June 15th of this year, I huddled under my hammock tarp in a clearing in the middle of Michaux State Forest in Pennsylvania. It'd been a race against time, and one that I'd ultimately lost but only just. We arrived to camp late but it was just as well, because the previous group of knuckleheads hadn't cleared out in time and we just had to sit on a rock and wait as the storm inched closer and closer and these guys slouched out of that campsite one by one by one with a seemingly endless assortment of utterly unnecessary junk. Generators, solar panels, coolers upon coolers, and who knows what else.

You know how when you look at a storm on the weather radar it goes dark green, light green, yellow, orange, red, purple, white? The white part was poised to trample the exact spot on the mountain we were sitting on. And still sitting is right. At one point I saw one chump troop out of there carrying a Ryobi battery powered weed whacker.

And here I thought we were being flamboyantly decedent by bringing my pop up canopy for the picnic table.

(There's a video there, but if your client doesn't render it you can get to it from here.)

But back to the storm, and my tarp, which I strung up too late and the usual way with a sextet of tautline hitch knots on the titchy little guylines, (a sextet being six boring fiddly knots, not the much more fun time you were thinking of instead) working just as fast and efficiently as I could I while I was pelted by fat raindrops, beech nuts, and leaves. Fast, perhaps, but not quite fast enough.

As I swung in my hammock and dripped dry, I contemplated that there must be a better way. Smart money might have been not to put up my tent and hammock last. But you know what I mean.

Well, of course there's a better way. There are no end to the widgets available for pulling taut the lines on your tarp or tent. It's only any wonder we aren't ankle deep in the things.

But this one is mine.

Herewith I throw my floppy boonie hat into the area of, in the absolute broadest sense possible, the cottage gear industry: Pinguys are my own take on a guyline tensioning gizmo, and they're shaped like penguins because of course they are.

I made you read this far to hook your interest, because I totally just make you read an ad and I'm pleased to mention that these are for sale on my website, presently consisting of the complete entirety of the "camping/outdoors" category, such as it is. I'm just sly like that.

I do these in three sizes:

• #2, for the 1.5mm, 1.75mm, and 2mm titchy lines for your fancy ultralight tarp or tent, the one you'd string up with dental floss if you could.
• #3, which fits 3mm, 3.5mm, and 4mm lines commonly found on brand name tents and tarps as well as most of the bewilderingly massive galaxy of Chinese knockoff gear.
• #4, which handily fits 550 paracord.

I quietly let slip the existence of these things a little earlier, in the post that contained this picture:

Obviously I wasn't just blithely going to start handing these out without first thoroughly verify that they, you know, actually work. I'm pleased as punch to report that via extensive field testing — read: using them for everything I could think of on my last couple of camping outings — that they do. I got thoroughly soaked in Bald Eagle a couple of weeks ago and rode out another storm just as easy as you please.

Of course other options exist and there myriad reasons to recommend them. But if you go with mine you get the warm and fuzzy feeling of giving your money to me rather than any anonymous asshole, let alone some megacorporation, the Chinese communist party, or ye gods forbid, Amazon. Every penny of which I do solemnly swear to blow on knives and camera gear, which I will proceed to show you all.

I kicked around several iterations of the name and my hopes were dashed when the obvious answer was already taken. Bummer.

I designed the Pinguys to work the way I want them to and solve the types of problems I want to solve. I don't propose that they're the be-all and end-all of tarp line hardware, but they're pretty versatile. For a start, I wanted to be able to leave them on my lines in position and ready to use. Thus, just pass your line through the holes in both ends and your penguin buddy will remain in place wherever you place him.

I tie a loop in one end of each of my guylines with a figure eight knot and leave the other end free. Keeping the Pinguy up near the loop lets you easily affix the entire assemblage to one of the grommets on your tarp by sticking the head of the loop through, and then passing the Pinguy and the rest of the line through it. Run the standing end of the line out to your stake and back, pulling it tight as you go, and you can lock this off by wrapping it under one wing, and then either around the waist and under the other or, if you're feeling particularly paranoid about wind, by making an X going around the back and over your standing line, then down and around the other side.

The Pinguy's belly on the side facing the beak is serrated, for added grip on your cord and slippage prevention. This is probably unnecessary, but it looks cool and a lot of the commercial options have that feature so I dutifully stole it.

You can do the same thing to tie the ends of your tarp to a pair of trees, by wrapping your line through its loop around the tree, passing the standing end through the gommet on your tarp as before, and wrapping it around the Pinguy to lock it off.

Notably, adding tension to your lines e.g. in the event they get wet and stretch takes no effort and if you're deft you can do it without leaving your shelter and getting rained on in the process. And unlike tying a Prusik or tautline hitch in your lines, there's no such thing as messing it up by tying the knot too close so you run out of room to slide it up and add tension. If you're right up against a tree you can use one of these in situations where a tautline hitch just won't work because there isn't enough room.

If you're a shock cord kind of bird you can just tie your cord on via the foot ring in each Pinguy, and tension a separate line under the wings the same as before. I don't do it that way, but there's nothing stopping you!

I told you that you'd see more of my old Eureka Backcountry 1. Here it is pitched in a very silly location on nights two and three of a trip I took to the Red River Gorge in Daniel Boone in Kentucky back in 2014.

Ninja morning.

It was theoretically possible to scramble your way up the back side of this rock, but my preferred solution was to boulder up the front of it and rappel off the face whenever I needed to come back down.

This was aided by my much beloved but alas rather uncomfortable Black Diamond Apine Bod harness, a selection of lightweight ropes and hardware, and...

Don't tell me you go around trying to ninja it up without your sword.

I went on this trip with my primary rock climbing partner and we spent most of it doing our level best to get onto the very tippy top of every damn fool thing we passed by, regardless of whether it was intended to be ooked upon or not. Towards that end we didn't complete a whole heck of a lot of actual traditional hikes, per se, because we kept getting distracted. (I went looking through these photos again in order to find this one which I posted previously.)

Night one saw us rocking up to this placid but comparatively boring creekside site shortly before sundown. That's my buddy's extremely well traveled MSR single-Hubba there, a considerable portion of which (along with one of his sleeping bags) is now made out of Tenacious Tape after it got eaten by a bear in Alaska one time.

But all that that was before the morning light coming over the crest revealed this fuck-off massive rock edifice that was right up the hill behind our campsite which, of course, we immediately scaled. That's where the 'biner picture above was taken, as I recall.

The Red River Gorge area in Daniel Boone is home to all kinds of interesting rocks, as I have vouchsafed to you all previously.

I could go on posting pictures of them all day. I have hundreds of the things.

I learned a couple of important lessons on this trip, gear wise. The major one was that I will now famously not travel anywhere my packable down jacket.

That's because we started this trip in roasting near-summertime temperatures, 85 and 90 during the day in the full sunshine despite it being only the middle of April.

And then on the morning on day four we woke up to three inches of snow, and more accumulating by the minute. We had no winter gear whatsoever.

Needless to say, we took that as our cue to get out of there.

While we're waxing all nostalgic, here's me and two of my scruffy companions at one of the various roadside campgrounds in Yellowstone, circa 2010. Mine is the yellow Eureka Apex 2 (the pre-XT version) in the middle. Sometimes I miss that tent. I rode out some truly epic storms in it several times and in several places all throughout the country. But then I remember having to carry it, and then I don't miss it so much. They called it a "backpacking" tent, and maybe it is if you split it between two or three people, but as I recall the son of a bitch weighed something like eight and a half pounds all together. It came with fiberglass poles, for crying out loud. But I will say this about that: Once you had that sucker nailed down, it wasn't going anywhere. You could probably drop a boulder on it. I replaced this a couple of years later with an Apex 2XT for the marginally lighter weight, but this was a bit of a lateral move.

I also realize belatedly that we formed an unintentional traffic light, here.

The green Eureka Backcountry 1 on the left was mine, too. I was lending it to a member of our trio here who didn't have their own tent. That was the tent I actually used for solo backpacking for quite a while (you'll probably see more of it later, if I keep this up) until finally succumbing to the siren song of modern ultralight gear. I gave it away to a homeless dude after I determined I had no more use for it. That tent was bomber, too. For all I know he's still using it.

The orange Marmot there, I think it's an Aura 2P, belonged to my nephew. For some reason he's a clean freak when he's out in the woods, or at least some manner of highly specialized Nervous Nelly, and insists on carrying that full size, full thickness tarp around with him everywhere. It's been literal decades and I still have not been able to get it across to him that he shouldn't leave the corners sticking out like that, lest he accumulate every pint of rainwater in the tri-county area directly underneath the floor of his tent.

This is going to sound like sacrilege, but I really don't recommend Yellowstone. It's too well known, too popular, too crowded, to well-trodden. It's one of those places you have to go if you're into camping and the outdoors just to say that you did, and I did indeed (and even bought a mug, which I still have someplace) but I have no desire to go back.

The Yellowstone area is both incredibly dangerous and incredibly fragile, so the park service has understandably cordoned practically all of it off. This is one of those don't-leave-the-path sorts of places...

...With everything boardwalked up. That means there's nothing to explore and there's nowhere to tread that a hundred other people aren't also treading on right now. So you spend your time climbing over slowpokes and brushing past shuffling tourists who all have their noses in their cameras and aren't paying attention to anything around them. You stand in the same places and take the same photos of the same things that everyone else has done already. I've said it before and I'll say it again: You really may as well just find some rando's Flickr album (or maybe Pixelfeed, if we're bringing this aphorism into the current era) and look at their pictures instead. It'll be just the same, and you won't go home with your clothes reeking of sulfur.

There are certainly some sights to behold. It's a shame about the other stuff, though.

Along the way on this trip we stopped by Laramie in at least some minor tribute to my brother, and drove past where he used to live.

It seems even out there isn't as remote as it used to be.

Tonight I'm pawing through piles of pictures of past trips. My last post was very recent. This one is a few years old. I took this up on Raven Ridge, in Dolly Sods in West Virginia.

My main camping and hiking buddy and I are very often gear twins. One of us will buy something, and if it turns out to be decent then more often or not the other of us will wind up with the same thing. At the moment we have the same main pack: An Osprey Atmos 65, in green. (We've also got the exact same models of sleeping bag, water filter, chairs, duplicates of several knives, and insofar as I'm aware at least two pairs of identical hats.)

But we have rather different approaches to life. Somehow, despite the superficial similarity of our setups, I can always tell which pack is mine and which pack is his.

Just, somehow.

That's right, I've gotten out my shovel and dug up this community's corpse, strapped it to the table and hooked up the lightning rod, and I'm about to throw the switch. And none of you can stop me!

This official (number 58) campsite I was in the other week turned out to be a mowed patch in the middle of the Tioga State Forest in an area which had clearly been logged fairly recently. As such it didn't have anything to offer in the way of shade and after a long day in the saddle I was a little miffed there was nowhere to hang up my hammock. Not at least without doing an awful lot more mowing, which probably would have been seen as a bit of a faux pas. It's in that stage of regrowth where everything is impenetrable ground cover and brambles, just a touch too opaque to still be a meadow but certainly not a forest yet.

Something about that blue sky and green verge still appealed to me, though, so I took this picture prominently featuring my dinkum Chinese knockoff tent that I use for motorcycle camping.

For a hundred bucks it's not only been remarkably solid so far but has also even managed to remain weatherproof, plus most importantly it fits exactly in the bottom of my panniers. It's a "Wandelen" non-brand thing, a model they purportedly call "Appalachian." How appropriate. They claim it's a "backpacking" tent but really isn't — It weighs a full four pounds and the bundle it breaks down into is probably a bit unwieldy to try to stuff in your pack. It's resolutely free standing, though, which I prefer any time I don't have to carry the thing myself. For actual backpacking duty I stick to my Lanshan which is half the weight but needs two trekking poles and about three dozen stakes to put up.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6218752

Sorry for the wall of text, but as we put it all down, we realised that we had to add more and more criteria.

We are planning our last trip for this year and are based in Germany. Our plans/funds unfortunately don't allow something as far away as Scotland/Sweden/... so we are looking in Germany, Denmark, BeNeLux, Western France, Austria or Switzerland.

Ideally, this trail is not too much of a misery in autumn. We are fine with lots of ups and down, but not equipped for mountains or very alpine terrain in this time of the year. We would be fine with huts or shelters, but could also wild camp (if it's no too much of a hassle). Doing just a certain section (5days max) would be fine for us as well.

Bonus points for remoteness and beautiful nature. Walking along roads, forestry roads or villages all day is a bit monotone after a while.

Might be that this does not exist; we enjoyed e.g. the West Highland Way very much and are looking forward for Sweden/Norway.

I had a couple small health issues a couple years ago. Bought a red Marmot Precip in response. I figured it would make me easier to spot if I conked out & rolled under a bush or somewhere. I had previously confined myself to dull olive or green jackets. Even now, the red seems a little too bright, a little too loud to me. My question is, what are your opinions regarding garment colors? Do you prefer muted, non–invasive colors? Red for safety (or blaze orange, especially during hunting season?) Just plain pretty colors like sky blue or yellow? Camo? Black? Thanks for your thoughts.

This is a solid milestone for me. I started hiking almost every day back in June after taking a year off, and I started with a 1 hour/2.5 mile hike. I started adding this 5 mile hike soon after.

Anyway it has been helping and my goal is 100 miles this month. I am up to 12 so far.