The Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide: Tools and
Techniques To Hit the Trail
Andrew Skurka |
Owner Review By Bob Dorenfeld
November 13, 2014
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Tester Bio |
Name:
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Bob
Dorenfeld
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I'm an active hiker, snowshoer, skier, and
backpacker. Home base is the Southern
Colorado Rockies, where I'll hike from 7000 ft
(2100 m) to alpine tundra, with desert trips at lower
altitudes. Six to 12 miles (10 to 20 km) daily is
my norm, with elevation gains up to 4000 ft (1200
m). Many of my backpack trips are two or three
nights, other trips are longer, and I usually
carry about 30 lb (14 kg). My style is
lightweight but not obsessively so - extras like
binoculars, camera, and notebook make my trips
more enjoyable.
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Email: |
geartest(at)sageandspruce(dot)net
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Age: |
56
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Location: |
Central Colorado, USA
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Gender: |
M
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Height: |
5' 6" (1.68 m) |
Weight: |
140 lb (64 kg) |
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Product Overview
Publisher:
National Geographic Society
Website: www.nationalgeographic.com
MSRP: US$19.95 ISBN: ISBN:
1426209207, 9781426209208 Published:
2012 Format: Softcover,
224 pp, 150 color photographs, 5 1/4 x 8 3/8 in
(13 x 21 cm)
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I
really wanted to like all of this book, but in the end I was
disappointed. It seems to me that just about any
guidebook to hiking gear, but especially one calling
itself "Ultimate", is going to have a very high bar to
jump compared to two of the classics in the arena.
In my opinion both "Backpacking One Step At A Time" by Harvey Manning
and "The Complete Walker" by Colin Fletcher have never
been surpassed in their readability, humor, and general
usefulness for a broad audience of hikers and
backpackers. Of course, some of their technical
content is now outdated but their style is not.
Andrew Skurka's Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide
would have benefited greatly by incorporating Fletcher's
or Manning's objective, fair, and more comprehensive
treatment of walking and camping gear. I was an
excited and enthusiastic reader of Skurka's introduction
and first section, but became increasingly disappointed
and dismayed by his opinionated and skewed treatments of
most of the specific gear topics in the rest of his
book. Indeed, Skurka hopes his Guide will "become
the go-to manual for backpacking how-to" à la
Fletcher's classic (which he counts as inspiration) -
but alas, I have serious doubts about that, for reasons
I'll explain below.
Ultimate Hiker's Gear
Guide is
aimed at beginning to intermediate hikers and
backpackers. Here is Skurka's first sentence in
the Introduction: "My most successful backpacking trips
have been those for which I had honest, accurate, and
correct answers to three critical questions: 1) What are
my objectives? 2) What are the environmental and route
conditions that I will likely encounter during my trip,
such as temperatures, precipitation, and water
availability? and 3) What gear, supplies, and skills
will best help me achieve my objectives and keep me safe
and comfortable in those conditions?" Hurray!
That's my kind of analysis, although I think that most
of us do it less formally than is implied by Skurka's
statement. But his excellent advice to the reader
stands: think about what you're planning to do, prepare
for expected conditions, then carry out your plan.
Skurka's target reader is a hiker who "at least
sometimes wants to be more like an Ultimate Hiker".
What is an Ultimate Hiker? It's a "backpacker who
simply loves to walk" - not a very helpful definition,
and much too broad to hang a hat on, let alone an entire
practical guide book. Later in the text Skurka
does help us out by expanding his definition of Ultimate
Hiker to include "relationships with nature, with
others, and with myself". Ah, to the heart
of the matter...as with any activity, we learn what
motivates us to push on and discover whatever it was
that made us trek the trail, scale the peak, flee the madding crowd.
But more practically, Skurka manages to
work in lots of useful information in the first part of
his guide.
Part 1 of Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide
expands on "What are my objectives" and "What are the
environmental and route conditions that I will likely
encounter during my trip", while Part 2 discusses the
gear, supplies and skills that will help the hiker enjoy
his trip comfortably and safely. Part 3 consists
of gear lists and "trip-specific kits" that readers can
consult during trip planning. I won't spend too
much time reviewing Part 1. I enjoyed this section
and found Skurka's advice eminently practical and
applicable to my own hiking and backpacking style.
His easy style is very readable, and the text throughout
Part 1 (and indeed all of Gear Guide) is
well-edited and structured. Typesetting and
illustrations are pleasant to read and look at, and I
found it easy to find topics using the Table of
Contents. Unfortunately, there is no index, which
would have made finding specific areas of interest easier.
Nonetheless, some of the interesting topics Skurka
covers in Part 1 include: Why, When & Where, Are
You a Hiker Or a Camper, and Know Before You Go.
Here is where the reader finally gets a useful
definition of an Ultimate Hiker, which includes, among
other things, that: they are knowledgeable about
environmental and route conditions, they scrutinize each
item in their pack to minimize pack weight, their skill
level is extremely high enabling them to remain safe and
comfortable, and they walk efficiently but not
necessarily fast. "Ultimate Campers", according to
Skurka, have other interests, such as photography or
hunting, are willing to backpack more weight than is
strictly necessary but don't mind, and, interestingly,
they can be content to just "nap and hang out".
I'm not sure I agree with Skurka's somewhat too facile
distinctions between Ultimate Hikers and Campers, but I
take his point that Hikers are more focused on the
technicalities of gear and on making miles on the trail.
I think it's a disservice to the outdoor
community to create artificial divisions such as these
instead of concentrating on what activities and types of
gear backpackers can agree on. Skurka includes any
number of practical tips for staying motivated on trail.
Proper conditioning before the trip starts, "hike like a
tortoise" with slow and steady progress to prevent
burn-out, start hiking early in the day to allow some
down time later, and last but not least, "expect a
challenge". "A 'fast' hike is rewarding and
satisfying, but it’s not a vacation. It can be very
taxing mentally and exhausting physically. I embrace
these additional difficulties as an integral part of my
trip, on a par with wildlife encounters and scenic
vistas." Well, it depends on how one defines
"vacation", but I agree that it's best to go with the
flow and "embrace" whatever obstacles one encounters.
Finally, in Know Before You Go Skurka details some of
the facts about the physical world that every hiker
ought to have at least a passing knowledge of, such as
temperature, precipitation, vegetation, sun exposure,
water availability, and natural hazards. These are
only summaries, though, and the reader is advised to
consult more comprehensive sources for more detail.
Part 2, Tools & Techniques, is the section promised
by the book's title, and here is where I think that Skurka fails to
deliver on his goal that his Guide will "become the
go-to manual for backpacking how-to". The
major problem is a subtle form of "projection": using
you, the reader, as a proxy for his own experience and
preferences without making it clear that he's doing so.
Skurka's treatment of hiking shoes and boots is typical
of most of Part 2. He repeats the same
contemporary mantras about footwear that I read both online and in
print. I'm referring to the trend today to
ever-lighter-weight hiking "boots" and shoes, and the
move away from the use of leather. This reminds me of
the 1970s when just the opposite (and equally
misleading) trend was for heavy mountaineering-style
boots. Skurka, like so many authors, loves to quote
the old saw about "one pound on the feet is four pounds
on the back", or in his case, five on the back. I
could find only one scientific study of this effect, and
its conclusions were interesting but not decisive.
Subjectively, of course, every hiker has his own comfort
level. Hiking boots (or shoes) are so much more
than just weight on the feet: they protect soles, sides
of the feet, toes, ankles, etc.
In his shoe section
Skurka strongly promotes
only lightweight and plastic-component boots and shoes
without fairly discussing why leather and heavier boots
might be appropriate for some hikers. The most
egregious instance of this is a triplet of illustrations: (top) a leather
medium-high boot with the caption "HIKING BOOTS The
conventional choice, despite their discomfort and
excessive weight", (middle) a low-cut shoe captioned
"TRAIL RUNNER An increasingly popular choice
because of
their weight and comfort", (bottom) another low-cut shoe
with the caption "HIKING SHOES A happy medium - lighter
than boots, more supportive than running shoes".
Let me see if I've got this right: "HIKING BOOTS The conventional choice" is uncomfortable and too heavy
for... whom? Certainly not me. I like
mid-weight to heavy boots for certain kinds of hiking,
and Skurka is projecting his preferences onto me by
assuming that my hiking style is his
style. Here is Skurka's evaluation of
boots:
best use
: Mountaineering, backpacking in dry snow
comfort: Uncomfortable
until “broken in”
breathability: Poor;
leather prevents escape of moisture
dry time: Once wet,
very difficult to get dry
durability: 1,000+
miles
underfoot protection:
Excellent
sensitivity/agility:
Poor
weight per pair: 3 to 4
lb
ideal temperature
range: Cool or cold
water resistance: Best,
but foot will get soaked in prolonged wet conditions
sole stiffness: Very
stiff
support: Maximum, but
overkill for most applications and users
cost: $150+
There are far too many generalizations, half-truths,
assumptions, and projections of his own opinions in just
this one listing of boot characteristics to go into
here.
Finally, it turns out that one of Skurka's own choices
for hiking is a boot I have much experience of my own
with: La Sportiva FC 3.0 GTX. My second pair of
these boots is almost at the end of its life at less
then 350 mi (560 km) and I'm quite disappointed in them.
The first pair came apart at about 300 mi (480 km).
Unfortunately it took some time (and miles) for me to
see why these favorite boots of Andrew Skurka were
poorly designed, and I don't see any discussion of these
kinds of details here. Any guidebook aspiring to
the level of The Complete Walker is going to
require a much more comprehensive treatment of its
subject than Skurka gives in his book.
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Concluding Thoughts
Andrew Skurka's Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide: Tools
and Techniques To Hit the Trail is an interesting
entry in the hiker's and backpacker's guidebook
category, but a flawed one at best. His hiking and
gear philosophy seems a bit muddied and could use some
clarity and an effort to avoid typecasting, especially
in the so-called differences between Ultimate Hikers and
Campers. Who is Skurka's intended audience for
Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide? Is it overnight
hikers or through hikers? Strictly
stay-on-groomed-trail hikers or bushwhackers? I
think he needs to better clarify his audience, and by
doing so he may have avoided some of his opinionated
mistakes.
After finishing his book, I better
understand what the "Ultimate" in the title refers to:
not the guidebook itself (it falls well short of that
goal for reasons discussed above), but to his philosophy
of what an "Ultimate Hiker" is. There is much to
be admired in Skurka's description of how to approach
hiking and backpacking (Part 1), both in the general
selection of gear and in being mindful about planning,
respecting nature, and respecting one's own abilities
and limitations. The Introduction and Part 1 of
Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide are worth keeping
and I'll want to peruse these sections in the future.
The treatment in Parts 2 and 3 of specific gear is
unfortunately too biased and incomplete to be of much
use.
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Reviewed By
Bob
Dorenfeld
Southern Colorado Mountains
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