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The Ultralight Hiker
The Ultralight Hiker

Ultralight hiking, backpacking, bushwalking, deer hunting, canoeing, pack rafting, tips, trails, adventures, gear, reviews...Over 1600 posts & 70 years' experience.

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A Wild River Stag

4 Comments / Australia, Gippsland, Hunting, Mountain Areas of Victoria, Rivers in Victoria, Uncategorized, Victoria / admin

I know lots of you have seen this photo before as I have used it as a signature image for some time. Unsurprisingly a number have asked, ‘There must be a story behind that stag, Steve. Tell us about it’. Well, here goes…You can no doubt tell by how much I have aged that it […]

A Wild River Stag Read More »

Birthday Walk:

Leave a Comment / Australia, Backpacking, Gippsland, Hiking, The Upper Yarra Walking Track, Victoria, Walking Tracks in Victoria / admin

Della: “Wow, what a birthday! I am feeling very spoiled by the lovely messages and comments from so many people yesterday. Thank you all for thinking of me and making me feel so special! I loved hearing from you, and will reply to you all individually today. Some birthday pics here from yesterday: I spent

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New Pack Suspension System

Leave a Comment / Backpacking, DIY, Hiking, How To Guide, Hunting, Packs / admin

For years I have been quite dissatisfied with backpack straps. They place a quite unnecessary and undue strain on a small area of the shoulders. It seems to me that for horses this problem was solved back in circa the C14th with the invention of the horse collar and associated hardware to allow a horse

New Pack Suspension System Read More »

Catching Your Breath – Walking Uphill

2 Comments / Backpacking, Hiking, How To Guide, Hunting / admin

I am often gob-smacked by just how bright Willis Eschenbach is, but this observation was astonishing. Could breathing out more combat the breathlessness you get by strenuous walking uphill. I tried this out on my recent hunting trip, and it’s true. I was able to walk in one go to the top of hills I

Catching Your Breath – Walking Uphill Read More »

DIY Crampons Equals 4WD Boots

2 Comments / DIY, Footwear / admin

As Della observed in the last post it has been very wet around her lately. We have ad 4″ of rain this week alone! Going around the lambs or trying to spray thistles on our steep hills has been fraught with difficulty on account of how slippery it has been. I have had a number

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Sword of Damocles

Leave a Comment / Australia, Farming, Home & Gardening, Gippsland, Victoria / admin

(Della): A wild and windy night! We were checking on the creek and dams this morning after all the bad weather and discovered this new “Sword of Damocles”which had obviously launched itself from the huge blue gum above, embedding itself firmly and deeply in the ground on the track below. So glad no-one was underneath

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The Joy of Closed Roads

Leave a Comment / Gippsland, Mountain Areas of Victoria, Uncategorized / admin

As a follow-up to my post Find Your Own Places to Explore can I suggest that for years (in Victoria – and elsewhere) our masters have been closing off previously useful access roads and tracks. Though these may not be open to vehicles (often despite sterling efforts to negotiate around piles of logs, rocks or

The Joy of Closed Roads Read More »

All the Rivers Run

Leave a Comment / Australia, Gippsland, Thompson River, Victoria / admin

We have been having a wet Spring here in South-Eastern Australia – as you may be aware. Dorothea McKellar’s observations in her famous Poem, My Country are well and truly vindicated this year, ie ‘I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains.” Rivers which

All the Rivers Run Read More »

‘Free’ Power Bank

2 Comments / DIY, Electronics, How To Guide / admin

‘Waste not, want not’ was another of my mother’s favourite maxims – one I have certainly taken to heart, as my wife will attest as I have fill our house and sheds up with all sorts of ‘mathoms’ – hobbit for ‘junk’. I had two ‘dead’ laptop batteries which I probably ought to have binned

‘Free’ Power Bank Read More »

Find Your Own Places to Explore

4 Comments / Backpacking, DIY, Hiking / admin

A sequel to an earlier post, Gully Walking I have always liked Robert Frost’s poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ even though I realised long ago how much he/it owed to my even more favourite poet, Edward Thomas who was also a close friend of his until his death in WW1. However I too, early in

Find Your Own Places to Explore Read More »

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