During winter trips to the dacha — to relax or for the produce stored in the garden — or on a weekend hiking outing, you may find yourself having to carry a heavy backpack. Hauling it on your back while walking through snowy terrain is not much fun. Experienced hikers have a joking saying: “A Read more…
I live in Siberia and have been fond of hunting and fishing for a long time. Our places are wonderful. There are many rivers and lakes rich in fish and game. I love hunting waterfowl most of all. But sometimes it is impossible to get it: impassable bogs, floodplains, quaking bogs, impenetrable reeds. I thought Read more…
Spring sunshine has barely had time to properly warm the ground that froze over winter; snow patches still linger in the forests — yet die-hard hikers are already setting out on their first trips. From storerooms and attic shelves come backpacks, tents, mats, and sleeping bags: the boldest hikers head out for the weekend, even Read more…
“A canoe made of birch bark… the most convenient and lightest of all means of travel. The bark of one birch tree is usually enough for one canoe; they have such a sensible shape that they float on water as easily as a cork” (J. Catlin, 1841). A canoe of the North American Indians can Read more…
An experienced tourist’s backpack usually weighs about 40 kg. Agree, it’s not easy to make your way along untrodden trails with such a load. Moreover, almost all frame packs share one common drawback: when heavily loaded, they fit tightly against the back, and because there is no ventilation in that area, clothing gets damp. Besides Read more…
Washing machines have firmly become part of everyday life. And while connecting a modern washing machine to a water supply network in cities is usually easy, in rural areas with no centralized water supply, where water is taken from springs and wells, putting such a machine into operation is much harder. This is primarily caused Read more…
The rubel (other names: rebrak, pralnik) is a wooden washboard and at the same time an “iron” used in everyday life long ago. Incidentally, it would be quite handy in the field, on expeditions, or at a dacha where there is no electricity. Russian women used this tool (or rather a set consisting of the Read more…
For weekend hiking enthusiasts who prefer relaxing on the water, an unusual lightweight catamaran design published in the Hungarian magazine “Ezermester” will certainly be of interest. This is a single-seat recreational “boat” with a pedal-powered rowing drive, based on two inflatable beach mattresses. They are used without any modifications, so they fully retain their traditional Read more…
Dedicated to friends of my student years. I was lucky in my youth — I joined the flow of student hiking life. On the wave of rapid growth among teachers of mountain sports hiking at our Kurgan machine-building institute, among students there also formed groups for the more accessible pedestrian “lowland” tourism. Inside these new Read more…
Whether it is a holiday or a weekend, we try to spend our free time as a family on trips: hiking and cycling, by car and on the water. We have been to the Baltic countries, Karelia, Crimea, the Caucasus, and the steppes of Pryazovia. Over fifteen years of such journeys we have built up Read more…
