REI Half Dome Repair strategies

If you read earlier posts, you might know I melted my tent trying out a new stove.  Note to self: try new stoves on the concrete pad behind your house.  I have tried once to repair it using A)Tenacious tape and B) Tear Aid (type A).  The Tear Aid worked well on the smaller holes, using a patch on each side of the fabric.  The Tenacious Tape did not work well by itself when placed under pressure, such as on the edges of a large silicon impregnated fabric patch. Because you can remove/ move the tape, it would not hold well enough to cure.  I will try to rectify this by maybe stitching the new repair fabric to the tent, then applying Tenacious Tape or seam sealer to the edges. I may also try out Sil-Net, which is more of an adhesive. 
So what you see are several different attempts. The black material is a silicone impregnated fabric from Seattle Fabrics.  The holes in this area were so big, there was really no other good way to attach the problem.  I merely laminated the fabric over the damaged areas.  Were it was necessary/appropriate,  I cut out the melted fly fabric, because it was stiff. I made the laminate in 2 pieces to accommodate the roundiness of the fly. I am unsure of which was the outside of the fabric and which was the inside, so I guessed based on the looks of the fly material.
Where the 2 pieces met was a seam on the fly, so I stitched one piece down face up and stitched it down the fly seam, then placed the second on face down and stitched it down the seam. Then I folded it back on itself to protect the raw edges and stitched it again down the seam.

After that I tried cutting Tenacious Tape into strips and using that to stick down the remaining raw edges on the other sides.  FAIL.  That stuff does not work well under tension. You can see the tape at the upper edge of the left piece, where the repair meets up with the fly fabric (cream colored). When I tried to stitch on the repair material over the tape, it gummed up the needle and frayed the thread, so I stitched just to the side of the tape. This seemed to work pretty well, though the tape didn't even hold while the fly was in the sewing machine and so the bottom is messed up and uneven.  I may remove the stitching and redo it. Finally, I used regular seam sealer on the stitching and Seam Grip on the main seam.

Other smaller holes were patched using Tear Aid Type A on both sides of each hole.
*** UPDATE- ultimately these repair were inadequate and the tent could no longer be trusted.  Additionally, this tent has seen extensive use, under difficult circumstances (occasionally packed damp or wet while on extended tours) and the waterproofing had become tacky.  When this happens, you run the risk of peeling when you roll out the tent the next time. Time for a new tent. As a guess, this tent lasted for over 150 nights.

Review: Osprey Manta 25

Osprey returned my Manta 25 (22L) pack, after re-inserting the bladder support panel the eBay seller had pulled out. With the support in, I conclude there is no way the pack will hold a 3 liter water bladder, 7 days of food and a small stove. This is difficult to conceive, since my cycling pal has a 28L and it holds vastly more. Back to the drawing board on that one.  I think I will need to actually go to a store to buy one, taking 7 days of food and the stove with me.  I did carry it around while day hiking and it is really comfy and holds day hike stuff fine.  The bladder and bite valve are really nice, far nicer than my life partner's basic Camelback.

IHSMBR Bike Prep

I have decided to be a lemming and get frame bags for my mountain bike.  I did the GDMBR with panniers, and they worked fine, but there is little singletrack on the Great Divide Route.  Idaho Hot Springs Route, however, has a lot of single track, offered as options.  It is pretty significant, so hence the frame bags.
Revelate is the brand I am familiar with, so I bought a frame bag, the harness, a gas tank and the Terrapin seat bag with a detachable Terrapin dry bag. I got a second Terrapin dry bag to put my tent in on the handlebar harness (Revelate states that dry bag will serve very well there).  My bicycling partner bought the SweetRoll and the Viscacha seat bag, which has a dry bag as its main component. This is kind of cool, since we will be able to compare the two systems.
In addition, due to the high elevations, I bought a Big Agnes Q-core air mattress, which offers some insulation, unlike my old thermarest. We shall see how fast I get tired of blowing the thing up.
I have decided to buy a lighter, smaller raincoat, since I think we will see little rain.  Going with the Novara Stratos 2.0 Bike jacket. REI was unable to give me a weight on it, so I will have to weigh it when it arrives.
And I bought an Osprey Manta 25 backpack off of eBay. Fool of a seller took out the hydration pack's stabalizing stay, which I tried unsuccessfully to re-install. I am pretty sure the stay's purpose it to keep the bladder from sagging, keeping the weight of the water evenly distributed from to top to bottom. Calling Osprey resulted in an invitation to send them the pack.  I pay shipping there, they fix and return to me on their bill. Lifetime warrantee. The pack seems really nice, with enough room for stove, kitchen and food.  I plan on hanging the entire pack (from bears). The hydration bladder seems really well thought out.

Testing for Leakiness

Here we have a GooTube, purchased from EMS.
 
It contains Hot Sauce, an essential cooking element. Since it seems like a dicey thing to carry, testing it under pressure using a marble mortar and pestle seemed appropriate. Although if you squeeze it when empty, the air gets out/in, it shows no indication of leaking the hot sauce. It might not be trustworthy under the pressure changes experienced in the cargo hold of an airplane, so it will be placed in a ziplock pre-fight.

Shake Down Efforts

After loading up my bike and taking it out in a city park near my home, I decided that I rattled so much, there would be no need for a bear bell. To remedy this, I put vinyl tubing on the rear rack and wrapped the front rack with electrical tape and inner-tube at the point of contact with the panniers to take up the extra space in the pannier hooks. I also created a mounting bracket to bolt to the top of the front rack for a headlight. Fenders may elude me, for I can find no acceptable way to mount one to my suspension fork.  The rear tire needs one less, for the rear rack will take most spray. I have also been combing the stores to find foods which might be procured while on the GDMBR, to see how they might be seasoned, how much they make per cup of dried, whether reducing the required water has much impact, whether not draining noodle dishes is possible and whether dehydrated vegetables and mushrooms were practical. More on this in the Vermont Report.
I ventured to Vermont for 5 days to meet up with a friend and try out our gear for the GDMBR.  It was colder in Vermont than Buffalo, so my plan to spend the first night near Killington in Gifford State Park, in the Northern portion of Green Mountain National Forest, was unsuccessful.  There was still quite a lot of snow on the ground and temperatures were expected to drop to 18 degrees.  Instead I slept in a church parking lot on the West side of the park at a much lower elevation. It still dropped to about 27 degrees, but the car served as a bit of a buffer.  Note that I was still cold in my 15 degree bag on my original Thermarest, sleeping on a board suspended between the rear seat and a milk crate; ie, there was just air beneath the board. Inside the bag, I kept my Foxwear tights and Patagonia R1 fleece on, with a hat, gloves and heavy wool socks.
The next morning I tried to cycle around Chittenden Reservoir, but snowmobiles had packed the snow on the trail such that 95% had to be walked. I turned around after about 1/2 mile.
My next excursion was to return to Rutland, where volunteers have worked on the Pine Hill Park to make it a mountain bike haven.  I only spent about 1 hour there, but was quite thrilled to have such a beautiful asset available.  Pine Hill could occupy almost a full day of mountain biking. For me.
When I met up with my friend, Jamie, she began by taking me out to kill me on frozen roads.  Unfortunately whenever I see a new opportunity for taxing my rather poor mountain biking skills, I always accept fate and charge ahead. Twice I went down due to getting caught in frozen ruts.  The nice thing about crashing on ice is the total lack of road rash. You can come away with some fabulous bruises, but the ice tends to be kinder to both rider and bike.  Two things I took away from those crashes: the Patagonia down sweater did tear or show any signs of abuse, even after I decided to roll over and lie on my back as I was sliding down the hill, using it as a sled, and the extra long skewer used with Old Man Mountain rear panniers, should be cut off so it does not protrude beyond its knob.  When I got home and tried to first bend the 3/4 inch extension back and then use a hack saw to remove the bent portion, failed catestrophically. The skewer is so bent that the outside plastic of the skewer's knob broke away from the metal nut inside.  When I used vise-grips to get the nut off, the skewer was still so bent, it can not be pulled through the axle.  I will have to cut off the skewer further, thereby totally ruining the skewer. A new one is $18. Sigh.
One of the foods we tried at Jamie's house were quinoa, into which we mixed dehydrated vegetables and dried mushrooms I had powdered.  The 2 tablespoons of mushroom powder were un-noticeable, and the vegetables would required us to carry large quantities, since the chance of resupply would be slim. Next we tried a vegetarian chili mix, into which we mixed a can of beans and tomatos. Canned goods are good if you don't have to carry them far, but 2 cans for one meal gave us too much food for one sitting.  Maybe a can of beans and a tiny can of tomato sauce.  We put the resulting chili on tortillas and ate it as burritos.  The vote: forget anything we need to carry in its entirety from the beginning (dried veg), tortillas are fabulous (already knew that) and spices/hot sauce would be valuable.
We picked up Jamie's new Surly Ogre and waited while a great mechanic at Onion River Sports configured the bike and attached various parts, including a rear rack.  Fully equipped, we headed back for Green Mountain National Park.  A ranger had done a little research for me to find winter camping opportunities and trails open to bikes, but not to snowmobiles. Silver Lake CG is accessible from a trail head near Branbury State Park.  A one mile closed road takes you up to the CG, closed to motorized vehicles. There were a couple of icy patches, which were difficult to get over/around, but less than 10%  of the road was in that state. More of the road had soft, previously frozen slushy old snow.
We got up to the CG, scoped it out a bit, then pitched our tents in the host site. Dinner was two of those Lipton noodles and sauce meals.  It was nice to have a hot meal, since the temperature was dropping quickly. We cut the liquid requirement of the Lipton meal by half and it was still great.  We also boiled it and then turned it off, covered.  Still fine.
At around 7pm, we jumped into our tents, because the temperature was dropping so precipitously. At about 10pm, I told Jamie that if SHE wanted to go back to the car, we could do so at any time.  Needless to say, I was voicing my own worries.  Even with all the clothing I brought (minus my rain pants) I was cold in my 15 degree bag.  I don't know exactly how cold it got, but might guess 27 degrees, since that was what was forecasted.  On several occasions in the night, I woke up and had to rock myself to produce heat to keep warm.  When sleeping, I was warm enough.  Jamie apparently had similar problems; we were in two tents and climbing into one would have been our next resort.  We agreed that one major problem (believe it or not) was that when we slept in all our clothes, we had nothing to use as a pillow and this caused us enough discomfort to keep us awake at times.  Maybe if we had been pedaling all day, we would have been tired enough to just collapse without a pillow.
We did make it through the night, but jumped out of the tents as soon as it started to get light and went for a warming walk.  We had to break through ice at the edge of the lake that the evening before had been open water.  The walk down was now treacherous, because all of the slushy snow had frozen and unrideable. Not only was it unrideable, but it was slick and for many parts we had to bushwack through the woods with fully loaded bikes to get around sheer ice.  Only a mile. Only a mile. Only a mile.
We spent the rest of the day at Pine Hill in Rutland; dry, warm, fun.  While Silver Lake gave us a chance to test out the camping side, Pine Hill gave us a chance to try out our bike setups (without panniers). I got many chances to fall off and Jamie and I swapped bikes to see how the other half was living.  Her Ogre has 29" wheels and no suspension.  My Troll has 26" wheels, a thudbuster seat post and shock fork.  Some observations: the 29" wheels make the front suspension less necessary (but I would still want it) and probably negate the need for the Thudbuster seat post. You sit higher up on the Ogre (further for me to fall- can you believe she let me ride her brand new bike, given my history?). She has flat bars and I have butterfly bars- I didn't see any advantage either way. She has a very small tolerance between her front derailleur and tire- not sure it will ever matter.  I bought my bike thinking 26" tires are more common worldwide, but 29" are gaining ground.  In 3rd world countries, it might still matter...  Final thought- two excellent bikes.
Lastly, I will broach front lights.  I had made the mount for my light, but the guy at Onion convinced me to get a headlamp.  I have often thought of this, but didn't want to carry 2 lights, one for the bike and one for my head.  He presented a slight alternative.  Tiny LED front and back lights, which are amazingly bright and would be adequate for letting people see you.  They are light and require very little battery power. AND a headlamp for reading or doing night tasks.  Forgot them for Silver Lake, so I haven't tried them out, but I have faith...