Quick and Dirty
Cost: $
Time: 10 minutes
Difficulty (1-10): 1
What You Need
Fabric – Tyvek or Window Film (rip stop, silnylon, cuben fiber is OK too)
Duct tape and/or double sided 3M VHB tape
Paracord, small bungee cord, or guy lines
Ruler
Scissors
Optional
Sewing Machine
Brass Eyelets
Nylon webbing (I prefer not to use nylon webbing)
Louis and I take eating pretty seriously, we love a good meal. When it comes to backpacking, we’ve always had trouble finding the right food. The ideal meal for us are light, affordable and tasty meals. We started out with Mountain House freeze dried food and were pretty happy with the taste, however, at $7-$9 per bag, it was a too expensive for us. For our upcoming three day backpacking trip, I decided to try something different. I decided to dehydrating fresh produce and scavenge through Walmart for cheaper ready made packaging food.
Dehydrating Fresh Produce
Two nights before we set out for our backpacking trip, I looked through our fridge and pulled out fresh produce that’s likely to spoil during our absence and came up with two green bell peppers, two ears of corn, several Roma tomatoes and a handful of strawberries. After chopping the produce into small pieces, I preheated the oven on the lowest temperature possible, in our case, it was 170 degrees. I laid the fresh produce on a flat sheet and left it in the oven for 6 hours. Depending on the oven, more or less time may be needed to dehydrate fresh produce.
Here’s a daily breakdown of what I packed for both of us:
Friday Night:and Saturday Morning
To get a head start Saturday morning, we decided to drive to the campsite Friday night and camp at the trail head. With our campsite Friday night so close to our car, we packed fresh fruits, bagels, two boil eggs and Thursday night’s leftover dinner for food.
Sunday and Monday Breakfast:
Saturday through Monday lunch:
Saturday Night Dinner:
Sunday night dinner:
In the end the total cost of food for a 3 day backpacking trip between Louis and I cost less than 15 dollars since we utilized our leftovers.
Quick and Dirty
Cost: $
Time: 30 minutes
Difficulty (1-10): 1
Below is a quick and easy tutorial on how to take dryer lint and turn it into an effective fire starter. We use these on all of our back country trips that allow fires.
What You Need
Lint from a dryer
Old candles, used candles, or residual wax
Heating device (heat gun, candle warmer, fire!)
Knife
Step 1
Wash your clothes and throw them in the dryer. Save the lint that’s collected in your dryer.
Step 2
If using long candles, cut them into bits and pieces for easy melting.
Step 3
Put pieces in a heat resistent bowl that you don’t mind not using ever again. I made a bowl out of tin foil.
Step 4
Use a candle warmer or some type of heating device to melt some UNSCENTED candles. It’s very important to use unscented candles in the backcountry.
Step 5
Form a ball with the dryer lint.
Step 6
Submerge HALF of the lint ball into the melted wax. The uncovered half of the lint ball acts as a candle wick and will burn faster.
Step 7
Pull them out and let them cool and harden.
Step 8
To correctly light the fire starters, you need to stack small sticks and kindling above the fire starter. Light the exposed portion of the fire starter. Making sure there is enough oxygen to feed the fire, allow it to burn and melt portions of the wax until your kindling and sticks catch fire.
These dryer lint balls are easy to make, light weight and cost virtually nothing. On a cold wet morning, a nice warm fire will make a huge difference. There are other options (newspaper, saw dust, etc.), but lint is FREE and easier to work with.
Final note: I highly recommend using unscented candles. We use whatever we have left over, but we prefer to use unscented, inexpensive stick candles. They typically cost a dollar for8 at the local dollar store – of if you are like us, you have a bunch of them around the house.
Hike Now, Work Later 