Interesting new gear I found in Backpacker and Outside magazine's today

From www.brooks-range.com

Igloo 35 Folding Snow Saw   

Make short work of cutting snow with our lightweight, easily packable Igloo 35 Folding Snow Saw. An aggressive tooth is perfect for building an igloo, barrier wall, or cutting out a snowpit for accessing avalanche danger. If needed, this blade will cut wood too.     $49

From www.seikbagusa.com

The Seik Bag

Developed in the Chilean Andes, the classic 3rd Generation Selk'bag Sleepwear System (35°F) is the most mobile and comfortable sleepwear system available today      $149

and from www.usbcell.com

This NiMH AA cell can be used in normal battery applications and can be recharged simply by plugging into a USB port  

sleeping bag meets snuggie...

Looks more like a gumbi makeover suit!!!!LOL  man what the chileans will come up with.

Comes in other colors too. Seems cheap at $149 and it comes in child sizes too. Reminds me of a down jacket and pants I used to have in the 80s, the lpants had a zipper in the middle seams to zip them into a sleeping bag foot.

It does look like the down suits and jackets worn to climb Mt kennedy in the 1960's. I remember the national geographic issue like it was yesterday. But its just comical that they are returning to old styles. Such as ultralite backpackers with design that is.

I used my down suit/bag in Yosemite in 1980 January to May, then sold it. Kept me warm to -30 Made by North Face I think, cost me all of 300 dollars in 1979 in Alaska. But it had no feet, had to wear down booties and gloves.

I have a buddy who swears by a system thats not that different from the suit above. His thoughts are why carry a heavy coat just for durring the day and a heavy down bag for night. He carries a VERY lite 45+ degree bag and a set of down pants and jacket to sleep in when it gets cold. I've never tried it so I don't know how well it works but I do know that his coat/pants/bag wiegh less than my 5 degree bag. I should note that my Marmot bag is on the heavy side for a down bag but boy is it comfy.

My old Golite down bag weighs 1.4 lbs and used to be rated to 20 degrees. Think I need to have it restuffed and washed. I bought at 20 degree polarguard style bag from Mike Morrow and use it now.

denis daly said:

Looks more like a gumbi makeover suit!!!!LOL  man what the chileans will come up with.

LOL....oh man...that is so funny!  And correct.

I think it would be funny to have a hidden video camera on while wearing the Gumby outfit while being at work.

The USBCell thing seems intriguing... but I'm grasping at how it might be useful in the real world.  Most (all) devices I have that use common style batteries (like AA) use multiple batteries.  So I'd need to either have multiple USB ports available to charge the batteries concurrently, or charge them one at a time.  And, while (as I mentioned in the post about solar chargers) can envision scenarios where I'd like to charge batteries in the wild, I certainly don't have a device with me that'd provide USB power for charging.   Hmmm, maybe one of those solar panels would...  But, still, it's the "one at a time" issue again.

Please help me here .. is this a gimmick or what? :)

I am beginning to wonder about that USB battery, cause everytime I go to the site it always says no available yet. Maybe someone dreamed up the idea and is just waiting for someone else to build it. And yes, that was one of the reasons I thought it was interesting is that most PCs dont have many USB ports. Seems like it would be better to have a charger with a cord that would plug into a USB port.   

My Brunton Solaris 26 will charge my camera batteries, my flashlight batteries, my computer and my cell phone as quickly as if I had it plugged into a wall socket. All I need it direct sunlight. It also has a car battery charger and says it will recharge a auto battery in 10 hours. But I don't drive or even own a car.

Those USB batteries do work and they work well as long as you realize that there is less actual battery because of the USB Male A connector. There is however a serious issue with charging them. Sticking to many of them into your computer can cause to much power run over the bus and slowly, or catastrophically, destroy the bus and probably your motherboard as well. The same can happen with multiple iPods or the like it's just that you don't often have 4-6 iPods plugged in to your machine. Luckily they can be recharged in most standard NiMH chargers so you can use one of them and top the batteries up on the go from your laptop or any other AC/DC to USB adapter.

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