So anyhow, I have an old tent where one of the aluminum poles, due to years of abuse, decided to split on one end. So I took that pole and broke it apart by cutting the elastic inside it, and created two new stays using two pieces of pole per side. Then last night I went down to the garage and cut the stays to the correct length with my dremel tool's cutting bit, then squared and smoothed the cut end with a grinding stone in the dremel tool. I put my new aluminum stays on the scale upstairs here and and they weigh 1.1oz apiece, or roughly 1/3rd the weight of the updated stay system for the Mariposa Plus, and raise the weight of the pack to 1 pound 3 ounces but with a huge increase in durability compared to the carbon fiber stays (that aluminum tent pole went through years of utter *hell* before one end of one segment finally got mushroomed by me abusing it horribly, it's as close to indestructible as you can get with backpacking gear).

Color this penguin satisfied. Now all I have to do is find a place to go backpacking in order to test it out...

-- Badtux the Outdoors Penguin

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1 comment:

  1. Marc30/4/09 10:33 AM

    I don't know your exact location in relation to this place, but it is a nice day hike, if you want to make a dry run.

    http://www.simpsoncity.com/hiking/bridge.html

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