Coffee Anywhere

A hot coffee with breakfast is one of the best parts of camping and there are many different methods to brew your morning joe, ranging from good old instant to portable espresso equipment. Our current method is to use an Alocs hand grinder with a sea to summit X-brew. The Alocs hand grinder was the cheapest option I found and for our purposes works perfectly, as a bonus a cordless drill can be used in place of the hand crank if you just happen to leave a drill in your car boot.  The sea to summit X-brew was not our first coffee dripper, we first tried a snow peak collapsible coffee drip. The snow peak was in my opinion a pain to clean and transport (especially if you take it hiking in your pack) being metal and having wire legs that can pop out. The X-brew is much easier to clean and a soft silicone construction. I have not had any luck with the X-brews inbuild filter (removable for cleaning), it is a fine line between clogging when the coffee is too fine and allowing the coffee to

The Fire Maple FMS-100T is a light weight hiking and camping stove available from AliExpress. It was my first experience with the brand and since purchasing I now have kettle, pan, pot, gas adapter and titanium cutlery all from Fire Maple. The stove weights 207 g or 219 g with its soft case (312 g with the plastic and soft case). The stove is made from titanium alloy and advertised at 2450W. I have mainly used this stove for car camping and some single night hikes and I would recommend for this purpose it works amazingly well. I paid $71 AUD but have seen the price vary from roughly $60-$100 depending on AliExpress sales, time of year and lunar cycle (prices can vary alot week to week on AliExpress.) Some Australian retailers have similar products to Fire Maple. The most apparent difference between the Fire Maple FMS-116T and the Kathmandu Backpacker Stove Titanium is the price (~$42 or $139) and the standard 4 week shipping time to Australia from most AliExpress

The rubber on a pair of climbing shoes that I purchased (Red Chilli Durango VCR) started to delaminate after about two months of use. After a bit of googling around I managed to find some recommendations for glues to try however I couldn’t find as much information on how to actually fixate the peeling parts of the shoes soles while the glue sets. The following is the method I have used twice and has given me great results. Materials used: SikaBond TechGrip High strength multipurpose polyurethane adhesive, newspaper/junk-mail, disposable rubber gloves, lots of rubber bands, half round second cut file and duck-tape (if your repairing the heel of a shoe). Method:           Clean the surface of the shoe that requires gluing (I just used water + old toothbrush and a clear rag to remove chalk dust)           Packed the shoe full of paper (junk-mail flyers and newspaper) to increase the rigidity of the shoes.           Apply the SikaBond TechGrip to the required areas (use

The Naturehike Cloud Up 3 tent is a 3-man, 3-season hiking tent that looks to have taken its design inspiration from the Big Agnes Fly Creek UL3. We purchased this tent originally for car camping but more recently have started to use it as a hiking tent. We have owned the tent for a little over a year now and have had no issues with it at all (we have bent 3 of the pegs). The tent has experienced moderate winds and heavy rain without issue. The inner fly has plenty of ventilation mesh at the top and makes for nice star gazing, the 20D half height walls of the inner fly provide extra protection from the wind and rain.  The front vestibule is OK but smaller than what some 2-person tents have. The single front entrance design works well for protection against weather conditions but makes it near impossible to get in or out of the tent without waking up the other occupant(s). If I were looking for a tent solely for hiking I would probably not pick this as it’s a little heavier

Ordered A generic “Down Jacket” from AliExpress for a total of $34 AUD some time last winter and since has become an almost permanent resident of my car/pack. The fabric is lightweight and the stitching is good. The down has leaked a few times but no more than some of my non-AliExpress sleeping bags. A size XXL weighs in at 313 g including the stuff sack. Sizing is a bit tricky, coming from Australia the sizing looks to work such that jackets are two sizes higher than they would be if on the shelf of an Australian retail store (I am a size Large and purchased an XXL) No fancy features to speak of, just a front zipper and two pockets both with zippers. The loft of the down fill is not rated but the jacket provides me enough warmth to justify its continued use in all four Australian seasons outside of alpine areas. Lauren is wearing a UNIQLO seamless ultra light down parka for comparison. The loft of the UNIQLO jacket is comparable along with the weight. The material of the U

3F UL Gear is a Chinese hiking brand that is best known for LanShan series tents. They also have been making backpacks for a couple of years now and recently released a 35L and 50L roll top style packs with single stay internal aluminium frame. This pack offers an interesting combination of features. A single compartment roll top XPAC bag with a zipper to allow overfilling the complete volume (probably allows an extra 5L roughly). The trampoline pouch front is nice but also its weakest point on my pack, already the stitching on my pack is unravelling – you may be able to see in the photo below some grey stitching near buckle where the red strap attaches to the trampoline pouch where is have attempted to stop any further unravelling. The internal frame is minimal and in my opinion puts this bag in the sweet spot between ultralight frameless packs and traditional packs (only other packs that come to mind would be the EXPED Lightning 45/60L packs). The aluminium frame stay a