video tutorial on CLOTHING

I pull my pants down as an educational technique.

muffin

muffin eater

Eating a warm muffin in the Tetons. Summer 2011. Muffin instructional HERE! (and muffin mystique explained)

ranked as a best seller!

Will it ever get all the way to number 1?

Check it out, my book is listed as the second most popular book on amazon.com! Well, in a sub-category of a sub-category. Also, all the reviews average out to 4.5 stars. The only 1 star review is actually my favorite (thanks Cindy!).

As seen in Der Spiegel

As seen in Germany's most important source of news. Direct link HERE. My corespondent from Europe translated some vital Journalism, that may directly influence the entirety of the EU.

The text sez:

Author Mike Clelland recommends a cut beer can as the lightest (and cheapest) outdoor cooking pot.

shockingly delicious

Calorie dense goodness!

Super Spackle is a powerfully wonderful snack, and I'm not the only blogger who thinks so! Click HERE to see a very simple recipe that can satisfy a hungry camper.

From tip number 152 in my humble book.

It really IS shockingly delicious!

caramelized onion sauce

This is a recipe that is NOT included in the book, but it's heart wrenchingly wonderful. I'm adding it here to this blog as a way to share the love!

CARAMELIZED ONION SAUCE

3 yellow onions (finely chopped)
5 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)
1 red pepper (finely chopped)
4 oz olive oil
2 oz peanut oil (or any high heat oil)
1 oz soy sauce
1 oz hot sauce
tablespoon tahini
tea spoon salt
tea spoon pepper
dash of vinegar
dash of sugar

(all weights above are measures, not weight)

Start by cooking the finely chopped onions in a large skillet on low heat with the peanut oil. Stir frequently for approximately 20 minutes, until the onions are caramelized and brown.

Add the finely chopped garlic and red pepper let cook approximately 10 minutes.

Add the soy sauce, hot sauce, salt, pepper, vinegar and sugar. Let this cook another 10 minutes or so. The stuff in your pan should be brown and gooey.

Take off the heat and let cool for a few minutes.

Put the warm concoction in a blender or food processor with the olive oil and tahini. Blend until smooth.

You will now have a brown flavor packed sauce that can be added to your camping meals. Carry it in a small lightweight plastic bootle. Approx. 2 ounces (in weight) per person per meal will bring tears of joy at dinner time.

PLEASE NOTE:
I'm a cook that ignores recipes, I pretty much just wing it in the kitchen. I encourage anyone reading this to get creative and tweak the above recipe to meet their own needs, and to match whatever you might have on hand in your pantry!

Bon Appetit!

toothpaste dots

Tip number 54 in the book is how to make toothpaste "dots" by drying stuff out of the tube yourself. But look what I just found (thanks Clayton)! Linked HERE.

Product description:
Archtek's Toothpaste Tablets are a chewable tablet that replaces paste in a tube and creates an incredibly clean feeling mouth. The tablet is placed in the mouth, chewed, followed by normal brushing and rinsing. Chew, brush, go! Travel-friendly Toothpaste Tablets are lightweight, more sanitary than toothpaste and the packaging is recyclable. Less mess, less weight, more green, more sanitary.

it really IS just this easy!

Shirking the fancy-schmancy. Living the dream.

Howdy Mike!

I thought you would enjoy this photo. It is of a student I had here at NAU [Northern Arizona University] - he was already pretty committed to the lightweight gospel but went the extra mile this past April on a 17-day trip in the Gila Wilderness. He made his own pack the day before the trip from mostly recycled materials - tyvek scraps from a construction site, buckles and flat webbing straps from an old pack he found at goodwill and an old cut up ensolite half-pad. The only new items I recall were some gorilla glue/adhesive and thread from the sewing machine.

I think the empty pack weighed in at 10 or 12 ounces. He was able to carry a 7 and then a 10 day ration, group gear and such with the pack and I think his largest pack-weight was in the upper 20's during the 10-day ration period. We had just received a half dozen copies of your book - hot off the press - loaned him one about 3 days before the trip and he attributes his inspiration and success to YOU!

Peace,
Aaron

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From Mike C:
The above just arrive in my in-box. Oh how I dearly LOVE this kind of thing!

(photo by Aaron Divine)

look inside the book (it's easy)

If you are curious about my book, the creepy corporate giants at amazon.com do offer a pretty cool resource. You can LOOK INSIDE the book, and check out the the first bunch of tips (the most important ones!) and see the table of contents too.

I'm impressed with this tidy little service because it'll give anyone a pretty good insight about the book and it's tone.

radical in places, but interesting

instructional art

Cute, lotsa info, no stress.

Double click for a HI-rez view.

The contents of my pack (video tip)

Check it out. You get to see my very nice cat Spazzy!

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And - If you wanna see a very tidy list for a summer trip click HERE.

This is pretty similar to what I show above (and in the book), but the list on this link is has a lot of extra information.

GearGrams on-line grooviness!

Just double click on the image for a HI-rez view.

Look what I just found on-line, a nifty gear-list template called GEAR GRAMS. Wow, this site is really cool! Check it out, I'm super impressed!

I just added my summer list (which I'll occationally be tweaking and revising). Wanna see it? Check it out HERE.

the DINKY STUFF - a video tutorial in two parts

Part ONE is above, and part TWO is below.

The Dinky Stuff (tip 61) is an area where too many campers go completely overboard. When you get right down to it, there actually isn’t that much you really need. All the dinky stuff should easily fit in one ziploc baggie. This items in the video may fluctuate a little between an overnight and a 10-day expedition, but not much.

Simple first aid kit (tip 55) is required. The stuff in the video is pretty much what I would take on any moderate trip. You have minimal gear, so your ability to improvise with what you might have on hand is drastically different than the traditional camper with their extra gear. The stuff in the kit reflects items that would be impossible to improvise. All stored in a ziploc baggie. Weight: Less than 3 oz.

This spartan little kit is not a substitute for proper first aid training. There is a professional certification titled Wilderness First Responder, and I would strongly advocate this course to anyone who travels in remote environments. Please, use your brain to avoid the kind of accidents that would make you need a first aid kit in the first place.

Simple repair kit (tip 56) is important 'cuz stuff breaks. And (mostly) it’s easily fixed. Here’s a simple list of what I would carry on the model trip. All stored in a ziploc baggie. Weight: Less than 3 oz.

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During the video, I reference a stove made by Andrew Skurka, the easy to create Fancy Feast Cat Food Can Stove is an engineering marvel!

Can you drink un-treated water? (video tip)

TIP number 105

Is it water safe to drink water straight from a mountain stream? The answer is an unequivocal sometimes.

Please be aware, drinking un-treated might have serious gastro-consequences. The text book signs and symptoms of Giardia read as follows: “Explosive diarrhea with a foul sulfurous odor.” That sounds gross, right? Knowing what is reliable in the backcountry is critical here, and making an informed decision is a combination of experience and a working knowledge of the hazards.

My pal Phil carries a cute little 500ml plastic juice bottle in his hand during all his mountain travel. It’s never on his back, so it adds zero to the pack weight. When he gets to a trustworthy water source, he fills up and drinks. Nothing to treat, no pumping, no hoses, no boiling, no mixing chemicals, no time waiting for anything. Phil has achieved a sort of mastery when evaluating the safety of water, and this came from years of experience in the backcountry. I’m a little more cautious than Phil, but I regularly drink un-treated water.

I realize I am outside of the perceived norm of camping practices to even suggest that it’s okay to sometimes drink water straight from it’s source. It might even come off as heresy in a world filled with filters, pumps, chemicals and weird glowing ultra violet batteries operated gizmos. These tools serve a purpose, but not all the time. In my opinion, it is entirely appropriate to do what we as humans have done since the dawn of time.

I only drink from springs and very small streams. And I’ve found that a lot of the small little streams are easy to follow uphill to their source, where the water bubbles up out of the ground. This is actually very easy to do, especially with a UL pack. If you are aware, and looking uphill, you’ll quickly gain a good sense of where to find the quality springs. Before drinking directly from any un-treated water source, I run through this simple check-list:

SAFE WATER CHECK LIST:

~ Are there any zones above this water source that could impact the quality? (popular camping, mine sites, moose mating grounds, etc)

~ Is this a popular camping zone?

~ Is the water running from an outlet of a lake or pond?

~ Are there any wildlife feces near the water or upstream?

~ Is there a dead elk in the stream?

If I answer NO to all these questions, I happily drink up, most of the time. I’ll add that if I find a spring bubbling straight up from the ground, I will always dip my cup as close as I can to the source.

My advice, carefully factor in all available data before drinking ANY water in the backcountry. For questionable sources, I carry Aqua-Mira, a chlorine based treatment.