So I continue my
progression towards lighter backpacking gear, and just got a shipment of just a
few things from Zpacks. Zpacks makes
ultralight backpacking gear, it’s a small company run by Joe Valesko and his
wife, along with a few employees, located in Florida. Many of their products are custom made from
cuben fiber material. They sell tarps,
backpacks, and many ultralight accessories, including stuffsacks made from
cuben fiber. The gear is mostly made by
them, is high quality from what I have seen, and, as I like my gear, well
thought out and designed.
I recently got a
stuffsack made of ultralight cuben fiber material .It’ a good size either for
my summer sleeping bag, or my Hennessy hammock.
It could also be used for a small to medium sized pot set. I will likely get another one or two of these
stuffsacks if this one holds up well.
And it looks like it would. I
also got some seam tape to so I can tape the seams of this stuffsack myself and
make the stuffsack more water resistant, if I want to use it for my sleeping
bag. Along with that, I got a cuben
fiber peg bag.
Zpacks also sells ultralight food storage/hanging components, so I picked up
some of those. I got a super light Blast
rolltop food bag , which is made of their more durable Blast cuben fiber and
has a Velcro closure at top, and loops for a caribiner. Speaking of which, it comes with a micro
caribiner, the smallest and lightest one I have ever seen, although it does
seem strong enough for the job. I also
got a cuben fiber rock bag to put rocks or pebbles into for using as a weight
when hanging food.
To round it out, I
got 50 feet of 1.75mm Spectra Dyneema
z-line, 450lb breaking strength. Arborists
specifically use this rope as throw lines to perform the same function as a
bear bag line, to sling over a branch and haul things up into the tree. The line has next to no stretch, unlike nylon
rope. It’s outer coating is slick – I believe
it has an outer coating of vinyl to
lower friction and will be awesome for pulling up heavy food loads over
branches… I just gotta make sure the
knots I tie in it will hold. The line is
so thin it has a high visibility blaze orange color so you can hopefully avoid
clotheslining yourself or others.
Without using it yet, this rig at least looks like a huge upgrade and
some significant weight savings over my current hanging gear I use – a 3/16” nylon
rope, a full sized caribiner heavy enough to be a throw weight, and a paddling
dry bag that is overbuilt for it’s purpose of just hold my food and being
somewhat water resistant
A last item I got was a Zpacks toothbrush. While it actually weighed more than my 1/3 toothbrush with the cut off handle, it is a more reasonable length and more funtional than my older backpacking toothbrush. I basically had to put my fingers in my mouth to bush my teeth with my older one... which some people do.. some ultralightists use silicone fingertip toothbrushes intended for pets and children mainly.
Old fashioned-ish backcountry gear on right
I weighed my older gear and the Zpacks replacements... shows I saved 351 grams. Not bad for a few items!
Zpacks
No comments:
Post a Comment