Lightening the load in your kayak or canoe saves you energy, makes your load easier to portage, and ends up making camp life easier. These 8 easy tips are a few ways that you can reduce your load.

A lightweight canoe and a small bag can be all you need if you travel light enough.

1. Store your composite kayak or canoe upside with the hatches open. As composite materials age, they can absorb water, which makes your canoe or kayak heavier. If as little as a quart of water absorption, you’re craft will gain 2 pounds. Not only does this matter on the portages and for car topping, but a heavier boat performs worse on the water.
2. New dry bags are now lighter and just as waterproof, consider trading in your old heavier dry bags for lighter versions. You could save as much as 1 pound per bag. If you use 6 dry bags, your savings could be close to 6 pounds. Try a few Outdoor Research Helium Dry Sacks. These OR bags are light and work like a charm.
3. Consider your choice of stoves: do you really need a white gas stove when you’d save weight and ease of use with a 3 ounce canister stove, or with an even lighter pop can stove. Try the MSR 3 ounce PocketRocket. Since, I switched to this stove, there has been no going back. It’s light and easy to use.
4. Leave the tent at home or upgrade. Many new lightweight tents are available now. Don’t buy a new two person tent unless it weighs less than 4 pounds. Or, even better, consider using just a tarp. Tarps combined with a bug bivy and result in total shelter weight of less than 2 pounds. Some of the lightest bug bivys weigh under 5 ounces. Sierra Designs’ Lightning XT 2 two person three season tent is one of the best sub-4-pound tents on the market. If you’re going solo, try NEMO Equipment Inc.’s Gogo Solo Tent. This cross between a tent and a bivy is a nice way to go if you’re going solo light and fast. My 8×10′ Integral Designs Siltarp has never let me down.
5. The weight of packaging adds up, so repackage all your food items. It’s really surprising how much packaging gets hauled into the woods and much of it doesn’t burn well, so it’s best to repackage your food into light plastic bags and leave the heavy store bought packaging at home.
6. Eat big breakfasts and snack during the day. Breakfast fuels your body in the morning to get ready for a big day and eating snacks during your day, allows you to feed a constant stream of fuel to your body. Big lunches tend to weigh more and if you’re cooking, they tend to take more time.
7. Change maps. A more detailed scale maps requires more paper to cover the same area and often a bigger scale will work just fine. If a 1:250,000 will work for your paddling trip, don’t bring 1:60,000. Use the more detailed maps to locate interesting areas and transcribe those markings to notes on the 1:250,000. A waterproof map may weigh slightly more than a paper map, but paper maps easily get wet and require a map case.
8. The easiest is leave stuff at home. Why do you need it anyway?

Do you know a few easy ways to reduce the weight of your load? Feel free to post them below.

Northern Lights near Grand Marais, MN

It’s two in the morning, the northern lights are dancing across the sky and having to remember how to set a camera to record the blazing greens and reds is made easier with a simple cheat sheet. Clip this article, laminate it and stick it in your camera bag, so it’ll be handy next time the Aurora Borealis are lighting up the sky.

Digital photography makes capturing pictures of the northern lights effortless. You’ll need a digital camera that can take long exposures and has noise reduction. A tripod is a must and a remote release or self-timer is helpful. Follow these steps and you’re sure to come away with good images:

1. The first step is to set-up the camera. Select a higher ISO of around 400. Anything higher on compact digitals results in poor image quality and lower isn’t sensitive enough to capture the color in the sky. With DSLRs, an ISO of 800 is fine.
2. After setting the ISO, turn on in-camera noise reduction, which helps save image quality during long exposures. Figure out how this works on your camera right now and write it in the margin. If you can’t find a description in your manual on how to do this, the camera probably does it automatically.
3. If you have a manual mode on your camera, set up your camera with the f/stop wide open, a setting of f2.8 or f4 is common. Then try a setting of 15 seconds for the shutter speed. Without a manual mode, try either a Night Scene or a Firework mode.
4. Connect the camera to a tripod, and plug-in the remote release or set a self-timer to 2 seconds. These later two steps will stop your hand from creating camera shake and blurring the picture when you press the shutter release button.


Nothern Lights in the BWCA.

5. Aim the camera at the northern lights and press the shutter button. When the image appears on the screen, check the brightness. If too dark, increase the shutter speed to 20 or 30 seconds. If it is too bright, decrease the shutter speed to 5 or 7 seconds. Take a couple more pictures to refine the brightness of the image. On point-and-shoot scene modes, use exposure compensation (read the manual) to increase or decrease the shutter speed.
6. Once you have the correct brightness, frame your picture and set your focus. Always try to include the ground, trees, a lake, or something interesting in the bottom third of your picture. The top two thirds should be northern lights. Focus so that the foreground (the bottom third) of the image is in sharp focus.
7. Take pictures. A couple of fun items to have with are an off-camera flash or a million candle power spot light. These can be used while the camera is taking a picture to light up the foreground or can be used to paint items into your picture.
8. A final note is that white balance can be used to change the colors of the Aurora. A Fluorescent setting is the most natural, but others are nice also. Adjust to taste.

Next time the northern lights are out, don’t just go out to enjoy them, go out to capture images of them. Following this simple cheat sheet, you’ll capture great images and be able to share your enjoyment of the dancing colors of light with your friends and family.

Good Northern Light Resources

www.spaceweather.com: Space weather provide Aurora predictions, links to the NOAA aurora oval map, and even a serves that will call you when the northern lights are out.