I ordered a car-camping tent from the REI Outlet store recently in preparation for this year’s Memorial Day Weekend float trip.

Today, we took the thing over to a nearby park and set it up, just to make sure everything is okay.

It looks good to go. The thing seems pretty sturdy, right down to heady duty aluminum poles (not fiberglass) and double vestibules with plenty of loops for guy lines.

I’m hopeful there won’t be any bad weather, but the thing seems pretty durable for a car-camping tent.

It looks like we’re going to enjoy an absolutely gorgeous weekend in the Houston-area.

I think a quick overnight backpacking trip may be in order. I still need to test that hammock, after all!

We’ll see if I actually get up and out of town at the crack of dawn.

UPDATE (03-24-2007): Backpacking aborted for various reasons, although I did enjoy a nice drive in the country today. But what is up with the rain? When I looked at the weather forecasts last night, there was a 0% chance of rain. Nice job, weather b@st@rds!

A while back, I posted about trying to find a lightweight one-person backpacking tent that suited my admittedly picky requirements.

I didn’t really come up with anything I liked better than the old solo tent I already had (which is in pretty bad shape, and probably not stormworthy at this point).

Poking around on the lightweight backpacking sites, though, led me in a slightly different direction — to hammocks!

I never really gave hammocks much attention in the past, because they seemed more like a backyard luxury item than a durable backpacking shelter. But so many lightweight backpackers now swear by them that I decided it was time to give ‘em a closer look.

My Hennessy Hammock arrived earlier this week, and I set it up over in a nearby park to give it a test (I think there were some envious homeless people!). It seems like a pretty sweet shelter (replete with rainfly and mosquito netting). Even better, the model I have weighs just under 3 pounds. That’s roughly a five pound savings over the traditional tent shelter setup (factoring in the tent, poles, ground cloth, and sleeping pad). Dropping five pounds is significant.

I’m looking forward to giving the thing a true test in the woods later this weekend and into next week.

UPDATE (11-11-2006) I think I’m postponing my hiking until next weekend, weather permitting. The Veterans’ Day festivities ran a little longer than I thought they would, and were a little more important than tromping around in the woods.

This is certainly a new twist on a very old backpack design.

And from a company in Lake Jackson to boot.

Given my difficulties in finding a lightweight internal-frame pack that fits properly, I may have to give one of these bad boys a try. They’re as light as the packs I’ve been trying, and I’ve never had a pack fit better than those old external frame packs. It’s just that the old ones used to be really bulky and heavy. This company seems to have solved that problem. Interesting.

I got back yesterday from my trip to the Ouachitas, where the drought conditions cut my trip short.

I had planned on hiking a loop on the Oklahoma side of the Ouachitas starting on the Old Military Road Trail swinging down into the Holson Valley, then catching the Boardstand Trail up out of the valley, and then heading back across to my starting point via the southern exposure of the mountains on the Ouachita National Trail (pdf of the trail). It’s about a 23-24 mile hike that I planned on doing in three days.

Unfortunately, the northern leg of the trip (Old Military Road/Boardstand Trails) was completely dry. Streams that usually flow year-round were all dry. That meant I had no water to purify on the trail, and only the 4.1 liters I was carrying. THAT meant that I was forced away from preparing my freeze-dried food for dinner, and instead conserving my water for the trip out.

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Things will be quiet here for a few days, as I’m headed out tomorrow for some backpacking.

Technically, I won’t actually head into the woods tomorrow. I’m taking off for the Ouachitas in the afternoon, but I won’t actually hit the trail until Thursday morning. The weather looks like it’s going to be nice — 70s for highs, and around 50 for the low (although 43 is forecast for Thursday night), low chance of rain.

It’s going to be nice to escape the crazy city for a few days!

I recently posted about lightweight solo backpacking tents, and my difficulties picking from several different models. I finally decided just to order a couple, evaluate them, keep one and return one (for those who think this is impolite, I would add that this is a pretty common practice with backpacking gear suppliers). I suspect the Eureka single-wall model will beat out the Alps model, because of the combination of weight and features.

Evaluating tents got me thinking about other gear, though, specifically packs. Five years ago, my ArcTery’x load carrier was state of the art, but since I haven’t really done much packing the last few years or kept up with pack technology, I figured there had probably been some interesting developments there as well. And sure enough, there’s a new generation of lightweight packs that will carry 25-35 pounds with ease, but themselves weigh anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of what my old ArcTery’x pack weighs. That 3-4 pound savings may not sound like much, but the potential cumulative effect on a long weekend roundtrip (typically 20-30 miles of hiking with a load) can be pretty significant.

A couple of packs really caught my eye:

The Osprey Atmos 50 and the Gregory Z-Pack

I’m planning on hauling in my typical 3-day base gear (sleeping bag, pad, old tent, food, camp clothes, stove/water purifier/cookware, all in stuff sacks) to REI, loading up both packs with it, and seeing which pack handles the load best.

As Scott Chaffin points out, REI is very cool about letting gear addicts come in and test out stuff this way, and they have an incredible return policy. So if I wind up dropping even more cash on a new state-of-the-art lightweight pack, it’s Chaffin‘s fault.

UPDATE (09-10-2006): The Osprey pack won my in-store gear test, AND my mom found a nice 15% off REI coupon that was pretty sweet (thanks mom!). Target date for my return to solo packing the Ouachitas: Next weekend or the weekend after. Woo!

Temps in the Ouachitas are finally starting to ease a bit. I just looked at a ten-day forecast that had 80s/60s listed for highs/lows. That’s getting into the territory of nice fall backpacking weather.

I’m still trying to decide on a new solo tent.

There’s this one made by Cabelas, and there’s this one made by Alps.

The Cabelas tent has a nice side door, which I find preferable. However, it doesn’t seem to have much mesh, which makes it more susceptible to condensation and less suitable for stargazing.

The Alps tent has a front door, which I don’t especially like. However, it has lots of mesh and seems ideal as condensation/stargazing go.

Both have a full-coverage rainfly, are free-standing, and are comparable in weight, so it really just comes down to those other features. I’m leaning towards the Cabela’s at the moment…. Decisions, decisons.

UPDATE: Hmm, there’s also this little number from Eureka. The single-wall construction is a little scary, though…

UPDATE 2: What the hell, let’s throw out one more possibility.

A scout leader has put together a pretty neat trail guide (pdf) for the Oklahoma portion of the Ouachita National Trail.

I’ve hiked every mile on that side. It’s challenging, and will probably be worse this fall because of the drought conditions (more water must be carried – bleh).

I’m probably going to do about a three-day, 24-mile loop hike around Deadman’s Gap in September/October (depending when the temps break).

Float Trip 2006 is a wrap, and goes down as a win I guess.

I’m still tired (and sunburned in strange spots), not to mention behind on my news reading, so blog posting probably won’t resume here for a little while yet.