Saturday afternoon in Tampere.
Too much to do, too less time. Time to let you know what you can expect in the next few weeks on Hiking in Finland. Tomorrow we start the week with an interview of Ron Bell, the Chief Happiness Officer of Mountain Laurel Designs. We will follow this with interviews from Ron Moak from Six Moons Designs, the European upcoming cottage manufacture Laufbursche will sit down with me and tell me how it is to start a cottage, and on the other site of the Atlantic Tim Marshall will tell us how his venture enLIGHTened equipment is doing. Jacks 'R' Better also take out some time and answer my questions, and finally I'll interview the owner of Ultralight Outdoor Gear and ask him how it is to run a UL Shop. Lots of stuff in the pipeline, as you can see.
It is getting winter in Finland, the first snow arrived and left again, and I am on the search for some UL equipment for the colder time of the year, including a new backpack. Expect a post on that front. On other gear related posts, get ready for some light and warm synthetic insulation clothing from Integral Designs. I got the Bushcooker LT 1 and LT 2 here, and am eager to go and try them out - I reckon a video should do them justice. And as I have a BushBuddy Ultra and an Inferno stove to compare it to, you can expect some mighty fires. For the cold time of the year you need long warm underwear. Woolpower makes some sweet merino long johns and longsleeves, and I will review the set I have been wearing since months now. For a sound night in the winter, a good mattress is in my opinion of utmost important, and I will show you the different mats I have for the winter. For transportation purposes you can use skis or snowshoes, I go with the latter and give my insights into them. There's even more than that in the pipeline, I just would need to find the time to get out and write.
Finally, I am busy organizing the trekking-ultraleicht.de forums winter tour aka T-U FTW 1.0 which goes down in the end of January/ beginning of February. Seven brave UL backpackers from the south will travel to Finland and go for a week long hike (ok, three nights we camp and three nights we'll spent in a cottage with sauna!) in hopefully plenty of snow and coldness.
So much for now. Check back tomorrow for Ron Bell's answers, and have a good Sunday evening!