I’ll say from a camp/comfort level, we did damn good considering our experience level. This site and Rokslide are incredibly valuable.
Revolutionary items:
Cottons balls in Vaseline. We started fire with absolutely no effort. Even in drenched conditions. It rained 8 hours one night, and 10 minutes after the rain stopped we had fire.
Puffy layers. Put em on when you sit to glass. Take em off to move. Simple.
Zip off Kuiu bottom base layers. Can take em off and put em on without taking off boots. Can take them off without even dropping trousers.
Enlightened Equipment 20* quilt with Nemo Tensor pad. Temps frequently dropped in the teens. Those nights I wore puffys over single Base layers and was very comfy. A couple nights I slept in a t shirt and no socks.
Merino. Holy crap. How did I not know about this stuff. Changed boxers and socks after 3 days and they smelled and felt brand new. I had no chafing either.
Injinji wool liner socks. No blisters, at all, anywhere.
What was stupid or didn’t work:
Solar charger. Dead weight.
Excessive food. None of us ate more than 1800 calories a day. We prepared for 2700.
We didn’t drink enough water. Force 3L down per day minimum. We prob only sat around 1.75L per day.
Short boots. Even at 9” with gaiters I managed to get water in my boots. This brought out leukotape as a precaution. I then ripped all the callouses off the bottom of my feet prematurely taking the tape off at first night out at the hotel. Let that stuff wear off!
