You Sweat You Die
Wearing Cotton – Cotton is great for bombing around town or the trip to the mall. It is soft and comfortable but once cotton is wet, it stays wet and loses any insulating properties. If the summer nothing is worse than your sweat drenched clammy cotton shirt sticking to you. Pick wicking clothing; you can even find wicking sport shirts and underwear at Walmart.
Wearing too Many Layers – Piling on a bunch of layers before heading out is great, just don’t over do it. What is the point if a mile into the hike you are going to over heat and have to shed a layer? I keep a record of what I wear and the temperature so I can look back and compare for current conditions.
Bundle Up When You Stop – When you stop hiking, you lose body heat fast, epically if it is windy. Bundle up when you stop for food or to take a break to avoid the chills. Once the chills set in it is hard to get rid of them…
Sweating – Les Stroud says it best “if you sweat, you die”. Sweat is your body’s way of removing excess heat through evaporation. After sweating when the temp drops the chills set in and can quickly lead to hyperthermia.
As the weeks pass the stock of dumb-phones that cell carriers are offering shrinks more and more. It seems that more and more people have a smart phone, I have a driod from verizon wireless and love it. The Android market offers lots of apps geared toward hiking. The GPS in many smart-phones are as good as hand held GPS receivers, many have an electronic compass and as long as you have cell service you can get up to date weather including radar maps. A smart-phone can be a great tool on the trail…
Here are my top 5 FREE hiking apps for android:
1. Hi-HikerPro
Hi-Hiker Pro is a all in one tool which is really all the different devices needed on the trail. It includes a pedometer, stopwatch, compass, flashlight, maps, altimeter, GPS tracking, weather forecast and emergency call. You can save your different sessions and import/export your trips as a GPX files to visualize your them on Google Earth.
2. My Tracks
My Tracks developed by google enables you to record GPS tracks and view live statistics – such as time, speed, distance, and elevation. Once recorded, you can share your tracks, upload them to Google Spreadsheets and visualize them on Google My Maps.
3. Peak.AR
Peak.AR offers a panoramic augmented reality view of the surrounding peaks. It uses the compass and GPS receiver in the phone to let you know what peaks you are looking at and how far away they are. Sometimes lacks accuracy but still pretty neat.
4. AlpineQuest GPS Hiking (Lite)
AlpineQuest GPS Hiking (Lite) is a maps program, you can store maps on your SD card so they can be accessed without network access. USGS TOPO maps can be made and saved via the AlpineQuest website. AlpineQuest will also track your route and allow you to save waypoints if you buy the full version of the app.
5. Wheres My Droid
Not really made for hiking but I’m including it here because it is a great tool for loved ones. With Wheres My Droid you can set up a phrase so when it is text to you it will auto reply with your location. I like this because Miss HuskyHiker can see where I am on the trail as long as I have network access. Great peice of mind for loved ones if you often hike alone.
And always remember to keep your phone on silent when hiking, nothing is worse than a ringing phone in the middle of the woods especially when you are trying to snap a shot of a deer or neat bird on the trail…
Ion Mask is Waterproof
Ion Mask is a liquid repelling shield. It changes the surface on the product at a molecular level and liquid just “beads” on the surface and runs off. Ion Mask can be applied to just about anything and does not affect there function or feel. P2i is the company behind Ion Mask and they have partnered up with the footwear maker High-Tec. High-Tec is already offering the V-Lite Altitude Ultra WPI boots with the Ion Mask process applied. In the Ion Mask tech papers they clam that Ion Mask was put through some rigorous tests like flex and abrasion tests and it looks like it performed well.
Ion Mask can also be used on consumer electronics. Just think things like MP3 players,
Ion Mask can be applied to electronics
cell phones, digital cameras, and laptops could all be waterproof. The coating affects the surface to a depth of nanometers, it reduces the surface energy so that liquids can not cling or be absorbed by it. They claim that the process does not effect the operation of power and usb ports. I hope more companies jump on board and give it a shot so we can see if this really works… I hope it does…
gear, hiking, how to, tech | Husky Hiker - Jim Bradley | 
3/3/2011 9:33 PM | 
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