I'm old enough to remember the Sunshower, which I never learned to setup properly. But with my wife balking at a 2 night camping trip, I saw the Camping Solar Shower for $9, and bought one. It's surprisingly light and comes with an economic low flow shower mode, and folds up nicely and packs into my backpack just fine.
What I discovered was that the handle hole is large enough to fit over some branches, so I didn't bother much with the flimsy string. Filling it takes more skill than you might expect: you have to keep dipping it in and out with a pumping action to fill the water bag. Bowen did that. On day 2, I got lazy and just used a running stream and only got it about half full.
As advertised, it takes about 3 hours of direct sunlight to get the water from freezing-lake cold to somewhat usable. The thermometer is misleading: it reads the temperature of the bag rather than the temperature of the water, so when it says 40C, the water is still only lukewarm inside.
To my surprise, both Bowen and Boen were much more enthusiastic about the camp shower than Xiaoqin was. They both ended up using all the warm water both nights of our backcountry trip. The shower runs for a surprisingly long time. It's well worth the weight if you're base camping, but for a point to point camping it was a bit much. I asked Bowen if he'd like to carry it next time and he said NO. But for car camping it's probably perfect. For the price, it comes recommended!
No comments:
Post a Comment