Our Hiking Blog

So you have spent $500+ on a brand new tent, headed out on a trip, arrived home and discovered a tear in the floor or fly.

Devastation.

Is it ruined for ever?
Can a tear be repaired?
Will the result be any good?

Luckily a simple tear or rip to a tent floor or fly can be repaired quite easily, and the result is great!

Our future son in law, Jay Reilly,  recently stayed for a few days. He is an experienced outdoor educator and mountain guide with many years experience in repairing tents. He “volunteered” to repair a torn tent one day and we captured the process on video.
Continue Reading…

We have a new eBook planned.

Just for a bit of fun.

It will be a giveaway on Our Hiking Blog.

It is designed to help people starting out.

We want to help them get setup with the best hiking clothing for a multi-day trip.

The mini guide will be a slightly expanded version of the “What  clothes to wear on the Overland Track” section of our How to hike the Overland Track guide.  Some of you may be familiar with it, and hopefully found it useful.

Gratuitous  photo of naked person hiking in an attempt to be funny…..

End of gratuitous naked photo, hope you laughed….. Continue Reading…

Georgie Bull, one of our contributers,  has been sharing her “Get Fit” program in preparation for Hiking the Overland Track in Tasmania in September.

This last couple of weeks she has been struck down with “the flu” but is finally on the mend.  In this piece she muses over how her fitness campaign is progressing:

Over to Georgie:

Regrettably, my fitness regime collapsed two weeks ago when I picked up a nasty dose of the flu.

I am a miserable patient and spent a lot of time mopping about, just willing my lungs and head to clear and my energy level to bounce back.

I felt better on Sunday, so decided to walk up to Montville. I got just past my letterbox before I felt my heart rate increase dramatically and my chest tighten. And my legs stopped wanting to work. I was tempted to turn back, upset at this rotten setback – muscles gone to jelly on their holiday from the gym, and cardio fitness obviously gone backwards.

Thinking, ‘I am doing the OT in four weeks’, I decided to push on. Continue Reading…

We were recently in the market for new sleeping mats.

For a few years we have been happily using Thermarest Prolite 4′s – the 3/4 length ones.

The main issue with these is, on a trip into cold climates, our legs were getting a bit cold and the insulation between the ground and our bodies was really only 2.5. cm (1″). They were  loyal companions for several years but it was time to upgrade.

Sue did a lot or research (in conjunction with her mate Anne - Overland Track March 2011) and came up with the Exped Synmat 7 UL (S) Sleeping Mat. It is marketed as light, warm and comfortable.  Definitely worth checking out. Continue Reading…

All right, we know it is ‘social media” and all pervasive but Facebook can be fun and entertaining.

And informative…

Last week we set up a new Our Hiking Blog Facebook page. We came to this decision quite easily, as up until now, Frank shared a lot of information on his personal Facebook account.

This was great BUT we are not sure if people interested in bushwalking or hiking, are also interested in what we had for lunch, what our children have been up to or reading about our football team!

It has been getting hard to keep the family and friend stuff separated from the outdoors stuff.

Hence it was an easy decision to create a separate Our Hiking Blog Facebook page.

So, why Like Our Hiking Blog Facebook page? Continue Reading…