Category: Exercise

First night in the woods with the Savage Industries bedroll (v2)

My friend Natalia made a suggestion that gave me a 24 hour respite from the misery of finding a room in Toronto, and we went back to the Hemlock forest near Catchacoma for an overnight camp.

One great thing about short visits to a place that has a brief and easy walk between where we parked and where we camped is that it allows for pretty quick and low-risk evaluation of gear for backpacking and camping. It’s feasible to bring two of something and try both, and not that bad if you only bring one version of something and it doesn’t work.

I have been so happy with my Savage Industries EDC ONE bag that even though I can’t say I ever had “buy a bedroll” on my to-do list, when I saw that they had made one I was curious about it. I have been very pleased with their stuff in the past and I know it sells out fast, so when they issued a second release I ordered one in time to have it to show off at this week’s bluegrass / hike planning evening.

Before leaving, it seemed like a bit of a questionable camping item when a lot of people live some version of the ultralight philosophy. Just the bedroll weighs 4 pounds, and it rolls up into a package bigger than my tent or sleeping bag.

The design justified itself in the field for sure. It has waterproof sailcloth on the outside and a good warranty, so I felt fine about putting it down on little sticks and stones that I would move away from the area under my thin-floored tent. The wool platform was great to rest on after the hike in, and to watch the clouds from. At night, it was a great venue for stargazing, and I expect it will be good for tent-free “cowboy camping” later in the season.

Back in my tent — where on the last trip I spent all night curled at the bottom of my sleeping bag and shivering for warmth — I followed Natalia’s advice to put the bedroll above and below my light sleeping bag. In that configuration, I was warm with my sleeping bag unzipped until after dawn, and then warm with the bag zipped and light clothes on after. Note, however, that we had -11 ˚C and -9 ˚C nights last time, compared with +5 this time. (Though last time, I also used a fleece sleeping bag liner which I never had to pack this time, and slept in all my clothes rather than light PJs.)

One more nice unanticipated feature emerged when we were breaking camp: the bedroll is large enough to use as a soft, dry, and debris-free place to roll up my tent. Being able to pack up a tent clean saves times and annoyance, reduces the odds of needing to unpack it later in the day to dry or clean it, and probably extends the life of the tent.

For the hike out, I even discovered that the integrated straps on the bedroll can be passed through two loops that were already there at the bottom of my pack. The bedroll still needs to be tied so that the middle doesn’t slide out of the roll, but the bedroll is nevertheless quite feasible to carry attached to the outside and bottom of a pack.

I probably would not carry it on a thru hike of thousands of kilometres, but it seems great for trips like this one plus picnics and Hive games in the park.

Three trips

Particularly during the dissertation writing phase, I have largely been confined to Toronto and the GTA for the last few years.

That made my recent trips to Ottawa, Guelph, and the Catchacoma forest all the more appreciated:

My urgent tasks are finding affordable housing and a job, but I am looking forward to an active spring and summer of wilderness and crown land camping.

First camp in an eon

Thanks to the prior exploration and get-up-and-go of my friend Natalia, I capped off the intense sequence from my brother Sasha’s visit through my mother’s departure with my first camping trip since pre-PhD.

This trip was meant in part as a gear shakedown for camping in the shoulder season. I can say definitively that the sleeping bag and fleece liner combo which I chose mostly to avoid sleeping in hostel-provided sheets was not comfortably warm at -11 ˚C and -9 ˚C during the coldest night hours, even with all my clothes on. My graduation gift tent did an admirable job of staying condensation-free, despite me curling up at the bottom of my sleeping bag to preserve my warm outbreaths.

We camped in and explored an area of crown land near the Catchacoma forest during a time of exceptional high water. A wetland area as seen in recent aerial images was mostly a large lake for us, with the outflow down a creek partly obstructed by an ATV bridge.

The trip was a remarkable and much-needed grit- and friendship-building experience. I can’t wait to get out again; taste simple food off the fire that tastes better than anything at home; wake to the bird chorus around dawn; and joke and talk with good friends while stomping through snowfall and hauling falling branches to the fire.

TO360 wayfinding consultation

Though I had noticed some of their signage (and, without knowing it, their printed Toronto cycling map has been a key planning tool for our urban hikes), I did not actually know about the city’s TO360 wayfinding project until I saw a post about it a few days ago.

They are currently working on the Long Branch area west of Humber Bay, and held a consultation yesterday at the local library.

The consultation was unlike anything I have done, and really cool. Some knowledgeable local residents turned up, and the TO360 people had printed maps the size of large dinner tables where people could correct errors, note things that ought to be included, and suggest places where they should include custom graphics for something like a building or monument rather than a generic labelled marker. It’s awesome to see a group with so much capability and official support working to map the city from a non-driving perspective.

As shown on p. 11 of the slides, the group is working through the whole GTA as they are funded by the city. It would be neat to explore new areas as they focus on them and contribute to forthcoming consultations. The results won’t just be used for map posts on the street and map posters in subway stations, but also future versions of the cycling map.

Bugs in GaiaGPS

They are too busy/understaffed to communicate with anyone or fix any bugs, but in case anyone at GaiaGPS ever has some free time, these are issues I have noticed.

Some may be on account of the large number of tracks which I have collected.

  1. On both my phone and computer, the map at gaiagps.com or on the app will not show all of my tracks when zoomed out. Far enough out (like looking at the whole city or a big part of it) they do not show at all, and then they pop into vision when I move in enough
  2. Track names often fail to sync from my iOS phone to the web/desktop app. They show up as generic track names and I need to figure out which is which and manually rename them
  3. Both the desktop and especially the iOS version insist on showing waypoints near tracks which are visible, even when the folder for those waypoints is explicitly set to not display
  4. When exporting a folder of tracks with waypoints near them, GaiaGPS includes some of the waypoints along with the tracks in the exported .GPX or .KML file
  5. Tracks and waypoints often fail to move into folders, on both desktop and iOS. I select a track or some waypoints and put it in a folder. It may disappear from where it was previously, but if I wait a minute it will often jump back to where it was before.

None of these break the functionality of the app, which is remarkably capable for a free version. Still, it would be nice to see a good product improved by sorting them out.