Silver Case

The last third of my Seattle Sabbatical was a trip with Matt and Adam to Death Valley via Las Vegas. Only two hours away, we all flew to Las Vegas, rented an SUV, and drove to Death Valley. It was like our Outback 2003 trip in miniature: a car crammed full of shit and a lot of ruined tires. It meant we stayed in Death Valley one day less than expected.

I’ve endured enough trips damaged by bad outfitting. It’s time to figure out alternatives to at least two major problems.

It’s impossible to rent a 4×4 truck with all the equipment necessary to mount a trouble-free 4×4 trip.

No national rental car company offers vehicles capable to mount a desert 4×4 trip. That would require expensive heavy-duty tires, extraction and safety equipment, and a willingness to have their vehicles abused to a considerable degree.

When you rent a 4×4 SUV (availability not guaranteed) your tires will likely be road/passenger class. They fundamentally cannot take the abuse of driving up old mining roads or trails along streambeds. As soon as you lose one tire, you’re stupid to continue on unless you don’t mind getting stranded.

Your two fifty-pound luggages will be filled with lots of other travel essentials already, so you’ll need to buy your shovel, tow-straps, and air compressor at your destination for a single-use

Forget Loss-Damage Waivers (LDW) to protect against abuse and damaged tires. LDWs just make your rental even more expensive and driving the car on unpaved roads voids it anyway.

Occasionally you’ll see boutique 4×4 rentals, but their rates are insane and always give me the impression that they make a good second-income by issuing punitive damage assessments upon return.

Owning your own infrequent-use 4×4 seems expensive and logistically difficult. Even if I didn’t mind buying and storing a field-ready 4×4 for trips, it’s still another matter to get the vehicle to the trip destination. I wouldn’t have wanted to drive a 4×4 truck fifteen hundred miles from Seattle to Death Valley. That would have (1) sucked (2) wasted four days driving. There are car-transport companies, but they are slow (small problem) and cost around $1,000 one-way (big problem). Of course having a 4×4 depoted in Seattle doesn’t do me any good if I want to go exploring in Australia or Borneo.

Car-camping cooking is gross and inefficient

My earliest camping experiences were strictly backpacking trips in the desert. Carrying everything enforces a certain efficiency. Camping with a 4×4 makes me sloppy. I think my logic failure is that the vehicle has infinite storage, thus I can outfit myself with a mobile kitchen, enabling me to eat as if I lived in a studio apartment.

It turns out to be gross. Preparing fresh food requires more equipment to prepare and cook. It also requires a host of accessory ingredients and cleaning supplies. The consequence is meals that range from vaguely disappointing to vastly disgusting. And they all invariably waste a lot of time to prepare.

On consideration, the only real essentials are: sufficient water, hot coffee, some savory calories, and some sweet calories. If things can be heated up, that’s a bonus.

I’m guessing that the best solution is to rely exclusively on dried foods eaten neat and dehydrated meals prepared in-bag with boiled water. This means one stove, one pot, no plates, and minimal cutlery. On average the backpack-style meals shouldn’t be much worse than the mobile-kitchen style meals (for every pleasant sausage, jambalaya, and coffee meal, there is always a revoltingly-prepared egg-and-potato breakfast) They should be substantially easier, cheaper, and faster to prepare.

I only need to eat back-pack style, so why do I even need a 4×4 truck?

Hiking doesn’t cover much distance. Getting from Furnace Creek (a park HQ in Death Valley) to the valley we explored required a forty-mile drive across a baked, blasted playa. That’s two excrutiating days of hiking right there. Hiking alone cannot cover the distances necessary.

An enduro-style motorcycle is a step in the right direction. They’re less expensive than a 4×4 but they suffer from the same logistic problems. How to get from my depot to my destination? 1500 highway miles on knobby tires? Nah.

The conclusion I draw is to specially outfit an expedition bicycle for the job.

• They’re at least nominally air-freightable
• In a pinch you could cover 50-100 miles of road in a day.
• You can cover (perhaps more) jeep trails
• Emergency repairs are considerably more manageable
• They should be able to carry a better load burden (including more water)
• Riding bicycles is fun

Next article will flesh out the ideas around a bike-based expedition kit.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 9:08 am and is filed under Seattle 2008.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.