Red Yeti's Blog

This is a bit of a departure eh?

Whilst we were in the Alps we got talking to many people that wanted to know how we were carrying less weight when camping and lugging photographic kit about than they were when just going hut-to-hut (that is, staying in accommodation, so not carrying a tent).

I’ve already got plenty of blurb on this blog about the hut-to-hut kit I carry from the postings on the Walker’s Haute Route.

But a few things have changed of course, and not everyone likes reading through the postings.

So whilst we were stuck in the same place for three days with a leg injury I thought I’d record a video, running through what I carry.

LB did an absolutely first-rate job or recording it (especially considering she’s never really shot any video of any description before!).

It was only done on a little Canon IXUS 980 IS but I think it’s come out quite well apart from a tiny bit of wind noise at a couple of points.

I”m not sure how many of these I’ll do but there is one more to come, which was shot immediately after this and shows the extra kit needed to go from hut-to-hut up to camping as well as the photographic kit and chargers.

I planned to put links on this posting to the kit but to be honest I’m getting rather tight for time. Besides anything in here should turn up in Google, but if you can’t find something or want to know more – just leave a comment!

The video is split into two parts due to YouTube upload restrictions.

This video follows on directly from the last and was, once again, very well filmed by LB.

It deals with the extra kit we carried for camping, the custom-made camera harness that I attached to the GoLite Pinnacle pack I carried (the pack was excellent!) as well as the charging solutions we came up with for the phones, the iPod Nanos and the cameras.

The iPod Nanos, loaded up with audiobooks, were absolutely life-saving when stuck in a refuge with an injury for three days and when getting in to huts early for short days thereafter. But we also listened to them each night before we dropped off to sleep. For about 50 grams each they became almost indispensable to our enjoyment of the trip. We combined the charger for the iPods and the phones, which we would be taking regardless, by taking a mains USB charger so there was no extra weight penalty there.

It beat the heck out of carrying real books. Not only that, you can listen to them in the dark in a dorm room and they’re not loud enough to disturb others.

At the point we made this video the USB phone charger lead was still working. By incredible luck, it broke when we were in the only town on the route where we stood any chance of replacing it.

Even more luckily, when we bought the new one we found that they also sold a mains to USB charger with two outlets instead of just one. That made life much easier. No longer did I have to choose which most needed charging from four items (both phones and both iPods), now it was just between which phone and which iPod.

As Lighthiker noted you need to check that whatever you’re using as a charger has the power to charge a completely flat device. For instance, the USB to Nokia charger lead isn’t just a wire, it’s actually a step-up transformer to give the normal USB output the extra guts it needs to charge a dead phone.

As per the last video, I planned to put links on this posting to the kit I mention but I’m getting rather tight for time. Besides anything in here should turn up in Google – but if you want to know more,  just leave a comment and ask!

The video is broken into three parts (due to YouTube upload restrictions).