Explore and Adventure will find you!
Spring and Summer Adventures, What we pack!
After we upload a new film we always get a significant number of messages and emails asking about kit. It’s for that reason we decided to writing this little blog. Long overdue we think.
Before we get into it, this blog is intended to provide food for thought and isn't the gold standard packing list for a days adventure into the hills, there’s no such list! It all comes down to number of factors, weather, kind of adventure, duration, skill level, bravery to mention one or two! This will however, give you an idea of our thought process and possibly a tip or two for beginners to the more experienced. The thing to keep in mind while reading this is that everyone has different priorities, this however is the standard that we set ourselves.
What you carry in your kit, is in many ways a matter of personal choice. However, there are items that can simply be described as "Must Have's". It obviously depends on the conditions and what adventures you plan to undertake whilst out in the mountain's. What we’d like to suggest is that you have a baseline standard, from here you can adapt and enhance your kit to fit a particular plan. Back to the Must Haves, these are items that will come with you no matter what adventure you are undertaking. It’s from here that you can build in the items that you’ll need to support something specific. For example, i’ll take a water filter because water is plentiful and I don’t need to carry extra, i’ll take a length of rope because the area I'm going to has the potential for hazardous, steep and rocky ground. If you’ve a little space left then you can look at, nice to have items. These are almost comfort items but are items you can ultimately do without. We all love a gadget in this day and age, don't we! As you know, we like to film a lot of our adventures. Its nice to have the cameras and drones, all that good stuff but safety items take priority.
If you regularly plan days out for groups on mountainous adventures you almost, by default, take responsibility for those people. For our own peace of mind and good safety practice, we've made a few investments in kit which we feel really helps to mitigate some of the risks, or at least reduces the impact an incident may have on the group.
Okay, lets get going….
What we carry in our kit
The - Must Haves
As a responsible user of our magnificent great outdoors the following items are or should be non negotiable! So, by not having these items you are putting yourself at risk of not being able to respond to basic emergencies.
Navigation: Map, Compass, Pacing Card, and Watch. Maps should be waterproofed by either using a map case, purchasing waterproof maps or using fablon to weatherproof the map. Its great that you have a map and compass but you should also be able to use them effectively. This is where pacing and timing comes in, hence the pacing card and watch, that's a whole other blog though. The very basic navigation skills you should have in your navigation tool box are that of being able to set a map to the ground, reference and understand what the ground you see in front of you, translates to on the map, ability to take grid reference and a bearing. A good compass is essential. Now, we cant stress enough how important it is to purchase the correct compass first time around, we promise you this will save you money in the long term. We use a Silva Compass Expedition 4, why! Because the roamers/measuring scales on the compass are compatible with the three main maps scales you will likely use, including the 1:40 Harvey Maps. It has everything you need to carry out basic navigation. It’s arguably the most common compass you will see in the hands of those that navigate properly. It’s also tried and tested and is the go to option for organisations such as DofE, that's enough of an endorsement for me.
The big debate, electronic or traditional map reading. There’s a lot of words we could write about this, but, what we will say is that there’s nothing wrong with using electronic mapping, actually it’s excellent, when its working well! Our preference is always to navigate using traditional map-reading skills and use electronic mapping to support that. Always know where you are on a paper map should your electronic device go on strike, and they do!
Mobile Phone: A fully charged mobile phone is an essential part of your emergency response kit. Its not for taking selfies with, we all do it! I'd suggest that at least one cell phone in the group is not used for anything other than emergency use. As the leader of a group it’s really important to demonstrate to the group how to access your phone, show where the emergency numbers are, how to open digital mapping, my phone has both OS Maps and ViewRanger installed. It’s really important that if you become the casualty those in the group know how to summon help if your phone has all the emergency contact options in it. Don't forget to lock away those pictures you don't want anyone seeing though, chuckle!
Whistle: I was recently in the Cairngorms on a course when two walkers were benighted in a Coire, lost! The mountain rescue teams had been deployed. The rescue teams worked their way down two ridges searching, using torches and flares to attract the attention of the lost walkers, they must surely have been seen by the stranded walkers. It turns out that the walkers were indeed in the Coire between the two ridges, they did see the rescuers but didn’t have the means to alert the them. Something as simple as having a whistle would have changed the duration of that event and therefore reduced the danger to the rescuers and the lost persons. LifeSystems has one of the loudest whistles available, the Hurricane whistle performs in all weather conditions and can be heard in all directions and from further away than most other whistles, they claim.
First Aid Kit: What would we add to tailor our first aid kit for the Scottish environment! To help complete our kit we have added a couple of extras. Compeed to cover those hot spots before they become an issue. Tick removal tool to tackle those pesky little irritants. Its very important to check each other and deal with ticks early. The long term implications aren't pleasant. An option to rehydrate, recharge your body. It is important to replace the fluids and electrolytes lost as soon as you notice symptoms creeping in, Dioralyte Sachets work well for us. SportShield. this prevents chafing and blisters for 24 Hours and is sweatproof and waterproof. This is good stuff! These extras add very little weight or bulk and fit easily inside most small first aid kits. Nearly forgot, last but not least, sunscreen, lip balm and nuclear strength midge repellent.
Survival Bag: That option to get yourself inside something to keep the elements off you and help retain your own body warmth is extremely important. Used in conjunction with the Group shelter in a survival situation drastically improves your chances being around to say hi to your rescuers. The light and dry thermal bivvy bag is a lightweight reusable bag that provides total body coverage. It reflects and retains over 90% of radiated body heat. Okay, there are other products out there that take it to the next level of protection but for its price point, durability, the fact that we can reuse it, its more manageable than a big orange plastic bag. We’ve chosen the Emergency Bivi Bag, Lifesystems.
The above items are all must have items and come with us no matter what. Below are some items that we are a little more flexible with. That said we pretty much carry a variation of these items at all times.
Group Shelter: Unfavourable weather elements are one of our biggest concerns when out in the mountains. There may not always be natural shelter from the weather. You may just need to shelter whilst having a lunch break or it may be something more serious, where you or people in your group are at risk of succumbing to the weather conditions. It’s essential to reduce the impact these conditions are having on you and the group by simply getting out of the wind and rain. Don’t forget, wind-chill is only wind-chill if it hits your skin, so get yourself out of the wind. We are seeing more and more people using these shelters in the mountains and we, think its a great option with multi fuctional applications. A little bit of imagination and this shelter can help you out in a number of emergency situations. More often than not we only need to pack a two person shelter. We use the LifeSystems, Ultralight Survival Shelter 2. This is a supremely lightweight survival shelter, weighing just 215g and is waterproof.
Waterproof and Warm Layers: We will always have a full set of waterproofs, even in the summer. Not always in case the great Scottish weather decides to ambush us but these are an extra layer if we were to run into trouble at any point and need to spend a night out in an emergency scenario. We have lighter waterproofs for spring/summer than we do for winter, for obvious reasons. Mrs O is a real fan of Rab gear. Not just because of its proven quality but it fits her well! Making sure your kit is a good fit is really important. Overly tight and you cant get additional layers on or it restricts your movement. Overly big and it become awkward to walk, its extra weight and well, you just look rubbish lol. We both have Rab Event waterproof trousers, BOTH are ladies trousers, they fit me better, don't be shy guys! We will always have a mid layer, softshell or even a down layer, perhaps a combination. It really depends on the plan for the day. Mrs O has a RAB waterproof jacket and I have Jöttnar Asmund. We have had some of this kit for a long time now so apologies for not having some of the specific product names. You’ll see that some of these items are designed for colder temperatures, it is Scotland. We do often tone it down to a fleece or even just a t-shirt. You may think that some of this kit is overkill, especially when we actually get a good summer, but the idea is to ensure we are equipped if something was to go seriously wrong. I think you get the idea! Don't forget also to add a hat, either beanie style or cap to provide more protection from the sun. Finally, we always add a thin pair of gloves. Hands, we need them working!
ML Rope or Confidence Rope: We’ll often carry a rope if we’re venturing to some of the more rugged mountains we have. Obviously, we’d not be carrying a rope if we were doing a nice walk up to Ben Ann for example. Emergency rope-work in difficult, steep, overhanging and long descents using a rope should be avoided. It is always safer to look for a better and more straightforward alternative. In certain situations it can be a safer option to use a rope to descend to safe ground, before re-planning a more suitable route, rather than continuing. Care needs to be taken as emergency rope work in descent can often cause more problems than it solves. However, when we feel there is potential, we’ll add a 30m, 8mm rope to our kit. This sits nicely in the bottom of a rucksack. We always back-stack it into a dry back with an overhand on the bite knot at the end. This helps us find the end quickly and reduces the chance of the rope getting tangled when deploying it. Also, if you are in a group that may be slightly less confident on steep ground this rope can be used as a confidence rope to help this that are perhaps experiencing a little bit of a brown trouser moment. Lastly, you may also consider taking a helmet.
Head Torch: In the event you get caught out and end up still on the hill when it gets dark its really important to make sure you've got a headtorch. Avoid relying on your mobile phone to provide the only source of light you have. Taking all those selfies will have used up most of your battery. We carry a Petzl headtorch with spare batteries but we also carry a spare headtorch. The Petzl e+LITE Ultra-compact emergency headlamp. 50 lumens this gives you enough light to navigate with and is a spare if your main head torch fails.
Fuelling our adventure - Snacks: We’ll normally take sandwiches, cake and a sports drink. Tucked away in a sealed bag will be some high energy snacks and chocolate bars as well as a couple of energy gels and some rehydration powders. This is our little emergency food stash, its only eaten after a few months and then replaced with new items to keep it all fresh.
Rehydration - Water: Obviously very important to stay hydrated. We never carry more water than we need and use a combination of MSR Trail Shot water filter and Hydrapak Stash 1L collapsible drink bottles to filter what we need. Normally, we keep filling up as we go but the weather can dry up many water sources, even in Scotland. Have a read of this blog and you’ll see what we mean. It’s a good tip to do a thorough map analysis to identify potential water sources. That said, I’d suggest never to get high expecting there to be water during extended periods of dry weather, even in Scotland. The first sign that your route is going to be dry will be the normally well flowing main rivers are very low or have almost zero flow. Always make the early decision to fill up and drag it up the trial.
Satellite Emergency Messenger Device: We always carried a SPOT Gen3, especially if one of us is out alone, which can be often. This kit a personal electronic transmitter used to alert rescuers that there has been a life threatening situation. It gives you a critical, life-saving line of communication when you travel beyond the boundaries of mobile phone service areas, in Scotland we have many of these. We have now upgraded to the SPOT X, this does everything the Gen3 does and more, most notable is that it allows 2-way messaging. The links will take you to our review of each of these items. Some will say that these devices are an expensive gadget but from our perspective its extremely good value and an insignificant cost for the peace of mind having one of these devices gives both you and the family. If you have to use it, lets hope not, even once to get help to you, we’d suggest that its has suddenly become worth every penny! If cost is an issue you can think of it this way. If you and a group go out regularly why not split the cost between the group, that then makes it even more affordable.
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What we pack it in
For me, a rucksack of around 20/30L with the potential to expand at least another 10L. This means that we have a rucksack that will be flexible enough to accommodate the kit and equipment we need to carry for most adventures. We were caught out in my early days by thinking all we needed was a small rucksack for our sandwiches. As we gained more experience we realised this wasn't going to be enough. To save money, in the long run, invest in a good sized rucksack. We promise you, you will need that space sooner or later!
How we pack for a day out
There are a number of points you need to consider when packing. Depending on the answer you come up with will depend where items of kit are stored in your rucksack or on the person. The first thing you may want to know is, what the weather is going to do. If its going to be showers on and off then there's no point having your waterproofs at the bottom of your kit. If the weathers been scorchio for an extended period of time, like it was last summer then the bottom of your rucksack is most certainly the place to store them. You will always want to be keeping yourself fuelled up, food and snacks can be packed in the top pocket of you rucksack, side pockets on your hip belt/rucksack, nice and easy to keep eating. Make eating easy, it’s often overlooked how important it is to eat, thus reducing the chance of fatigue which leads to poor decision making and so on. I practically need to put Mrs O into a UFC, vicelike grip to feed her at times....oops, sorry, I digress!
Waterproofing everything is essential. Its great having all this kit but if by becoming wet it turns out to be unusable, its not going to be a good day. Not forgetting that wet gear only adds weight to your rucksack. We use a selection of Exped drybags. For us its a great way to segregate your items, the bags are various sizes and different colours. Once you get a routine going, you know your hat and gloves are in the yellow bag, out comes the yellow bag, on go the gloves and hat, in seconds you are ready to go again. That’s when you notice the kit explosion of other less organized people! Its then a waiting game while they find kit, empty the rucksack and then repack. Being organized is the key to keeping warm or cooling down. Hanging around, or lets call it the faff factor, is just taking time away from enjoying your adventure.
Your must have items, I’d like to say that if they are must have then you must need them to hand all the time, this isn't the case. Your safety items such as first aid kit, group shelter and survival bag may want to live in the bottom of your rucksack. Where as your navigation, whistle, phone etc. may want to be easily accessible in the unlikely event that a sudden emergency situation presents itself.
Sounds a lot, but this will pack down to a manageable size and weight.
Finally, to close the lid on this..
Well we’ve rambled on for a while now so just to pull this all together. It's a very subjective topic and one persons priorities, skills and experience wildly varies from another's. Particularly for those starting out, the MUST HAVES are the very basics of what you need to carry and know how to use in the hills. From a beginners point of view, its like anything, unless you ask, you’ll never know if you are thinking along the most practical and sensible lines. As we’ve already said, it depends on your abilities and what the aim of your activity is. A combination of weather and not having these basic MUST HAVE items are a common factor when people get into difficulties in the hills.
Any one of us may need to call on the services of the Mountain Rescue teams, lets hope not though. The media report from your (hypothetical rescue) should read:
The individuals were well equipped for the hills but ran into some difficulties. They were effectively able to summon help and provide a location. They had equipment to stay safe and warm whilst the rescue team made their way to them. The individuals correctly requested help when they realised they were unable to self rescue and move off the hill. Both the rescue team and walkers are all now safely off the hill.
We think we’ve refined our kit to reflect our skills and experience level and hope this has helped you in your quest to develop the perfect set up for you!
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