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Grease pot? hmmm Guess, I'll go to Walmart and look for it.
Most of the suggestions for clothes in the other threads have focused on nylon or nylon blends. I saw some athletic shirts made of polyester at Walmart and Target. Is that a good backpacking fabric? My guess would be that it is too warm but idk.


They don't have that grease pot at the walmarts here in Canada, which kind sucks, but I found a little pair of 1 and 2 litre non-stick coated pots, they are light, as I grinded the rivets off the handles and picked myself up a pot lifter. Also I find that, even though polyester dries really fast, it is heavier and doesn't wick as well as well as nylon. When sweating in a polyester shirt, I feel like I'm wearing cotton, but of course it dries effeciently enough. I have found the Walmarts here in Canada have really beefed their activewear section with the Athletics brand. I find nylon wind pants that weigh 10 oz for 15 bucks (which is great compared to my polyester sweats weighing in at 14oz and most other hiking pants weighing in at 18oz or costing 100 bucks). I find all my shirts in the underwear section. They are meant to be an under layer, but work perfect as a stand alone shirt, they even make nylon/spandex compression fit and loose fit longsleeve shirts just like underarmour but without the price, 15 bucks each. Of course my Athletics shortsleeve nylonblend is my fav shirt still at 10 bucks each. If they have this line in the States, I'm sure it'd be even cheaper than it is up here.

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1. leave your backpack unzipped when you hang it on bear cables because, the mice will eat a hole in your pack top get the food, now I have to patch it.


I heard that if you have a cardboard disc with a hole in the middle that you can thread the line through, the mice will get to the disc, try to crawl over it and end up falling off. Never had experience with mice yet, but who knows.

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2. Don't be so pre-occupied with scaring off a bear that comes into the campground that you don't get a good picture of it.


Ya, me and my wife were car camping and we saw a bear out by the road (the campsite was the first one by the road) and we thought he'd left and my wife got this chill like she was being watched, she turned around and this (I would say about 3 year old) black bear was about 2m from her and I told her before, DON'T RUN. Not a sound out of her, but she books it to the truck. lol. And then after I scare it away (she was making food), she's like 'damn, I wanted a picture!'. We got to see him again as he camp up the campsite road after going to numerous other sites. lol
This pic is of him later that day in a stream bed up the road.



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4. Don't underestimate the temperature difference between 2500 ft and 5500 ft. I woke up at 4:30 am to 40 degree temps in my 40 degree bag.


My home is at about 3000ft, where we go camping is about 4500 and even that much is a difference. But when you mix in mountain terrain you get what was on the May long weekend We had about +6c for a low here at home and out there was -6c. I'm just glad I'm a hot sleeper, I needed to shed clothes and open the bottom of my +4c bag over the night! My nose got a little cold though. lol.