Latest news with #ultralight
WIRED
16-07-2025
- Lifestyle
- WIRED
Dyneema's New Fiber Composite Is Lighter, Stronger, and More Durable Than Ever
Jul 16, 2025 12:46 PM Hyperlite Mountain Gear and Dyneema collaborate on lighter, more durable hiking backpacks, which lets you put even more Dyneema on your Dyneema. If you went back in time 150 years and told people that in the future they will carry everything they need to live for a week on their backs, you'd get run out of town. Carrying gear is the job of horses and mules, not people! Fast forward to the present, though, and here we are, schlepping into the backcountry with the essentials on our back. Progress! The good news is that today everything you need to live for a week weighs considerably less than it did 150 years ago. The ultralight backpacking movement, born from obsessive thru-hikers and eventually widely adopted by weekend warriors, has driven innovation in the outdoor gear industry for more than 20 years. Every iteration of backpacks, tents, and sleeping bags has been lighter, stronger, and warmer. But just when you think they couldn't possibly get any better, those backpacks are getting lighter and more rugged. Today, Dyneema launches a new fabric composite called (surprise) Dyneema Woven Composite that is being used in updated backpacks by cult classic Hyperlite Mountain Gear, which is a long-time collaborator. Light as a Feather Dyneema's namesake fabric has long been noted for being not just strong, durable, and waterproof, but featherweight as well. Its new fabric, Dyneema Woven Composites, is made for the ultralight backpacking community. It melds a fully woven Dyneema face fabric to Dyneema's pre-existing composite fabric. Dyneema Woven Composites was created in conjunction with Hyperlite Mountain Gear, and for now is available exclusively in the company's core ultralight backpacks, including the Southwest, Junction, and Windrider models. Mike St. Pierre founded Hyperlite in 2009 and was one of the first manufacturers to embrace Dyneema (then known as cuben fiber). As crinkly as it was, that ultralight fabric endeared Hyperlite to backpackers. The company's minimalist, stripped-down designs and unwavering commitment to quality—my 2019 Junction pack, with hundreds of miles on it, looks like it did the day I bought it—made the company a natural fit for this collaboration. Strong as a Board Thanks to that outer layer of Dyneema, the new Woven Composite has 10 times the abrasion resistance and five times the tear resistance of the older fabric. The former statistic is particularly good news for anyone hiking in places like the desert Southwest, where brushing your pack against hard rock tends to destroy your gear quickly. The good news for those who don't like the trademark 'crinkling' sound of Dyneema? St. Pierre tells WIRED that Woven Composites are indeed quieter, with less crinkly sound than the company's older packs. The new fabric, in addition to being stronger and more durable, is also 34 percent lighter. While a few companies have previously claimed to weld Dyneema to Dyneema, the results have been disappointing, with products delaminating rather quickly in our testing. No wonder then that even Dyneema took quite a while to figure out how to make it work properly. The new fabric is the result of two years of research and development by Dyneema and Hyperlite Mountain Gear, with plenty of lab-based testing from Dyneema and real-world testing by Hyperlite's network of guides, athletes, sherpas, and thru-hikers who spend long periods of time in the backcountry. Dyneema Woven Composites fabric isn't the only change in Hyperlite's updated packs. The company has also taken user feedback from over the years and made some other changes, including a new sewn back panel and tweaks to the shoulder strap design. The pockets have also been redesigned to be more accessible, and St. Pierre tells us that the new packs feel more luxurious and more durable. We'll have a full review of the new Hyperlite Mountain Gear packs soon, after we've had a chance to put them to the test. We probably won't need that mule, after all.
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
John W. Dean John W. Dean of Albuquerque NM died peacefully
Jun. 23—John W. Dean John W. Dean of Albuquerque NM died peacefully on Sunday, June 8, 2025 at the Montebello Assisted Living Facility in Albuquerque, NM. John was born on April 6, 1929 in Cambridge, MA to James and Mildred Dean. John spent much of his youth on his uncle Steven's farm in rural Connecticut where he became a Boy Scout and developed an interest in the outdoors. During WW2 he moved with his family to Louisiana where he graduated from high school and enrolled in at LSU. After receiving his B.A. from LSU he was drafted into the US Army and sent to White Sands Missile Range as a mechanic working on rocket engines. After receiving an honorable discharge from the Army, John enrolled in the graduate engineering program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. While attending graduate school, John met and married Margaret (Joy) Blackadar and they moved into a small cabin in Nederland, Colorado and adopted two children, Steven and Nancy. After receiving his Master's Degree in Engineering, John worked for the Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado; Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford, England; Brookhaven National Laboratory in NY and spent the rest of his career at Los Alamos National laboratory in Los Alamos, NM. After retiring, John began to build and fly ultra-light aircrafts. He spent many hours at the airport in Los Lunas, NM and made many friends in the ultra-light community. He was also a long time member of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque, NM where he found great community, fellowship, and support. John is preceded in death by his parents James and Mildred Dean, his sister Nancy Humphrey and his wife Margaret (Joy) Dean. He is survived by his two children Steven Dean and his wife Erika Britt-Dean of Salt Lake City, UT and Nancy Johnson of Albuquerque, NM and his five grandchildren Wyatt and Savannah Dean and Emily, Cole, and Davis Johnson. Services will be held at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, Albuquerque, NM on Saturday, July 12, 2025 at 10:00 am. In lieu of flowers please send donations to the National Alzheimer's Association.
WIRED
27-05-2025
- General
- WIRED
Six Moon Designs Lunar Solo Tent Review: An Ultralight Summer Shelter
Finding the right tent for a backpacking trip is always tricky. You have to balance packed size and weight against livability and how well it stands up to wind and rain. I've always erred on the side of a sturdy tent over any weight concerns, which is why I love the Hilleberg Akto, but I don't always need the Akto. There is a short season in my neck of the woods called summer, when storms are less likely, and the temps don't drop much below the 60s. This is when I've been using the Lunar Solo, Six Moon Design's flagship ultralight 1-person tent. After several late and early summer trips around the north woods of Wisconsin and Michigan, it's proved itself a capable shelter. It weighs just two pounds, packs down quite small, and checks a whole lot of other boxes on my tent wishlist. Plenty of Space Photograph: Scott Gilbertson There is no one tent to rule them all and trying to find one is a mistake. You're better off with two tents, knowing the limitations of each and using each when it's the best for the job. Which is to say, I love the Akto, but I also think Six Moon Design's Lunar Solo is excellent for summer trips when you prize traveling light over withstanding intense storms. That's not to say the Lunar Solo won't keep you dry. It will. The silicone nylon, or silnylon, is plenty waterproof, though you'll either need to seam seal it yourself with some Seam Grip, or have the Six Moon Designs do it for you before they ship it, which costs $35. My testing tent arrived seam sealed, but being old enough to remember when you had to seam seal just about every tent, I've done it enough times to say it's not hard should you choose to DIY it. The Lunar Solo is single wall, single pole tent intended to be pitched with a trekking pole. This makes for a very small and light tent, but also has two potential drawbacks: structural integrity and condensation. More on those in a moment. Once pitched, the Lunar Solo offers 26 square feet of living space, a peak height of 49 inches, and the vestibule offers 8.5 square feet of additional gear storage. Overall I found the Lunar Solo to be plenty spacious for one person with gear. The rear wall expands out slightly, giving you a place to stash frequently needed items without pushing them up against the tent wall. The 20D silnylon and mesh walls feel as durable as anything you'll find at this weight, unless you want to go with a Cuben Fiber/Dyneema tent, but to my mind the high price of Cuben puts it in a different category. The floor of the Lunar Solo is a more robust 40-denier (40D), and has a bathtub shape to help ensure water doesn't get in. The rear of the Lunar Solo has a 6-inch mesh portion between the floor and the main wall that helps with ventilation. Any single pole tent is going to struggle in wind, no matter how many guyline points it offers. I did find the Lunar Solo compressed a good deal when I pitched it in high winds on the exposed shores of Lake Superior. It was admittedly not a great campsite from a seeking shelter point of view, not one I would pick if I wasn't testing the wind resistance of a tent. But it did convince me that the Lunar Solo needs either a trekking pole or a heavier tent pole than the ultralight pole Six Moon Design provided (I did a good portion of my testing while bikepacking so I didn't have trekking poles).
