Stuff for hiking

I like hiking in Lapland, for extended periods (6 weeks), alone in the wilderness. The amount of stuff I can carry with me is quite limited, and I have reduced it to a practical minimum. Here is a list of the kind of stuff I carry with me in my backpack on a summer hike. I've never weighed my backpack (I don't really want to know), but it's just heavy enough at the beginning of the hike. This list is not meant to be complete, and it must be adjusted according to where and when you are hiking, and under what conditions. But I do use this very list as a basic checklist when packing my own backpack for a hike.

• Backpack (earlier I used a Savotta 906, now I have a Savotta Jääkäri XL with a few extra Molle/PALS pockets attached) with a bright red rain cover, extra straps, some large plastic bags
• 1-person tent (Hilleberg Akto), sleeping bag (Joutsen QTM 900 arctic down in the summer, Joutsen Tunturisusi 2000 in late autumn or winter), closed-cell foam sleeping pad
• For the winter sleeping bag, I have a custom compression bag / backpack
• Rope, wire, sticky tape, adhesive nylon repair kit (sold under OAI, COATS or PRYM brand name as a 10×20 cm sheet in various colors), needle and thread
• Maps (copied or printed onto separate A4 sheets, stored in Minigrip/Ziploc bags—take several extra bags also, as repeated folding will eventually cause them to leak), compass
• Cooking pot (mess kit, pakki in Finnish), my homemade titanium camp stove, Trangia burner, spirit (why not gas?), several boxes of matches sealed in separate plastic bags
• Frying pan, plate (a cheap plastic soup plate which fits over the frying pan, protecting its non-stick surface), mug, canteen, sheath knife
• Authentic, Soviet military surplus, titanium SPOON!
• Dishwashing detergent, scrubbing pad, several small 2–3 liter plastic freezer bags
• Toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, microfiber towel
• Personal medicines, multivitamin pills, first aid kit (adhesive bandages, sterile pads, gauze, disinfectant), Mylar "space blanket", whistle
• Insect repellent (high-concentration DEET is much preferred to icaridin), toilet paper, hand creme (also works on feet!)
• Gore-Tex suit, gumboots (Nokian Kontio) with extra insoles (Jalas FX2), neoprene sandals
• T-shirts, underwear, socks, long shirt and trowsers, also woolen trowsers for a late autumn hike. Brimmed hat for summer.
• Woolen shirt, woolen socks, woolen cap, water-resistant gloves for any time of year. Lately I've fallen in love with merino wool long underwear. They're great as pajamas in late autumn, and quite comfortable under the Gore Tex suit on a rainy day!
• Fishing rod and reel (I'd prefer a two-piece rod, but a telescoping one is more convenient to carry), landing net, bait, lures, fishing permits
• Camera, memory cards, batteries
• Cell phone, wallet, keys, passport (if needed—I've never had anyone inspect it, but technically the law does require it when crossing the Finnish-Norwegian border to stay overnight in a Norwegian wilderness hut), all sealed in plastic freezer bags
• Train or plane tickets, timetables etc.
• A book or two of good science fiction (Baxter, Bova, Clarke et al.—see my list), pencils and paper (the blank back side of the maps will do)
• Candles (only useful in a hut), flashlight or headlamp: A simple 3×AAA Petzl Tikka served me well for some 20+ years, but now I'm finally toying with a needlessly fancy and powerful Fenix HM65R SuperRaptor
• In the summer of 2020 I took along a walking stick—a single telescoping trekking pole (Black Diamond "Trail") to give a bit of extra balance and push in difficult terrain and when crossing rivers. So maybe I'm getting along in years (riddle of the Sphinx, anyone?), but I was absolutely sold with it, and have made it a permanent part of my hiking gear. (But one hand holding a map, the other holding the stick, means now I can't carry the fishing rod in my hand anymore. So I had to get a telescoping one that I can strap onto my backpack, without it sticking up like an antenna and catching onto tree branches.)

The microfiber towel (a Sea to Summit "Pocket Towel") is some 40×50 cm in size and weighs absolutely nothing and takes up no space at all. It's next to useless for drying myself off after a swim, but gets the job done—eventually. What it's really good for is drying other stuff. It does not absorb all that much water, but whatever it has absorbed can be squeezed and wrung out of it, leaving it almost completely dry. So it is effective for drying my hair, although it takes a few iterations of drying and wringing. And it's also very good at drying the insides of gumboots that have accidentally slurped water from a river! Wipe the insides, wring the towel, repeat. Your woolen socks will also be wet after such a disaster, and they cannot be wrung without destroying their shape—so just wrap them up in the towel, squeeze for a bit, then wring the towel, and repeat! Insides of the tent damp from condensation after a cold night? Wipe them off with the towel, and wring it outside the tent flap. Repeat. Did the towel get all icky somehow? Wash it and wring it dry. Ready to use without any waiting.

A Leatherman Wave or similar multi-tool weighs approximately a quarter of a kilogram. Needless to say, I've never carried one into the wild. As a knife it's just not as good as a real sheath knife, and in the wilderness I've never found myself needing the multitude of tools it contains. Ditto for a do-it-all Swiss Army Knife. Keep one handy when bicycling around the neighborhood, when readying a hybrid rocket for launch, or when installing a new TV antenna at your cottage, but save weight when hiking—leave the Leatherman at home. It's an urban tool.

I do not carry a GPS-unit. A GPS would only tell me where I am. I need to know where to go, and a compass will point me there. Once I get there, then I'll know where I am. (Besides, a good lot of help the GPS will be once its batteries die.) Pro tip: Copy or print your maps onto separate A4-size paper sheets. Store them in your backpack, and keep just two immediately relevant sheets handy. Place them back-to-back and seal them in a 2-liter Minigrip/Ziploc bag to protect them from the rain. The white label areas on the bags can be cleared up by wiping with acetone! I re-use my maps by writing a journal on the blank back side. Otherwise they could just as well be two-sided prints. I print my maps from pikakartta.fi. Yes, you can also get 1:50 000 maps from there. An axe would sometimes be useful, but I've deemed it unnecessarily heavy. I've always managed to make a campfire even without an axe. Branches can be pulled off fallen dead trees, stumps are easy to kick and pull out of the ground, and dead birch breaks apart in your hands. And most huts, lean-tos and other serviced campfire sites usually have an axe provided as standard equipment.

I've tried Gore-Tex footwear, but it just doesn't cut it. Others will disagree, but in my experience, traditional old gumboots rule for walking. Nokian Kontio is what I use, despite its slightly sub-par rubber mix (it only lasts some 500 km or so before developing hairline cracks), as it happens to fit my foot like a glove. (Note to self: Size 46. I never can remember that.) I regularly use double insoles—an extra pair in addition to what came with the boots. I used to swear by the wool insoles made by Kuoma, but I've lately used Jalas FX2 insoles, which are hugely more expensive, but actually pretty good, and seem to last forever. A pair of neoprene sandals can be worn around camp, and used to wade across rivers too deep for boots. Despite my distrust of modern hiking boots, Gore-Tex raingear (jacket and pants) does work for me just fine, and I would not trade those for anything.

The Mylar "space blanket" is a generously sized, aluminized sheet of incredibly thin and tough plastic material. These are generally sold to protect against hypothermia. I have never used one for that purpose, and probably never will (I hope). I carry one because it weighs absolutely nothing, and (at least while it's unused) it is completely waterproof. So it will fix a broken tent or a leaking lean-to, and maybe if I encounter a river too deep to wade across, I'll wrap my backpack in it, and float it while swimming across the river.

The cell phone remains switched off most of the time, as there's no way to charge it out there. (Nor could I charge a GPS when its batteries wore out.) I just check text messages once or twice a week. I used to lug a Canon EOS 5D or an EOS 3 with an L-series lens, but have since come to my senses and bought a used Canon PowerShot A720 IS specifically for hiking. (I've also tested a used SX120 IS—running on AA batteries is the critical requirement—but that doesn't hack wet weather nearly as well as the A720 IS. Pity. The SX120 IS is a very nice camera otherwise.) One of these days I might bring an amateur radio transceiver with me. (Hmmm... Could I make my fishing rod double as an antenna?)

For two people, modify the above list slightly:

• Replace the one-person tent with a Hilleberg Nallo 3 GT—luxuriously roomy accommodation for two! I have made some improvements and additions to mine.
• Add a standard Trangia 25 camp stove with a gas burner (yes, despite the heavy canister, gas cylinders do have higher energy density than spirit).
• Of course, take enough gas as well. I find that a 450 g (net) gas cylinder is just enough fuel for a week, provided you don't boil a full pot of water to make tea with every meal. If you never make tea on the Trangia, a single cylinder will last much, much longer. Gas is more convenient for cooking than spirits, but combining leftover gas into a single cylinder is a bit more tedious than pouring spirit from one bottle to another.
• Take two plastic soup plates. Leave out the extra frying pan, as a non-stick version of the Trangia lid is just fine for frying. You can even toss pancakes with it, despite its rather harsh vertical sides. For frying fish or pancakes over an open fire, you can whittle a wooden extension for the handle and attach it with wire. Keep a length of wire handy right there inside the Trangia. And I've found an extra handle to be useful enough to warrant its minimal weight, so I routinely have two handles in my Trangia.
• Even with the Trangia stove, the pakki is most useful for all other cooking over a fire (e.g. when making evening tea), so I do take that along also, as well as my wood-burning titanium stove. Sometimes I make tea on it while cooking on the Trangia, in order to save some gas.
• Also, take along some deodorant and a deck of playing cards.

Food

I carry foodstuffs that I have dried myself. They can be dried overnight in an ordinary oven—spread the stuff in small quantities in a loose, thin layer over parchment on an oven tray, and dry at low heat (around 50–70°C) with the door left slightly open (leave some utensil between the door). You can dry two trays at once, one on the lowest level of the oven, pushed all the way back, the other on the highest level, all the way at the front, up against the slightly open door. This allows air to circulate sufficiently even in a conventional (non-circulating) oven—though a circulating oven can handle even a third tray at the same time! I like to put a layer of paper kitchen towel under any even slightly fatty foodstuffs (e.g. pretty much any meats) at least for the first few hours of drying. This helps remove some of the fat. Less fat not only means it will keep better in summer temperatures on a weeks-long hike, but also makes reconstitution easier, as fat tends to repel water. But you do perhaps lose some small part of the flavor. (I heard an interesting idea from another hiker once: instead of frying e.g. minced meat before drying, you can boil it in water instead. Most of the fat will float to the surface, and you can skim it off for an even leaner dried meat! Though I guess this will lose an even greater part of the flavor. I have not tried this myself.)

I also have a dedicated dryer (a simple and cheap one by OBH Nordica) which blows hot air through a pile of stackable trays. Most foodstuffs will dry overnight. The dryer is very good for vegetables and especially potatoes, which tend to take on a dark tint and sweet taste when dried in the oven (not that it really matters much, though). Minced meat or flaked tuna, on the other hand, are better suited for oven drying, as they would fall through the perforated trays of the dryer. With sufficient attention, the dryer and an oven, both working "in three shifts" i.e. three batches a day, can dry a month's food for one in just about a week.

Almost anything that's not too oily or fatty can be dried. Slice everything quite thin. Raw meats are cooked before drying. Some vegetables e.g. potatoes, carrots, cabbage or asparagus benefit from being shortly boiled (but not fully cooked) before drying. Once reconstituted and heated up, they seldom need further cooking. Here's some examples of what I routinely dry and take along:

• Minced meat, various smoked meats (smoked kangaroo or deer yum!), meatballs, chicken, reindeer stew
• Shrimp, crab, tuna, mussels
• Potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, asparagus, apple, corn, leek, cabbage, other mixed vegetables
• Peasoup concentrate, baked beans in tomato sauce, tomato puree

Here's some other store-bought foodstuffs that I carry:

• Chocolate, nuts, dried fruit, other assorted snacks, rum
• Instant mashed potato powder, parboiled rice, macaroni, lentils
  • Ready pasta carbonara meals by Pirkka are a staple of my diet while hiking, easily enhanced with dried meat and veges!
• Porridge materials (oatmeal and talkkuna-porridge)
  • Add some dried apple, brown sugar and cinnamon to oatmeal! Yum!
• Crispbread, butter, loose leaf tea (teabags take up too much space)
• Spices, salt, chili powder, dried onion (luckily I don't have to dry this myself), boullion cubes
• Soup mix, sauce mix, dessert soup or compote mix (Ekström or Blå Band or whatever)
• Pancake mix (home-made, see below for recipe), wheat flour, sugar
• Dried egg powder (I hear that can also be dried at home, but I've bought it ready)
• Hot chocolate mix with extra added cocoa powder. Nice at the end of a rainy day.
  • Extra nice with an added drop of rum.

If you prefer, you can combine and seal everything intended for one meal into a single freezer bag, possibly even including spices, before leaving home. This might seem convenient, but it does limit your options for improvization out there. I prefer to keep the individual foodstuffs separate, and combine them at mealtime (or, perhaps, at previous mealtime, if they'll need longer to reconstitute, or if I expect the weather to be really awful). That also feels more like actual cooking than just emptying a single freezer bag into a pot and adding water.  :)

Carrying all the food for six weeks would be tough, but four weeks is just possible. Having a grocery store somewhere along the hike makes things a lot easier—you can carry dried stuff for all six weeks, and stock up on butter, cripsbread, porridge, macaroni, rum etc. halfway through. Many stores carry quite reasonable pancake batter mix as well. Of course, if you can rely on catching enough fish, you can cut down on the food you must carry. Mostly I don't rely on it, but fresh fish is major, major, major YUM in the midst of dried foods. In the autumn, the forest is also full of berries and mushrooms—but I really don't like the latter. And there's no substitute for pancakes. Mmmmmm, pancakes. Pancakes are gooooood. Remember to eat pancakes. Pick ripe cloudberries, add the tiniest bit of sugar, and eat over pancakes. Yum.

Here's the pancake mix, enough for a sturdy evening meal plus breakfast the following morning (for one hungry hiker). I guess you could utilize dried egg in there as well, but I've always just used extra powdered milk instead. Two of these servings will almost fit in a 1 liter bottle. Better to make generous servings, and what doesn't fit in the bottle can be sealed in a plastic freezer bag. 4 dl wheat flour 1 dl skim milk powder 3/4 dl sugar 2 tsp salt Mix the ingredients well before the hike. To cook, mix into approximately 1/2 l of water (start with less, add as necessary). Let the batter sit for 30 minutes (and guard it with your life!), add more water if needed, and season with salt if necessary. Fry in butter over an open fire. Serve with jam or compote made from powdered mix such as Ekström. Or, better yet, pick ripe cloudberries from the nearest marshland. Yum. Remember to eat pancakes at least once a week during an extended hike.

Water

Water in Lapland is mostly ok to drink as is. If you happen to find a spring, that's the best water you can get, anywhere. Any small streams coming down from the fells should be absolutely clean rain water and perfect to drink. Bigger streams and rivers that they eventually form are, in theory, the exact same water. In lakes and ponds, where water stands still, all kinds of stuff can live, but they probably won't kill you. I generally scoop up a mug of water, and visually inspect it for insect larvae or other aquatic life swimming about. Then I sniff and slurp it like I would a fine vintage wine. If it does not smell or taste bad, I drink it. Rivers and streams flowing out of lakes and ponds are, in theory, the exact same water as in the lake, but any aquatic life will tend to live in still water—not at the very point where a river flows out. Therefore any flowing water will likely be better to drink than any stagnant water, but regardless, especially for larger rivers, I do look at the water before I drink it.

Sometimes the best you can get is a ditch or stream leading out of a swamp. Or perhaps even a natural or dug-out hole in a swamp, where water collects. A swamp can harbor various signs of life, but mostly they won't kill you either. I've drank out of swamp streams and survived. If it looks ok, doesn't smell bad, and doesn't taste bad, then the water is probably ok to drink. But if there's any concern, I've never taken the chance—boiling the water first (either make tea for drinking immediately, or boil the water and let it cool down for bottling) makes it safe to drink, period. There's also all kinds of chlorination tablets and purification filters on the market, but I've never bothered to look into those.

On occasion, there simply is no water available in the near vicinity. Quite often you can find some water regardless, but it may be too nasty to drink without boiling (which is a hassle) or even after boiling. Check your map to see what kind of streams or ponds your planned campsite has nearby. If there just is no water nearby, you will have to carry it from the closest available supply. I always have a 1 liter canteen with me (not always full, if I'm hiking where there's good water everywhere), but that's not enough for making dinner and breakfast when camping overnight. I have carried water in the pakki, by filling a plastic freezer bag with water (I always have extra freezer bags with me), tying it off and fitting it inside. That works also, but I recently realized that an extra plastic water bottle does not actually weigh much at all—it only takes up space. But space is at a premium in my backpack as well... However, if I store my pancake mix in the bottle, that space is not wasted. Now, if I ever need to carry more water with me in any kind of emergency, I can just transfer the pancake mix into a freezer bag and voila, I have an additional 1 liter bottle to carry water in!

Note that I cannot guarantee the safety of any water you choose to drink in the wilderness or elsewhere. The suitability of available water for drinking does depend on where and when you are hiking, and under what conditions (the same waterhole may be ok in early spring or late autumn, but in the warmest midsummer it may be infested with insect larvae). It can also depend on luck. There may be a dead moose rotting away just 50 meters upstream from where you stopped to quench your thirst. So drink at your own risk.