Gear & Craft
How to read a weather forecast in mountain terrain
A valley forecast tells you almost nothing about the ridge. Reading mountain weather means reading elevation, exposure and timing…
Kofi Asare
Contributing writer, Earth Worth Exploring
Kofi reports on coastal ecosystems and the communities whose livelihoods sit alongside them.
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15 articles
Gear & Craft
The three-layer system explains almost every clothing mistake outdoors
Base, mid, shell is not marketing. It is a description of three different physical problems, and most discomfort comes from…
Conservation
Payment for ecosystem services, explained without the jargon
Landowners are increasingly paid for water, carbon and flood attenuation rather than for what they grow.
Gear & Craft
Sleeping mats matter more than sleeping bags
Most cold nights outdoors are caused by the ground, not the air, and the fix is a number nobody checks.
Gear & Craft
Repairing kit in the field with four items
Most gear failures on a trip are one of a handful of things, and all of them are fixable with a very small kit.
Gear & Craft
Ticks, Lyme disease and the checking habit worth building
Removal within a day dramatically reduces transmission risk, which makes a nightly check the whole intervention.
Conservation
Bracken, gorse and the plants that win when management stops
Undermanagement produces a predictable set of dominant species, and reversing it is harder than preventing it.
Gear & Craft
Maps, licences and why some apps stop working abroad
Mapping data is licensed by territory, and the app that works at home may show nothing in another country.
Gear & Craft
Socks do more work than boots and get a fraction of the thought
The layer between foot and shoe manages friction, moisture and pressure. Get it wrong and no footwear will rescue the day.
Gear & Craft
Hands go cold first and warm up last
The body sacrifices fingers to protect its core, which is sensible physiology and extremely inconvenient. Handwear works with that…
Gear & Craft
Zips, buckles and seams are where outdoor kit really fails
Fabric almost never gives out first. The failures that end a trip happen at the small components nobody looks at when buying.
Gear & Craft
Batteries lose most of their capacity long before they die
Cold does not empty a battery, it hides the charge. Understanding the difference changes how you carry power in winter.
Gear & Craft
Grip is rubber, tread and what lies underneath
Every claim about a sole depends on the surface it meets. Understanding why grip fails is more useful than believing any compound…
Conservation
How anyone actually knows whether a conservation project worked
Most projects report activity: hectares managed, trees planted, fences built. Whether the thing they cared about improved is a much…
Gear & Craft
Food that survives a week in a pack
The constraint is not calories per gram. It is what is still edible, still appealing and still intact after six days of being…