Overland Journal :: Winter 2010

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

CONTENTS

Winter 2010

Feature s 28

In the Footsteps of Genghis Khan: Silk Road by Lada, Sophie Ibbotson

39

Sleeping Bag Test, Graham Jackson

63

Venturesome Spirit: Cape Town to Cairo, Lois Pryce

71

Northern Michigan: Say Yah to da UP, eh?, Mike McCarthy

79

An Overlander’s Camera: Ricoh GXR, Tom Sheppard

85

The Canol Road, Part 2: A Camel-Trophy-style Assault, Pete Lembesis

99

Vehicle Feature: BMW 800GS, Brian DeArmon

Dep artments

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8

Overland Post

12

Editor’s Column

14

Publisher’s Project

18

News from the Trade

25

Overland News

55

Latitude

105

Overland Conservation, Roseann Hanson

106

Overland Medicine: First-Aid Kits, Dr. Ed Beggy

111

Skills: Africa on your Own, Jonathan Hanson

120

Overland Chef: Cider Chops with Grilled Apples, Overland Gourmet

122

Classic Kit: The Bush Jacket, Jonathan Hanson

128

Tail Lamp: Thoughts During an Icelandic Whiteout, Charlie Venezia On the cover: The Land Rover team making their way along the braided Godlin River, northern Canada. Photo by Pete Lembesis.

This photo: The Gates of Hell, Darvaza, Turkmenistan. Photo by Scott Brady.

Back cover: In 1948, Wally Byam toured Europe with Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. During the trip and after they arrived home, the towns and nations were painted on the four sides of their Airstream.

Photo courtesy of Dale Schwamborn.

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

Winter 2010 Publisher and Chairman Scott Brady President and Director of Design Stephanie Brady Executive Editor Jonathan Hanson Editorial Director Chris Marzonie Senior Editor, Africa Graham Jackson Conservation Editor Roseann Hanson Medical Editor Dr. Edward Beggy Contributing Editors Stephen Bodio, Tom Collins, Brian DeArmon, Adam Jeske, Christine Jeske, Lois Pryce, Andrew Moore, Kevin Rowland, Chris Scott, Tom Sheppard, Mark Stephens Cartographer David Medeiros Photo Editor Jacob Lichner Senior Photographer, South America Jorge Valdés Photographer At-Large Sinuhe Xavier Director of Business Development Brian McVickers Director of Operations Jeremy Edgar Contact Overland Journal LLC PO Box 1150 Prescott, AZ 86302 service@overlandjournal.com editor@overlandjournal.com Overland Journal is a trademark of Overland Journal LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. overlandjournal.com LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK Send comments to editor@overlandjournal.com or PO Box 1150, Prescott, AZ 86302

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

OverlandPost

Trail run overlooking Lake Tahoe, after recently completing the Rubicon Trail. Left to right: Rob Woodward, Doug Lawyer, Marilyn Moyer Ward, Ted Moyer, Jon Christensen, and Craig Ludwig. Photo by Jon Christensen.

First Rate Advice

I stumbled across your website by accident about a year ago, and ordered the entire back catalogue. I just felt the need to write and say, like many others, bravo! I’m sure you get a lot of emails along these lines, but your magazine has really helped me make decisions on a lot of the equipment I have bought for the overland adventure I’m undertaking from London to Singapore in a couple of weeks.

From GPS units to waffle boards, the advice and guidance have been first rate.

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Addicted

After stopping to get my mail during my lunch break today, I was pleasantly surprised to find the summer issue waiting. Like a junkie getting his fix, I was useless for the rest of the day, and devoured every page. As always, I found excellent articles, beautiful photography, and great writing. All I ask? Keep it up.

Chris Maytag 2007 FJ Cruiser 1964 Vespa

I’m doing my bit spreading the word with your stickers plastered on my Defender 130.

In fact with the number of people asking me about them and the Journal I should be getting a commission.

Keep up the good work, and I shall endeavor to get my new issues en route through Asia, somehow . . .

Regards, Simon Maple Defender 130

Write us a note

attention: Overland Post editor@overlandjournal.com PO Box 1150 Prescott, AZ 86302 Include your name, address, e-mail address, daytime phone number, and the year and make of your vehicle.

Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

CONTRIBUTORS

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Winter 2010

Tom Sheppard

Mike McCarthy

Tom has an exploration career spanning 50 years, and totaling over 110,000 overland miles since 1960, including significant exploration in northern Africa and the first-ever lateral crossing of the Sahara from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Tom is a freelance writer/photographer and consultant, and author of the Vehicle Dependent Expedition Guide and the new The Nobility of Wilderness (Desert Winds).

From the Royal Geographical Society, Tom has received the Ness Award, and the distinction ARPS (Associate of the Royal Photographic Society).

Mike is a native of the small northern Wisconsin village of Niagara. He received his first set of wheels at five, and has never stopped peeking over the next hill. After 70-plus countries, 30 years in the military, and the Wisconsin State Fair, he is still seeking new adventures in his Sportsmobile or rust-enhanced Land Rover with his wife, Carol, and their faithful Irish setter, Finn. His latest trip was into the Chaco region of Paraguay and Bolivia. When not on the road, you can find him bouncing off the bumps and trees of the local ski areas or scaring trout with a fly rod.

Graham Jackson

Sophie Ibbotson

Graham Jackson was born in Lesotho in Southern Africa. He grew up racing motorcycles in the dirt as well as helping his father design, build and race offroad buggies. Graham completed his first safari across the Kalahari at age 10 in a Range Rover with his family. This trip planted the seed for Graham's lifelong overlanding obsession. In 2004 he completed a 30,000 mile overland adventure from London to Cape Town. He has guided expeditions in Africa, the American West, Mexico and Central America, and has been an active supporter of the global overland community. A scientist by trade, Graham tries to combine his interest in the natural world, his passion for overlanding and his love of things mechanical. He is now director of Overland Training.

Sophie Ibbotson read Oriental Languages at Cambridge University before disappearing into the Indian Subcontinent for a protracted period drinking tea in the hill stations, pretending she was part of the Raj, and falling in love with Indian tuk-tuks. The call of the wild then beckoned her to northern Pakistan and Central Asia, where she now divides her time writing about regional politics and economics, promoting tourism in the Kyrgyz Republic, and driving ridiculous vehicles to little-known destinations.

Sophie is fascinated by the journeys of historical figures in Asia, and aims to repeat the travels of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and the Mughal Emperor Babur.

Brian DeArmon

Pete Lembesis

Riding on four wheels or two, the soles of his boots, or the saddle of a horse, Brian DeArmon has spent most of his life exploring the wonders of nature.

This obsession has taken him from the Rocky Mountains, to the Gold Coast of Australia, the beaches of the Seychelles Islands, the frozen landscapes of Alaska, and a few places in between. Settled now in the Sonoran Desert, Brian is enjoying a lull in the fast pace of life before the next adventure begins.

Born in the northeastern U.S. and degreed in mechanical engineering, Pete has lived in California, Germany, and Italy, and maintains a residence in Greece. He has traveled throughout North America, Europe, Korea, Tunisia, and Libya, including four treks into the Sahara with his Unimog. Currently he lives in Langley, British Columbia, and manages product development for a semiconductor equipment company. He currently owns a Toyota pickup, an FJ40, a Land Rover 110, a U1300L37 Unimog, and a 1966 Corvette roadster. Pete enjoys doing all his own fabrication (including a 300TDI conversion in the 110), painting (cars, not landscapes), motorcycles, photography and travel. He is the vice president of RoverLanders of B.C., a Land Rover enthusiast club.

Overland Journal Winter 2010

Charlie Venezia

Lois Pryce

Charlie is a Cape Cod native who grew up deeply immersed in the world of equestrian athletics. He currently owns and manages Holly Hill Transport, a Massachusetts-based company that specializes in transporting show horses throughout the U.S. While the news of his arrival came as a surprise to his veterinarian father and show-stablemanaging mother, they nonetheless did everything they could to work him like every farm boy should be once he was old enough. He learned to operate myriad types of farm and construction equipment very, very early in life. Charlie lives with an adopted cockatiel named Herb and tries to divide his time evenly between stand-up paddle-boarding, working his family’s land in Vermont, and trying to get up the courage to talk to girls.

Weary of the daily grind in jargon-infested London media-land, Lois Pryce jacked in her job at the BBC to ride from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego astride her Yamaha XT225. Upon her return she wrote the book of this trip, Lois on the Loose, which was published in the U.S. and the U.K., as well as being translated into German and Dutch. Itchy wheels struck again and it wasn’t long before she was poring over maps of Africa, plotting another adventure. In October 2006 she set off on a Yamaha TTR250 to ride from London to Cape Town, crossing the Sahara through Algeria and Niger and continuing down the west coast through the Congo and Angola to South Africa. The tale of this trip is captured in her book Red Tape and White Knuckles. Lois lives on a Dutch barge in London with her husband, fellow motorcycle adventurer Austin Vince.

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

JOURNAL ENTRY: From the Editor

Jonathan Hanson

Tough, and Tougher Never let ego get the better of you

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’ve learned something over decades of doing a lot of different things outdoors: No matter how tough you think you are, there’s always someone

tougher.

One of my most satisfying moments on the “tougher” end was the time years ago when my friend Tommy Thompson and I paddled our sea kayaks out to a tiny island in the Sea of Cortez, about 16 miles from the nearest land mass, and farther from where we launched our 22-inch-wide, 17-foot-long boats. It was a rough paddle in choppy conditions, and we were tired but satisfied when we pulled up to the cobbled shore, and carried the boats up to a spit beneath a hill on which several thousand seabirds were nesting.

Late that afternoon as we relaxed in camp, glassing for the sharks that hung around the island because of the sea lion rookery, we noticed a small sailboat headed our way from the horizon, the same way we’d come—a sloop, perhaps 23 feet or so overall. It tacked back and forth in the stiff southerly breeze, and finally anchored in the sheltered cove below us. We walked down to the shore as three young men climbed into a dinghy and rowed in. They were clearly a bit chagrined to see us, but took it in Overland Journal Winter 2010

good spirits—until we led them up the slope to where our kayaks nestled together. Three chins dropped onto three chests. There was a moment of silence, then one of them said, “You came out here in those?” When we allowed as to how we had, there was another moment of silence, then, “Damn. We made it out here in the sailboat, and we thought we were butch.”

That was cool. But be assured I’ve had far more experience on the less-tough side of things. One incident in Tanzania just a couple of months ago illustrates this perfectly.

Roseann and I were in a Land Rover in the middle of a 3,000-mile loop through the western part of the country, where few tourists visit and even fewer drive. We’d had a couple of 250-mile days on seriously corrugated and potholed Tanzanian B-roads—no mud, no chance of getting stuck, mind you, just 13 or 14 dusty hours at the wheel dodging rocks and bumperheight craters. We hadn’t seen a white face in days, had stretched our rudimentary Swahili to the limit, and were feeling pretty, well, butch.

Then we met Obes.

I pulled up beyond the bicycle he was pedaling northward, and stopped. He pulled up too, shook our hands, and introduced himself with a smile. He was clearly happy to chat, yet

just as clearly had no real need for the contact; he was simply being friendly. His mount was a thoroughly pedestrian, steel-framed Bianchi mountain bike a decade old. Beat-up Vaude panniers held his gear, and cheap plastic bottles sufficed for water. Obes himself, under the road dust and cap, could have been anywhere from 50 to 65. He spoke perfect English with a heavy Italian accent—I wondered if the choice of bike was a bit of patriotism.

We talked for a bit, and told him where we were going when he inquired. Then I asked where he’d come from.

“Today, or where I started?” he replied. I asked where he’d started, and he said, “Cape Town.”

I knew immediately the answer to the next question, but asked anyway where he was headed. He shrugged offhandedly and said, “Cairo.”

Damn.

We talked a bit more, and Roseann gave him a Coke from the fridge, which, after a couple of sips, he poured into one of his plastic bottles to drink later (“It’s too cold!”). Then we shook hands with him again, and drove off.

Suddenly it seemed we were moving really fast, and didn’t have far at all to go.

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

Editor’s

Project Jonathan Hanson

The Perfect Overlanding Tool Kit The editor sets himself a goal he has yet to achieve in decades of travel: the one-box, do-it-(almost)-all, anyvehicle-he-owns-or-has-to-rescue tool kit

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deliberately titled this column in a way designed to raise eyebrows. Clearly, there is no such thing as the perfect tool kit—at least, not short of stock number 9600GSBO in the Snap-on catalog: a spectacular 1,000-plus-piece triumph of the forger’s art that includes rolling chests and wall cabinets and retails for—I’ll write this out for full impact—thirty seven thousand, seven hundred and twenty dollars. And ten cents.

Even that wouldn’t be perfect. Most obviously, while 9600GSBO is inarguably comprehensive, it would be . . . inconvenient . . . to transport, and one of the salient features of an ‘overlanding’ tool kit clearly must be portability. Considering only that, then, the Leatherman Charge TTi on my belt would qualify as perfect—except the Leatherman falls short when we factor in the need to do more than pull fuses, tighten hose clamps, strip wire, and open boxes of new accessories.

So—it’s apparent there is no such thing as the perfect overlanding tool kit. However, is there such a thing as a perfect compromise overlanding tool kit?

That’s what I’ve set out to discover in the next month or two.

You’d think that, after decades of backcountry travel, I’d already have a pretty good tool kit—and I do. The problem is, it’s never been consolidated, and it’s never been dedicated. I’ve always put together a more or less on-the-spot selection for each trip and each vehicle. The result is that the wrench roll sometimes gets forgotten in the Jeep when I want it in the FJ60, and my Knipex pliers are in the rolling tool chest in the shop when I need them in Mexico. What I hope to accomplish is to assemble a comprehensive kit that, on pain of death, will remain together in one case so that whatever vehicle it goes in will have a complete set.

We’ve already determined one parameter—portability. But just how portable is portable? Somewhat arbitrarily, I’ve set the goal of fitting the entire kit into a Pelican 1550 case, which gives me interior dimensions of 18.5 by 14.5 by 7.5 inches, or just about 2,000 cubic inches. The 1550 is a reasonable size that fits easily in almost any ve-

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

Tool rolls will help organize the contents and prevent rattling

Think of it this way: If you’re using tools on your vehicle for anything but maintenance,

something has already gone wrong.

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hicle, yet should hold—well, we’ll see what it will hold.

I’ve decided to ignore weight for the moment, figuring the 1550 can’t hold more than I or my wife can reasonably lift. We’ll also see if that assumption holds up.

It would be easy to try for some sort of a one-time record to see how many tools I could cram into the 1550—a Guinness-like stunt that could never be duplicated in the field, like trying to put your average Chinesemade electronic device back into its packaging. But I’m after organization and convenience as well as versatility. Thus, each subset of tools—sockets, wrenches, screwdrivers, and the like—will need to have its own compartment or other enclosure. I also want to avoid loose tools rattling around inside the case, creating noise and migrating out of order.

The next thing to determine is just how comprehensive I hope this kit will be. What sorts of procedures do I want to be capable of handling? Again, we’re inevitably talking compromise here. For example, I’d draw the line somewhere south of including a pistonring compressor—but I want to be able to go well beyond standard maintenance and such elementary tasks as replacing serpentine belts Overland Journal Winter 2010

or alternators and reading OBD-II codes.

I decided, given what I’d tackled myself in the past, what I’d seen other people faced with on extended trips, and even considering a few situations I’d only read about, that I wanted to be able to do anything up to and including the following: • Remove and replace such components as water pumps, radiators, manifolds, etc.

• Repair or replace a clutch (i.e., remove a transmission) • Disassemble a transmission • Repair or replace a differential • Replace an axle, driveshaft, wheel bearing, CV, or universal joint • Replace suspension and steering components or a steering box • Diagnose electrical problems and rewire circuits I knew I’d have to draw the line at certain categories in terms of fitting all the tools needed or desired for a trip into one 1550 case. For example, there’d be no way to include a decent air compressor in there and have room left for anything like a proper assortment of wrenches and sockets. So I decided to treat tire repair (and airing down/up)

as a separate category (and container). The same goes for potentially useful but bulky tools such as cordless drills or impact drivers, and DC welders. Also, I rejected the idea of trying to fit in spare parts, or selections of nuts and bolts. However, I did want to include items such as nitrile gloves, hand cleaner, rags, some sort of trouble light—things that directly support a repair effort.

Every vehicle I own is metric, so the socket and wrench selection will be tilted in favor of millimeters. However, I frequently have to deal with SAE fasteners when helping others.

While metric tools can almost always suffice for SAE, at a minimum it’s inelegant to do so, so I’ll include a basic set of SAE sockets and wrenches.

Last but far from least comes the question of quality. I’m always of the opinion that better quality is the better buy, but when shopping for tools the axiom carries extra weight. Think of it this way: If you’re using tools on your vehicle for anything but maintenance, something has already gone wrong.

Why would you take the slightest chance of compounding the problem—perhaps even rendering it unsolvable—with a tool that fails to do its job properly, or even breaks?

On the other hand, it would be effortless to drop a quarter of my yearly salary on a set of tools from one of the boutique makers whose sales reps troll mechanics’ shops in those spanky trucks—unimpeachable quality, for sure, but simply not affordable for me.

Therefore I’d be looking for high-quality tools that were within reach of those of us who don’t use them all day, every day.

The ubiquitous Sears Craftsman comes to mind, of course. It’s fashionable to dismiss them, and easy to find as many “My brother’s friend’s father had a Craftsman wrench break in two” stories as you like, but I’ve had uniformly good luck with them. Another brand that interests me is Britool, which not only offers solid value but is available in sets in blow-molded cases organized more efficiently than I’ve seen in any other brand.

Finally, I’ll need at least a couple of tool rolls to organize wrenches and the like. Several companies make good ones, particularly Off Road Trail Tools, which just happens to be headquartered right here in Tucson.

The Pelican 1550 is waiting . . . pelican.com, 800-473-5422

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

NEWS FROM THE TRADE Exploring the newest gear for overlanding

diesel and alternative-fuel news

by Kevin Rowland

DAFN without the AF? Why electric vehicles don't feature here very often You may have noticed that, over the past couple years, I’ve covered few electric-powered vehicles. The word order in the title of the column is an indication of where my personal preferences lie, but despite that I’m not one for ignoring the possibilities electrics offer.

For that reason I feel my lack of coverage deserves an explanation.

we want it in a ‘green’ way. If the desire were truly to be green, the impact of building a car could be cut in half by simply removing as many unnecessary systems as possible. Each system or component lost would make the whole simpler, easier to manufacture, more durable, and easier to repair. That would truly be green.

There is a handful of criticisms typically directed at Electric Vehicles, or EVs. The source of the electricity is often questioned, since much of it is derived from burning fossil fuels.

While true, this is a short-sighted objection, since, besides the efficiencies of scale (one big power plant is more efficient than a bunch of little ones), that infrastructure is more than capable of catching up to, and even surpassing, EV technology—think nuclear, wind, etc.

The real issue, then, is just consumption, period. The impact of any given vehicle on the road is a drop in the bucket compared to the impact of our collective daily appetite for stuff. One study reported that a single container ship bringing items to Wal-Mart emits as much sulphur oxide pollution yearly as 50 million cars.

Range Anxiety is a major fear factor, but what overland vehicle doesn’t suffer from the same symptoms? We strap on those extra fuel cans for a reason, and I find the prospect of being able to stop and roll out some solar panels for a recharge in the middle of nowhere rather appealing.

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Another concern specific to our hobby is the dearth of EVs with off-pavement capabilities.

This is more an indication of where consumer demand lies than an indication of electric technology limitations.

Things start to get more interesting when opponents of EV technology reference higher production impact compared to more conventional vehicles. This argument is supported—or not—by the numbers, depending on who crunches them, but the same argument holds true with most new production methods when compared to established ones.

Not your great-grandfather's green machine.

Electric cars sparked interest early on.

Overland Journal Winter 2010

It’s more valuable to look at production in general, electric or otherwise, and recognize that the production impact of any new car is far too high, as a result of consumer demands.

We still want everything in a car, but suddenly

The current socially attractive tactic to justify consumption is the green-washing of products. The EV is becoming the poster-child of that mindset, and the trend is to present the EV as the silver bullet of green mobility. EVs are certainly a better direction, but stopping there falls far short of addressing the actual problem.

There is no silver bullet, there is no truly green vehicle and no perfect solution. That’s why I don’t cover many EVs—not because they are not a good step forward, but because they seem to be too commonly portrayed as something they are not. My favorite electric vehicle is a diesel/electric hybrid. GE and other companies make them. They’re called locomotives, and a couple of them do the work of hundreds of tractor-trailer trucks.

So if you want to be green, don’t rush out to buy a green car. Make use of the vehicle you have, buy less stuff, and ship goods by rail.

In celebration of national Buy Nothing Day, November 26th P.S. Jeep Wranglers will be getting an efficient new 2.8-liter diesel engine in 2011. (Need I mention that it won’t be available in the U.S.?)

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

NEWS FROM THE TRADE Exploring the newest gear for overlanding

By Jonathan Hanson and Jeremy Edgar

AGVSport Excursion Kevlar cargo pants $99 Adventure motorcycle riders shopping for riding pants used to have a choice between looking like a Paris/Dakar racer, or going civvie and having no protection at all. Now there’s a compromise with AGVSport’s handsome cotton twill khaki cargo pants, which are reinforced with Kevlar in all likely contact areas. They retain breathability for warm-weather riding, but add skid-resistance for unexpected horizontal adventures. In addition to four standard pockets, two side cargo pockets hold bulkier stuff where it won’t interfere with sitting. (JH) agvsport.com; available from motonation.com, 619-401-4106

Merrell Mammoth Coat $199

Michelin-man down jackets are unmatched at retaining vital core body heat, but they leave a lot to be desired in the coziness department.

This big old jacket from Merrell has the look and feel of a heavy wool coat, but polyester fabric and synthetic insulation keep total weight down to three and a half pounds. Heavy ribbed cuffs and collar hold warmth inside the quilted lining where it belongs, a fleece-lined hood keeps your head from freezing, and a total of six pockets (not including two handwarmers) hold such other cold-weather necessities as gloves and a flask of whiskey. (JH) merrell.com, 800-288-3124

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X-Socks $25 - $35 Have you noticed that while shoe and boot technology advanced, sock manufacturing more or less stayed stuck in the 1950s? “Socks with those Zamberlans? Sure—uh, cotton or wool?” That’s finally changing, although the idea of spending 35 bucks on a pair of socks might take some getting used to. X-Socks brings sock-making into the 21st century with differential weaves, targeted materials, and designs specific to different sports and different footwear—even right and left feet. Their hiking socks guard against chafe and blistering while enhancing ventilation and providing padding in critical areas. (JH) x-socks.com Overland Journal Winter 2010

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

NEWS FROM THE TRADE Exploring the newest gear for overlanding

Goal 0 Elite Sherpa 50 Adventure Kit $450 Need I point out the irony in the increasing number of electronic devices many of us are carrying into the wilderness? No? Good. In any case, we need power for those devices, and the Goal 0 Sherpa kit has it to spare. A 13.5-watt foldable solar array completely charges the 50-watt-hour power pack in eight hours (or you can charge it on 120VAC before you leave, or a 12V plug en route). That power pack, via several types of ports, will then charge a cell phone for 50 hours of use, an iPod for 93 hours, a handheld radio for 100 hours, or a GPS for 27 hours before needing recharging itself. Rated for up to 3,000 cycles—that’s the equivalent of 30,000 AA alkaline batteries. (JH) goal0.com, 888-794-6250; available from matrixmotosports.com, 480-782-9300

JK Winch Commander $135 Tired of running your winch controller through a window or open door, especially during inclement weather? The (Jeep) JK Winch Commander from Outback Hardware is a semi-permanent installation, but still allows the winch to be operated with the stock controller outside the vehicle if necessary. The panel installs in the JK dash below the factory power outlets using factory clips, and features momentary push buttons, an ‘armed’ indicator light, and a sealed weatherproof cover. The price includes the controller, installation kit, and instructions. The controller works on several Warn models as well as winches from other manufacturers. (JE) outbackhardware.com, 805-604-5337

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Magellan ToughCase $180 Built for the iPhone and iPod touch, the ToughCase is ruggedized and waterproof to IPX7 standards. The surprise is a built-in battery and GPS. The battery charges via mini-USB, which powers the SiRFStar III GPS and doubles as an extended-life power source for the iPhone. The case has three modes: battery only, battery and GPS, or off. The ToughCase allows access to all the controls on the iPhone except the ring/silent toggle switch. The GPS has no operating system; you use whatever mapping software you have on the iPhone for backcountry navigation. However, once outside of cellular data network range, only maps saved onto the iPhone can be used. (JE) magellangps.com/toughcase, 800-707-9971

Overland Journal Winter 2010

NEWS FROM THE TRADE Exploring the newest gear for overlanding

PMI Heavyweight Rescue Gloves and Rope Tech Gloves $28 and $31 Static ropes and prusik cord from Pigeon Mountain Industries have been standard equipment among my caving friends for 20 years, but it was only a year or so ago I noticed someone using their gloves for tire repair and winch-handling duties. I tried a pair, and the difference in quality was obvious compared to the gloves typically included in a winch kit. The Heavyweight Rescue Gloves, with two extra layers of cowhide across the palm, are ideal for handling wire winch rope, but I like the extra dexterity of the Rope Tech Gloves for synthetic rope. They’re not loose enough to “pull free if caught in the winch,” but I’ve always been dubious about that concept anyway. Keep your hands away from the damn winch, is my motto. (JH) pmirope.com, 800-282-7673; available from expeditionexchange.com, 310-618-1875

Brunton Polaris LED lantern $52 Much as we love the ambiance of a classic white gas (or even propane) lantern, the constant hissing overwhelms the sounds of the night. The Polaris uses a Cree three-watt LED to produce 75 lumens of 360-degree light on high, a glow it’s reported to maintain for 50 hours on three (included) C batteries. Even on low it lights up a big tent enough for dressing or packing.

Despite an orange emitter tint the light cast is still on the cool side, but it’s better than earlier LED lanterns, which made everyone look like zombies. Coyotes and crickets will come through loud and clear now. (Note: This will soon be marketed as a Primus product.) (JH) brunton.com, 307-857-4700

SureFire G2X and 6PX $55 and $79

Since the very first issue of Overland Journal I’ve sung the praises of SureFire’s high-intensity, bombproof flashlights, while acknowledging their corresponding premium cost. Now the company has introduced two new LED models, the polymer-bodied G2X and the anodized-aluminum 6PX. Despite prices well below SureFire’s previous ‘bottom’ models, both are microprocessor-controlled to ensure constant output and maximum battery life, both come with lifetime guarantees, and both are made in the U.S. Each cycles easily via a tailcap switch between a reading/walking/working 15 lumens and an instant-daylight 200 lumens—an ideal combination. Run time for either light with the two included CR123 batteries is two hours on high and an economical 45 hours on low. (JH) surefire.com, 800-828-8809 Overland Journal Winter 2010

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

OVERLAND NEWS Showcasing expedition travelers and resources from around the globe

A Land Rover club you can’t join . . . . . . unless you are a 9-year-old girl. Meet the Rover Divas: Grace, Izabella, Samantha, Sophia and Sydney. The definition of a Rover Diva is: “A bunch of girls who all own Land Rovers and love the outdoors and camping,” according to the homepage of their popular blog (roverdivas.blogspot.com). Inspired by their many outings together with their parents and the Arizona Land Rover Owner’s club, the five young Arizonans have blogged about looking for gold in the Santa Catalina Mountains (it was iron pyrite), rock climbing, and exploring Chaco Canyon, including an excellent discourse on misspelled inscriptions and signage (immediately endearing the author to this magazine’s executive editor).

The Divas’ trip logs are often very useful, with maps, history, and details about sites such as Monument Valley—as well as some MacGyveresque ingenuity. Izabella wrote: “We had marshmallows but no skewers so I took a fork and knife and put them together with a hair tie. I broke off the two middle spikes, too. The marshmallows were delicious!!!!” Now the Rover Divas blog has gone global: Inspired by their enthusiasm for both the brand and their spirit of exploration, Land Rover’s main U.K. training center sent the girls Land Rover travel journals, patches, and key chains (thinking ahead there). You can meet the Divas at Overland Expo 2011—the team will be teaching workshops just for kids, with topics including fort building, using a map and compass, and camp cooking.

The Rover Divas on a hiking trip; left to right: Izabella, Sydney, Sophie, Samantha, and Grace. Divas and Dormobile; left to right: Sydney, Grace, and Izabella. Below: The Rover Divas’ Rovers. All photos by Kelly Howard

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A drive in the footsteps of

Genghis Khan Sophie Ibbotson steps up from a tuk-tuk to the luxury of a Lada for her latest endeavour

By Sophie Ibbotson

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If western China’s border guards had been on duty in the 13th century, Genghis Khan would have

never made it out of Mongolia.

His horses would have been quarantined, his weapons confiscated, and his troops rounded up and left in a small, soulless waiting hall until they strangled each other in frustration.

Obdurate officialdom would have thwarted the take-over of the known world, and Pax Mongolica, Moscow, and the Golden Horde would never have come to be.

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or those who have yet to visit the vast wildernesses of Central Asia, the regional icon that most often comes to mind is the Mongol warrior. Those who have been here and followed in his stead are far more likely to call to mind that enduring symbol of the Soviet successor states: an elderly, rusty, asthmatic Lada sedan. The Lada, once the pride and joy of Mother Russia and all her subjects, was exported to every corner of the USSR. It bears a striking resemblance to an old Fiat (it was in fact based on one) and, although in Moscow and Prague, East Berlin and St. Petersburg the nouveau riche have long since traded in these humble wrecks for BMWs and blacked-out 4x4s, in the steppe-land and mountains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the Lada remains king of the road.

What better way, then, to explore the region than to follow in the footsteps (or, more accurately, horse tracks) of Genghis Khan and his marauding horde whilst driving a caricature of Central Asia’s more recent past?

The challenge set, I took ownership of my very own rusting white Lada Riva, complete with suspicious-looking papers, for a thousand dollars cash. The authentic taste of Soviet bureaucracy and black market dealings behind us, the Lada and I were ready for our own assault on Central Asia.

As mentioned, attempting to cross into Kazakhstan through one of the most remote corners of the People’s Republic of China is not to be done in a rush. The Lada and I arrived from Xinjiang bright and early, paintwork scrubbed and residual wildlife removed from every nook, lest either of us receive one of the not-so-pleasurable cavity searches of which customs officials are notoriously fond. Hours, but little drama, later we were across.

The drive through Xinjiang Province had been largely uneventful, thanks to the immaculately maintained Chinese highways, but—as the soaring peaks on the horizon had suggested as we drew near to the Khorgoz/Zharkent border crossing—the challenges for both the Lada and me were yet to come. Perhaps it’s just the contrast with their Chinese counterparts, but the barely-paved roads one first encounters arriving in Kazakhstan are a bit of a shock. Even if the Lada’s suspension were faultless (sadly far from so), every single pothole and rock seemed carefully positioned for maximum impact, bumping and jarring each bone until, a few miles along the road, I took my cue from the trucks roaring past me and abandoned the main carriageway entirely, driving instead along the baked-mud verge. The Tien Shan Mountains make quite an impression (in particular the feeling that death is imminent every time a truck overtakes you whilst navigating a blind, hairpin bend on the edge of a precipice), but it was the anticipation of the steppe to come that largely occupied my mind.

Kazakhstan is home to the largest dry steppe in the world and even now, as when Genghis passed through some 800 years ago, it seems barely inhabited. The country is equal in size to all of western Europe combined, but its tiny population (not all of whom were accurately portrayed in the film Borat) is concentrated in a few, oil- and gas-rich conurbations.

Most of the rest is home only to scattered nomads and their flocks. High above the asphalt, majestic golden eagles soar on the thermals, ever on the lookout for a well-fed marmot waddling up the road.

The majority of these impressive birds roam wild but, every now and again, you’ll spy one squatting by the side of the road, a pointed leather hood across its face and a ring around one foot. Taken from its nest as a chick, or raised from captive parents, the bird will have been trained to hunt and fetch, a winged retriever with the finest eyesight on earth. The eagle and hunter are entirely dependent on one another for survival, their relationship closer than man and wife, and replicated over and over again for hundreds of years.

No doubt the Mongols raced through at a gallop, anxious to reach the promised Silk Road wealth further west, and today, unless you’re particularly fond of your own company or are drawn by the bright lights and escort girls of Astana and Almaty, it’s tempting to follow suit. The Lada and I, however, had something else in mind.

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Opposite: Chinese offi cial checking passports.

Lada Riva, windshield still securely in place.

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Dead-Goat Polo: Goals are scored when the carcass is thrown into a ring at the end of a loosely-defined pitch, and the triumphant team will sample the now much-tenderised goat at dinner.

Opposite: Goat polo-the winner gets dinner.

Clockwise from top left: Hunting with eagles is a traditional Kazakh activity. Horseback wrestlingno padded mat and a long fall. Poor little goaty guy.

The German Autobahn holds an affectionate position in the minds of motorists across the globe. It presents the one opportunity we have to test our cars to the limit, topping out at 120 or even 150 mph on endless, flawless asphalt. Kazakhstan may not offer quite the same surface quality, but the wide-open spaces and confidence that there is not a traffic cop, wandering child or, in all likelihood, even another vehicle for 500 miles also has a certain je ne sais quoi. The Lada and I perfected our handbrake turns on the giant skid pan that is the steppe’s sandy top soil. I mastered steering with my knees whilst fixing my make-up (something I’d never chanced in London, despite the fine examples set by fellow rush-hour motorists), and, as I revved up for a drag race against a competitive-looking Bactrian camel a hundred or so miles north of Almaty—the Lada’s front passenger-side tire exploded with a surprisingly loud bang. Understandably interpreting this as the starting gun, the camel bolted into the distance, leaving the Lada and me alone, spluttering in a haze of dust. So much for fair competition. Genghis would have had the camel’s head, probably on a spike.

All across the steppe and into the mountains beyond, Genghis Khan’s descendants are alive and well. It is said that one in 200 of us carry his DNA, and that figure is dramatically higher so close to his native soil. On Saturday afternoons throughout the late summer and fall, the skills of horsemanship that made his army such a force to be reckoned with are clearly in evidence: on every village’s sports pitches, teams do battle in mounted games of kok boru (AKA dead-goat polo).

Originally derived from goat raiding, teams of up to 200 men hurl the carcass of a goat from one to another, violently jostling and wrestling as they ride. Goals are scored when the carcass is thrown into a ring at the end of a loosely-defined pitch, and the triumphant team will sample the now much-tenderised goat at dinner.

Moving westward along the Kazakh-Uzbek border, the feel on the roads is utterly different.

There is inevitably a great deal more traffic, but it’s also a different type of traffic: horsemen and donkey carts have been replaced by foreign trucks, and where previously we saw herds of ambling goats milling among the Lexus 4WDs, now there are tankers and drilling machines being hauled to the region’s oil and gas fields. The Lada and I travelled roads in continual use for nearly 3,000 years; the likes of Marco Polo almost certainly passed this way. When Genghis Khan arrived in 1220, the cities of Samarkhand and Bukhara were already rich on the profits of trade; the ruins of caravanserais (ancient motels where merchants and their camel and donkey caravans stopped to rest) still line the highways, and, as we weaved our way, painstakingly slowly, through the narrow lanes and bazaars on the outskirts of the cities, it was clear the locals were unrivalled Overland Journal Winter 2010

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in the complementary arts of barter and banter. Crystal-clear voices rang out: “Madam, I sell you new car; nice new shiny car?” “Madam, I sell you not stolen car?” “Mercedes car?” “BMW car?”

“Husband and car?” The offers were endless.

The highlight of Samarkhand is the Registan. Some 2,750 years old, this UNESCO World Heritage Site comprises a central square, around which medieval madrasahs (religious schools) were constructed. Genghis Khan’s descendant, Amir Timur, whom Christopher Marlowe made famous in his play Tamerlaine, had a penchant for displaying the severed heads of his victims on spikes here. Fortunately, by the time the Lada and I arrived there was not a dismembered corpse in sight. Instead, what strikes you most is the scale of the buildings, built entirely by hand, and the striking simplicity of the geometric tile work which covers them. Elegant turquoise domes are flanked by magnificent gateways, and towers are inlaid with greens and blues of every shade.

Quite unexpectedly, animals and human faces also make their appearance in the designs, overturning my previous assumption that Islamic artists are prohibited from portraying living things.

As evening falls and the structures are bathed alternatively in golden light and long, deep shadows, it’s easy to imagine the impression these religious buildings must have made on weary travellers for centuries past. Just like a European cathedral for a pilgrim of the Middle Ages, every brick and every line is designed to evoke awe at man’s accomplishments, and respect for a greater power.

The dark is darker, the stars are brighter and more numerous and, if it weren’t for the fact you’re driving a car, you could be quite simply

in any time or place.

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Just a day’s drive from Samarkhand is Turkmenistan, and here you could be forgiven for thinking that God is once again incarnate—this time in the body of former president Turkmenbashi. His face stares out at you from the usual posters, books, and statues, but also, somewhat more unusually, from yoghurt cartons. Until last year, the month of April was known instead as Gurbansoltan in honour of the President’s mother; January was Turkmenbashi month, and the days of the week were also re-christened as Turkmenbashi saw fit.

Turkmenistan’s capital, Ashgabat, is the physical embodiment of an architect’s wildest dreams. The drive through the city centre took the Lada and me under an hour as it’s a modern, relatively efficient metropolis, but if you want to stop and see all the sights on offer you’d need at least two full days. Whilst elsewhere in the world it is worth remembering Tolkien’s line, “All that is gold does not glitter,” here in Ashgabat what glitters quite possibly is gold: The country’s mineral wealth has been creatively spent. Turkmenbashi’s palace is topped with a gilded dome to rival the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and the Independence and Peace Monument burns brilliantly gold and white in the midday sun.

However, the crowning glory of it all is undoubtedly the solid-gold statue of Turkmenbashi himself. The much-lauded sculpture had recently been moved to a new home in the outskirts of the city, so it took half a day to find—but it was well worth the effort. As the sun moves across the sky in the course of the afternoon, the statue rotates to follow its path—or, as the faithful will tell you, it is the sun falling into rightful submission and following the leader of the Turkmen.

How can you possibly argue with that kind of logic?

Providing you can see the road and any oncoming traffic, travelling at night in the Karakum Desert is an enjoyable experience. The dark is darker, the stars are brighter and more numerous and, if it weren’t for the fact you’re driving a car, you could be quite simply in any time or place.

The blazing horizon that seeps towards you as you drive only serves to emphasise the otherworldly feel of the place. I had heard before of naturally burning gas fires in this part of the world; it’s likely that flaming gases inspired the first fire worship of ancient Zoroastrians in the UNESCO World Heritage Site: the Registan in Samarkand.

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Photo by Scott Brady

Photo by Scott Brady

Buying your own?

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Before you decide to buy a car in the ‘Stans, take a deep breath: this may well be the most drawn-out and stressful part of your entire journey. The ‘official’ process in each country seems to be subject to the interpretation of the official involved, and at every turn you’ll be offered the opportunity to fasttrack, confirm, or merely process your paperwork for an invariably usurious (but frequently unavoidable) fee. If the official is required to lift a finger too far, you may be informed that your request is simply impossible, although a donation will likely change his mind.

The most straightforward way to buy and, importantly, register your vehicle is a) to be a resident, or b) to ask a resident or local company do the paperwork on your behalf. You will choose and pay for the vehicle (cash is preferred), they will process the paperwork with the authorities, and then provide you with a power of attorney document permitting you to drive the vehicle. The power of attorney should be in both Russian and English (stamped to confirm the authenticity of the translation) and then notarised. The more stamps, signatures, and official-looking paperwork you can accrue, the happier policemen and border officials will be when you drive away your purchase.

If you’re determined to buy the vehicle in your own right, it’s possible for foreigners to obtain a three-year warrant authorising a vehicle purchase.

However, the vehicle must be re-sold within the three-year period, and will have to wear easily identifiable plates, making it a target for police.

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nearby Caucuses. However, whatever the visual similarities may be, there is nothing natural about the 100-meter wide flame pit in the middle of the sands. Charmingly nicknamed ‘The Gates of Hell’ by the locals, this curiosity is the result of a 1971 Soviet gas exploration project that went badly wrong. The ground above a drilling rig collapsed, gas in the cavern below ignited and, when the Lada and I arrived in September, 2009, the light of the fire was still visible from miles away. Flames lick around the edges of the hole as if it were the subject of a poem by Dante, and the heat on your face as you approach is quite extraordinary. I could look down into the flaming abyss for only a minute at a time before being forced to retreat, coughing and spluttering, to cool down and expel the smoke from my lungs.

The crater is spectacular to see but, at the same time, it serves as a very physical reminder of the dangers of exploiting oil and gas resources beneath the desert floor. Rumour has it the government intends to turn off the gas supply one day but, for the time being, the environmental impact is being ignored in favour of a spectacular tourist draw.

After travelling well over 1,000 miles in the course of 10 days, conquering ice-capped mountains and speeding across steppe and desert alike, I wasn’t surprised when the Lada began to limp. The heat, dust, and, if I’m brutally honest, my driving style were taking their toll on a car that, at 30-something, was considerably older than I. The steering had become loose, the engine developed an even more extreme wheeze than before, and each time I changed gears it sounded as if I’d tipped a bag of gravel into the transmission for good measure.

My government-approved guide—mandatory for travel in Turkmenistan—looked decidedly worried each time I pressed my foot to the accelerator.

Even more ominously, extensive corrosion had loosened the entire structure of the car to the point that it quivered and shook over every bump. At last, on a rough track almost within sight of the last historic site on my list, the oasis-city of Merv, the Lada hit a particularly deep pothole and the windscreen shot out of its rusted frame, smashing on the bonnet. My noble steed had failed me at the last hurdle, and it wasn’t even the engine to blame.

Knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that my horsemanship was not up to that of Genghis, and wary of the children poised nearby ready to laugh hysterically, I trooped the last few miles to Merv on foot, frustrated and sweating prolifically under the burning sun.

Once the largest city in the world, Merv is now no more than ruins. The man we have to thank—inglorious on this occasion—is, of course, Genghis Khan. Opening their doors to the invaders in a time-honoured fashion, the inhabitants of Merv expected to be spared. Instead, Mongol troops massacred everyone they could find. As many as a million people died, and the city never recovered from the tragedy.

Standing atop what had once been the fortified wall of this mighty city, nothing obscured the view—the horizon was clearly visible in every direction. No other tourists were exploring the site, and the archaeologists normally present were nowhere to be seen. I felt completely alone in the ghostly city, and as the light began to fade and I trudged back to the Lada, the weight of the past seemed to hang heavily in the air.

Genghis and his troops passed fleetingly through Kazakhstan, and as a result left little mark on the landscape or the people; the steppe land looks today much as it has for a thousand years or more. The great Silk Road cities in Uzbekistan were razed almost to the ground but, thanks to their strategic importance and ongoing trade, they were able to rise back, phoenix-like, from the ashes and boom throughout the medieval period, traces of which are still evident today. This leaves Turkmenistan as a curio in the heartland of Central Asia. Political and architectural eccentricity makes Ashgabat and its environs a playground in the modern world, but scratching the surface, albeit briefly, reveals a somewhat sadder past. Total destruction by the Mongol horde, the environmental chaos and mineral exploitation of the USSR, and the passionate, if somewhat nonsensical, clutches of one of the world’s most unusual leaders have created a fascinating country, under-explored and little understood—but perfectly suited for a drive in the footsteps of Genghis Khan.

The Lada Riva

By Jonathan Hanson

One of my favorite thriller writers once penned the following concerning a certain dodgy pistol: “It was a Chinese copy of a Russian copy of something that wasn’t very good to begin with.”

While the Lada Riva has no Chinese DNA, the rest of that description fits well. The Riva, introduced in 1980, was a warmed over version of an earlier Lada, itself a ripoff of the 1966 Fiat 124 sedan. Perhaps “ripoff” isn’t quite the right word, since Fiat underwrote the building of the AutoVaz factory in the Soviet Union, and so must have received some sort of royalty. Perhaps “poor imitation” might be a better term—the Soviets downgraded the Fiat’s already marginal engine and brakes, and stamped the body out of thicker but apparently pre-rusted steel.

But it was cheap—virtually the only mandatory quality for a car in those days of the USSR. With the fatalistic attitude that was a mandatory quality for Soviet citizens, they made do with disintegrating body panels, wiring that was a step down from Italian electrics (if that’s possible), and pot-metal engine internals. Nevertheless, the all-coil suspension suited Soviet roads, and the car was nothing if not simple to work on.

Surprisingly, the Lada enjoyed a long export career to such places as Great Britain (where it compared favorably with stellar competition from Skoda and Yugo), and even Canada, where its bodywork must have had a lifespan measured in weeks. Technological improvements came along in the 90s in the form of throttle-body fuel injection and even a turbo, which boosted horsepower nearly into the three-figure range.

Opposite: The "Gates of Hell." A 100-meter-wide crater created by a Soviet gas exploration project gone wrong. Clockwise from top: Picturesque remains of the Soviets. A cotton farmer in Uzbekistan. A railway carriage café.

In case you’re wondering: Yes, it’s still being made, and in fact plans are underway to reintroduce it to Great Britain with multi-point fuel injection—and a price around $7,000.

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Silk Road

Route

Cartography by David Medeiros (mapbliss.com)

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Sleep the Night Away Even in the bush, it’s still a third of your life

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We test three-season sleeping bags—and get to play with a thermal-imaging camera

By Graham Jackson Photography by Brian Slobe

Overland Journal Winter 2010

“The most important sleeping bag characteristic for me is that it can suffocate all intruding scorpions before I climb in.” Tracy Hindman

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We each have our own idea of the perfect night’s sleep—and the perfect sleeping bag. Tracy might be among the few to put arthropod extermination at the top of the list, but her comment illustrates the fact that sleeping equipment will be rated by very subjective standards.

That makes conducting a technical review of sleeping bags extremely challenging.

Our first task was to narrow down the target group. We decided to concentrate on the conditions faced by most overland travelers—thus the six rectangular bags in the main test are all rated to 30ºF. Why rectangular? Because if you’re driving a truck and sleeping in a roof tent, why not spread out and enjoy the space? Leave mummy bags to the mountaineers—or the motorcyclists, which is why our editor reviewed a further three lightweight bags.

How insulation works Thermal insulation is possibly the most important property in a sleeping bag. To understand how manufacturers choose and use insulating materials, we should first understand what insulation does. Obviously, for our purposes it’s supposed to keep you warm, but insulation generically refers to a barrier—in our case a barrier to heat transfer.

There are three mechanisms for heat transfer in materials: conduction, convection, and radiation, and all three need to be considered.

Conduction refers to the transfer of heat at the atomic scale, as molecules with more kinetic energy (hotter) bump into molecules with less kinetic energy (cooler) and transfer some of that kinetic energy.

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of the material. Dense materials such as metal conduct heat very well, while lighter materials such as plastic, cork, and asbestos do not. Gases also do not transfer heat very well by conduction, because the molecules are far apart, and have to travel a long way to hit their neighbors.

Convection refers to the transfer of heat by movement of a heated substance. When boiling water on a stove, the water in the bottom of the pan heats first by conduction, and then expands, becomes less dense, and rises through the cooler water above, heating it. The same concept is involved when you hold your hands over a fire to heat them.

The rising, less dense, hot air moves past your hands and heats them up.

Convection does not occur in solids, so only fluids and gasses can be considered.

Heat is a form of electromagnetic radiation, just like visible light, microwaves, radio waves, etc., so the third mode of heat transfer is by radiation. All objects not at absolute zero both emit and absorb heat as radiation, but those hotter than their surroundings emit more than they absorb, and those colder than their surroundings absorb more than they emit. Direct sunlight is a great example of heat transfer by radiation.

So how does this apply to sleeping bags? To insulate, a material needs to stop conduction, convection, or radiation, or, ideally, all three.

A primary enemy in a sleeping bag is conduction. Any part of the bag that touches your skin will be heated by conduction, and if that layer then touches the outer layer of the bag, there’s a direct conduction channel for body heat to exit the bag. Combating this involves insulation. Since gas (air in our case) is less efficient than solids at heat transfer by conduction, it becomes a tool for insulation. If we can create a gas barrier within the sleeping bag, we can minimize conduction, and that’s part of what bag insulation does.

However, while that air space reduces conduction, we still have convection to deal with. If you made an inflatable sleeping bag that kept, say, six inches of space between the inner and outer shell, you’d get minimal conduction, but it would still be a very cold sleeping bag, because the air space would provide no barrier to convection currents carrying heat away from your body. That’s the principle behind vacuum thermoses—no air, no convection.

Clearly, a vacuum sleeping bag is impractical, so the task is to reduce as much as possible convective air movement between the inner and outer shells. Down—and all the synthetic insulation that attempts to emulate down—does this very well, since the plumules are made up of thousands of nearly microscopic filaments, which create high volume with minimal weight, and also drastically slow convective currents. Loft (or fill power) in insulation is a direct measure of how much moreor-less motionless air the insulation creates around the occupant. The higher the loft, the better the insulation.

Obviously, the hardest part of a bag to insulate will be the side in contact with the ground. The weight of the occupant will squeeze all of the air out of the insulation and allow for direct convection out of the bag. It’s a myth that insulation on the bottom of the bag is useless, since it can loft up anywhere there is no direct contact; nevertheless it’s of significantly less value there. Ironically, the lighter and fluffier— and, hence, the more effective—an insulation is on the top of the bag, the more completely it compresses directly underneath you. Enter the sleeping pad.

In sleeping bags, convection via liquid is pretty easy to stop. Liquid usually comes from the occupant in the form of perspiration, and if that’s happening there’s obviously too much insulation at work. That moisture can make for a clammy and unpleasant experience. The main technology to deal with this problem is a closure device called a zipper, and some fast action by the occupant. Enough said.

To impede heat loss by radiation, almost any barrier helps. The liner of a sleeping bag will be heated by radiation from your body, which is a good thing as a cold liner is unpleasant. Emergency thermal blankets that have a silvered (or mirrored) internal surface are most efficient at stopping heat loss by radiation, and, in fact, help reflect the heat back to your body.

Types of insulation Everyone has likely heard of the two types of insulation used in sleeping bags (and clothing for that matter): synthetic and down. The goal is to maximize loft while minimizing weight and packed volume.

So far, humans have made some impressive insulating materials, mostly using polyester in various fiber forms, but we have yet to match what evolution accomplished over millions of years. Down remains as good as it gets for insulation measured by loft, drape (the ability to form itself over your body), and compressibility. It’s also tops for durability, but it does have drawbacks, in the potential for mildew and a near complete lack of water resistance. Fill, as a measure of lofting power, is used to rate down, and in the U.S. that’s measured by how many cubic inches one ounce of down will fill in a standardized tube with a standardized weight on top. Good down measures around 550 cubic inches per ounce, excellent down 750 and above (better down comes from more mature geese and contains a lower percentage of feathers).

Synthetic insulation comes in a dizzying variety of trademarked names such as Climashield HL, Slumberloft, Primaloft, and at least a million others. Virtually all are some sort of cleverly spun polyester fiber.

The big advantage of synthetic over down is in initial purchase price, although on a long-term basis this advantage frequently disappears. Synthetic bags are easier to clean—many can simply be thrown in a washing machine—and synthetic insulation will retain some of its effectiveness if it gets wet. Sleeping bags that use synthetic insulation are heavier and bulkier for the same temperature rating as a down bag, which might or might not be a concern.

For a complete, as-much-as-you-ever-wanted-to-know treatise on synthetic versus down insulation, see Jonathan Hanson’s article in the 2008 Overland Journal Gear Guide.

Test Procedures The paramount function of a sleeping bag is to keep the occupant warm and comfortable. Warmth can be measured, but instead of kidnapping a copper dummy laced with thermal sensors, such as they use for the industry-standard EN 13537 rating, we decided to take a different approach. Using a thermal-imaging camera, we took a picture of each bag with a person (yours truly) in it on a 36ºF (2.2 °C) Colorado evening. In each case we took a picture when I first climbed in the bag, another after five minutes, and another after ten minutes. At ten minutes we also took pictures of any significant hot (i.e. leakage) spots, a shot from above the occupant, and a shot of the zipper side. Thermal leaks and cold spots are easily seen using this technology, and the pictures give an excellent indication of the manufacturing quality and attention to detail of the designers. A baseline picture is included of a person not in a sleeping bag. (Unfortunately the very expensive camera was rented, and we couldn’t ship it to Arizona to also record the lightweight bags tested

by Jonathan.)

Comfort is entirely subjective, so empirical measure is impossible.

Instead I enlisted the help of a group of friends who all tried the bags, then rated them one to six. Their ratings are included on the data sheet.

We had Connie, Debbie, and Karen, all experienced campers and overlanders, and able to give great input from the female perspective. Keith and Brian have both also camped a great deal. Samantha, at age 10, was able to give a younger perspective, and 14-year-old Ryan, at six foot one, gave us the extended-length teenage boy perspective. Many of their observations are included in the individual reviews. The ratings they gave were all without having seen the thermal imaging results.

There seem to be two kinds of people in the world: those who like the slippery inside of a synthetically lined bag, and those who like the grippier feel of a natural fiber lining. Whichever camp you fall into, you’ll have multiple bag options. Synthetic liners tend to be easier to clean, and get less dirty in the first place. They will not, however, wick moisture away from the body as effectively as natural fibers. Conversely, natural fibers like cotton, get dirty more easily and can retain smells until washed.

There also seem to be those who turn inside a sleeping bag, and those who take the bag with them as they roll. That might not strike you as important, but it can directly influence the type of bag you should choose.

Opposite: Open size comparison. L to R: Coleman Duck Harbor, Butler Mild Climate, Slumberjack Telluride, Big Agnes Gunn Creek, Kelty Galactic, Big Agnes Fish Hawk.

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Coleman Duck Harbor

$40

Pros:

• Low price • Single-piece construction • Can be zipped to another to make a double • Comfortable cloth lining

Cons:

• No draft tube on the zipper • Cover offers little protection to stowed bag • Liner fabric pills and gets dirty quickly

C

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Top to bottom: Interior pocket holds essentials.

Loose weave liner tends to pill. Half width cover unfortunately isn’t well placed to be used as a pillow sack. Anti-snag bevel on the nylon zipper works most of the time. No draft tube along the zipper.

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oleman is well-known for a century of history and a vast array of camping gear.

Neither the highest quality nor the most expensive, Coleman gear remains accessible for the average camper.

In 30-degree rectangular sleeping bags, their offering is the Duck Harbor, a no-frills, cotton-lined model with a half-width fabric flap that serves marginally well as a storage cover. The shell is also cotton and has very little water resistance. Inside is 48 ounces of 100-percent polyester insulation, making the Duck Harbor relatively heavy (5 pounds even) and large when packed. At just over 1,800 cubic inches of packed volume, it’s the second largest bag in the test, but not the most spacious when opened.

In features, the Duck Harbor falls to the minimalist side, as befitting its lowest-in-test price.

There’s an interior flashlight pocket. Along either side is a set of loops and buttons that keep the bag folded in half when rolled for storage. These could also be used to secure a sleeping pad if needed. A handle is sewn into the bag for carrying when rolled up. The attached bag could double as a pillow sock, but it’s only half the width of the bag. When rolled, the sack billows out and does not tightly contain the bag.

The zipper is plastic and has a red anti-snag bevel that worked well in repeated closings along the straights, but did snag and make hard work of the corner. Having a zipper on one side and the bottom allows the bag to be opened up and used as a blanket, or you can zip two together to create a double bag. The zipper has no draft tube, and there is a two-inch section along the lower side with no internal insulation. This creates a convection leak along one side and along the bottom of the bag.

Stitching is fine on all seams, but there are few baffles to keep the insulation properly located.

To be fair, the insulation comes in large sections, so it’s unlikely to move unless broken up. The cotton liner feels ‘clothy,’ and grips enough to put this bag in the realm of those who like a nonslick bag interior. Being cotton, it does wick moisture away from the body, but can also retain odors. The cotton is a loose weave and pills quickly when washed or just rubbed, but has a very nice skin feel, and the bulky (and heavy) insulation makes a cushy bag.

In the thermal images, the Coleman showed heat leakage in specific areas. The stitching that runs in an S pattern throughout the bag proved to be a conduction leak. The zipper also showed a leak. With no drawstring at the head, a great deal of heat is lost around the shoulders of the occupant. The bright spot at the foot of the picture is a conduction leak from the underside of the bag above the sleeping pad, where it is compressed by the occupant.

For light-duty use in a roof tent or the back of a truck the Duck Harbor would work well, but none of the reviewers rated it highly. coleman.com, 800-835-3278

Kelty Galactic

$150

Pros:

• Down insulation; very compact and warm • High quality • Features and design add up to an excellent all-around bag

Cons:

• Down insulation requires more care than synthetics • Heat leaks in torso area of bag

K

elty got its start in 1952 manufacturing external-frame backpacks, and has since expanded to a full line of outdoor gear. In mild-climate bags they offer the strangely named Galactic, one of two down bags in the “heavyweight” part of the review. It’s a true rectangular bag, with a draw cord at the top, and a zipper extending around the bottom, allowing two bags to be connected or a single to be used as a blanket. Kelty includes a stuff sack and a long-term storage sack.

The down fill is very soft and compressible, making the Galactic the second-smallest bag when stuffed, at 618 cubic inches. It’s also tied for the lightest, at three pounds even. Kelty uses 19 ounces of 600-fill duck down for this bag, claiming a minimum of 75 percent down by weight (the rest being feathers and down fragments). The liner and shell are both 100-percent polyester, and have a nice feel to them—especially if you like slippery interiors. A zippered pocket is featured on the outside of the bag, large enough for a light or iPhone.

The Galactic has loops along both sides for attaching a sleeping pad, and larger loops at the foot for hanging the bag. At the head is a velcro tab to stop the zip from opening; it includes a section of velcro loops so the hook side can be covered when the tab isn’t in use—a nice feature for those with long hair. A draft tube runs the length of the zipper and is large enough to cover the opening and the non-insulated seam along the lower side of the zipper. The zipper itself is nylon and snag-free in most use, but if the two sides are folded away, the slider can snag on the draft tube fabric. All the stitching on the Galactic is very fine and tight, and there is a lot of it for all the down-enclosing baffles. One minus to note is the polyester liner and shell tend to build up a lot of static as the occupant moves about.

The Galactic is marvelously smooshy and lofts really well, making a very nice feel. The foot can be unzipped, allowing your feet to protrude—a great feature for sitting around the fire on a cold evening (beware—polyester isn’t fireproof). Thermal imaging shows that the Galactic leaks heat along some of the seams in the midsection of the bag. The zipper leaks little to no heat, and with the drawstring around the shoulders, little is lost out of the head of the bag.

All the people who tried the Galactic—save one holdout—really liked it, and it got more number one picks than any other bag. For use in a roof-top-tent or back of a truck, the Galactic would be excellent. The design doesn’t provide a lot of wind protection for sleeping in the open, but that’s out of its design specifications. kelty.com, 800-535-3589 Top to bottom: External pocket has zip closure for security. Large draft tube follows the zipper.

Snags are certainly possible, but not common.

No shortage of branding. Foot end loops useful for hanging, while side loops make pad attachment an option.

Overland Journal Winter 2010

43

Slumberjack Telluride (Long)

$80

Pros:

• Ease of care • Available in different lengths and zipper orientations • Included compression sack

Cons:

• Minimal loft • Slick outer surface and no pad loops • Zipper leaks heat

S

44

Top to bottom: Head draw cord and zipper stay.

Draft tube and no-snag tape unfortunately don’t work as they should. Zipper jams are common.

Compression sack included.

Overland Journal Winter 2010

lumberjack has been a well-known name in sleeping bags for 50 years. For this review we chose their Telluride, a 30-degree synthetic model. Slumberjack sent a long rather than a regular version, so keep in mind when looking at the data sheet that in a straight comparison the Telluride would be shorter by six inches, and the price would be $60 rather than $80.

On opening, the rectangular Telluride remains very flat, and the 28 ounces of SlumberLoft synthetic insulation doesn’t provide much loft, despite the name. The insulation weight and bulk puts the Telluride right in the middle of the bags we tested for packed volume, at just over 1,000 cubic inches—that’s using the included compression sack, which reduces the otherwise relaxed volume. At four pounds, the Telluride is also in the middle of the pack in weight.

The shell is 100-percent nylon with a very slick surface, and there are no loops to secure the bag to a sleeping pad. That may not be important for most overlanding applications, but should be kept in mind if you are looking for a multi-use bag. Hanging loops are provided at the foot of the bag. The liner is a cotton/polyester blend with a nice soft feel, and falls solidly on the grippy side of interiors.

The head has a draw cord, and a velcro tab to stop the zip from opening. As with the Kelty, the tab comes with a section of velcro loops to cover the hooks when not in use. A large draft tube runs the length of the zipper. A length of stiff fabric tape next to the zipper is designed to prevent snagging, but we found that with repeated use the slide could still snag the draft tube even when the sides were not very far apart. This is particularly noticeable at the corner—use caution.

Slumberjack offers the Telluride with a left-hand or right-hand zip, and two bags can be attached together to make a double bag. Stitch quality is good, and the insulation baffle stitching is all interior to the bag, leaving a very smooth outer surface. The compression stuff sack is a nice feature, although it does not compress quite as well as the purpose-made sacks from Granite Gear. No loft sack is provided.

Our thermal imaging showed significant heat leaks in the torso area, probably due to the thin construction of the bag. The zipper showed clearly in the side shot, while the drawstring at the head reduced but did not eliminate the leak there.

Interestingly, the addresses for Kelty and Slumberjack are identical, and the tags on the bags indicate that they are made in the same factory in China. slumberjack.com, 800-233-6283

Butler Mild Climate

$249

Pros:

• High-quality materials • Weather resistant for outside use • Integrated sleeping pad sleeve

Cons: • Size • Weight • Cost

T

Top to bottom: Large, heavy-duty, brass zipper slides well and snags rarely. A draft flap is featured on the outside. Sleeping pad pocket internal to the bag, pillow is included. Although a tote bag is included, the Butler Mild Climate rolls up and has well placed draw cords on either side for closure.

he Butler Bags website declares: “Even tough guys like to be cozy,” but when you accept delivery of the Butler Mild Climate bag, cozy won’t be your first thought. Mine was something closer to, Wow, that’s huge! At 16 pounds, and 4,747 cubic inches of volume packed, the Butler is certainly the big boy in this review.

Throughout the testing people just could not get over how large it is.

That said, with size comes certain advantages. Spacious is an understatement when you climb into the Butler. At 42 inches wide and 81 inches long, it will swallow even the burliest overlander. An integrated sleeping pad sleeve on the inside allows pad integration without any of the claustrophobia issues of the Big Agnes bags. The cotton/polyester blend liner makes a comfortable, if initially rough skin interface, and the large flap at the head, which doubles as a storage cover, can fold over your head to keep the weather out. When rolled up, a drawstring at either side of the flap keeps everything tightly in place, including the pillow. Yes, the Butler comes with a pillow—in the case of ours, a very lumpy pillow which included the only manufacturing defect we found: One of the seams wasn’t completely sewn; not a practical problem, but certainly an aesthetic one.

The Butler’s heavy-duty brass zipper only runs down one side, not the bottom of the bag.

Slider action on the zipper is smooth, and we had no snagging issues. Pull does become stiff where the canvas seams in the cover come together, but I think that would ease with use as the stout material softens. A draft and water flap protects the outside of the zipper.

Insulation is a full 64 ounces of polyester fiber batting sandwiched between the 100-percent cotton, 12.5-ounce-per-square-yard, marine-grade water-repellant canvas shell and the 65/35 cotton/polyester liner. Barring the one seam on the pillow, the build quality of the U.S.-made Butler is very good. Stitching is large due to the weight of the fabric, and the fit, finish and materials used are fabulous. The canvas shell would attract dirt, and the sheer size of the bag requires a commercial washing machine for cleaning.

The Butler showed minimal heat leakage in the thermal shots. After ten minutes, the outside of the bag had hardly changed temperature. The head area did show significant leakage due to its sheer size. There were no evident leaks along the zipper.

I found it hard to fit the Butler into many overlanding scenarios. It’s too large for regularsized roof tents and standard-width camp cots. In the rear of a truck it would work well, but it is very large to store. This is a bag that would be most at home on the ground under the stars, or in a large campaign tent at a base camp on the Serengeti. It harkens to a different era, and therein lies most of its appeal. I envision the Butler on the roof rack of a Series IIA 109 Station Wagon on a biology expedition somewhere in the African hinterland. butlerbags.com, 800-922-2247 Overland Journal Winter 2010

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Big Agnes Fish Hawk Regular

$175 (Add $75 for sleeping pad)

Pros:

• Small packed size and light weight • Efficient and durable down insulation • Integrated sleeping pad adds insulation and comfort

Cons:

• Integrated pad makes movement difficult • Long set-up time • Not ideal for roof-top-tent

B

46

Top to bottom: Built in pillow pocket can hold a fleece or other packing. Big Agnes calls it a rectangular bag, but it has a lot in common with a mummy bag, including the hood. Sleeve on the underside holds the sleeping pad.

Overland Journal Winter 2010

ig Agnes, of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, submitted two bags for our test, identical in construction apart from the insulation; one is down, the other synthetic.

The Fish Hawk is the down offering. It boasts the smallest stuffed volume of our six bags, at 615 cubic inches, and ties for lightest at three pounds. Unlike the other bags, the Big Agnes models are not true rectangles. They taper toward the feet, much like a mummy bag, although the foot end is more spacious. The widest point of the bag is in the shoulder area, upwards of which it tapers again to a full hood. A draw cord allows snugging around the face, and a Velcro tab locks the zipper. Around the lower edge of the hood opening a draft collar makes a cozy interface with your neck and ears, keeping cold air out. A pillow pocket is included in the head, which can easily be stuffed with a fleece jacket or sweater to make a very usable pillow.

These Big Agnes bags incorporate sleeping pad sleeves on the bottom, which perfectly fit the optional pad. The system completely eliminates rolling off the pad during the night, and makes a very comfortable bed—as long as you mostly sleep on your back. If you typically roll with your bag, the pad actually provides too much structure, and can hinder movement. Getting into a fetal position is not easy, and if you’re tall it’s nearly impossible. Donning clothes in the bag is also a challenge, as the pad makes lifting your knees and reaching around inside difficult.

The Fish Hawk has a 100-percent nylon liner and shell, sandwiching 10.5 ounces of 650-fill goose down with a minimum down content of 85 percent. The bag lofts beautifully and feels very soft. Along the length of the zipper is a fat draft tube which seals the opening even before the zipper slide snugs it, ensuring a positive heat barrier. The slide moves well, but can snag at the curve in the shoulder area. Although the zipper does not go below the feet, two oppositeopening bags with the same zipper size can be attached to make a double. Big Agnes provides the Fish Hawk in both left and right-handed zippers, and in regular and long lengths.

Attention to detail on the Fish Hawk is fantastic—all stitching and features are well crafted.

Both a stuff sack and a loft sack are provided. The sleeping pad is optional.

In the thermal images, the Fish Hawk showed both very good body insulation, and demonstrated the massive advantage of the mummy-bag-like hood. After 10 minutes the external heat signature of the bag had risen, mostly in areas that were tight to the body. The zipper is almost invisible.

The Fish Hawk is an excellent all-around sleeping bag and seems directly aimed at backpacking where size and weight are critical. For overlanding and car camping, the time to set up may be an issue for some, and in a roof-top-tent the integrated pad would not be an advantage. bigagnes.com, 877-554-8975

Big Agnes Gunn Creek Regular

$140 (Add $75 for sleeping pad)

Pros:

• High-quality construction • Integrated pad is very comfortable • Insulation is water-resistant and resilient

Cons:

• Integrated pad makes movement difficult • Not as compact as its down counterpart • Higher heat leakage than its down counterpart

F

Top to bottom: The no-draft zipper tube makes contact with the interior baffle well before the zipper slide reaches it, ensuring a good seal. Two slides on the zipper mean it can be opened from either end. Loops provided for hanging. The sleeping pad sleeve velcros shut once the pad is in place.

ollowing on directly from the Fish Hawk is Big Agnes’s second 30°F bag, the Gunn Creek, identical to the Fish Hawk in design except for the synthetic insulation. The trim color is red, distinguishing it from the Fish Hawk’s blue.

Again, the bag looks a lot like a mummy, though the foot box is bigger and Big Agnes calls it a rectangle. The hood also includes the no-draft collar, the draw string to cinch the face area, and the flap pocket for pillow stuffing. The zipper has a parallel draft tube, and runs well except in the shoulder area where the bag makes a curve.

As a synthetic bag, the Gunn Creek weighs a little more than the Fish Hawk, at 3.2 pounds, and takes up 959 cubic inches of space when packed. The liner and shell are both nylon; the 20 ounces of insulation is 100-percent polyester in a trademarked configuration called ClimaShield HL. It’s a continuous-filament insulation with highly resilient fibers claimed to retain loft over continuous use. The insulation isn’t sewn into the bag in the traditional batting arrangement, rather in a form called A-Shingo, made by Insotect, in which individual insulation shingles lock together, to ensure what the maker says is greater loft resiliency. This all adds up to a very warm and rugged synthetic bag design that lofts well. Big Agnes provides both a stuff sack and a long term storage loft sack with the Gunn Creek.

Just as on the Fish Hawk, the Gunn Creek has a sleeping pad sleeve that takes a Big Agnes pad and gives structure to the bag. All comments made above about the sleeping pad in the Fish Hawk review apply here. Several pads are available from Big Agnes; we tested the Insulated Air Core pad, which is a product of their Re-Routt recycled materials program. Products from this program are made from waste materials diverted from landfills. In addition to the Insulated Air Core pad, which is an air chamber that requires inflation, you can choose a self-inflating pad or a memory-foam pad. It took me three minutes to inflate the pad, so expect to exert some effort on set-up. A couple of the reviewers who did not like the enclosed feeling in the Big Agnes tried it with the pad removed from the sleeve, but still under the bag. They found it more comfortable, but certainly not ideal as there is no insulation on the pad sleeve, and sleeping like that will create a huge heat sink. Of note is that the sleeping pad comes with a repair kit.

In the thermal images the interior baffles on the Gunn Creek become clear. Much more than on the down Fish Hawk, detail can be seen of the bag interior in the ten minute shot. The zipper is not evident as a heat window, and the hood displays superb heat conservation.

The Gunn Creek offers a lower price than the Fish Hawk, and similar performance, at the expense of extra weight and volume. Again, a good backpackers bag—consider this if you backpack and overland and want a single sleeping system. bigagnes.com, 877-554-8975 Overland Journal Winter 2010

47

Conclusions

48

L

ying on the ground in a sleeping bag on a cold night, waiting for someone to take your picture, tends to bring it all home. In the final analysis, it comes down to what individuals like, so I’m going to give my opinions.

The Duck Harbor from Coleman is cheap, and for obvious reason.

With few features, high weight, and high volume, this is, as Debbie put it, a slumber-party sack, not fit for overlanding.

I really want to love the Butler, but I can only bring myself to like it a lot. The look and feel are fantastic, and the performance certainly commensurate, but the sheer size intimidates me. It doesn’t fit the kind of camping I do, but if I were heading to Africa in a Series Land Rover to search for the source of malaria, I might grab one.

The Slumberjack Telluride feels thin, and although thermal tests may not show it, I felt coldest in it. However, at $80 it is not a bad deal if you plan on staying in warmer climes. The review team found it hard to criticize, but also hard to compliment.

Big Agnes designs some impressive sleeping systems, and if I could possibly convince my wife to let me sleep on my back I would be all over the Fish Hawk or the Gunn Creek. For someone who wants a single bag for multiple uses, Big Agnes has them. For overlanding only, while the features are great, the sleeping system of the bags actually becomes a hindrance. I can set up my roof tent in less time than it takes me to fill the sleeping pad. If you ride adventure motorcycles, this may be your bag (pending review of Jonathan’s piece on lightweight bags).

Overland Journal Winter 2010

That leaves us with the Kelty Galactic. Of all these six bags, I see it as the best all-around overlanding design—with the strangest name.

Very comfortable, very compact, spacious and decently made, this bag will serve well for a three-season traveller. It gets my nod for Editor’s Choice.

What of the Value Award, you ask? Well, every now and then, there just isn’t a fit. None of these bags stood out as both a good performer and a top value. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for.

And just to be clear: None of the bags in this test makes any claims regarding scorpion suffocation, and no scorpions were harmed during the making of this review.

Thermal Imaging Results Images from the thermal-imaging camera, on a 36ºF (2.2 °C) Colorado evening.

In each case we took a picture when I first climbed in the bag, another after five minutes, and another after ten minutes. At ten minutes we also took pictures of any significant hot (i.e. leakage) spots, a shot from above the occupant, and a shot of the zipper side. Thermal leaks and cold spots can be seen, and offer an excellent indication of the manufacturing quality and attention to detail of the designers. A baseline picture is included of a person not in a sleeping bag.

Baseline image

Start of test

5 minutes

10 minutes

Zipper side

Head view

Butler Mild Climate

Coleman Duck Harbor

Big Agnes Fish Hawk Regular

49

Big Agnes Gunn Creek Regular

Kelty Galactic

Slumberjack Telluride

Overland Journal Winter 2010

Sleeping Bag Comparison Coleman Duck Harbor

Butler Mild Climate

Slumberjack Telluride

Kelty Galactic

Big Agnes Fish Hawk

Big Agnes Gunn Creek

Tested version

Regular

Regular

Long left hand zip

Regular

Regular right hand zip

Regular right hand zip

Cost

$40.00

$249.00

$80.00

$150.00

$175.00

$140.00

$75.00

$75.00

Sleeping pad

50

Rating (F)

30°

32°

30°

30°

30°

30°

Shape

Rectangular

Rectangular

Rectangular

Rectangular

Rectangular

Rectangular

Weight (lbs)

5

16.3

4.1

3

3

3.2

Volume stuffed (cubic inches)

1809

4,747

1,007

618

615

959

Width unstuffed (in )

30

42

33

30

29

29

Length unstuffed (in )

70

81

83

72

76

76

Liner

100% cotton

65% cotton 35% polyester

65% polyester 35% cotton

100% polyester

100% nylon

100% nylon

Insulation

48oz polyester

64oz polyester

28oz polyester

19oz 600 fill minimum 75% Duck down

10.5oz 650 fill minimum 85% Goose down

20oz polyester

Shell

100% Cotton

100% Cotton

100% Nylon

100% Polyester

100% Nylon

100% Nylon

Accessories included

None

Pillow

Compression sack

Loft sack

Loft sack

Loft sack

Options

None

None

Regular or long, left or right hand zip

None

Regular or long, left or right hand zip, various sleeping pads

Regular or long, left or right hand zip, various sleeping pads

Country of manufacture

China

USA

China

China

China

China

Reviewers:

Bags rated one to six, with one the best.

Connie

4

6

2

1

3

5

Debbie

3

6

2

1

4

5

Brian

6

5

3

1

2

4

Keith

5

6

2

1

3

4

Karen

6

5

4

3

1

2

Samantha

5

6

2

4

1

3

Ryan

4

5

2

6

1

3

Total (lower is better)

33

39

17

17

15

26

Overland Journal Winter 2010

Western Mountaineering Sycamore MF

$365 Lightweight bags

Pros:

• Very high quality • Superior down loft and durability • Lightest and most compact bag in the test

Cons:

• Very expensive • More difficult to clean than synthetics

I

Top to bottom: Microfiber shell fabric is windproof and moisture-resistant. Impeccable quality—and made in the U.S. Detailing is flawless

know what you’re thinking: It figures the guy who included a $600 chair in a review would contribute the most expensive sleeping bag.

Not so fast. I can pretty much guarantee you this is the least expensive bag in this entire test. In fact, given Graham’s decision not to hand out a Value Award, I nominate the Sycamore.

Why? Most significantly, because the Sycamore is stuffed with 17 ounces of the finest goose down on the planet, gossamer eastern European stuff measuring a minimum 850 cubic inches per ounce and minimum 90-percent purity. And no sleeping bag insulation—none—comes close to prime goose down for durability. As proof I offer the Marmot Gore-Tex Grouse I still own, which is a spiritual ancestor of the Sycamore. It was a U.S.-made semi-rectangular bag filled with what was then the best down one could buy, 650-fill (eastern European down was not then available). In 1983 it cost an insanely dear $200 or so as I recall. Twenty seven years later I still use that bag regularly; it’s lost perhaps a half-inch of loft. In contrast, a North Face Polarguard bag I bought around the same time was a giveaway six years later.

Okay, so the Sycamore is a bargain. Experientally, it’s like sleeping under a cloud—that layer of down over you is deliciously imperceptible except in the even warmth it provides, and the lining feels so close to silk one could imagine . . . okay, I need to stop.

In terms of its construction, the U.S.-made Sycamore pretty much beggars criticism. Stitching is tight and dead-straight, the generous draft tube seals in heat, the YKK coil zipper is snagfree thanks to a stiff runner on either side, and meets a separate foot zipper to ventilate the bottom of the bag or lay the entire thing open as a comforter. A hood snugs gently around one’s face, or lays open flat on milder nights. The baffles are spaced just 5.25 inches apart, and run all the way around the bag, so you can shift down from the bottom to the top or vice versa to adjust its temperature rating, which is nominally 25ºF (I’ve found Western Mountaineering’s ratings to be realistic in the past). A microfiber shell renders the Sycamore windproof and highly moistureresistant. I find the semi-rectangular shape of the Sycamore (and similar bags) nearly ideal for three-season use—there’s enough room to move around and sleep with my knees up, but not a lot of dead air space to heat.

Stuff the Sycamore into its 8 by 15-inch stuff sack and chuck it on a scale, and you’ll read two pounds even—almost three-quarters of a pound lighter than the next lightest bag on these pages (the Therm-a-Rest hybrid can’t be compared directly). That’s just hardly there even on a bicycle—on a GS 1200 it probably weighs less than the bugs smashed on the fairing.

If all your traveling is by 4WD vehicle, the Sycamore would be a complete waste of money. If saving weight is as important as comfort, and you appreciate long-term value, the Sycamore isn’t an expense—it’s an investment. westernmountaineering.com, 408-287-8944 Overland Journal Winter 2010

51

Lightweight bags

Therm-a-Rest NeoAir

Regular mattress, Fitted Sheet, Alpine Down Blanket $135, $23, $239

Pros:

• Extremely lightweight for a complete system • High-quality down fill in blanket • Mattress provides excellent support and stability

Cons:

• Mattress is very loud • Cold can leak in around blanket edge

I

52

Top to bottom: The system integrates a mattress, fitted sheet, and down cover. The fitted sheet wraps tightly around the NeoAir mattress.

Ultralight shell fabric contributes to low overall weight. The NeoAir mattress is comfortable but noisy

Overland Journal Winter 2010

n 1974 the original Therm-a-Rest self-inflating foam mattress changed the way we slept outdoors. No longer did we have to choose between carrying a warm but bulky foam pad, or a compact but poorly insulated air mattress. Therm-a-Rest combined the best of both.

Now Therm-a-Rest is out to change our approach to ultra-lightweight sleeping systems. The Comfort System I have here comprises a 14-ounce Neo Air mattress, a 6.5-ounce fitted sheet, and a 24-ounce snap-on down comforter, to create a 35-degree-rated package with a total weight of just 2 pounds, 12.5 ounces.

Christophe Noel reviewed the NeoAir mattress in our 2010 Gear Guide. Briefly, it saves weight and bulk by eliminating the open-cell foam normally found in a Therm-a-Rest mattress, and retains heat by employing an internal reflective barrier. In addition, multiple internal ‘trusses’ reduce the roly-poly feeling common to many air mattresses. The brushed-polyester sheet does just what its name suggests, and provides a slightly breathable, grippy, and comfortable surface to the mattress. And the Alpine Down Blanket snaps over the mattress and sheet to complete the ensemble.

How does it work? The mattress, even sans foam, is surprisingly comfortable and stable. Even sleeping on my side I’m able to keep my shoulders and hips just off the ground. I don’t think 3/4-length mattresses are worth the weight savings (even for ultra-ascetic travel) given the loss in comfort and warmth, so I appreciate the full-length NeoAir. The Alpine Down Blanket encloses 10.5 ounces of very good quality, 700-fill down. It actually wraps around you much more completely than the term ‘blanket’ would have you believe; there are full-length draft tubes on each side and all around the foot area. The blanket attaches to the mattress via snaps around the perimeter, which mate with tabs you buy in a kit that fasten to the mattress with adhesive backing. So—that’s how it works. The question is, how well does it work?

My conclusion is: It works just great, as long as you’re not the type who moves around much when you sleep. The reasons are two. First, the NeoAir mattress makes a sound like Rice Krispies if you roll around on it. It’s enough to just barely wake me up every time I shift positions, and hasn’t diminished with use. Second, the blanket, while adequately insulated around the perimeter, does not, by its nature, seal completely to the mattress, and can thus suck in invigorating little jets of cold air if you lift a knee too high or turn on your side too abruptly. I also got the impression from my trial that 35 degrees is the absolute lower limit for a non-insulated mattress to remain warm enough, no matter how cunning its construction.

With that caveat, I found the Therm-a-Rest system to be perfectly comfortable while lying in any one position. The sheet has a cozy texture, the blanket is lofty and negligible in weight, and I felt more like I was lying on a (narrow) bed with a blanket over me rather than stuck in a sleeping bag. Kudos to Therm-a-Rest for once again thinking outside the box. thermarest.com, 206-505-9500 (Cascade Designs)

REI Lumen +25

$139 Lightweight bags

Pros:

• Good value • Very light for a synthetic bag • Full-featured despite weight

Cons:

• Hood is obtrusive • Minimal draft tube

F

Top to bottom: Two-tone ripstop shell fabric is handsome and quality control is good. Pocket secures a flashlight or keys. Drawstring snugs hood but won’t let it lie flat.

rom a scruffy band of 23 Seattle climbers who got together in 1938 to buy ice axes wholesale, Recreational Equipment Incorporated has grown into the 800-pound gorilla of outdoor companies. Yet despite a membership list now nearing four million, plus millions more walk-in customers, REI manages to stay relevant, and to offer some of the most cost-effective gear you can find, both under their own brand and from other companies.

The Lumen’s handsome two-tone nylon shell encases 25 ounces of an insulation called Thermawave—which, after you strip away the technospeak and trademark, reveals itself as a polyester filament, a variation on the same basic material in every other brand of synthetic insulation. That’s not a cut—advances in polyester extrusion and spinning techniques have significantly increased the durability and compressibility of synthetic sleeping bags. The total weight of the Lumen is just 2 pounds, 11 ounces, and it compacts into a 9 by 20-inch stuff sack—not bad at all for a 25-degree synthetic bag. And, of course, when it needs cleaning you can just toss it in a (front-loading) washing machine—none of the bathtub massaging and four hours of low-heat tumble-drying a down bag wants.

The Lumen is a roomy mummy in shape—in fact it’s as wide as the semi-rectangular Sycamore in the shoulders, although significantly narrower in the knees and feet. Still, there’s little chance of claustrophobia. Nor were any other corners cut to save weight: The zipper extends all the way to the footbox, and is protected by a draft tube which is itself protected by a stiff oxford-weave zipper guard; there are loops to connect to a pad, and even a zippered watch/keys/penlight pocket.

Overall I found the Lumen very comfortable. The insulation lacks the peculiar slippery quality of some polyester fills I’ve used. It has a lighter feel, more like, well, down. Even though I’m somewhat of a flopper I had plenty of room to move around, yet not so much that the bag sucked in cold-air pockets. The hood was mostly fine, although when I snugged it all the way closed I could feel two mildly lumpy spots on either side of my forehead where the seams met and bunched up.

Also, it cannot be loosened far enough to lie flat on warmer nights, like the Sycamore’s. It’s always around your head unless you roll it up and tuck it under your neck.

I could find no faults with the Lumen’s made-in-China construction—REI’s quality-control department is on the ball. Thin spots in the insulation were nowhere to be felt. Laid out side by side, the Lumen’s loft measured just a smidgen less than the down Sycamore, so I’d expect this to be a reliable freezing-night bag. I would have liked to aim the thermal-imaging camera at the Lumen to see if the rather thin draft tube allows the slight heat leakage I’d expect, but I doubt it affects comfort much. Overall, as with most of REI’s products, the Lumen is a solid value if you aren’t out for weeks at a time several times a year, when the extra durability of down would overcome this bag’s attractive up-front price. rei.com, 800-426-4840 Overland Journal Winter 2010

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Lightweight Sleeping Bag Comparison

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Western Mountaineering Sycamore MF

REI Lumen +25

Therm-a-Rest Comfort System

Tested version

Regular

Regular

Regular

Cost

$365

$139

$23, $239

Sleeping pad

N/A

N/A

$135

Rating (F)

25º

25º

35º

Shape

Semi-rectangular

Wide mummy

Rectangular

Weight (lbs)

2

2.6

2.7

Volume stuffed (cubic inches)

470

1200

370

Width unstuffed (in )

30

30

22 (mattress)

Length unstuffed (in )

76

76

76

Liner

100% polyester

100% nylon

polyester/nylon

Insulation

17 oz 850 fill minimum 90% goose down

25 oz polyester

10.5 oz 700-fill goose down

Shell

100% polyester

100% nylon

100% nylon

Accessories included

Stuff sack, storage sack

Stuff sack, storage sack

Repair kit (mattress)

Options

Regular or long, left or right hand zipper

Regular or long, left or right hand zipper

Country of manufacture

USA

China

Sleeping bag care and cleaning Whether you buy a $40 Coleman polyester bag or the finest goose down product from Western Mountaineering, how you care for it will have a significant effect on its lifespan.

Never leave any sleeping bag stuffed for longer than necessary. Every bag, whether synthetic or down, should be stored in a loose storage bag away from direct sunlight. However, when you’re just home from a trip it’s a good idea to hang the bag inside out in the sun for a couple of hours, both to dry it thoroughly and help kill any surface bacteria. If weight is not a concern, a machine-washable cotton or silk liner goes a long way to keeping the inside of the bag clean, and adds comfort as well.

Once it is time to clean the bag, you can take the easy way out and send it to a cleaning service such as the excellent and venerable Rainy Pass in Seattle (rainypass.com, 888-747-7867). They’re experts in cleaning down or synthetic bags.

Cleaning a goose down sleeping bag properly yourself is time-consuming, but not difficult. Fill a bathtub eight inches deep or so with warm water and a down-cleaning product such as Nikwax Down Wash 2.0. Immerse the bag, massage it to thoroughly work in the cleaning solution (which can take patience on bags with weatherproof shells), then let it soak for 10

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USA, China

minutes. Massage some more, drain the tub, then gently press as much water as possible out of the bag. Do not lift it yet, as the weight of the soaked bag can damage delicate baffle material. Once it’s pressed, roll it from the bottom to squeeze out as much more water as possible. Squeeze slowly. Then you’ll need to rinse it the same way several times to make sure all the cleaner is out of it.

Once rinsed, you’ll want a big commercial dryer capable of very low heat.

You’ll need to tumble the bag for several hours, and toss in a couple of tennis balls to break up the down clumps during the last hour or so. Verify by feel that it’s absolutely, positively, completely dry and that all the down has fluffed up again before stopping—once down has dried clumped it’s nearly impossible to get it unclumped again.

The good news is, this procedure shouldn’t be necessary often if you use a liner and/or air out the bag after every use. I’ve only had to wash my 27-year-old Marmot bag three or four times, and it’s stayed fresh in between.

Washing a synthetic bag is similar (and you can use the same Nikwax cleaner), but it will dry much quicker.

Old World

Lati tude Portfolio by Chris Marzonie

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H istoric Overland Journeys Cape Town to Cairo. . . with 41 Airstream trailers—in 1959

Venturesome Spirit Airstream inventor Wally Byam lived out— and shared—his exploration creed

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By Lois Pryce Photos courtesy Dale Schwamborn

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The image of

a great overland explorer

usually involves a khaki-clad chap in a pith helmet hacking through the jungle a la Stanley and Livingstone, or maybe the bearded, cloaked figure of Marco Polo trudging his way along the Silk Road. What doesn’t normally suggest itself is a be-suited, white-haired American businessman sporting a blue beret cocked at a jaunty angle.

But the seemingly innocuous gentleman I describe is responsible for some of the most ambitious overland journeys of the 20th century. The man in question is Wally Byam, founder of the Airstream Company and the inspiration for thousands of adventures around the world.

These days the Airstream trailer is synonymous with vintage cool; it’s up there with the Coke bottle and the Zippo lighter as one of the great American design classics. But I defy anyone to cast his eyes over the gleaming aluminium curves of an Airstream and not feel a little shiver of wanderlust. It was this urge to get out there and see the world that burned inside Wally Byam, and that drove him to not just create his iconic trailers but to encourage his customers to put them through their paces and to use them as they were intended—for exploring the planet. And if they needed someone to show them the way, Wally was the man for the job. In 1951 he led 50 of his friends in a troop of Airstreams through Central America—the first of his famous ‘caravans.’ The next year they visited Mexico, then eastern Canada in 1955. Soon the caravans became ever more ambitious, touring Europe in 1956 and, incredibly, traversing the length of Africa, from Cape Town to Cairo, in 1959.

For Wally Byam, these long-distance overland journeys were the very essence of Airstream ownership.

“Don’t stop. Keep right on going. Hitch up your trailer and go to Canada or down to Old Mexico. Head for Europe if you can afford it, or go to Mardi Gras. Go someplace you’ve heard about, where you can fish or hunt or collect rocks or just look up at the sky. Find out what’s at the end of some country road. Go see what’s over the next hill, and the one after that, and the one after that.”

These were the words that Wally spoke from his hospital bed in 1961 in answer to a concerned caravanner friend asking, “What are we going to do without you?”

Wally died the following year, but his message was taken to heart by the thousands of Airstream owners who continue to gather at rallies all over the world under the name of the Wally Byam Caravan Club International. He left behind not just a worldfamous trailer company, but a whole way of life.

Wally knew from an early age that he would lead an extraordinary existence. As a boy he traveled extensively with his grandfather, who led a mule train in Oregon.

Later, when his grandfather acquired a flock of sheep, Wally was sent out into the hills as a shepherd, where he would spend months alone sleeping in a small twowheeled wagon towed by a donkey. At night he would unhitch the wagon and prop it up by its tongue before folding out the tail-board to reveal his basic necessities—a mat for a bed, a small kerosene stove, food, water, and a wash pail. It was this formative experience of the simple nomadic life that gave Wally his love of wilderness travel and the outdoors. It was probably also this experience that made him so keen to make his Airstreams as comfortable and homely as possible.

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Opening page: The caravan left Cape Town, South Africa in July, 1959 and arrived in Cairo, Egypt in February, 1960. The Egyptian Department of Antiquities gave the group the rare opportunity to set up their wagon wheel encampment at the Great Pyramids. Previous page: In Wally’s notebook was a small scrap of paper with a definition of what a travel trailer should be. Upper left, an Airstream Torpedo; upper right, an Airstream Clipper; lower left, Helen Byam Schwamborn’s rig; bottom right is the Carle’s rig kicking up dust in the Northern Frontier district of Kenya. The Carle’s tow vehicle, a Land Rover, was purchased in Cape Town, South Africa. It was the only non- American tow vehicle. Below: The Airstream Torpedo blueprint from the 1930s, part of a set used for orders and line-productions. In Airstream’s early years, Wally sold plans for the ‘do-it-yourself’ folks. This ad appeared in Popular Mechanics. Opposite top to bottom: Wally and Stella Byam. In 1951 Wally Byam led the first caravan to Mexico and Central America.

It was advertised in The Los Angeles Times and RV magazines. Wally is conferring with Major Millender, the advance scout for the tour. Wally camped in Del Mar, California with family and friends in the 1930s. Wally is cooking over the fire, while Henry Schwamborn, Bill Blitch, and Marion Byam (Wally’s first wife) look on.

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It was the kind of childhood that would turn any boy into a man and, aged 19, Wally wrote down a series of affirmations that would guide him from then on. One of them turned out to be particularly prophetic: I am a man of extremes. Either I will be a big boss, a rousing success, or a blank failure. In my heart I know I will be a great big glorious success, and that my name will go down in history.

A bold statement from one so young but according to Dale ‘Pee-Wee’ Schwamborn, his first cousin once-removed who accompanied him on many of his caravans, Wally Byam had a strong sense of his place in the world. His list of affirmations focused on what would nowadays be called ‘life skills,’ and showed an unusual sense of maturity and sensitivity on the subject of how to treat others and conduct oneself properly. According to Dale he even made a point of learning to dance, considering it to be a crucial skill for any true gentleman.

Wally was clearly a man of ambition who knew his own mind, and as he soon discovered, he was not suited to working for someone else—the independence of life as a shepherd had given him a taste for being his own boss. During the 1920s, after completing a history degree at Stanford, he tried his hand at a few jobs, including a stint as an advertising copywriter for the L.A. Times and subsequently for Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., who had set up a group of ‘penny newspapers.’ Vanderbilt and Wally became lifelong friends, and in later years toured Europe together in Airstreams, but their friendship didn’t hamper Wally’s need for autonomy and eventually he struck out alone, establishing his own publishing company, which occupied him over the next few years.

It seems an unusual career move, from publisher to trailer builder, but it came about almost by accident. A ‘do-it-yourself ’ magazine Wally published featured an article on how to build your own trailer. The piece prompted a mailbag of complaints from readers who found themselves grappling with the shoddy plans. Intrigued, Wally set about following the instructions, and sure enough found them unworkable. His curiosity piqued, he designed and built his own trailer and published the plans in Popular Mechanics magazine. The response was overwhelming, and soon Wally was building trailers out of his back yard in Los Angeles. The most significant feature of his design was the lowered floor between the wheels and the raised ceiling height, enabling the occupants of the trailer to stand up straight.

Wally Byam never set out to make a fortune or build an empire. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to be a businessman. The Airstream Company came about almost by accident. He built trailers, helped friends build theirs, took other friends on trailer trips, and as one order followed another, and another, he finally realized he was in the trailer business. In the late 1920s Americans were on the move, and Wally’s new trailers were the ideal solution for what was fast becoming America’s love affair with the open road. The Airstream Company was incorporated in 1931, and a few years later the ‘Clipper’ was launched: an aircraft-like trailer with a riveted aluminum body, enclosed galley, its own water supply, electric lighting—even ‘air conditioning’ using dry ice. It cost $2,000—a huge sum in those days, but Wally couldn’t build them fast enough for the orders that flooded in.

It shouldn’t have worked—starting a company during the Great Depression, and selling a product that cost several times more than anything else on the market. But it did, and there is no doubt that the Wally Byam magic

Wally was obviously doing something right, as Airstream was the only trailer company to survive the travails of the Great Depression. had more than a little to do with the success of the Airstream Company. According to Dale, Wally was a charismatic fellow who cared most of all about other people, “He wanted to provide work, create quality products, and to dedicate himself to others. There was nothing he couldn’t do in the workshop or on the business side of things and he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. And he never gave up, he was incredibly persevering. But he lived modestly in a one-bedroom house, and didn’t own much in the way of material possessions.” By 1952 he had married his second wife, Stella, who as Dale points out, was more suited to the Wally Byam way of life.

“She was great fun and enjoyed the same things as Wally—the outdoors and being around people.”

Wally was obviously doing something right, as Airstream was the only trailer company to survive the travails of the Great Depression, but World War II took its toll on the company and it was forced to close its doors as the materials required to build trailers were in demand for the war effort. So Wally took his aluminium fabricating skills to Lockheed and worked in the aircraft industry until the post-war boom brought a renewed surge in leisure and recreational travel, and once again the demand for Airstreams seemed limitless.

Wally Byam must have had an almost magnetic pull. After all, how many other people in 1951 could have rounded up 50 friends and persuaded them to tow their trailers to Central America? In fact, how many people could do that now? And how many business owners would feel comfortable leaving the company to set off on such an adventure? But as far as Wally was concerned this was business, and it wasn’t unusual for the managers back at Airstream HQ to receive phone calls in the middle of the night from London or Mexico City or Cape Town with Wally’s latest idea for a new fold-down bed, an improved door catch, or a way to stop the air-vent vibrating. But by taking his trailers out on the road, testing them in extreme terrains and all climates, he was truly living the Airstream life: To lead caravans wherever the four winds blow . . . over twinkling boulevards, across trackless deserts . . . to the traveled and untraveled corners of the earth.

Dale, aged 12 in 1951, took part in the first caravan to Central America, and remembers clearly the thrill of tackling the jungles of southern Mexico, the rough roads of Guatemala, and arriving in Managua, Nicaragua, where the road finally ran out altogether. This experience at such an impressionable age gave him a thirst for adventure, and eight years later he was driving the scout vehicle for Wally’s most ambitious (and famous) caravan: a 7,500-mile trek with 41 Airstreams from Cape Town, South Africa, to Cairo, Egypt— led by Wally and Stella Byam in their gold-anodised model.

“We were welcomed everywhere we went,” remembers Dale, “whether by the educated of the cities or the natives in the villages. None of them had ever seen such a sight before.

My mother, Wally’s first cousin, was in charge of organizing the border crossings and dealing with the embassies, but Wally had done a lot of research about Africa in the previous years, and during our European caravan in 1956 he had

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The rules are simple: be friendly and gentlemanly and you will be received everywhere. made contact with people who had traveled there and lived there, so he was well-prepared.”

Wally’s international connections were clearly impressive, for in Addis Ababa he secured an audience with none other than Emperor Haile Selassie, who greeted the entire caravan, shaking their hands while they bowed and curtsied, “It was truly one of the highlights of the caravan,” says Dale.

In contrast to African travel today, the border crossings were a breeze, and despite fears put about by some of the authorities, Dale claims the caravan never felt under threat. “Our only experience of any hostility was in Egypt when we became lost and people were shouting at us ‘English go home! English go home!’ So I shouted back, ‘We are not English! We speak American!’ and after that they were fine!”

But road surfaces in Africa have a certain tradition, and the story in 1959 was much the same as it is today. “We had a few surprises,” says Dale, laughing.

“The roads in the Belgian Congo were like washboards, for miles and miles.

In northern Kenya there was terrible dust, and in Ethiopia we had every man, woman and child shoveling the trailers out of thick mud. The roads were so eroded and some of the bridges were falling apart, but we always made it, and we always found somewhere to camp. We would try to park off the road in a circle, but that wasn’t always possible so sometimes we would just line up at the side of the road. The local people were always amazed at the sight.”

The caravan never had any trouble finding food, and the trailers carried filtration systems for the water. Fuel was readily available, and propane was sourced for the cooking stoves without problem. The dates were arranged to avoid the worst of the African heat, leaving South Africa in their winter and arriving in the northern hemisphere in spring time. “And I never got sick during the trip,” says Dale. “Well, not in Africa. I got explosive food poisoning in New York City—just before we sailed!”

In the true spirit of African overland travel, the caravan ended up two months behind schedule. “We were meant to arrive in Bethlehem for Christmas,” explains Dale, “but we didn’t get there until February. So we spent Christmas at a U.S. Army base in Asmara, Eritrea, and I can tell you, for 50 Americans to get their hands on hamburgers and milkshakes after months on the road in Africa, that was quite something!” But for Dale, even the joys of the great American diet were outweighed by a momentous morning in Egypt. “We all camped overnight right next to the pyramids in a big circle, and to wake up and step out of your trailer to that sight, right there on your doorstep—that was the greatest moment of the whole trip for me.”

Wally Byam wrote a creed for Airstream which included a desire to play some part in promoting international goodwill and understanding among the peoples of the world through person-to-person contact.

It was important to Wally that the caravans were not seen merely

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Opposite: The African caravan traversing the Mussolini Pass in Northern Ethiopia. The roads were engineered and built by the Italian Army when they assaulted Ethiopia in the 1930s. Top to bottom: Dale ‘Pee Wee’ Schwamborn wondering how many more miles of roads he’d need to repair before Addis Ababa. Roads in southern Ethiopia were bad, worse, and non-existent. At times every man, woman, and child had to help patch up roads to get the caravan through. Emperor Haile Selassie after inspecting an Airstream trailer in Ethiopia. The Caravan stopped for a break in a village in Ethiopia.

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as a bunch of Americans out for a good time, and it was common for them to stop on their journeys to donate supplies to schools and orphanages. Dale recalls his experience of visiting a school in what was then the Belgian Congo.

“As the scout vehicle, I went ahead to the school. When I arrived there were hundreds of men dressed in loincloths and bearing spears eyeing us warily. We were unable to communicate in any language, so instead of trying to speak to them I switched on the music player in the trailer and played a Louis Prima record, and immediately everything was fine—the music transcended language. By the time the rest of the caravan arrived I had succeeded in teaching the students a few words of English, so when the others rolled up the students all began chanting ‘Viva Wally Byam! Viva Wally Byam!’”

Although Wally Byam passed away well over forty years ago, his influence continues to shape the Airstream Company. He might well be amazed at the hi-tech offerings of today’s models, but Dale thinks he would approve. “He was no Luddite; he was always looking forward, seeing how he could improve things.” On the customer service page of the Airstream website one of Wally’s famous quotes makes a refreshing change to the usual corporate guff that other big companies trot out so readily. It is also probably the best advice I’ve ever read for any overland traveler.

The rules are simple: be friendly and gentlemanly and you will be received everywhere.

People like Wally Byam don’t come along very often, and his influence on Airstream owners today is as powerful as ever. Dale puts the popularity of the trailers and the longevity of the company down to Wally’s personal touch. People feel like they’re buying into a part of American heritage, something solid with a heart and history behind it.

Over 60 percent of all Airstreams ever built are still in use—but nowadays they tend to stay closer to home. Nobody has ever taken Airstream trailers to the limits Wally Byam achieved with his international caravans. In 2009 a re-creation of the legendary African caravan was planned, to celebrate its 50th anniversary—but sadly it failed to happen. It was cancelled due to concerns over politics, security, and insurance costs.

Somehow, I have a feeling that if Wally Byam had still been around, he would have made it happen. He would have found a way.

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Wally Byam’s creed In the heart of these words is an entire life’s dream. To those of you who find in the promise of these words your promise, I bequeath this creed . . . my dream belongs to you.

After Wally Byam returned home, he had a graphic arts designer create an aluminum plate commemorating the African caravan. Wally's notice to Airstream owners back home.

Overland Journal Winter 2010

To encourage clubs and rallies that provide an endless source of friendships, travel fun and personal expressions.

To place the great wide world at your doorstep for you who yearn to travel with all the comforts of home.

To lead caravans wherever the four winds blow . . . over twinkling boulevards, across trackless deserts . . . to the traveled and untraveled corners of the earth.

To provide a more satisfying, meaningful way of travel that offers complete independence, wherever and whenever you choose to go or stay.

To play some part in promoting international goodwill and understanding among the peoples of the world through person-to-person contact.

To keep alive and make real an enduring promise of high adventure and faraway lands . . . of rediscovering old places and new interests.

To refine and perfect our product by continuous travel-testing over the highways and byways of the world.

To open a whole world of new experiences . . . a new dimension in enjoyment where travel adventure and good fellowship are your constant companions.

To strive endlessly to stir the venturesome spirit that moves you to follow a rainbow to its end . . . and thus make your travel dreams come true.

- Wally Byam

Say Yah to da UP, eh?

In the northern woods of Michigan, Mike McCarthy chases a childhood ideal, while photographer Richard Pick chases ideal imagery.

By Mike McCarthy Photography by Richard D. Pick

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Moccasin Lake in Michigan's Upper Peninsula

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Lake Superior

“There was a long tug, Nick struck and the rod came alive and dangerous, bent double, the line tightening, coming out of the water, tightening, all in a heavy, dangerous, steady pull. Nick felt the moment when the leader would break if the strain increased and let the line go.” - Ernest Hemingway, “Big Two-Hearted River”

Anyone who has ever held a fly rod and caught a wild trout can identify with that moment. I grew up not far from where Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories took place and never caught a trout longer than six inches, but I shared the experience with Nick. Several decades and a career in the Air Force later, and living a half-dozen states away, I reread those stories—and decided to head across the prairie in my Sportsmobile to explore the Upper Peninsula. With my fly rod, dog, and wife on board, I looked forward to catching the wild trout of the Big TwoHearted River. Along the way, we would explore the vast region’s history, culture, and forests.

I also had several other missions for this trip. First, I wanted to take my Sportsmobile and Adventure Trailers Chaser on a long test drive. I had owned the combined rig for several years but had yet to leave the western states. Along the way, I also hoped to sample the products from a historic brewery and a historic bootmaker.

I grew up in the northern Wisconsin village of Niagara, in a valley on the Menominee River, which separates Wisconsin from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. My mother was a librarian, and when books are your babysitter, there is no limit to your education or your imagination.

Like every kid in that region of the frozen tundra, I loved to fish, hunt, and explore. Unlike every kid, I got to review all varieties of books as I hung around the library.

One of my favorite authors was Ernest Hemingway, the hairy-chested, hard-drinking, Pulitzer-Prize winning writer. Unlike many fiction writers, Hemingway experienced most of the things he wrote about.

One of the many things he wrote about well was fishing. His Nick Ad-

Mike McCarthy’s Sportsmobile and AT Chaser trailer.

ams stories took place in the northern Michigan area just a few hours from my home town. The descriptions of Nick fighting wild trout on the Big Two-Hearted River were a long cry from the brook trout I managed to catch in the local Pem-Bon-Won Creek as a kid. Now as an adult, I had time and opportunity to walk in Nick’s boots.

Some pundit said that we make a decision at 20 and suddenly we are 70 years old and we wonder what the hell happened. I am not 70, but it is breathing down my neck. While I was an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin, I returned to the north woods during the summers to work in the paper mill. In my spare time, I harassed the half-starved brook trout, and wandered the local forests with my shotgun.

After graduating from college, my wife and I headed off to Air Force pilot training. Thirty years, 70 countries, and two wars later, we found ourselves in the mountains of Utah, still peeking over the horizon to see what is on the other side. What better way to peek over the horizon than as an overlander?

In retrospect, I got the overlanding disease when my dad brought home a used five-dollar bike for my fifth birthday. Those two wheels represented discovery and mobility. Ever since that moment, the next mound, hill, or mountain just had to be crossed. Through the years, everything from a BSA 441 to a Sportsmobile to a C-130 Hercules has taken me on the discovery journey.

Our trip took us from the dry Wasatch Mountains, across the prairie, to the woods of northern Wisconsin. Once there, we stopped at the old Leinenkugel Brewery in Chippewa Falls. Central Wisconsin was settled by German immigrants in the mid-19th century, and there used to be dozens of local breweries. Leinies is one of the few to survive into the microbrewery fashion of today, and produces a fine selection of carefully crafted lagers.

I also fulfilled a quest by stopping at Russell Moccasin, the centuryold maker of custom boots and shoes. I expected to find the wood benches and aproned craftsmen replaced by modern machinery, but the inside of the building still looks like a chapter out of a Dickens novel, with real humans making custom boots by hand. I ordered a pair of hunting boots which have subsequently proven to be the most comfortable my aching feet have ever experienced.

Eventually, we reached the far north woods of Wisconsin, and the UP. I’ve been in every state in the union and there are not many regions in the country as unique as this area. If you want to experience a special culture, see remote wilderness, and feed the hungry, this is a must visit.

The Native Americans who greeted the explorers around Lake Superior were generally from the Ojibwa tribe. The rock art of the southwestern United States is impressive, but the cliff art of the Ojibwa is awe-inspiring, since the Ojibwa and related tribes painted their art on Overland Journal Winter 2010

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Wagner Falls, Michigan

the cliffs bordering Lake Superior. The illustrations are so large they can only be fully appreciated from a boat.

The present natives of the Upper Peninsula are called Yoopers. The Yoopers are proud of their mongrel heritage, and revel in a dialect of “English” that is frequently unintelligible to outsiders. The culture extends from just north of Green Bay and reaches all the way to Sault Ste. Marie on the tip of the Upper Peninsula. Once you cross the bridge at the Sault you are no longer in Yooper land.

Yoopers are tough, independent, and most importantly they are Green Bay Packer fans. They have a distinctive accent that reflects Nordic sing-song followed by the Canadian “eh?’ Local bumper stickers state, “Say yah to da UP, eh?” Yoopers are outdoorsmen who leave school during deer season, and think ice fishing is fun. Drive around the UP in winter and you’ll spot fishermen dressed in layers of insulation sitting on boxes, jigging through hand-augured holes in the ice.

You’ll also see many shacks on the lakes and bays, where the less-hardy enjoy temperatures of, say, only 10 degrees below zero rather than 20.

When I was a boy, my dad took me to one of the ice-fishing shack villages on Bay de Noc near Escanaba, MI. I was impressed. This was not a shack. Rather, it was a miniature man’s lodge complete with stove, TV, and refreshments. Of course, there was no bathroom, and when nature called the men had to stand on the ice with the strong wind from the Arctic blowing across the flat plane of ice. It was at that moment I discovered that not all men are created equal. The Bay de Noc area is also home to the company that makes the famous and deadly Swedish Pimple fishing lure—honest.

Despite all its natural wonders, the UP hit its economic summit about a century ago. The region was rich with iron ore, timber, and water. The towns have mining heritage names such as Iron Mountain, Iron River, and Vulcan. When my father graduated from high school in the 1920s, he followed his father into the underground iron mines. The forests that seemed to stretch endlessly provided wood for the paper mills, and for the Ford “Woodie” automobiles of the 1940s. The water provided a highway for loggers and power for the mills—and it eventually flooded the mines.

By mid-century, most of the mines had disappeared. What the Great Depression did not take out, flooding and cheaper foreign mines finished. The mines tried hard to keep the water out by importing huge pumps from the Cornwall mining area of England, but it was a downhill slide. During the boom times, Henry Ford built an assembly plant and the town of Kingsford, then shut down the plant as the need for wood in automobiles disappeared.

The mines attracted workers from Cornwall, England, Southern Italy, and other mining areas of the U.S. The forests drew hardy woodsmen from Finland. These immigrant cultures brought some unique food to the area. The fast food of the UP is a Cornish pasty—a crust generally enclosing meat, potatoes, onions, and rutabaga. The pasty was filling, easily carried, and could be heated by the flaming wicks on the miner’s helmets.

There were still isolated ethnic neighborhoods and villages when I was a boy. Many taverns served better Italian food than the best restaurants in Chicago, as aging Italian immigrant women served up heaping dishes of southern Italian fare. There were also Italian wine moonshiners. Trains would bring grapes to Iron Mountain, and old men would produce barrels of what the Yoopers called “Dago Red.” In the 60s, a gallon of the earthy wine cost about $1.25.

The Italians brought cuisine; the Finns brought ski jumping. For decades the UP was the center of U.S. ski jumping. The area hosted Olympic tryouts, and nearly every town had a ski jump. The biggest jumps were at Suicide Hill in Ishpeming and Pine Mountain in Iron Mountain.

Look at a pair of seven-foot jumping skis from the 40s and 50s, then climb to the top of the jump and look down. That view will give you an appreciation of the jumpers’ courage.

If you want to experience a special culture, see remote wilderness, and feed the hungry, the UP is a must visit.

The UP, like the rest of the U.S., is not as ethnically European as it once was, but ethnic food persists. Pasty shops still outnumber McDonalds, and you can also find a pork-based mystery meat called Cudighi near Negaunee. The Becco family in Iron Mountain made sausage by hand for 60 years before closing their doors, but you can still find the sausage in the bigger food markets, which purchased the recipe from the family.

The UP also offers a chance to feed the hungry. I had forgotten this aspect of the region. Ticks, black flies, and mosquitoes are present in biblical numbers. For weeks after leaving the region, we found ticks waiting in ambush. You’ll ignore the Geneva Convention and enthusiastically engage in chemical warfare with the enemy during the summer months.

The bugs were also excellent guards for the World War II prisoner of war camps bordering Lake Superior. What better place for a POW camp?

Anyone who escaped faced the prospect of being eaten by wolves in one meal or by black flies through 10,000 bites. Some POWs made a run for it; most returned much worse for the experience. One enterprising German built skates and headed across Lake Superior. He should have paid closer attention in geography class, since Lake Superior is big and cold, but it does not freeze over. The escapee was glad to rediscover the camp a day or so later.

After exploring and eating our way across the UP, we pulled up to the Big Two-Hearted River. It is a nice river, indeed—but it is not the home of large, rod-bending trout. Hemingway later admitted that he used the Big Two-Hearted River simply because it is a beautiful and poetic name, and he didn’t want to give away his real favorite fishing river, the Fox. The UP, in actuality, is not big-trout country because the winters are too long.

On the other hand, the lakes of this area are home for the wolf of the northern waters: the muskellunge. The muskie, a member of the pike family, lurks in the weeds waiting to ambush other fish, ducklings, even small rodents. Known as the fish of a thousand casts, it is a real Northwoods fish. My guess is that muskies hang in the weeds telling hunting stories and drinking Leinies until some unsuspecting muskrat swims by for supper.

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Amanita mushroom on the trail to Rock River Falls

In square miles, the UP is one of the largest congressional districts in the United States. It is full of bait fishermen and they know the outdoors. Of course, if you insist, there’s also room for dedicated fly fishermen to work the 36,000 miles of rivers and streams. Like Hemingway and Nick Adams, you can grab your rod and wet a line in the Big Two-Hearted River. No matter how you fish or explore in the UP, don’t forget your bug dope. The mosquitoes didn’t get that big by dieting.

Prologue Our plans for the near future include exploring more of southwestern Canada and attending Overland Expo 2011. Your plans should include exploring the north woods of Wisconsin and the UP of Michigan. If you visit the Yoopers in the winter, take in a ski-jumping tournament and try some ice fishing. I’ve heard you can earn big points with the locals by ice fishing in a Speedo.

If you go in summer you can drive through tunnels of pines trees, and gain a respect for the Native Americans and tough pioneers who settled this remote area of the United States. It’s like no other place. The food, scenery, and remoteness are worth the trip. Don’t forget to feed the hungry when you pass through. Say yah to da UP, eh?

Planning on visiting?

Things to do: Fish for muskie in northern Wisconsin. The Chippewa

Scott Falls near Christmas, Michigan

I had envisioned stepping into the Big Two-Hearted River with my fly rod in hand and verses of Hemingway dancing in my head. But northern Wisconsin and the UP, it turns out, is not country where you find fishermen talking about bamboo rods and exotic flies over a dram of Scotch whiskey. Rather, it’s a tough, sparsely populated country filled with practical outdoorsmen and practical fishermen. In this area they wear Packer hats, use spinning rods, and toss lures or bait. Yooper fishermen call themselves worm-dunkers and wood-chuckers for good reason. That’s how to efficiently catch muskies and another large fish, the sea-run trout called steelhead.

Fishing up here is not about aesthetics. When hunting for Wisconsin muskies, locals use plugs that imitate flat fish. The technique is to toss the plug and jerk it back. I’m not sure if the muskie thinks the plug is a wounded fish—or if it just angers him enough to attack. The same is true for the steelhead. In Washington State, we fished for steelhead with a large fly rod and drifted nymph flies along the river bottom. In this neck of the woods, they use spinning rods and “spawn bags” full of salmon roe to hook steelhead. After all, the steelhead are following spawning salmon to eat their eggs. Why would you throw a fly at them?

It may not be poetic, but it’s efficient.

Flowage (the Big Chip to locals) near Hayward, Wisconsin, offers trophy muskie water. Hire a guide and let him get you in the hunt. The state muskie record of 70 pounds was taken from this area. I also recommend touring an underground iron ore mine to gain an appreciation for this tough kind of mining. Next, drive across the Mackinac Bridge to the UP. The bridge was opened in 1953 and for decades it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Although the old hotel is special, skip Mackinac Island unless you like T-shirt shops and junk food. Finally, go skinny dipping in Lake Superior. The local technique is to take a running start and dive into the surf. Don’t worry—you’ll only get wet on the way in, because you’ll run on the top of the water screaming on the way back to shore. The water is very, very cold. Get off the blue highways and explore the public side roads. You will see some really beautiful rivers and lakes. As always, respect private property rights.

Things to eat: On the UP side of the bridge, try a pasty from Lehto’s Pasty Shop near St. Ignace. I always stop there. Also, The Pasty Oven near Iron Mountain serves a good one. For an evening with good drinks, steaks, and southern Italian fare, try the T and T Supper Club in Aurora, Wisconsin, right across the river from Iron Mountain-Kingsford.

Supper Club is a name given to restaurants that are a step or two up from a bar, but you will pass through a bar on the way to eat. Tino’s bar in Negaunee is the place to try Cudighi mystery meat. Finally, stop at Econo Foods for Becco’s Italian sausage; it’s worth the search. The family sold the recipe after 60 years of making it by hand.

Things to pack: In all months, pack for any kind of weather. In the

winter, pack as if you are exploring Antarctica. In the summer, take some of those winter clothes, since the wind can rip off of Lake Superior any time of year. On the other hand, be prepared for hot and humid weather during the two weeks of summer. Finally, bring all kinds of chemicals (the Yoopers call it bug dope) to ward off the hordes of arthropods.

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An Overlander’s Camera

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Tom Sheppard waxes poetic about his favorite compact digital camera—the Ricoh GXR—while delving into the current state of imaging technology

By Tom Sheppard

Overland Journal Winter 2010

What is this life if, full of care We have no time to stand and stare . . .

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The poet W. H. Davies would have been one of us if he’d had a good 4WD back in the 1890s. With his love of nature, he put his finger on the core ideal of overlanding, often forgotten in our rush to cover ground.

Photography—for which, to do well, we must learn to slow down and distil, stand and stare a little—helps draw us back to why we go. Not only does it overcome our lack of time, but, unless we are scatter-gun snappers, in giving us the chance to freeze our cherished experiences it makes us more selective, appreciative of what we preserve; makes us look closer, makes us seek and see the essence.

However, as is known to any overlanding photographer with a beefy tripod and a rucksack stuffed with high-grade Japanese optical engineering, there are times when you can’t take it all with you or don’t want to be too obtrusive: the stroll in the bazaar, chance hospitality, the sudden opportunity on a relaxing walk. A little take-it-everywhere digital compact in a pocket or waist-belt pouch is what most will have latched on to by now, although such cameras are less capable (by most criteria) than a ‘proper’ single-lens reflex. The gap, however, is closing fast.

Ricoh lacks the universal fame of the Canon and Nikon juggernauts, but those in the know appreciate the company’s reputation for build quality and upper-middle-range DSLR optical performance. That reputation has lately been enhanced by some truly original thinking, and the ability to grasp any nettle that presents itself.

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Holding a compact at arms length and squinting at a pale image struggling through LCD reflections in bright daylight was always a recipe for an ill-composed shot. Ricoh addressed this on the GX100 and GX200 with a unique clip-on electronic viewfinder (EVF) that, when brought to your eye, gave you a reduced but bright and glare-free representation of what’s on the LCD. Moreover, it hinged upwards at any angle up to 90 degrees—a stroke of genius that enabled ground-level shots, such as the underside of a daisy against the sky, or unobtrusive candids with the photographer looking down into the camera rather than pointing it at strangers, eye-to-eye-to-lens. (Olympus have since been smart enough to jump on the bandwagon; a hinge-up EVF is available with their new Pen E-P2 camera.) Ricoh combined this with a wide zoom of very short focal length (5.1-15mm, a 35mm equivalent of 24-72mm)

and exceptionally close macro capability.

Their current surprise is an extension of the GX family with the addition of the GXR system. Among other notable features, the GXR incorporates a cunning interchangeable, modular lens/sensor system.

Four such modules are currently available—in 35mm-camera-equivalent terms, a 24-72mm zoom, a 28-300mm zoom, a premium fixed-focal-length 50mm and, just coming onto the market, a premium 28mm, also fixed-focal-length. Ignoring for the moment the inherent cost disadvantage of being required to purchase a sensor with each lens, the elegance of this system takes a little while to appreciate.

Firstly, each module is a self-contained plug-in lens and sensor in a sealed unit—thus virtually eliminating the hazards of dust on the sensor and resulting spots on one’s images. Secondly, each module’s sensor is optimised for its own lens. Initially this sounds like sales talk, but research and examination of the specs is revealing. Whilst the 24-72 zoom has a sensor normal for this class of camera—a small 7.5mm-wide item (incomprehensibly named a ‘1/1.7-inch,’ using the old TV camera nomenclature)—the 50mm and 28mm lenses that carry Ricoh’s cherished top-of-therange ‘GR’ tag utilise a full 12.3MP APS-C sensor of 23.5mm width. That’s the same size as the sensor in Canon’s spanking new EOS 60D and most mid-upper range DSLRs. MTF (modulation transfer function) curves showing resolution and contrast impressively highlight the benefit better than words.

The potential unfolds further when you see mock-ups of the other slide-in modules in the pipeline: high-capacity storage for downloading your SD cards, a projector unit, a fibre-scope, a GPS, and a wireless receiver paired to a match-box-sized underwater optical unit. A slow smile begins . . .

Dig deeper into what the GXR can do and the smile gets broader. It is certainly the most customizable camera I have ever encountered. The degree of control is astonishing, the more so for such a small camera. (And eschewing the tech-world’s seemingly accepted practice of giving the manuals to the tea-lady to produce, even Ricoh’s user guide is unusually well written.)

The GXR has a high-definition, 920,000dot, three-inch LCD viewing screen—both larger and double the sharpness of the GX100 and 200 before it. It is reproduced precisely, complete with all settings and a tiny

Opening page: The basic Ricoh GXR system, comprising a body, a lens/sensor module, a clever auto-collapsing lens cover, and a clip-on electronic viewfinder (EVF). Opposite: The GXR is no miniature, but it’s significantly smaller and lighter than a full-size digital SLR such as the Canon 5D. Top: The EVF makes low-level shooting a breeze.

Right: The chart shows the generous 23.5mm size of the APS-C sensor in the GXR’s premium 28mm and 50mm fixed-focal-length lenses. It also demonstrates the corresponding focal lengths of different sensor sizes to achieve the equivalent of a 28mm lens in a 35mm camera format.

histogram for tonal-range checks, in the EVF, and is now a real aid to visual focus checking, further helped by a long press of the menu button which brings up an enlarged central area. Like Canon’s latest EOS offerings, a main-parameters ‘Direct’ button displays the principal variables in big print, transparently superimposed on the LCD image, and most parameters are easily changed by controlwheel or jog-switch without having to burrow into the extensive menus.

Pressing a macro button extends the focusing range on the 24-72 zoom down from a 30cm default minimum to an astonishing 10mm (yes mm, not cm). The new fixed focal-length 28mm module has a closest focusing distance of 20cm and the 50mm, with a macro mode, will squint down to 7cm. Various focus modes are available but, using spotAF, the focus-point is moveable to nail the exact target position you require within the image—invaluable for super close-ups.

Built-in flash (variable), external flash (also variable), continuous shooting, comprehensive display data, variable combinations of aperture and shutter speed when in programme

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mode, and auto image-stabilisation are among the many options, all falling intuitively into the operating arena. Picture quality and size are, of course, selectable and when RAW is chosen it is, sensibly, in the universal Adobe DNG format with a default jpeg to accompany it. The excellent detail you can drag out of a DNG post-capture (with Adobe Camera Raw) shames the jpeg into superfluity. Video is available but varies in quality and frame rate according to lens module (the 50mm is capable of high-definition shooting).

Despite the intuitive interface to get up and running, a thorough read of the manual

(and an equally thorough re-read two weeks later) is advisable—correction, necessary.

Ahah! you find yourself beaming, as further enlightenment touches down on your runway.

So can this paragon of ergonomic virtue do no wrong? For a start, even acknowledging its robust build and very high all-aspects quality, the GXR is expensive—albeit, for me, worth it for those very attributes. An overland trip, or even a local few days out, is no time to be discovering the durability or functional limitations of a camera, whatever its role in the great plan. With the A12 50mm lens module the GXR is starting to lose its compactOverland Journal Winter 2010

ness. And if you take on board more than one module you are into camera bags rather than pocket or waist-belt toting of your compact.

Leave the rest in the wagon and attach the retractable and versatile 24-72mm, and you’ll still have an unobtrusive, carry-all-the-time camera in your belt pouch.

The autofocus system, carried over from the GX100 and 200, is the contrast-sensing type. Inevitably it is slower than the virtually instantaneous phase-detection type (which is dependent on an SLR-type mirror) such as that in the Canon EOS 5D II. But the Ricoh’s focus-acquired green frame comes up in— estimated—less than half a second. If you’re trying to take flowers waving in the wind it will drive you nuts, but for normal, preferably non-moving subjects it is an acceptable shortcoming. If you’re in the habit of photograph-

ing the inside of dark cupboards, or a night shot of your vintage truck’s latest oil leak, a bright green focus-assist light takes care of the situation.

If you inadvertently leave the camera in macro-enabled mode, however, focusing takes forever as the poor thing cycles right back to one centimeter before embarking on the great trek out to infinity. Focusing visual feedback is good, with a white, red or green oblong (or oblongs in multi-focus mode) superimposed over the viewfinder image to indicate both the focusing area and the status of focus acquisition. White means not activated, red is shutter button pressed half-way but focus not acquired, and green means button half-pressed and focus okay.

But Ricoh have addressed the faster-AF requirement in three ways. Firstly, the high-

definition LCD and EVF give you a reasonable helping hand in determining focus visually—albeit with such short focal-length lenses and wide-angle selected, this is not always easy to pick up. Secondly, there is a selectable ‘preAF’ mode in which the AF system is focusing all the time the camera is turned on to reduce the time otherwise required to half-press the shutter release, wait for a green rectangle and then make the exposure. Not noticeably beneficial at 24mm, it seems to be a little more effective at the longer end of the zoom and could well earn its keep with the 28-300mm module, where the mechanism has more visual differentials to get its teeth into.

Thirdly, you can select ‘snap focus’ mode and then pre-set the (fixed) ‘S.focus’ distance you think you will want in advance. For example, head-and-shoulders in a bazaar will

Dig deeper into what the GXR can do and the smile gets broader. It is certainly the most customizable camera I have ever encountered. probably be around 2.5 meters in front of the camera. When you want to take the picture you just press the shutter button all the way, straight off with no pause at the half-way stage. Very quick and, again, the short focal length of the lens—at least the 24-72 on wide—is a help with depth of field.

With its small sensor, optical performance is good rather than brilliant on the 2472mm, but with RAW files results are greatly improved with a little post-capture help from Camera Raw and Photoshop. I have spent a lot of time with this lens both on this camera and the GX200, and it brings versatility and exceptional close-focus characteristics to the party. The APS-C-sensored, fixed-focallength 50mm GR, which I have not used, is very well-reported (the new 28mm GR, also APS-C, is likely to be of a similar standard), but less versatile and bulkier. I have not had experience of the 28-300, but the sensor is smaller than the 24-72 and the MTF curves

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Clockwise from top left: Street scene with the GXR and 24-72mm lens, ISO 3200, hand-held, 1/3 second at F2.5. Grainy digital noise is making itself known in the background orange glow and on the pavement; still, not bad. Checking book proofs—and the close-focusing ability of a 5.1mm lens. Challenging tonal range handled expertly in the GXR’s RAW format. Go ahead and enlarge this to a 36cm (15-inch) print. It will still look good.

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Clockwise from top: The 24mm wide angle view together with an amazing macro facility make a smart combination. Detail—and context. The GXR’s ability to highlight a microcosm while illuminating its surroundings is unmatched. Still life with bicycle tire. Resolution good enough to count that 60 tpi in the casing.

confirm the expected lower optical performance as one price for the greater zoom range.

Noise suppression at high ISOs is not the Ricoh’s forte using the 24-72mm lens module and much degree of enlargement or sharpening, especially in dark areas of the picture. It does well up to ISO 800 but above that images start to look somewhat Impressionist in midshadow areas—photo-Monet, as it were. The full current range of lenses was not available to me, but tests elsewhere indicate the A12 f2.5 50mm module (larger sensor, CMOS, different processor) is not only very sharp but deals with digital noise very well even up to ISO 3200.

It could be argued that the GXR system at present provides slightly inconsistent results at the extremes of the performance envelope, according to which lens/sensor/processor is fitted. However, Ricoh have launched with a

sound middle-of-the-road wide-zoom—the 24-72—and the very concept of the camera enables a levelling-up of lens capabilities as different modules are released.

Regarding image sharpness in ‘normal’ daylight conditions: While the Ricoh is not the camera you’d choose for a wide-screen scenic if you have a 21Mp EOS in your other bag, it can nevertheless hold its head high, and is capable (from RAW) of a perfectly acceptable 38cm (15-inch)-wide landscape for a home print or submission for publishing, with the post-capture software assistance mentioned above. I have a 53cm-wide macro shot of bluebells hanging at the top of my stairs which cheers me daily.

In terms of general on-the-job function, there’s an exceptional degree of control on the GXR. Whilst the ‘Direct’ main-parameters screen is also at hand, everything is at your fingertips—but ‘tips’ is the crucial term. It’s

easy in the heat of the moment—say, running about trying to capture action—to find you have inadvertently hit one of the small-button controls, as I found to my cost leaping about in front of a new G-Wagen recently. A mysterious and maddening slow-focus bout was traced to accidental selection of macro-enable. And an embarrassing -3.7EV exposure compensation on a couple of shots was due to the heel of my thumb hitting the jog control as, holding the camera in one hand, I skipped among the rocks. So, as I keep telling myself: Slow down, make ‘em wait, check things as you go.

On-screen (or glare-free EVF) enlargement of shots you’ve just taken goes up to 16X, and there’s a dinky histogram to monitor your tonal range. It’s all there, but clever as the camera is, it won’t correct stupid mistakes.

What the Ricoh can do that, to my knowledge, no other camera short of a 4 X 5 can, is produce extraordinary close-ups of flowers, rocks, or beetles, and include the landscape and sky in the same image to give a feeling of location and context. Looking at such a shot—like the poppies on this page—it takes a minute or two to realise how special it is. But it’s just the kind of photo you’d want of your overland trip: the up-close detail and the setting all in the one shot. That 24mm wide angle view together with an amazing macro facility make a smart combination. And the tilting EVF is the icing on the cake.

For a lightweight trip with only one camera, on a hike or a bike, for example, I would immediately reach for the Ricoh GXR with the versatile 24-72mm module, and probably the superb 28mm stashed elsewhere. As it is, it’ll be coming along with the Canons with a definite and unique role to play in the Sahara.

Pricing: As always, the suggested retail price on cameras means nothing. Present U.S. street price on the GXR body alone is around $350. In kit form with the 24-72mm lens, about $600. The VF-2 external viewfinder (EVF) is about $250. ricoh.com

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A world-class overlanding challenge on our own continent

The Canol Road Part Two

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Preparations complete, a Land Rover and Unimog team heads for the wilds of northern Canada to tackle a WWII supply route not maintained for decades.

By Pete Lembesis

Overland Journal Winter 2010

On a geologic scale, 60 years is the

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not even

blink of an eye.

But while Mother Nature may demonstrate unwavering patience building mountains or carving mile-deep canyons, she’s capable of destroying man’s fragile construction efforts in short order. In the less-hospitable corners of the planet, Ms. Nature pushes temperatures to extremes, whips up cataclysmic storms, and drives raging torrents of spring-melt rivers— freezing, baking, and battering our seemingly solid structures.

To combat her formidable weapons, we must be ever diligent in a constant battle with the elements. Turn your back on a remote road for 60 northern winters, and it’s a sure bet the repo man has been sent to collect on the long lapse in attention. Such was the case for the Canol Road, but we intended to find out if it was still possible to traverse it so many years after the U.S. Army abandoned it.

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Heading North I need lists. Without them, underwear gets left home and chaos soon ensues. To avoid going commando for three weeks, underwear— and every other item that was to be packed—needed two checkmarks beside it: The first denoting said item was on hand and the second that it was on board. It was August 15, and with my double checklists complete, raft bits distributed among the group, and the trailer stocked with 40-plus fuel cans, the time had come to head north. Shawn in his 109, Dave and Scott in a second 109, Kris in his 110 with trailer in tow, and I in my 110, set out from Vancouver to meet Norman and Andy in Watson Lake, then Charlie and Martha in Ross River.

It’s a warm and sunny summer morning as we depart for the 2,500-kilometer haul to Ross River. The 300Tdi in my 110 is running like a champ, consuming less than 10 liters of diesel fuel per 100 kilometers, despite tipping the scale at over three tons. After a quick stop in Cache Creek to meet one of our sponsors, we make our way 800 kilometers north, to Prince George, BC. We have dinner with a club member who hosts us for our first night’s camp on a former NORAD military base, where we sleep surrounded by idle radar domes. As we continue up Highway 97 the next day, we come upon a herd of bison grazing on the roadside. Naturally believing the grass is greener on the other side, several saunter across the highway with complete disregard for traffic, bringing us and an 18-wheeler in the opposing lane to a complete stop. This is their territory and we’re only allowed to pass on their terms.

We join the Alaska Highway at Fort St. John, and drive north to Ft. Nelson and through the beautiful backdrop of Muncho Lake Provincial Park. After three days and nearly 1,700 kilometers, we finally leave British Columbia and arrive in Watson Lake, Yukon Territories.

With a population of just 1,600, Watson Lake is the last place we’ll find a supermarket, so the following morning we stock up on provisions, visit the famous Signpost Forest, and head northwest on Route 4, the Robert Campbell Highway. The term “highway” is used loosely in these parts, as the 370-kilometer portion of the Campbell we travel is a graded dirt road that makes me thankful for the full-time fourwheel-drive under my 110. The previous day’s rain made soup of many stretches, and soon the Rovers are all painted with a thick brown coating. In addition, long sections of ongoing construction make for a soft surface that reduces our pace considerably but doesn’t seem to slow the truckers much at all. They drive in the center of the road, appearing suddenly as we round one of countless blind curves. Most won’t give up taking their half of the road out of the middle, so we often need to swerve into the ditch, then struggle to get our rigs back onto firm footing. As the day wears on and we move farther from civilization, we eventually come upon a broken down tractor-trailer. Despite our dislike of most of the truckers’ driving tactics, we decide to stop and see how we might help. The driver spent the past night in the sleeperless cab, thanks to a rock that broke an air brake fitting. With no spare parts or cell phone service, he’s trying to rig a field fix to get to the next town, more than a hundred clicks away. Since there isn’t much any of us can do for him, we roll on, but as the hours pass, I begin thinking that we should have offered him the use of our satellite phone or some food or water.

Early in the evening, we finally reach the town of Ross River at the confluence of the Ross and Pelly Rivers. We make our way through

the tiny outpost of 400, hoping to find the Aarons and their giant blue Unimog, some fuel, and the Pelly River ferry. It’s too late to make the ferry today and the gas station is already closed, but word of our substantial fuel needs eventually reaches the owner, and he quickly finds us and reopens his dilapidated pumps for the unexpected windfall. After asking around town about the Unimog, the lone RCMP officer points us to the Lapie Canyon campground, where we find Charlie and Martha, awaiting our arrival.

The next morning, the fifth of the expedition, we wake to a chilly 3ºC and make our way to the ferry. As we line up to board the 2–3-vehicle barge, the operator, a colorful and chatty guy named Mad Mike, insists we spend the night at his hunting cabin just off the Canol Road.

We collect the keys, then cross the river and begin our journey toward the Northwest Territories border, 230 kilometers northeast. We never find Mike’s cabin, but it’s not long before we come upon what will become a common sight: dozens of rusting WWII-vintage military and construction vehicles, and scores of discarded 55-gallon fuel drums.

There are Ford, Dodge, GMC, and Studebaker trucks lined up along the road, most picked clean of the good parts. We spend an hour climbing around the trucks, making photos and shooting video footage. All very interesting, especially to a group of gearheads, but we’re on a mission, so reluctantly we move on.

So far, the road is in pretty good shape, about what you would expect from a maintained forest service road. Bridges span the rivers and creeks, and the road is wide and fairly smooth. As we roll past the low brush, we encounter a recent gouge in the road’s surface that ends at a three-wheeled Ford Explorer. A front wheel has parted company with truck, which tends to happen when the lug nuts leave the party early.

In a timid, almost apologetic way, the driver tells us that she and her sister are taking a teenage boy to a hunting camp some distance up the road, where he’ll learn the traditional ways of the native Sahtu people.

Opposite: Years of neg lect have not been kind to this bridge near the Yukon/NWT border. Abo ve: Filling nearly 60 fuel cans in Ross River, YT, while the proprietor looks on approvingly.

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Eventually, my 110’s tie rod is pulled into a V-shape, causing the tires to point in

conflicting directions.

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The Explorer had a flat a few days earlier, so in preparation for the trip they installed the spare and had their father tighten the lug nuts. Their father is 90. Luckily, we find the chrome center cap with all of the nuts still clipped in place but the threads on the studs have been pounded flat. We manage to force the nuts back on but decide to weld them in place since the threads are in such poor shape. Using a few welding rods and the batteries from two of the Rovers, I soon have the nuts securely burned in place. The woman is incredibly grateful and gives us smoked and candied salmon as a token of her appreciation. After convincing them to turn back and have the studs and nuts replaced, we continue on our way, happy to have been able to help.

In the cold rain of the next morning, the 109 boys empty two cans of gas into their tanks. By noon, we’ve made it to Macmillan Pass and the NWT border, where a sign warns that beyond this point, there are no bridges, no services, and you proceed at your own risk. The view grows ever broader as we look out over the vast valley. It’s wide open country, with only a thin ribbon of gravel bisecting it. We mo-

Overland Journal Winter 2010

tor along, crossing streams and fording several shallow rivers, since, as the sign warned, only the collapsed skeletons remain as evidence of the bridges’ existence. Despite the deteriorating condition of the road, there are still recent tracks visible. Soon, the path narrows, the mud holes grow deeper, and the rocks become boulders that increase in frequency. Charlie and Martha decide it’s time to turn around in their beautiful and expensive Unimog rolling home, so we bid them goodbye and continue north.

As we make our way farther up the road, we catch sight of a small group of buildings on top of a ridgeline. It’s the Old Squaw Lodge, and as we bounce our way up the long drive, we’re greeted by a group of kids and barking dogs. Two women emerge from the lodge and invite us in for coffee and cookies, then explain that it is a summer camp where native kids come to learn the values, traditions, and language of their ancestors, and that the buildings were constructed using materials salvaged from the bridges. We wander out onto the balcony and watch as a small group of caribou graze on lichen far in the distance.

But we still have a lot of ground to cover, so we leave the spectacular view and generosity of our hosts and continue our northeasterly trek along the Intga River and into the MacKenzie Mountains, in search of our next milestone, Camp 222.

Since the oil from Norman Wells had a great distance to cover before reaching the refinery in Whitehorse, the Army built 10 pumping stations along the pipeline. Camp 222 is one such station, named for its distance in miles from Norman Wells. The buildings and a large oil storage tank seem structurally sound, but are very uninviting. A visitor’s book lies open on a dusty table in the smaller structure, so we read through to see who has come before us. Best we can tell, hunters and hikers but no reference to any vehicle-based overlanders, so we change that with our entries. The pumping equipment is long gone and all that is left is trash, asbestos insulation, and discarded oil barrels. It’s damp and cold, and the soggy ground quickly convinces us to move on and find a better location for the night. Three kilometers up the road we find a nice field next to a burbling stream, just what the doctor ordered as we’ll have a perfect source of water for the diesel-fired hot shower, the first we’ve had in six days.

Opposite: 109 plunging into the Tsichu River, fast-relief implement attached. Clockwise from top left: Pushing through dense overgrowth that is slowly reclaiming Canol Road. Little trees, big appetite: The bush is slowly eating my 110. To avoid serious axle damage, care is needed when fording rocky rivers along the Canol Road.

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Brush, Boulders, and Crossings Now a week into the expedition, we march ahead over Caribou Pass, and as we cross the 300-kilometer mark since Ross River, the bush grows thicker and the road narrows considerably. It’s barely wide enough for the Land Rovers to squeeze through, and soon basketballsized rocks slow our pace even further. While tracks for the wheels remain, we now have to contend with brush that has grown up in the center. The two-inch-diameter alder claws at the undercarriage of the trucks and whips and scrapes along the sides. We often need to stop and use a chainsaw to clear the road of larger brush, but doing so reduces our pace to a crawl and means finding a place where a door can be opened. When we eventually emerge from the dense brush, it’s to ford the Ekwi River. The locals told us it had been a dry year, so we’re lucky that the water is only about two feet deep. We cross the boulder-strewn riverbed near the remains of a long-forgotten bridge. This routine continues throughout the day, repeated countless times, as the road follows the river, forcing us to make one crossing after another.

With the exception of the occasional ATV track, nothing shod with tires appears to have passed through here in a long time. Bear scat, on the other hand, is plentiful.

As the day drags on, we begin to grow weary of fighting our way through such thick overgrowth. But if we have it bad, the poor Rovers

have it far worse. When the axles aren’t being hammered by boulders obscured by the river, the steering linkages are slowly succumbing to the unyielding grip of the alder in the center of the road. Eventually, my 110’s tie rod is pulled into a V-shape, causing the tires to point in conflicting directions. Norman’s drag link suffers much the same fate, and those of us with eyebrow arches over the wheel openings find them ripped and dangling by the time we make camp for the day.

Twelve hours of battling the Canol, and all we have to show for it are badly bruised trucks and 46 kilometers of forward progress.

The next morning, our slog through the never-ending brush is interrupted when the road comes to a sudden end. We stand staring at the largest beaver dam and pond any of us has ever seen. As we spend more than an hour contemplating how we’re going get past the giant pool, a beaver swims out to replace a few twigs we disturbed, demonstrating his efficiency at minding the fort. We debate assembling the raft and floating across the pond, but after a bit of scouting we discover a horse and ATV track below the dam, just wide enough for the Rovers.

The only trouble is that it’s soggy. In an effort to minimize the ruts we would make, we break out the raft ramps and use them to bridge the streams and cross the deeper sections of mud. Despite our best efforts with the bridging, the winches need to be deployed to get the Overland Journal Winter 2010

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I climb back into my 110 and look up the road—

face-to-face with a big brown bear, not more than to see Kris standing

20 feet between them. trucks through the worst of the bottomless bog. Before the six-hour marathon is finished, the tireless PTO winches have dragged each truck several hundred meters and set the trailer back onto its wheels. This is quickly followed by another river fording—then it’s right back into the relentless brush. It’s not long before my tie rod is bent once again.

Soon after straightening the rod, Shawn notices that his gearbox is beginning to whine. A look under the truck reveals that the Series III is mysteriously missing the transfer box drain plug. Shawn and Kris grab a shotgun and hike a mile back up the road to see if they can find it. Unfortunately, their hour-long search yields nothing, strangely, not even a sign of any leaked oil. While they’re gone, I carve a replacement plug from a piece of a fallen CANOL telephone pole Norman finds along the roadside. To protect it from damage, Shawn removes the transfer box cover and installs the plug from the inside.

We carry on, pushing our battered Land Rovers and ourselves through the endless bush, and fording one river after another. At one point we stop for a break and Kris decides to walk ahead to get a good vantage point for photos of the group as we motor by. I climb back into my 110 and look up the road—to see Kris standing face-to-face with a big brown bear, not more than 20 feet between them. As my Tdi spins to life, I yell “Grizzly!” to the others, floor the accelerator, and race toward the bear, hoping to scare it off. Despite looking like he’s just seen a ghost, Marlin Perkins actually manages to snap a photo of the bear as it turns to run.

Beavers and bears, bent tie rods and open transfer boxes. An eventful day to be sure, but the kind we do not need. The road is no longer visible, so we decide to stop for the night. As a low-flying bush plane 91

Opposite: Raft ramps are used to bridge a small stream. Left to right: D90 easily crosses the Inga River next to the broken spine of a long-collapsed bridge. Long stretch of axle-deep mud means several pulls are needed to free bogged Landies.

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Opposite: Grinding through a canopy of alder. Left to right: One of many sites of abandoned WWII-era construction and military trucks. Swift three-foot-deep current stops heavily laden 110 in its tracks.

slices through the stillness of the valley, we make camp at 9:00 p.m., a mere 13 kilometers from our last one.

The next day we cross the swift, two-foot-deep Ekwi River for the last time. As we enter the muskeg on the far bank, we finally get a break from the brush, but route finding becomes difficult. On foot, we hunt for signs of the road, but only find hoof prints. Following them and advice from my 276C, we head north, toward Godlin Lakes. Eventually we find telephone poles, then rusted 55-gallon drums—both sure signs that the road is near. A short distance later, we find the road, along with the remains of yet another bridge and a new junkyard of abandoned trucks, including a caboose on skids known as a wannigan. Wannigans were the workers’ quarters and were towed behind bulldozers. In addition to the rusted barrels, we find a clean orange one that has “Jet B – 7/1998” stenciled on it. We break the seal on the cap, and peer through 55 gallons of perfectly clean and clear aviation fuel. We wonder why it’s there, and decide that since no one has come back for it in more than a decade, we’ll fill our tanks with it on the way out, if we pass this way.

As we near our next milestone, an airstrip and hunting lodge, we find several planes and helicopters and a corral full of horses. The primitive looking lodge belongs to an outfitter that flies in clients for remote—and expensive—hunting guide services. Unlike everyone else we’ve met so far, the owner is very unfriendly, so we roll on, gladly putting distance between the camp and us. Farther ahead, we encounter one of the outfitter’s guides, who tells us he can’t believe we actually drove in, then wishes us luck as he makes his way toward the lodge. We push through the ever-present alder and make it to the Godlin River, where we stop for the night. It’s been another long day, but the odometer has only rung up an additional 15 kilometers.

Day 10 It’s day 10, and before we hit the road the 109s’ tanks are replenished and the reserves checked once again. We huddle around the map and realize we’ve come a long way, more than 360 kilometers since Ross River. There are no longer any tracks from road-going vehicles—but the Twitya River is still 40 to 50 kilometers away. Considering the heavy bush still to be conquered, our fuel reserves, and our current rate of travel, we begin to wonder if the remaining fuel and time are enough to get us to Norman Wells. We quickly squash such thoughts and carry on, believing our progress will improve.

It’s not long before we come to a huge wash-out, where the track is simply gone. The road ran along the mountain slope, but as this section has been exposed to season after season of spring melt and runoff, the soil has been stripped away. No vegetation or sign that the road ever existed remains here, only half a kilometer of softball-sized rocks. The weather is perfect and the landscape and scenery are incredible so we pose with the trucks and take a few photographs. A long valley stretches ahead, framed by glacial moraines and the Sayunei Mountains.

After an hour of soaking up the unbelievable view, we enter the washout and carefully pick our way across the rocky terrain. We stop often to scout ahead on foot, but eventually make it to the other side where we rejoin the road. Soon, we come to a braided river and make our way across, hopping from one gravel bar to the next. At one point, the bank has been badly eroded so we’re forced to dig a bit to round off the sharp precipice. As we dig, a helicopter flies over, circles a few times, and then continues on its southwesterly course. When we get to the far side of the river we find that half the road is gone, washed away Overland Journal Winter 2010

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The next morning, the petrol guys check their fuel and find

they’ve consumed twice that of the diesels.

They figure they have another day of forward travel before they

reach the point of no return

and must either commit to reaching Norman Wells or turn back.

Overland Journal Winter 2010

Opposite: Making our way along the braided Godlin River. Left to right: Weary overlanders carve plaques to mark termination point 152 miles from Norman Wells.

"Canol Expedition 2009: On this site, on this date, Aug 25, The Canol Expedition team turned back. Not due to the elements, difficulty of the road, or lack of determination, but lack of time. Five Land Rovers and: Pete Lembesis, Andy Yung, Shawn Doherty, And O'Doul, Dave and Scott Fraser, Norman Hendry, and Kris Maksymiuk."

Pausing 375 kilometers from Ross River to soak in the incredible vistas.

by the Godlin, so there’s no choice but to drive along the bank with the trucks leaning over at a precarious side angle. Our heavily laden beasts of burden need human ballast to help keep them upright. A kilometer elapses before the road is wide enough for the Rovers to fit again.

As we enter the next washout a few hours later, we hear the beating of a helicopter growing louder above our heads. It’s the same bird, but this time the pilot sets it down and officials from the NWT tourism office, Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, and the pilot, Guy, climb out. They tell us that word of our expedition spread to Norman Wells, and since they were out on other business they thought they would see what we’re up to. While the environment officer records our names and addresses, Guy, who seems genuinely pleased to meet us, tells us of his involvement with the Canol museum in Norman Wells.

He talks about the history of the road and the abandoned equipment, about the legend of twelve Harley-Davidsons with sidecars, still in their shipping crates, said to be buried somewhere along the road, that no vehicle has crossed the entire Canol Road since 1948, and that we’ve come farther than anyone since that time. We ask about the brush, the terrain, and the depth and speed of the Twitya. Along with the technical details, he tells us of the incredible views from the Plains of Abraham and of Dodo Canyon, and encourages us to push on.

Our chat with Guy has reinvigorated us, so we push on, determined to see the wonderful places he described. However, our newly found energy is quickly sapped away as we resume the battle against the unyielding bush. It’s 10:00 p.m. and although the sun has dropped below the horizon, we continue for another hour, hoping to find a decent campsite. Exhausted, we finally decide to make camp right on the narrow, alder-lined road—it’s not like anyone is likely to come along. It’s dark and getting cold as I heat up a can of soup, but it’s not so bad for me since I can just crawl into bed in the back of my 110. Norman and

Andy have it much harder, as they’re forced to sleep in the 90 instead of their tent. It’s been yet another tough day—and again we’ve only covered 15 kilometers.

Tough Decision In preparing for the expedition, we planned on rivers and rocks, but had no idea the bush would be so challenging. Eleven days of fighting against the alder is taking its toll on our Land Rovers, on our bodies, and on our spirits. The next morning, the petrol guys check their fuel and find they’ve consumed twice that of the diesels. They figure they have another day of forward travel before they reach the point of no return and must either commit to reaching Norman Wells or turn back.

Given the distance and our progress to date, we know there’s only one choice. Still, we’d like to reach the Twitya so we can deploy the raft and cross the river that we believed was the biggest obstacle in the journey.

We forge ahead, but by noon we realize that even the Twitya might be a bridge too far.

After just five kilometers, we stop. We’ve come 390 kilometers since Ross River, and no one wants it to end this way, but we all know what we must do. There’s a somber, defeated mood as we carve the plaques that will mark our terminus. It takes six long hours to chisel them out.

We hang them on a tree just off the road and, using glass insulators from downed telephone poles, drink a toast of Scotch to our achievement. We came up short on the 25th of August, somewhere deep in the Northwest Territories, but we drove farther up the Canol Road than anyone has in more than 60 years. Here’s to you, Norman and Andy, Shawn and O’Doul, Dave and Scott, and to you, Kris. It truly was an epic adventure.

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Canol Road

Route

Cartography by David Medeiros (mapbliss.com)

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BMW 800GS

Making a better bike even better

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Brian DeArmon succumbs to the lure of a new motorcycle— then succumbs to the lure to improve it

By Brian DeArmon

Overland Journal Winter 2010

“The key to loving what you have is

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not riding anything else.”

Those words, which can be applied to so many things in life, came from one of the more notorious members of the local adventure motorcycle riders’ group. Banzai Becky knew what she was talking about.

But I didn’t listen.

For reasons I can no longer recall, I had stopped by Iron Horse BMW to see someone about something. As usual, there was an 800GS on the showroom floor—but this one lacked that pesky ‘sold’ sign. My furtive glances between the bike and sales desk drew attention—and someone tossed me the key. No harm could come from a quick lap around the city, right?

Wrong. The yellow GS followed me home that day. I guess that’s one advantage of living alone: There was no one at home to ask what the heck I was thinking. (Editor’s note: That’s since changed, but she’s way too cool to question new motorcycles.)

So, uh, just what was I thinking? To be honest, I was thinking a lot of things, but primarily: This might be the perfect bike. Of course, we all know that the entire concept of the perfect bike is seriously flawed. What’s perfect for me might be different from what’s perfect for you. What’s perfect for I-70 through the Colorado Rockies is not perfect for Mex 1 heading north into Loreto, and is certainly not perfect for the run out to Coco’s Corner (unless the paving operations continue). Anyway, the concept of perfect is a bit of a moving target with motorcycles. But while I hadn’t found it yet, the 800GS looked pretty close.

The F650GS I was currently riding was at home on dirt roads, and comfortable on the highway as long as I kept the speed down. But it lacked the power to push itself down the road at 80 mph with a full load, particularly during Arizona summers when the air temperature climbs past 115 degrees. It would do it, but it wasn’t happy about it.

Crash protection The first area I ad-

dressed was one of the most basic: crash protection. I’m still not sure why all adventure motorcycles don’t have crash protection included from the factory. But they still leave it to the aftermarket industry to pick up the slack. Fortunately, quite a few companies offer crash protection for the 800GS, and more are popping up all the time.

One of the early entrants to the 800GS market was Adventure-Spec. Dave Lomax and Chris Colling founded the company in 2007 after growing weary of the constant search for functional parts for adventure motorcyclists. In addition to manufacturing the Adventure-Spec branded products, they offer a variety of other top-shelf components. When you factor in excellent service and incredibly fast shipping (three days from the U.K. to my

Overland Journal Winter 2010

Since most of my trips involve hundreds of miles of pavement to and from the area I’m exploring, freeway performance has become an important factor.

Someone at BMW was reading my mind. The F800 gives me an extra 30 horsepower, throws in a couple more inches of suspension travel and ground clearance, keeps the seat low enough for my lessthan-average height, and keeps the weight gain minimal. It’s still a monster (455 pounds wet), but once you get moving it feels much smaller. It really is a different class of bike than the old F650GS (now rebranded as the G650GS). It is a much more spirited ride, and doesn’t mind being pushed a little harder than the 650GS did.

As with any new project, the first step is to put the motorcycle (or car, truck, gun) through its paces in its factory form. You can’t improve something until you identify areas that actually need improvement. It didn’t take long to rack up a couple thousand miles of mixed asphalt, dirt, and rocks. Street manners were pretty good. Power is smooth and linear, if a bit touchy coming off idle. Dirt road and two track performance varied with the terrain, but overall, it’s pretty good for a 450-pound bike.

However, while it’s wonderfully stable running down maintained dirt roads at speeds that defy sanity; the suspension is tried and true BMW—a bit mushy. There is little the rider can do to tailor the OEM suspension to his needs; spring preload and rebound damping adjustments on the rear shock are all you get. Overall, and keeping in mind what the bike is (an 85-horsepower, 450-pound dual-sport), it handles well. But, like every motorcycle in the world, there are improvements that can be made to tailor the mid-weight GS to an individual rider.

doorstep in Arizona), Adventure-Spec proved to be a one-stop shop for my crash-protection needs.

The engine bash plate was of primary concern. The factory part was a flimsy plastic piece that did little to protect anything. In fact, the spin-on oil filter on the front of the engine is completely exposed to rocks kicked up by the front tire. Half-way to the first 6,000 mile service, the filter was already pitted and dented pretty bad, and was making me nervous.

The aluminum replacement from AdventureSpec covers the full width of the bike’s belly (including the exhaust system), and extends far enough up the front to cover the oil filter, providing the protection BMW should have.

I also installed Adventure-Spec crash bars to protect the radiator tanks. The bars provide ample coverage, and complement the lines of

the bike. Both components are powder-coated for a durable finish that closely matches the black paint used on the bike’s frame. As a bonus, the crash bars are sturdy enough to use as a tie off point for a hammock after a long day, and just wide enough to use as a leg rest when you want to stretch out a bit on that long straight road.

Adventure-Spec is a distributor for Barkbusters hand guards. Like Adventure-Spec’s own products, these hand guards—comprising a plastic guard over an aluminum bar—fit like they’re supposed to. None of these components had to have any holes reamed out, and there was no pushing, pulling, or twisting of the parts to make them fit. I didn’t have to bend any brackets or flanges; there was no grinding or pounding to be done—simply no headache whatsoever.

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1. Adventure-Spec crash bars complement the lines of the bike while providing protection for both the fairing and, more importantly, the radiator. 2. The powder coated aluminum engine sump guard / bash plate from Adventure-Spec provides greater protection than the OEM part and adds minimal weight.

3. Barkbusters brand handguards provide hand protection from both wind and branches, as well as protecting the levers during bouts of narcolepsy. 4.

The rugged Odyssey II panniers from Jesse Luggage provide 90 liters of dry and secure storage. 5. The aluminum luggage plate made by Adventure-Spec features chamfered tie-down slots and is large enough to hold a reasonably sized load.

Luggage System Next I turned my at-

tention to the luggage system. I’m still torn regarding hard panniers on adventure motorcycles. They’re wide, heavy, and have been a contributing factor to many broken legs (thankfully, none of which has been mine).

On the other hand, they’re convenient for the quick run down to the store for a gallon of milk, or the morning commute to the office.

Add in the security they provide for expensive gear, and you begin to understand the draw.

In the end, I decided to use them again on this project. The convenience and security are a welcome addition on trips that don’t involve rough dirt roads and remote backcountry exploration. For those journeys, I can remove the brackets to eliminate the extra weight, and replace the hard panniers with soft bags from Wolfman Luggage.

You may recall that the Odyssey II panniers from Jesse Luggage won the Editor’s Choice award during the Overland Journal’s pannier review (Gear, 2009). My opinion of them hasn’t changed since—I still believe they’re the best hard panniers on the market. A quick phone call to Xplorermoto in Tucson, the exclusive distributor for Jesse Luggage Systems, and all the parts were on their way.

Just as with my last two sets of Jesse Luggage, all the brackets are powder-coated, and all hardware is stretch-wrapped in the appropriate locations. No sorting through bags of hardware and taking endless measurements to see if you have the right length bolt in the

The last piece of luggage-related gear I installed was an Adventure-Spec luggage plate, which has plenty of wide, chamfered slots for straps, and is sized appropriately for small to medium-sized loads. The only issue I ran into was the shared mounting points be-

As with any new project, the first step is to put the motorcycle (or car, truck, gun) through its paces in its factory form. You can’t improve something until you identify areas that actually need improvement. right spot. The fit and finish are superb, and the panniers sit tight to the side of the bike, keeping overall width to less than 38 inches— not bad considering the 90-liter capacity of the panniers. The one trade-off with keeping the panniers this tight to the bike is that there is limited clearance between the right side pannier and the fuel tank cap (the F800 uses an under-seat fuel tank). Dropping the bike on the right side can tweak the bracket enough to interfere with the cap. Don’t ask me how I know, but rest assured that it isn’t a huge deal to fix the problem should it arise.

It’s a small risk to take for the convenience.

tween the luggage plate and panniers. This is always a risk when combining gear from different manufacturers. Each of the parts fit as designed when used alone, but combine them and problems can arise. In this case, the solution is relatively simple: Cut down the spacers for the luggage plate. A band saw and flat file made quick work of it. It’s worth noting that Jesse Luggage does offer a luggage plate (and top box) designed to work with their panniers.

But since I already had the Adventure-Spec parts on hand, and adapting the luggage plate to the pannier mounts was such a simple task, I went with it.

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1. Bar risers from Rox Speed FX move the handlebars up and forward 1 3/4 inches, providing a more comfortable riding position while standing on the pegs.

2. The G2 Ergonomics throttle tube (left) offers a different cam profile than the OEM part. This gives greater throttle control during low RPM operation. Minor modification is needed to adapt the tube for use with the OEM heating element (shown in the background). 3. The hand grips on the 800GS are a touch on the small side, so they were replaced with a set made for a BMW R1100. The larger diameter provides a more comfortable grip and reduces hand fatigue.

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Ergonomics With crash protection and the luggage system in place, my attention was shifted to ergonomics. While the BMW is a physically large bike, and I’m not the tallest rider around, I still found it just a little cramped.

The seated riding position is comfortable (although the seat itself is not), but the standing position could be improved. Again, this is a common condition, and one for which aftermarket suppliers have found simple solutions.

Rox Speed FX produces pivoting bar risers in a variety of lengths, including a 1 ¾-inch version designed specifically for the F800/F650 motorcycles. These move the bars up and slightly forward, without the need for new brake or clutch lines. This brought my hands and arms up to a more comfortable position when standing on the pegs.

Speaking of pegs, the OEM pegs from BMW have been improved from the older F650 design, but they’re still not wide enough for extended rides. The OEM peg is only about 2 ½ inches wide, while the soles of my riding boots are a shade over 4 inches. Adding an extra 1 ½ inches was a simple matter of bending a piece of half-inch flat steel stock, cutting a few notches in the top to match the OEM pegs, and welding them onto the OEM parts. The result is a peg comfortable enough to stand on for extended periods.

My final ergonomic modification was the throttle cam. I mentioned earlier that the throttle was a bit touchy when coming off of idle. This is pretty common with high-horsepower, fuel-injected motorcycles. It results in excessive use of the clutch when picking your way through difficult terrain. While the wet clutch used in the BMW (and most other adventure bikes) is certainly up to the task, my Overland Journal Winter 2010

hand isn’t. Constantly manipulating the clutch for extended periods brings on fatigue and generally makes the ride less enjoyable.

Fortunately, G2 Ergonomics manufactures throttle tubes for the 800GS. These aluminum replacement tubes offer a non-linear profile on the throttle cam. The result is that when coming off idle, the throttle has to be turned farther than the OEM part to achieve the same input at the throttle plate. This allows you to roll the throttle from idle to just off idle without the sudden response of the the OEM throttle. The result is a much tamer motorcycle while riding through technical terrain. Tame enough, in fact, to allow you to stop slipping the clutch in all but the most difficult stretches of trail. To make up for the added rotation needed when coming off of the idle position, the cam profile changes to increase the input at the higher end. This keeps the overall rotation (idle to wide open) at about ¼ turn, just like the OEM throttle cam. It’s a seemingly small change, but it makes a huge difference.

Installation of the throttle tube is a bit challenging, thanks to the BMW’s heated grips. They were not intended to be pulled apart; rather they were designed to be replaced as complete assemblies. The rubber grip can be cut off, but care must be taken to avoid damage to the heating element underneath it—essentially a flexible printed circuit board.

Before installing the G2 throttle tube, a hole must be drilled in the cam to pass the heating element wires through, and the sharp edges should be knocked off of the knurled section to prevent wear on the heating element, which could eventually cause it to fail. I used a few drops of super glue to hold the element

in place, and replaced the grips with a pair of OEM R1100 grips. These are a little larger in diameter than the original 800GS parts, and fit either the OEM or the G2 throttle tube.

Test Run With crash protection, luggage system, and ergonomics addressed, the F800GS was ready to hit the roads and trails, where each of these modifications has proven itself worth the cost. The motorcycle performs pretty well, and is an absolute pleasure to ride on both the asphalt and the un-maintained back roads of the Sonoran desert.

For riders who want to go a little faster, the suspension is still a little soft. I don’t have to work very hard to bottom both the front and rear suspension. Naturally, remedies exist, and in the second half of this project, I’ll address that, along with lighting, navigation, and some loose ends on what is proving to be an incredibly fun and capable motorcycle.

RESOURCES

Adventure-Spec: adventure-spec.com, 01 422 882997 Jesse Luggage: jesseluggage.com Xplorermoto (US distributor for Jesse Luggage): xplorermoto.com, 520-743-0638 G2 Ergonomics: g2ergo.com, 815-718-5860 Rox Speed FX: roxspeedfx.com, 218-326-1794

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In Colorado, We Stay the Trail Overland Journal Winter 2010

Free downloadable OHV maps available online.

www.staythetrail.org

OVERLAND CONSERVATION

Roseann Hanson

Green light Many of our outdoor gear gadgets use AA batteries, which we hate to simply throw out.

Mostly we’ve switched to rechargeables, but on extended trips it’s hard to keep batteries topped up. A month ago we had a chance to test a 2.2-watt roll-up AA battery charger by PowerFilm, on a 3,500-mile trip through Tanzania and Kenya. The soft panels fold up into a tiny package (3.5 x 3 x 1.5 inches) but unfold to 32 inches long to charge four AA batteries surprisingly quickly—about an hour in full

sunlight for partially discharged, and maybe twice that for fully discharged. We liked the unit a lot, but not as much as the young Maasai game scouts we met in Kenya’s South Rift, where there is no power grid. We donated the $100 unit to the South Rift Game Scouts Association, where it’s already being used daily to charge batteries for their GPS units. A 1.5-watt USB model is also available. powerfilmsolar.com, 888-354-7773.

In hot water

Hot water in camp is not just a luxury, it also saves water by reducing the amount needed for effective washing-up. But heating water takes energy, usually in the form of fossil fuels. Adventure Trailers Overland Equipment is offering a new product that heats your water—and stores it—while you drive. The six-liter insulated heat exchanger works off your vehicle’s cooling system, heating water to 180º F. The insulated tank maintains the heat, so you’ll be taking a hot shower at camp while everyone else is still pitching their tents— and in the morning, you’ll have warm water for washing up. Adventure Trailers will install the unit ($562), or provide how-to instructions, including how to integrate with a shower mixer and pressure-activated electric pump. adventuretrailers.com, 877-661-8097.

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Eco-Overlanding Noteworthy efforts around the globe

Trans-Borneo Biodiesel Expedition: In a move to boost their palm-oil industry, the Malaysian government mandated the use of five-percent biodiesel in all public transportation and government-owned vehicles. A group of engineering students at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia responded with the TransBorneo Biodiesel Expedition, designed to promote biodiesel and test four versions—B5, which contains five percent biodiesel, B15, B50, and B65. “We want to differentiate the energy consumption between the different quantities used,” UTM chemical engineering major Ann Yvonne explained to the Brunei Times.

She noted that biodiesel could release much more energy than petrol or diesel, and emits less carbon

monoxide. This summer, 36 students undertook the 2,000-kilometer expedition in two buses, covering three Asian countries along the way. The project was supported by institutions including UTM, the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education, and Toyota. (It’s worth noting that much controversy exists regarding the region’s biologically diverse rain forests, which are being cleared at an alarming rate to plant palms for oil production.)

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OVERLAND MEDICINE

Dr. Ed Beggy

It’s Not a Fetish, it’s a First-Aid Kit! Assembling your own first-aid kit

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A fishing-tackle box works well for storing and organizing first-aid supplies.

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t’s not really a fetish, honest—but for as long as I can remember I’ve had a thing about first-aid kits.

Looking around, I currently have at least a dozen in my home, cars, AT trailer, workshop, and fanny pack.

And, with just one exception, they are all home-made.

My first first-aid kit was an old metal BandAid tin (yes, they used metal cans way back in the Dark Ages) with an assortment of goodies inside. Later I made one from an army surplus canvas pouch that hung on my army surplus web belt—chock full of Band-Aids, tincture of iodine, and a stinky burn ointment that made a terrible mess when it split open after I rolled over on it one time too many (hey, we played “army” really rough in those days).

My smallest kit was an aluminum 35mm film canister I made into a Boy Scout neckerchief slide. I think I still have that tucked away in a box somewhere in the garage.

A good first-aid kit can be personally assembled, or purchased commercially. I have a nice Adventure Medical Kit, but I’m quite partial to my own kits, in part because I know exactly what is in them and where everything is.

Where do you start? Before you rush out and buy a container, make a list of all the items you want to include. Take into account your own skills, and perhaps the skills of those who might travel with you. Make your own list, divided into workable subsections, then take a

few minutes to do a search on the Internet for more ideas. Look, too, at the contents of commercial kits. You may be surprised to see many recommended items you hadn’t considered.

Once you have a working list, consider how many people the kit is meant to cover, and where and for how long you plan to travel.

Obviously if it’s just you and your family for a weekend camping trip, your needs will be considerably smaller than if you’re traveling overseas with a group for several weeks—or longer. And if you will be particularly remote you might want to consider other specialty items, and double or triple your supplies. You might be surprised how many gauze dressings you can go through for a bleeding head wound.

Consider also that in the event of an emergency you may have people with you who are qualified to render more technical medical care—suturing wounds for example.

Although I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, you might want to pack some sterile suture kits, gloves, and instruments if you are a long way from good medical care (think Africa or the Australian outback). The same goes for intravenous fluids and the supplies needed to administer them. Just remember that crossing borders with some of these items may lead to lots of questions by the authorities (see Overland Journal, Spring 2010, “The Traveler’s Pharmacy”).

Once you know what will go into your kit, it’s time to get something to put it in. Soft bags and backpacks are ok, but I need a rugged box

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to protect the glass vials of medications I carry. A good-sized fishingtackle box, with lots of adjustable compartments that can be tailored to fit those odd bottles, vials, tubes, and what-nots, suits me perfectly.

I chose a Plano Magnum for its size (12 x 17 x 7.5 inches) and sturdiness. I like the five-inch-deep bottom compartment for larger items, and a two-inch deep top compartment that has adjustable dividers and a translucent lid. Mine is an older model; Plano now offers the “44 Magnum” that is essentially the same but not as boxy.

Plano offers a large selection, and there are plenty of other box manufacturers on the market as well. If you insist on the utmost in weatherproofness and durability, Pelican has some fine cases, including the bombproof (and expensive) 1460 EMS Case reviewed in the Fall, 2010 Overland Journal.

In each lid compartment I keep individual medications or several, small similar medications or first aid items. If you carry any glass vials, be sure to pad each one separately using foam or cotton padding. I’ve lost a few vials when they banged against each other on a particularly bouncy backroad trip.

If you go with a soft bag or a single-compartment case, buy a few divided fishing-lure-type boxes to keep it better organized. In an emergency you don’t want to be fumbling around in a backpack looking for a small loose item that dropped into the dark recesses at the bottom. (Incidentally, the reason commercial first-aid kit makers include all those infuriating little packets of pills, rather than more convenient bulk bottles, is liability: If you hand out medication to a stranger, the packet positively indentifies the contents.)

Try to keep your kit out of direct sun in the vehicle. Excessive heat is not nice to many medications, and some types of adhesive tape can get really gummy. Conversely, in a very cold environment some medications may need protection from freezing.

If traveling with others, in your own vehicle or separately, take a few minutes for a “preflight check” to familiarize folks with where you keep your first aid kit and what’s in it. The time you spend on this simple procedure could be vital in an emergency.

Make a habit of checking your supplies before every trip, or at a minimum every six months. If an item needs replacing, do it while you’re thinking about it, not when you get a “roundtuit.” When you use an item on a trip make a list for immediate replacement when you return home, or reach a supply source if you’re on an extended journey.

One last item I add to my first-aid kits is quarters. I keep four (used to be just one, but with inflation . . .) taped up on the inside of the lid, in the event that I need to make a pay phone call—and presuming there’s a pay phone in the vicinity. I know, everyone has cell phones these days.

But I’m an Eagle Scout, what do you expect?

Assembling a great first-aid kit is all well and good, but do you know how to use all that stuff ? If you haven’t done so, check in your community for a good first-aid course at the Red Cross, Remote Medical (RMI), or NOLS and get some training before you hit the trail. Trust me, you’ll learn things you didn’t know you didn’t know.

No matter how well you prepare for a backcountry trip, accidents are bound to happen. Someone will get cut, scraped, burned, or just plain “busted up.” How well you handle the situation will depend on how well prepared you are not only with your first aid kit, but with the skills to use it properly.

“Be Prepared,” is not just for Boy Scouts!

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Suggested contents for a first-aid kit Supplies:

• First-aid manual (military manuals are good) • Hand sanitizer, soap (use hotel bar soaps. Cheap, small, longlasting) • Absorbent compress dressings (5 x 9 inches) • Adhesive bandages/Band-Aids (assorted sizes) • Sterile gauze pads (2x2 and 4x4 inches)(lots) • Roll gauze (1 or 2 inch wide and 3 or 4 inch wide) • Eye bandages • Elastic bandages (Ace® wraps) • Bandage scissors • Triangular bandages and safety pins • Adhesive tape (1 inch and 2 inch wide) • Betadine (antiseptic) • Alcohol swabs (check often, they dry out pretty fast) • Emergency blanket (space blanket) • Instant cold packs (sometimes a nuisance. Consider carrying plastic bags and ice or cold drinks in the fridge) • Disposable gloves (latex and non-latex)(lots of them) • Flashlight/batteries (a headlamp is ideal) • Splinter forceps (tweezers) • Finger splints (aluminum with padding is best) • Aluminum splint (e.g., SAM splint) • Pencil & paper (to write stuff down!)

• Card with emergency phone numbers, contact information, concise medical history for self/family • CPR/breathing barrier with one-way valve (body fluid precaution) • Quick clot or similar • Moleskin/blister pads • Steri-Strips with tincture of Benzoin (adhesive)

Medications: • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Antibiotic ointment (e.g., Neosporin, or triple antibiotic ointment) Burn ointment Aspirin (81 mg) Tylenol (acetaminophen, paracetamol) Ibuprofen or naproxen Hydrocortisone cream (for bites/stings/itching rashes) Diphenhydramine (Benadryl®) for allergic reactions and itching Antacids Antidiarrheal medication Contact lens eyewash Sterile saline solution for irrigation (bottled drinking water will do) Sterile syringes for irrigation (20 ml or larger) Electrolyte solution for dehydration

Other items to consider: • • • • • •

Sterile gloves, sutures, instruments Intravenous fluids, needles, and tubing Albuterol inhaler (bronchodilator for asthma attacks) Hypodermic needles (handy for splinters as well as injections) Blood glucose tester (aka, “glucometer”) Stethoscope (a handy item even if you’re not a “pro”)

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SKILLS

Jonathan Hanson

Africa on your Own You don’t have to leave the driving to someone else

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Overland Journal’s editor looks at the practicalities of self-drive expeditions in the overlander’s Mecca, sub-Saharan Africa.

By Jonathan Hanson

Overland Journal Winter 2010

Five hundred cape buffalo. Two humans.

One Land Rover Defender.

That was the scene in Tanzania’s Katavi National Park a couple of months ago. As far as we could see across the vast plain from our cross-legged perch on the roof, it was just us and the animals—not only the stupendous herd of buffalo, but elephant, zebra, impala, and waterbuck as well. For all the evidence of other people around us at that moment we could have been Adam and Eve—except the Old Testament omits mention of turbodiesel 110s. (Perhaps on the eighth day . . .)

Later we spent an hour watching a lone bull elephant grazing next to a pool fed by a tumbled waterfall.

And that night, after sundowners of chilled Tusker lager and a dinner of ugali and vegetables from a local market, we slept peacefully under the Southern Cross—in between the interesting moments when hippos from the nearby river performed a Fantasia-esque dance around our tent. I knew hippos could run; I never realized they could gambol.

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Some people are happy to “do” Africa being flown from park to park and lodge to lodge in a Cessna 210, checking off their Big Five with cocktail in hand from a veranda overlooking an artificial waterhole. Others are thrilled to take part in one of many well-organized and comfortable driven safaris, as a passenger in a Hi-Ace van or extended-chassis Land Cruiser with eight or nine companions.

But I suspect many readers of Overland Journal yearn for a more intimate experience.

The ne plus ultra of an African overland expedition, of course, would be to ship one’s own vehicle there, as our Graham Jackson and his wife Connie did several years ago. However, the costs and logistics (and risks during transit) of such an undertaking are daunting.

But there’s a next-best-thing, an option that has its own advantages while reducing very little the independence associated with owning the vehicle: You can simply pick up the keys to a fully equipped Land Cruiser, Land Rover, or Hilux, complete with a comprehensive camping kit, tools, and sometimes even food—and go. You’re free to choose your own route, to stop for photos or sightseeing or shopping when and for however long you please, and there’s no worry your seatmate will be some blowhard know-it-all or a whining princess. And forever after you’ll have a conversation-stopping card up your sleeve if you’re cornered at a party by someone bragging about his flying ‘safari’: “Oh, how nice. That reminds me of when we drove through Namibia . . .”

We’ll ignore the Cessna alternative; however, to be fair, driven safaris do have some advantages—especially if you sign on with one of the smaller operations run in standard Land Cruisers or Land Rovers rather than the bloated safari busses that resemble queen termites. Obvious among upsides is the expertise of a driver who is also a competent guide, familiar with the region and the habits of the animals, and able to identify birds and mammals at a glance—or, say, determine if an elephant’s charge is a bluff or the real thing. (Bluff: ears out, trunk up. Real thing: ears back, trunk tucked between front legs.) (Usually.)

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Having a driver frees you for viewing and photography exclusively, and of course in the event of vehicle trouble you’re off the hook for the wrenching bit. A driver—particularly one fluent in the language—can serve as a go-between if you want to talk to or photograph locals, or shop for crafts.

However, if you’re being driven with a sizable group of strangers from mixed backgrounds, I guarantee there will be someone in that group with less patience than you for photography and game viewing (“Okay, elephant, great. Can we go find lions now?”), and someone else with infinitely more (“No! Don’t go yet!” as you grind enamel off your teeth while he fills a 16-megabyte flash card with impala).

If you’re on your own and would like help finding and identifying wildlife, it’s possible to hire excellent guides by the day at most national parks. And having a driver doesn’t guarantee a trouble-free trip. Paul and Erika Sweet, of Shaw Safaris in Tanzania, told me of one couple originally scheduled for a self-drive, who demurred at the last minute and hired a driver from another outfitter to pilot their rented 110. He put it on its side in Serengeti (fortunately with no injuries).

More significantly, a driver/translator insulates you from the need to immerse yourself in the country and push your comfort zone, phrase book in hand. And pushing comfort zones is the only way a simple trip becomes an adventure. The larger the group you’re with, and the more chaperones, the more you’re likely to experience the journey as a tourist, rather than as a traveler. A good way to prove this is to compare the slide show from someone who’s taken a package safari with the photos from a self-drive trip. The former usually comprises a nice selection of fantastic wildlife images and scenics, and little else. The self-drive album might (or might not) be shy on close-ups of black rhino, but will include shots of shopping in local markets, playing with kids, repairing flat tires, toasting boerewors—the kinds of photos that give a sense of the whole experience to a friend, and recall not just the sights, but the sounds and smells and tastes of the journey to its participants.

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Where to go In southern Africa—Namibia, South Africa, and Botswana, especially—self-drive companies have been around for years, and the infrastructure is well-sorted. In East Africa—notably the premier destinations of Tanzania and Kenya—there are surprisingly few outfitters, although that creates its own opportunities. All the countries I’ve just mentioned enjoy stable governments; of the bunch I’d pick Namibia, Botswana, and Tanzania in no particular order as premier destinations for even first-time visitors to Africa who nevertheless are keen to try it on their own. Each of these countries has regions that are well-traveled, where English is spoken by many residents, and where modern stores make supplying easy, yet each also can offer off-the-beaten-track challenges for those willing to take them. One possible downside for non-Commonwealth residents is that each is a drive-on-the-left country. However, after more than 15,000 miles of left-side driving myself, and after leading several groups of left-side neophytes, I can state categorically that for most people it’s just not a big deal to switch, and soon becomes instinctive.

Namibia has a rock-solid infrastructure and excellent highways—

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one of the few decent legacies of German colonialism. But scenery here is the country’s own legacy, ranging from the eerie, fog-shrouded magnificence of the Skeleton Coast, to sun-hammered, Welwitschiadotted Namib Desert, to more lush vegetation farther inland. There’s Etosha National Park if you want to spot wildlife easily (although Etosha has its problems, chiefly resulting from the fence that prevents natural migration). The Caprivi Strip also offers good wildlife habitat in several refuges that are unfenced. In the north, along the Kunene River, you can visit the Himba tribe, who have eschewed virtually all of the modern world’s trappings. On the way there you can visit Twyfelfontein and its 2,500 San (bushman) petroglyphs. Windhoek (‘Vindhook’), the capital, is a beautiful city in a high valley, with ample sources for provisioning.

Botswana remains a paragon of African success—stable government, vibrant economy, mostly effective conservation measures. The Kalahari Desert and the Okovango Delta are its star attractions, and difficult to miss as they comprise a good two-thirds of the country.

Chobe National Park boasts the largest population of elephants in Africa. If you’re driving in from Johannesburg in South Africa you’ll cross Kipling’s “great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo, all set about with fever trees.” English is spoken nearly everywhere in Botswana and, although there have been rumors that the government intends to limit self-drive access, it is as yet a first-rate destination for a first African excursion.

Tanzania could be summed up in two phrases: Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater. There are no finer places on earth to witness nature as it must have been at creation (and this is a biologist writing). As a result, both are popular destinations—however, it’s quite possible to escape crowds in Tanzania by exploring some of the lesser-known wildlife areas such as the immense Selous (Selloo) Game Reserve, Tarangire, and the even farther-afield Ruaha and Katavi National Parks. We spent three days in the latter and saw one other couple (retired Germans in a superbly equipped Hilux of their own). In northern Tanzania you’ll be in the land of the legendary Maasai (and Overland Journal Winter 2010

Tented camps outside national parks provide affordable full-board lodging when you want a break from setting up your own camp. Whistling Thorn Camp, outside Tarangire National Park.

everywhere in Tanzania you’ll be in the land of extremely friendly people). There’s also Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria and, just off the Indian Ocean coast for an epicurean and historical side trip without equal, fabled Zanzibar. The chief downside of Tanzania is extremely high visa and park fees—but after a once-in-a-lifetime experience, it’s unlikely those costs will seem significant.

South Africa is worth visiting as well, certainly as part of a loop

through Namibia and/or Botswana (self-drive companies in southern Africa usually allow multiple country visits). Most international flights terminating in Namibia or Botswana land in Johannesburg first, so you’re already there. The country is highly developed (which presents its own possibilities, for example lovely vineyard tours), but Kruger National Park, in the northeast, is spectacular, and in the opposite corner, Cape Town and its Table Mountain backdrop might be the most stunning city in the world to look at—especially, if ironically, from offshore on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years.

Zambia If you’re willing to venture a bit farther afield from these

suggestions, Zambia is a wonderful choice, a highlight of course being the incomparable Victoria Falls, as awe-inspiring now as when Livingstone first laid eyes on it, despite the banal thrill-sport vendors hawking whitewater rafting and bungee jumping nearby. (Blatant editorial comment: If after seeing Victoria Falls you feel the need for extra excitement, your sense of wonder is badly flawed.) Elsewhere, Zambia offers superb wildlife viewing in Kafue, South and North Luangwa National Parks, and several camps along the Zambezi River. Many outfitters in the country offer walking safaris, an unforgettable way to experience Africa and a proper side trip to a vehicle-dependent journey.

Kenya and Malawi Other countries to consider include Ke-

nya—which boasts legendary destinations in the south such as the Maasai Mara, Amboseli, and Tsavo, if you can just stay out of Nairobi’s traffic snarl—and Malawi, which has little wilderness but does have the magical Lake Malawi and possibly the friendliest inhabitants on the continent.

What to drive To any Land Rover or Land Cruiser aficionado from North America, Africa is fantasyland. If you don’t think you could ever become blasé about seeing 78-Series pickups and Troopies, or turbodiesel 130 crew cabs, trust me—you will. These are the everyday workhorses of the African bush.

The self-drive companies with which I’m familiar (and my experience is way short of encyclopedic) usually specialize in one of three base vehicles. Land Rovers are almost always Defender 110s or 130 crew cabs from the late 80s on, virtually all equipped with the proven 300Tdi (turbodiesel four-cylinder) engine, although a few TD5s are around. Land Cruisers are predominantly 70-Series Troopies, normally powered by the sturdy, non-turbo 1HZ six-cylinder diesel. However, I’ve driven rental Troopies pulled along by ancient 2H (non-turbo six-cylinder) diesels, and even in one case a wheezing 3B naturally aspirated four-cylinder—which I suspect was the result of a budget home-engineered swap at some point in its life, and quite a job for 80odd horsepower to haul the aircraft-carrier bulk of a Troopie. (Despite laying a smoke screen that would have concealed an aircraft carrier on every uphill section of road, it got us everywhere we needed to go.)

Interestingly, I’ve seen a few and driven a couple of rental Land Cruisers of significantly older (i.e. mid-70s) vintage, from both business and private sources, still in regular service—a 45-Series Troopie and an FJ43, for example. Is this evidence that Land Cruisers last longer under the punishing conditions of hired-out safari use? I’m not touching that one here . . .

A third common choice of self-drive suppliers is the ubiquitous “Taliban Taxi” Toyota Hilux pickup—lacking the pedestal-mounted 14.5mm machine gun. The Hilux also lacks the caché of the classic safari vehicles, but is better-sealed against dust, better-handling, and more powerful if running the superb three-liter turbodiesel we’d kill for stateside. A crew-cab Hilux equipped with both a roof and ground tent makes an excellent, comfortable choice for a family.

With both gas and diesel running roughly a dollar per liter most everywhere in sub-Saharan Africa, you’ll want that extra 50 percent economy a diesel guarantees, not to mention the lazy power and added reliability.

{ TIP

Note that I’ve referred exclusively to diesel-powered machines.

You’ll find a few rental vehicles with gas (petrol) engines, but avoid them if at all possible. With both gas and diesel running roughly a dollar per liter most everywhere in sub-Saharan Africa, you’ll want that extra 50 percent economy a diesel guarantees, not to mention the lazy power and added reliability. On one trip with several diesel Land Cruisers and one with a gas F engine (all we could find), the latter burned almost exactly twice as much fuel as any of its brethren. All our jerry cans were quickly drafted to make sure it could cover the same range between fills.

There are of course many other choices available depending on the company (and country), from an array of Land Cruiser models to pickups (‘bakkies’) from Nissan, Ford, and Mitsubishi, and on up to motorhomes.

But those 110s and Troopies just look so good in photos . . .

Details

Rental fees for self-drive vehicles can seem daunting—usually around $250 per day for a fully equipped model. But that includes insurance covering you for driving off in an expensive vehicle into a strange country on the wrong side of the road, and, usually, unlimited mileage—not bad, really. And I’ve never met anyone who came home and said, “We had the trip of a lifetime . . . but gee, the rental was kind of expensive.”

Paperwork A reputable self-drive company will provide you with more paperwork for the vehicle than you thought could possibly be necessary. The windscreen is also likely to be nearly obscured with tax stamps and the like. Make sure you go through all of it with the owner, so you can produce the important stuff when asked. The biggest problem we’ve had at a border occurred because the company gave us a photocopy of the registration instead of the original (which had been left at a border crossing by a previous client). Tanzanian officials at first refused to let us pass through to Kenya, but polite persistence on our part payed off and we were eventually given permission. Note that phrase “polite persistence”—it’s one of the most important tools you can have for dealing with unexpected officialdom (anywhere in the world, in fact).

Insurance Read carefully the insurance coverage you’re given with

the vehicle. It’s normal for an operator to hold you liable for the first $500 or $1,000 in damage. If so, ask what constitutes that damage.

Stone-cracked windscreen? Blown tire? Or just collision damage or obvious abuse? Some contracts include medical air evacuation insurance for any of the occupants of the vehicle; if it’s not included you should get it. It’s worth the small cost.

Concierge Most companies will be happy to furnish you with a

suggested itinerary, and can make reservations at lodges or camps for you. They’ll be able to tell you what’s a reasonable expectation for a day’s mileage, and can offer advice on everything down to what you should expect to pay at local food markets.

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Local culture Speaking of local markets: Embarking on a selfdrive trip automatically imbues your journey with a sense of self-sufficiency. But it’s still easy to isolate yourself from the local culture if you rely on European-owned lodges to stay in, and big chain supermarkets, such as Tuskys or Nakumat, for provisioning. Your trip will be infinitely richer if you bring a phrase book and dive into village markets for produce, and stay in $5 local camps or $10 hotels now and then. It’s easy to get a bit gripped driving into a strange town in a strange country with no prior arrangements for food or shelter, but somehow things always work out, usually in a delightful way. The Rough Guide books are excellent resources for exploring on your own.

It’s easy to get a bit gripped driving into a strange town in a strange country with no prior arrangements for food or shelter, but somehow things always work out, usually in a delightful way.

After coffee, Erika showed me through elegant guest rooms and introduced me to the second-floor veranda’s view over the park, where a pair of the lodge’s namesakes browsed within a stone’s throw.

But it wasn’t until Paul began going through the vehicle with me that I realized how well they’d done their homework before the first client drove out the gate.

Externally, the 110 was all business and no frills. Five-bar aluminum checkerplate on the hood and fenders is viewed as a poseur add-on in the U.S., but it makes cleaning the windscreen and standing on the hood to spot game or photograph with a tripod a non-damaging affair. A 9,000-pound electric winch and two auxiliary driving lights comprised the total modifications to the front end. The roof rack offered plenty of support for two people to stand on, but was burdened only with a second spare tire and wheel, a brai grille that nested cleverly over the tire, two jerry cans full of extra diesel, and a folding aluminum table that slid under the rear of the deck. The suspension was beefed up with heavy-duty springs and massive Koni Raid shock absorbers (the combination of which proved flawless over any kind of surface).

Inside, the cargo area was divided into upper and lower sections with a stout shelf. Dominant on the upper deck was a National Luna Weekender fridge, the name of which belies its enormous capacity and dual-zone compartments. Also up top were boxes containing cooking gear and a starter food kit, two jerry cans of water, a bulk propane tank, and a two-burner stove designed to sit on a fold-down shelf built into the rear door. The fridge was solidly bolted down; ratchet straps secured everything else. Additionally, the entire cargo area was isolated by a security grille behind the rear seat and bars over all the windows, creating a reasonably theft-proof compartment when the back door was secured via a padlock. Smaller items could be secured in a safe beneath the driver’s seat.

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A Tanzanian tour Early this September, Roseann and I arranged to pick up a Land Rover Defender 110 from Shaw Safaris, outside Arusha. We planned an exploratory trip through western Tanzania, where neither of us had been, followed by a loop into the South Rift Valley of Kenya where we had an appointment to deliver some equipment to a group of Maasai game scouts.

Paul Sweet of Shaw Safaris drove heavy trucks over much of southern Africa, then ran an engineering firm, before he and his wife, Erika, decided to open their own lodge and self-drive business (named after their home town in England). They bought a two-story house suitable for conversion to guest quarters on the edge of Arusha National Park, then began putting together a small (four at this writing) self-drive fleet of 110s, all powered by the 300Tdi engine and equipped more or less identically.

We had only communicated with the Sweets via email, so I was a bit trepidatious as a friend dropped me off at their Twiga (giraffe) Lodge (Roseann was still at a conference in Nairobi). The immaculate grounds and white house were reassuring, as was the tidy double-stall workshop.

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A common fear—sometimes, it seems, bordering on terror—of Americans contemplating foreign travel is food-related disorders—even though the majority of those disorders involve no more than a few hours discomfort (or, at worst, some time spent calling Ralph). Those fears escalate the farther away from major hotel chains and fancy lodges Americans venture.

Ironically, in our experience it’s the major hotel chains and fancy lodges—where food preparation is done on a large scale—where such problems most often occur. The single time a group I was with had trouble was at the upscale Lobo Lodge in Serengeti, where fully half the participants came down with food poisoning. (My only personal experience with it on an Africa trip was on returning to the U.S. and eating dinner in a restaurant at a stopover Hilton. Two hours later I was on my knees in our room’s designer bathroom, wondering if my medivac insurance would pay to fly me back to Kenya.)

While personal experience can only ever qualify as anecdotal, not statistical, every veteran traveler I know—on any continent—has had better luck staying healthy by buying food from local markets and cooking it personally. The produce and even meat is generally only hours from harvesting, and you can properly wash and prepare it. Plus, of course, you’re supporting a local economy, maximizing your opportunities for enjoyable personal contact—and greatly increasing your chances to improve your Swahili/Spanish/Mongolian/Shona/Russian.

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118 Opposite: Bring a phrase book and shop at local markets. You’ll get a lot more out of your trip than if you just stock up at big supermarkets. Clockwise from top left: A Land Rover from Shaw Safaris in Katavi National Park, Tanzania. An exhaustive tool kit stores under the rear deck. Everything here is high quality.

The complete kit included with a Shaw Land Rover.

From underneath the shelf Paul pulled a half-dozen boxes containing an exhaustive selection of high-quality tools, a proper air compressor, spare parts, and an accessory kit for the winch. To be honest, it put my own Land Cruiser’s standard trip kit to shame.

So well-packed was the gear that the rear seat was completely free for our luggage, although since it was just the two of us we opted to store the tent there rather than in the back or on the roof. (After much consideration, Paul elected to equip the Shaw Land Rovers with a roomy, standing-headroom ground tent rather than a roof tent, although he appreciates the advantages of each. He is an admitted stickler for a low CG.) Heading out to travel and camp in a vehicle someone else has equipped goes against the grain for most of us. But in the two weeks we had the Shaw Land Rover, every single time one of us thought, What I need now is a . . . it was there, from an allen key set for tightening the roof rack to a thermos for hot water for mid-morning tea.

Our 3,000-mile trip is a tale for another time. Suffice to say, in addition to those 500 buffalo and the dancing hippos, we had leopards, a Overland Journal Winter 2010

night at the Sombrero Hotel in downtown Mbeya (no kidding), a sleeping pride of lions all to ourselves, coffee at one of the oldest working coffee plantations in Tanzania, sundowners over the same stretch of Lake Victoria gazed upon by Livingstone and Stanley, a dik-dik that almost ran over (well, under) Roseann, plus hyenas, sunbirds, one really big croc, nine Maasai game scouts who really needed a ride . . .

It was unforgettable. You should try it.

RESOURCES Shaw Safaris (Tanzania): shawsafaris.com, +255 7689 45 735 Safari Drive (England office): safaridrive.com, +44 1488 71140 Maun Self Drive (Botswana): maunselfdrive4x4.webs.com, +267 6861875 Whistling Thorn Camp (Tanzania): whistlingthorncamp.com Rough Guides: roughguides.com

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OVERLAND CHEF

Zach Berning and Jonathan Snaza Overland Gourmet

Cider Chops with Grilled Apples

Photo by William Howard

When it’s your turn to cook, here’s your ‘ace in the hole.’

There’s something to be said about travelers coming together around an open fire after a long day. The warmth of the flames, the crackle of the wood, and the instinctive comfort it instantly provides—all of these are the perfect ingredients in the recipe for the sharing of great food and drink. This recipe is perfect for this time of year. It’s a simple yet elegant way to turn a few basic ingredients into a gourmet meal. By pairing easy-to-find pork chops with fresh fruit and vegetables, even the most amateur chef can put smiles on fellow diners’ faces with this one. In fact, you might even call it your ‘ace in the hole.’

Menu

Starter ~ Selection of cheeses, nuts and crackers Dinner ~ Cider chops with grilled asparagus and grilled apples Wine or Beer ~ Beaujolais Crus or Guinness

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Cider Chops with Grilled Apples

Serves: 3-4 | Cook Time: 25-30 minutes, prep time: 15 minutes | Equipment: barbecue grill (charcoal preferred)

Cider chops ingredients:

3 - 4 thick-cut boneless pork chops 2 - 12 fl. oz bottles of Ace Perry hard pear cider (or similar hard cider) 1/2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce 2 tsp kosher salt Fresh ground pepper to taste

Grilled apples ingredients:

2 -3 medium sized apples (enjoy what is in season) 2/3 cup orange juice 2 tbsp honey 1 tbsp fresh chopped mint 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp finely minced ginger 1/4 tsp black pepper

Pork Chops Place pork chops, Ace pear cider, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper in a large zip-top plastic bag and marinate for at least a couple hours, all day or overnight preferred. (Note: be broken down into indiOverland Journal Recipe Wintercan 2010

vidual servings by using a small zip-top sandwich bag for each pork chop.)

fruit pair perfectly with the delicate flavor of the pork.

When ready to cook, place pork chops directly on grill over medium heat. After three minutes, flip the pork chops and grill them for an additional three minutes. At this point, flip the chops and move them to slightly cooler section of the grill and allow them to finish cooking, turning occasionally. Total cook time should be 10 to 15 minutes depending upon your heat. The insides of the chops should be a light pink to white. Be careful not to overcook them. Season with a little salt and pepper (to taste) and serve.

Apples Core the apples and cut each sideways into 1/3 to 1/2-inch slices. Add apples and ingredients into large zip-top plastic bag.

Seal and marinate for 1 to 2 hours in refrigerator or cooler, turning bag occasionally. When ready to cook, place apples on grill (medium heat) for roughly three minutes per side, turning and basting frequently. Plate and serve.

These can be used as a stand-alone dessert by adding a drizzle of honey and a sprinkle of brown sugar over the top when serving.

These chops are perfect with grilled asparagus or steamed vegetables such as broccoli and carrots. The subtle flavors of the Ace pear cider will delight the taste buds as the hints of

Zach and Jonathan run Overland Gourmet, a website dedicated to gourmet cooking in the field: overlandgourmet.com

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CLASSIC KIT

Jonathan Hanson

The Bush Jacket 122

A staple of Hollywood safari movies, the bush jacket is a practical piece of outerwear—even if you never star in a remake of King Solomon’s Mines

F

ew things are more annoying than watching a useful piece of gear be reduced to the status of cliché, even parody.

Back in the day, BMW 2002s and Bavarias were performance sedans for a discerning few cognoscenti. Then the brand was discovered by yuppies who couldn’t define trailingthrottle oversteer, much less correct it. A Rolex used to be a rugged steel watch you could submerge 200 feet or wear at 40º below zero without worry; now the popular image is a diamond-encrusted hunk of gold on a hiphop star’s wrist. And that hip-hop star is likely to be driving a leather-upholstered, climatecontrolled, satellite-navigated Range Rover— another icon victimized by its own success.

The same can be said for the bush jacket.

Developed as a thorn- and tsetse-fly-proof outer garment suitable for chilly mornings in Overland Journal Winter 2010

the Rift highlands, and capable of carrying a compass and a dozen .470 solids and a few other necessities, it transitioned to celebrity via Teddy Roosevelt and Hemingway, then to stardom via Stewart Granger and Gregory Peck, and then began the long slide to its eventual fate as, of all things, the vague inspiration for polyester leisure suits.

The bright side of this all is that, if you’re willing to ignore rolled eyes and bad jokes, BMW still offers the M3—the best highperformance sedan on the planet—Rolex will still sell you a plain stainless-steel Explorer full of gears and sapphire bearings but lacking any hint of gold or jewels on the exterior, and Land Rover—at least as of this writing— will still sell you a 110 pickup with manual windows, a diesel engine, and 16-inch wheels.

And you can still buy a cotton khaki bush jacket that will fend off acacia thorns and tse-

tse flies, keep you warm on chilly mornings, and carry all the .470 solids you can afford at 15 bucks apiece.

The origin of the bush jacket lacks any of the historical clarity with which we can trace the beginnings of other iconic examples of gear. It wasn’t invented, like the jerry can or volcano kettle or even the Land Rover— rather it gelled out of military uniforms and earlier outerwear into something like its complete form around the beginning of the 20th century.

Go back a century or so before that, and take a look at a painting of a British infantryman. You’ll note he’s wearing a red—a very red—jacket. To us this seems insane—why make oneself a vivid target? In fact, uniform color made little difference to survival as an infantryman then—battle tactics still involved mass formations marching toward the enemy

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stead. He dyed them with a local plant extract, mazari, which turned them a dusty color, the word for which in Hindi sounded like ‘khaki.’

And a legend was born. In a few years, khaki uniforms were being issued to British troops in India, and by the Second Boer War it was the world-wide standard, much to the relief of the troops downrange of those Mausers.

Naturally, the now-practical khaki military jackets found their way into the hands of former soldiers and civilians exploring the interior of Africa. Taking cues from other jackets, what we would recognize as a bush jacket was a common sight by 1900 or so. By the time the African safari business began to take off a few years later, a hunter arriving in Nairobi by train from the coast could stop in a number of Indian tailor shops and have a complete khaki safari outfit made to measure in a day or two.

The bush jacket stepped on the road to commercial success in 1902, when a geologist named Ben Willis, unhappy with the cloth-

Willis and Geiger's motto was: "Don't tell us how to make it

cheaper; tell us how to make it better."

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and firing in volleys. Smoothbore muzzleloading weapons of the day were so wildly inaccurate that aiming was nearly superfluous except in a general directional sense. Uniform color was simply a matter of national identity: Russians wore green, the French wore blue, and the British wore red.

The British got a taste of the inadvisability of bright uniforms at the hands of American colonial snipers equipped with accurate long rifles, but passed this off as a mere distasteful historical fluke. In fact, aimed fire at specific targets was considered shockingly immoral to the British commanders who were frequently the specific targets. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that the British finally realized the days of orderly face-to-face warfare were over. To a Boer farmer with a Mauser, hitting a rooinek in a red jacket at 400 yards wouldn’t even qualify as showing off.

Fortunately, around 1846 a British commander in the Punjab named Sir Henry Lumsden, seeking a more comfortable alternative to the heavy white trousers that were then paired with red jackets as standard issue, had decided to wear his lighter cotton pajama bottoms inOverland Journal Winter 2010

ing available for his arctic explorations, began making and then selling his own foul-weather gear, using leather, shearling, and alpaca.

Abercrombie and Fitch—then a young and serious outfitter supply store—carried Willis’s clothing, and sold some of it to a fellow named Theodore Roosevelt who was on his way to Alaska in 1906. Roosevelt was so impressed with the performance of Willis’s gear that he asked him to outfit his massive African safari three years later. Willis provided the khaki clothing you see in all those historical photos of Teddy and Kermit on their yearlong odyssey, sitting on dispatched rhinos and buffalo.

Willis went on to supply Charles Lindbergh, Roald Amundsen, and legions of other explorers at the ends of the earth and all points in between. In 1928 he took on a partner, and the business was renamed Willis and Geiger. Three years later the company was instrumental in the development of the U.S. military’s A-2 leather flight jacket, a design now sullied by a thousand knock-offs (and another example of an icon reduced to triviality).

In the meantime, Willis and Geiger introduced a very tightly woven (340 threads per inch), but lightweight, all-cotton khaki fabric they called Bush Poplin, which became the standard for durable warm-weather field wear.

W&G supplied Bush Poplin jackets and shirts to thousands of adventurers on their way to Africa, Australia, and other hot regions—and along the way managed some notable product placements in Hollywood. In 1936, Ernest Hemingway had the company make a bush jacket to his own specifications, which then entered their regular catalog.

For seven decades W&G also remained a major supplier to Abercrombie and Fitch.

Sadly, in 1977 A&F went bankrupt—and its single biggest creditor was Willis and Geiger, which did not survive the write-off. A hopeful rebirth in 1977, under a former A&F employee named Burt Avedon, brought back the best of Willis and Geiger’s offerings for a time—but the writing was on the wall for small makers of fine, specialized outdoor wear. Avedon fought back by going mail order, but eventually sullied the catalog with inconsequential accessories, and completed the slide by shipping production of old standbys offshore. Willis and Geiger wound up, comically, sold as a whole to Laura Ashley, who sold it to Lands End, who relegated the legendary name to remnant sales and, in 1999, to the dustbin of expedition history.

However, all was not and is not lost.

The bush jacket—and, in fact, Bush Poplin itself—was too useful a product to die in Dallas reruns. A company called Lost Worlds, in New York City, makes an exact reproduction of Willis and Geiger’s bush jacket, using the exact same material. Lost Worlds also makes bush shirts and many other ex-W&G products, including a spectacular horsehide A-2 flight jacket. Filson, as well, makes a very fine bush jacket, in a material that is to my eye indistinguishable from Bush Poplin.

Fight icon entropy with me and wear either one. You’ll carry on a venerable tradition—and you’ll own a very useful piece of classic kit. lostworldsinc.com, 212-923-3423; filson.com, 866-860-8906

Stars such as Stewart Granger - who at least shot King Solomon's Mines on location in Africa - gave the bush jacket Hollywood cool.

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Continued from page 128

At this point you may be asking why I was driving the lead vehicle on the crossing. Just two hours before the whiteout hit, Gummie had broken a front axle shaft on his Defender 110 while making a 180-degree turn in deep snow. This mechanical failure came as no surprise to me: Gummie had bragged earlier about the fact that he’d never broken an axle in that vehicle, and even went so far as to attribute this to his prowess as a driver—virtually spitting in the face of fate, especially given the stress those huge tires put on the drivetrain.

My salvation was to open the driver’s door, stick my head out, and look at the snow moving beneath the vehicle to make sure we were still making forward progress.

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Gummie’s axle-breaking turn was intended to set up a wind barrier with his vehicle, so we could enjoy lunch protected from the daggerlike winds on Langjökull. “Enjoy” might be a generous term, given that lunch consisted largely of hákarl, the most wretched food I’ve ever tasted. hákarl (Greenland shark), tastes like shoe leather soaked in ammonia, and is a staple in Iceland. It’s eaten by locals and fed to unwary tourists along with a shot of local spirit called Brennevin—itself a wretched libation—which seems to kill the taste of the meat. Think of it like shooting a staple into your tongue after you stub your toe so as to forget how bad your foot hurts. I think Gummie derived sadistic pleasure from watching us try these local delicacies. (Thankfully, the rest of my culinary experiences in Iceland were far better.)

Normally, Bruce Elfstrom of OEX led the expedition from behind the wheel of Gummie’s Defender, but their truck’s impairment prohibited them from taking the lead in such deep snow. That morning, fate just so happened to have me behind the wheel of the only other vehicle in our four-truck team equipped with front, center, and rear differential locks. Dennis, another OEX client, and I had been sharing driving duties since the start of the trip. I’d actually done most of the driving while he took photos, which suited me fine. Under the oversight of Bruce, I had been breaking trail since lunch, driving through the deep virgin snow, packing it down so the other three trucks in the convoy could follow.

Once I realized the squall was there to stay and I was actually leading the group through it, I became a little nervous. Not one to sidestep a challenge—and certainly not one to give up the reigns voluntarily— the decision to pretend like I knew what I was doing was a relatively easy one to make, especially considering Bruce and Gummie were in the vehicle immediately behind me, watching our route via their GPS and communicating any course changes via radio.

From behind the wheel the whiteout was a complete shock to the senses. Actually, it was downright frightening. Seeing nothing but white for extended periods gives one a false sense of texture, an optical illusion that makes the white ether outside the windshield look like the snowpack of the glacier. Driving into the void that filled our field of view tricked my senses and caused me to become disoriented. Motion sickness was a constant threat.

My salvation was to open the driver’s door, stick my head out, and look at the snow moving beneath the vehicle to make sure we were still making forward progress. Often the snow would lack the density we needed to cross it at the speed we were traveling and I’d have to stop, carefully reverse, and either creep forward more slowly or change direction slightly to find better snow. In the back seat, Dennis, a former Air Force pilot and now-retired ocular surgeon, was reviewing photographs he’d taken on the trip and didn’t seem the least concerned by our predicament. I swear he fell asleep at one point.

The storm was the most severe at the top of the glacier; as we descended, visibility slowly improved. Luckily—barring the odd precipice, which we could see on the GPS—there wasn’t a lot to run into out there. There were, of course, the offhandedly mentioned pools of water that sat under the snowpack and which could partially swallow a vehicle, but I tried not to let my mind wander and think about them.

It was after the crossing, when we knew we were safely through the whiteout and had stopped to air-up our tires from an incredibly low three psi, that Gummie came over and gave me a hearty pat on the back. Whether he felt required to do so or not I’ll never know, but he gave me a genuine look of approval, a smile, and said, “Good job,” in his heavy Icelandic accent—a gesture that absolutely made my trip.

Adventure Check List.

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Overland Journal Winter 2010

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TAIL LAMP

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Charlie Venezia

Please Don’t Drive off the Precipice Thoughts during an Icelandic whiteout

T

here are times in each of our lives when we have to do a little self-motivation to get through a difficult situation.

This was definitely one of those times—but the voice I heard wasn’t coming from within.

“You’re headed right toward that precipice. Do you see where the contour lines on the GPS get really close together? Make small corrections and get away from there or we’ll drive off the glacier.”

From the passenger seat, Garrett, my trusty co-pilot and a head instructor for Overland Experts (OEX), made it seem like driving on 15 feet of snow atop thousands of feet of glacial ice in a whiteout should be easy. He watched the screen of the GPS plotter with a furrowed brow as I led our team of four Land Rovers across Iceland’s Langjökull glacier in a complete whiteout. What might have been an easy ride on a sunlit and fluffy glacier had turned into a six-hour drive-by-wire adventure. What made the whiteout so fitting was that it served as a metaphor for Iceland itself, a land of constantly changing extremes where harsh beauty commands utmost respect.

Overland Journal Winter 2010

Our vehicle was a TD5-powered Defender 110 with a five-speed manual transmission, specially equipped for glacier travel on 38-inch tires. The vehicle not only did the trick on the trail, it looked ridiculously cool while doing it. All four vehicles in our group were Defender 110s, two nearly new and equipped with LR’s new Puma engine; the fourth, belonging to our local guide, Gummie, was rolling on even bigger 44inch tires.

Iceland is a 4WD vehicle enthusiast’s dream come true. While mostly void of trees, there is every type of terrain. Many of the trails we explored are actually seasonally used primitive roads through the interior. Expedition vehicles that span generations are numerous and meticulously maintained—it’s a veritable enthusiasts paradise. Due to high shipping costs and import tariffs, the wasteful throw-it-away culture we have here in the U.S. is non-existent. From early Nissan Patrols and Land Cruisers to Ford Excursions and Econoline vans on huge tires, there was something for everyone. I was awestruck when I saw a school bus drive by in downtown Reykjavik, riding on 44-inch Swampers.

Continued on page 126

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