I posted a couple weeks ago about the Goal Zero Nomad 13 portable solar charger I bought for the big pack trip. I haven’t yet had time to test it.

However, one evening last week, as I lay awake in the middle of the night contemplating the upcoming adventure (the closer it gets, the harder it is to sleep at night), I started running through, in my mind, what a day on the trail might be like. As I did so, it occurred to me that we would be using our electrical devices during the daytime, but would be unable to charge anything at night. Funny how I hadn’t thought of that before, as I plug my iphone in to charge before I lay down to sleep.

Furthermore, I realized that if our one solar charger were to be damaged, we would lose the use of all our electronic equipment within about a day, including the ability to call for help via satellite texting in case of emergency. I made the decision then that we needed a second solar charger, not only to increase our ability to recharge items during daylight hours, but as a backup in case one unit were to be put out of commission. I considered, for just a moment, the thought of buying a Sherpa recharger, however, with a price tag of over $250 for a basic model, it seemed impractical for us.

I headed back up to Cabela’s with the intention of buying another Nomad 13, but upon looking over the various models and options offered by Goal Zero, I came across the Guide 10 unit. This model is also a solar charger, with two solar panels measuring about 6 by 9 inches, putting out about 7 volts, 7 watts. It is able to charge at 5V at up to 1A (5W)  regulated – via USB port or 6.5V up to 1.1A (7W) unregulated – via mini-solar port.

Also included is a charger pack for four AA batteries that is charged from the solar charger. This battery unit may then be used as a charger for items such as my iphone 6, the DeLorme InReach Explorer GPS/satellite unit, and our recently purchased GoPro Hero 4 camera. From the literature, it appears this 4-cell unit is capable of recharging two cellular telephones on one charge. This will help for charging at night or when the sun isn’t shining brightly during the daytime. The batteries may also be removed from the unit and used as regular AA batteries. Also included is an adapter for charging four AAA batteries.

Just as the Nomad 13, the Guide 10 comes with integral cables for charging at either 5V or 6.5V, as well as an integral USB port and a separate USB/mini-USB cable for charging Android-type cell phones and other accessories. I will have to remember to bring the proprietary Apple cable to charge my iphone from the USB port. Also included is an adapter for 12V connections that use cigarette lighter-type connectors.

The Nomad 13 and the Guide 10 solar panels may also be “daisy-chained” to increase electrical charging capacity and decrease the time involved in recharging devices.

You can see the size relationship between the larger Nomad 13 and the Guide 10 units. the solar panel size of the Nomad 13 is roughly 1/3 again the size of the Guide 10, however the battery pack certainly increases the utility of the Guide 10 package and offers us one more option and backup plan for charging our very important electronic gear.

The Nomad 13’s price tag of $159.99 also made the Guide 10 a bit more appealing. Along with the benefit of the battery pack and charger came a price tag of $119.99. The combination of the two solar chargers, I believe, will serve our needs very well.

I feel much more comfortable now, having two solar charging units with us on this trip. The trick will be determining, while on the trail, the battery life of each of our several electronic devices, and developing a routine for recharging each of them in turn,  to keep them all alive and functioning optimally for two-and-a half months on the trail.

wish us luck!

I recently received a large gear order from Outfitter’s Supply, out of Columbia Falls, Montana. Kevin was nice enough to sponsor Dad and me on our upcoming pack trip with substantial discounts on much of the gear we ordered. When I first started acquiring gear for this trip a couple years ago, I began by perusing the various websites and online catalogs available for packing gear and ordering one or two items to see what I liked and what I didn’t think would hold up, before making a larger order. As I was doing that kind of research, I came across Trailhead Supply, and I placed an order for a couple feed bags from them. I wrote a blog post on the feed bags, which you can find here.

I bought another feed bag in this recent order from Outfitter’s Supply, having decided from the previous purchases to go with the tougher, more durable, canvas/leather bag. I am very pleased with what I received. This feed bag, bearing their Trail Max marketing name, is made with a leather bottom that is formed, so that the edges come up about an inch from the bottom.  This should protect the canvas and seams from the chafing and scraping that will occur when the horse pushes the feed bag against the ground. The canvas appears to be of 24 ounce canvas. It is made with heavy-duty leather straps, approximately 9/10 ounce weight, that are riveted to the canvas at the top of the bag and extend all the way to the bottom, where it is again riveted to the leather bottom. The straps are stitched to the canvas bag with heavy thread down both edges of the strap. The leather is well-oiled and appears to be of good quality. The length of the hanger is adjusted by a heavy-duty chrome-plated steel roller buckle.

If you read the post on the previously purchased feed bags, you will remember that I was concerned that the air vent was positioned very low on the bag. I have had instances in which horses would not eat, because they could not breathe well with a couple scoops of feed in the bag.

I felt the vent was low enough on the bag that it would be covered by the feed and would be of little use to the horse. Since that time I have spoken to another experienced packer who once had a horse nearly drown when it tried to drink from a stream with a feed bag on. The feed bag held the water and the horse could not breathe. He felt the vent was more of a safety feature for water drainage than for breathing. I value his opinion and experience and learned that there is good reason for placing the vent low on the bag.

The vent on this new bag is placed a bit higher on the bag than the Trailhead Supply one. In my opinion the location of the vent on the Outfitter’s Supply bag is a good compromise between the safety issue of draining off water and allowing airflow to allow the horse to breathe easier with the bag full of feed.  Outfitter’s Supply has also found an excellent place to stamp their maker’s mark – right on the vent.

The Trailhead Supply bag was priced at $21.95, but I no longer find it listed in their online store. They now offer only the nylon mesh bag with a canvas bottom.

The Outfitter’s Supply bag is a hefty $64.95, but it is a heavier-duty bag and made using heavier and better materials. Is putting this kind of heavy-duty work and materials into a feed bag overkill? Outfitter’s Supply’s experience in making their feed bags comes from doing repair work on feed bags used by the U.S. Forest Service. They seem to know their stuff.

I’ll have one of each on the trip and will report how each performed when we get home.

Way back when Dad and I first started talking about taking a horse pack trip from Tucson, Arizona to Panguitch, Utah, I think it was in about 1975, there was no such thing as a cellular telephone, much less a Global Positioning Satellite system. In fact, the closest thing we had available to a cellular telephone was a “walkie-talkie”, that might have a useful range of about 5 miles, at best. Battery life on those was indefinite….as long as you brought along an inexhaustible supply of spare batteries! I don’t recall that we had re-chargeable batteries available at that time. And do you remember Kodak Instamatic Cameras?

Back then, when we talked about the trip, our main consideration was simply to get “from here to there”, so to speak. We thought about things like food supplies, horses, and gear. The gear consisted of Dad’s old pack saddle outfits, our own well-used saddles, and a bit of camping gear. When we thought of the trip, it was like going back in time to the late 1800s, or maybe the early 1900s. Planning was simple, complications were few.  We just couldn’t get our act together to actually do the trip.

Now that we’re finally ready to give our big pack trip a real try, things are a bit different in the modern world. In particular, we’re both much older now. That brings in a whole new set of concerns and complications in itself, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We now have technology to deal with that didn’t even exist way back when.

Now, we have these great gadgets that can not only tell us exactly where we are in the world, both in time and space, but can also take pictures to prove it!  Not only that, but these same gadgets can also tell the rest of the world where we are at the same time! And, if that’s not enough, I can actually communicate with anyone I choose, anywhere in the world, via satellites in outer space! Dick Tracy, eat your heart out!

My, how times have changed!

Still, all these gadgets use electricity. All of them have internal rechargeable batteries. All of them require special cables and chargers to keep them useful for anything other than paper weights. Now, horses generate a lot of “gas”, but no electricity, as far as I know.

So, now, the big question is, how long will these gadgets stay alive without a recharge? Most of them will handle one full day, as long as I don’t play with them too much. My iphone 6 will last about half a day if I take a lot of pictures and start texting them to my wife and mother. I took the Delorme InReach Explorer out for a test ride yesterday. We were out for about 4 hours, tracking the whole ride, and it ended up with over 85% battery remaining. I plan to take along a GoPro3 camera, but haven’t purchased it yet, so I have no idea about it’s capabilities, battery-life-wise, but I imagine it is a matter of hours, not days.

Since our pack trip will take somewhere between five and seven weeks….we think…. and since most of the time we will be far away from the nearest electrical outlet, our only option is to take an electrical source with us. Hauling a generator and the fuel to run it is out of the question.

Enter the GOAL ZERO Nomad 13 Solar Panel.

The Nomad 13 is a pair of solar panels, measuring approximately 10.5 X 7 X 1 inches,  about 23 inches wide when open, and comes in its own zippered protective case with the solar panels built-in. You simply unzip, then open it like a notebook. According to the specifications on the box, the unit will produce up to 13 watts of electricity. That is sufficient to put out 5V, 0-1A (5W) regulated for USB charging, or 13-15 VDC, 0-1A (13W) unregulated for 12V charging.

It has several cables built into the unit, on the back side, including a USB cable, a Guide 10 cable, and two cables for chaining units together and for charging other GOAL ZERO rechargers, such as the venerable Sherpa. Also included is an adapter cable with a cigarette lighter-type connector for 12V accessories. The literature inidcates this unit, placed in full sun, will recharge a “smart phone” in one to three hours. Not that it will matter to us, but just for information, the unit will charge a Sherpa 50 in six hours, which will then charge a laptop computer in two hours.

I’m going to have to consider buying a Sherpa 50 for the trip, due to all the gadgets we’ll have along. Having the portable recharger along would certainly help if we should have a couple days of cloudy weather. Our plan is to strap it to the top pack on a pack horse and let it charge all day long. We’ll see how durable it is as we go.

At $159.99, it was an expensive accessory for us, but if it will do what it says it can do on the box and in the manual, it will certainly be worth the expense to us, as well as our loved ones left at home and our friends following us via the Internet. The GOAL ZERO Sherpa 50 Portable Recharger runs $249.99.

I haven’t yet had a chance to test this unit, but I expect to do so in the next week or so. That test will probably determine whether I go the extra expense for the Sherpa 50.

Stay tuned!

Last week I went on buying spree at Cabela’s. One of the items I came home with…two actually, were air mattresses for the trail. When I was a kid I used to sleep on the ground, and quite well, I might add. In high school, these new-fangled foam sleeping pads came out. They were 1/2″ of luxurious medium-density foam rubber that rolled up onto a 20″ X 4″ roll that weighed hardly anything and you could tie it to your pack right above your sleeping bag. Then, as an adult, I found the self-inflating 3″ foam pads that truly improved my sleep rest during camping and pack trips. However, these pads roll up into a bulky roll about 22″X8″…that is if you get it real tight. It weighed a bit more as well, at about 3 pounds or so. I stuck with those a long time. Recently, however, I’m finding I don’t sleep so well on those self-inflating pads anymore.

Now, Dad has always preferred air mattresses. Of course he was 24 years ahead of me in experience. Seems like my air mattresses always ended up flat about the time I was gliding off to sleep, and it was back to my childhood days of sleeping on the hard ground…or not. Anyway, Dad seems always to have done pretty well with his air mattresses, so for this trip I let him talk me into buying a couple of backpacking air mattresses for our trip. Mostly the decision was made to save space on the pack horses, but truthfully, I was willing to try an air mattress again to see whether I could get a good night’s sleep on one while out on the trail.

After talking on the phone to Dad while I was looking at the mattresses, we settled upon two of Cabela’s XPG Ultralight Extreme Performance Gear air mattresses. They came rolled into a 3″ X 9″ roll, stuffed into a nice little nylon bag. I have to tell you, I was pretty skeptical that this little thing could provide a nice resting place for my tired bones after a long day on the trail. I found Cabela’s display, where they had samples of each of their mattress offerings already aired up, so I pulled each one down in turn and laid on it, right there in the store, for a first-impression test. Surprisingly, I found this little XPG mattress to be the most comfortable of the bunch.

The XPG Ultralight mattress measures a nice 72″ L X 23.5″ W X 2.5″ H, inflated, which was among the widest mattresses offered. I found the goofy-looking way the mattress is designed to be very comfortable. It has round air pockets in the center for comfort and larger air pockets on the sides to keep you on the mattress during the night. This mattress didn’t make me feel high in the middle while lying on my back, which tends to give me a backache, nor did my hips touch the ground when I rolled onto my side. I was quite surprised and impressed. This is a well-designed mattress, and very comfortable to lay on.

I took a good look at the seams and materials, trying to imagine it lasting the whole trip. The mattress is made of a reinforced rubberized nylon material (no trade name for the material is given on the packaging), which appears to be fairly durable, however I wouldn’t try laying it directly on the ground. We’ll have canvas ground cloths under us on the trip, so wear from the ground should be minimal. Just in case, though, the mattress comes with a patch kit slipped inside a pocket inside the stuff sack, consisting of about 30 square inches of material (two 3 X 5 pieces) and a small tube of cement.

The seams appear to be sealed with cement, or possibly heat-sealed. They appear to be solidly joined. With the new “space-age” cements available, I feel confident that if I can keep Dad from jumping on the bed, they’ll last the trip.

A couple nights ago, I blew up one of the mattresses to see how much effort goes into it, wondering whether I would pass out before getting it filled at elevations exceeding 9,000 feet in some places. Again, I was surprised that I was able to fill the mattress to capacity in 17 breaths. While that will make your head swim if you do it too fast, it’s not anything that would make the average person uncomfortable if they take their time.

The air valve is a little larger and somewhat differently designed than other mattresses I’ve used before. It has a push-pull system, to keep the air in while you take a breath as you blow it up, then a twist-lock to keep it from being inadvertently opened. It took me a minute to figure it out, even with the instructions plainly spelled out on the top of the valve. Sometimes I have a hard time pouring water out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. Twist the valve to unlock, then pull. Blow into it, then push to hold while you take a breath, pull again to blow air in. When done, push in and twist to lock. Simple! Much easier than the old ones you had to hold and squeeze with your teeth while you blew.

I laid the mattress in front of the television and lay down on it to see if I could lay on it comfortably for an extended period. I was quite pleased with the results. I nearly fell asleep.

After the limited testing I have done on this mattress, I am quite pleased and convinced this XPG Ultralight mattress, marketed by Cabela’s, will do the trick for us. With a price tag of $99, I feel it is a good buy for us.

Now, a good night’s sleep is all I need.

Stay tuned for more gear reports.