In the comments for previous post about Trooper Traverse gear, Ginger wrote that she used a Desani ( bottled water) bottle to save weight over a Nalgene. That sounds like an interesting idea. Downside is that the bottled water container has a small top, and during ski touring traverses you need a bottle you can easily fill from a pot of snowmelt. Also, one wonders how they’d hold up in the cold. Nonetheless this is something to consider for ski traverses, and certainly an option for day trips. Just how much weight does it save? Read on.
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| One liter bottle weight comparo. From left to right: store-bought bottled water, 1.6 oz – 46 g; Nalgene lexan, 6.2 oz – 176 g; Nalgene poly, 3.9 oz – 108 g. BINGO! Just carrying a Nalgene poly instead of a Lexan nets a couple of ounces, but check out the difference between carrying the bottled water container vs the lexan: a whopping 4.6 oz, or more than 1/4 pound!
If you have your master’s in weight control and are going for a doctorate, this kind of thing can help you qualify! I’ll be experimenting with carrying the bottled water container for day ski touring trips (when I’m not using a drinking bladder), and will try to figure out a way to use it for overnights. At the least I’ll be using Nalgene poly instead of lexan. |
Department of bonus weight nerding:
Am I crazy or not (comments are on)? The other day I was playing around with trimming ounces, and realized my car keys were kind of heavy. Out to the WildSnow modshop they went, and came back looking like this! They fit on a mini-biner without a split ring, and really do have less mass. My family thought I was nuts, but then, drilling speed holes in keys is better recreation than watching television, isn’t it? The only question I kept asking myself was, if I skipped one 7-11 buritto on the way out to Utah tomorrow, wouldn’t that save more weight than messing around with my car keys? Then I realized, how about both? Skip the gut bomb, and drill out the keys. Now there is a concept.
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WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.