Feature > Adventure Toys
Adventure Toys: Camping Tech
Cutting the Crud
by Rob Reaser
photo courtesy of Stearns, Inc.
There’s no doubt about it — serious off-roading is dirty work. But then, so is camping and just about any other outdoor activity that comes to mind. Heck, you don’t even have to work up a sweat or crawl around in the mud to replace a broken u-joint in order to get grimy. Hitting the trails with the windows or top down and the fresh air flowing on a sweltering summer day is enough to make you willing to pay dearly for a hot shower.
Thanks to a wide assortment of nifty camping accoutrements, roughing it in the backcountry isn’t as rough as it used to be. Today, a generous array of shower options is available to fit any budget or cargo limitations. Furthermore, they’re relatively compact depending on the design you choose. That’s a big plus - particularly on trail rigs of the short-wheelbase variety.
4x4 Power Shower
R&M Specialty Products’ Unlimited Hot Water Camping Shower or Helton Hot Water Shower Kit
No discussion of showers and off-roading can be complete without mentioning vehicle-mounted shower/heat exchanger units such as those produced by R&M Specialty Products (www.hotwatercampingshowers.com) or Australian-based Helton (www.helton.com.au). These products turn a 4x4 into a rolling hot-water source. The heart of the system is a heat exchanger that taps into your vehicle’s cooling system. Hot engine coolant flows into the exchanger to heat up the incoming fresh water. A pump pulls the water from its source (a stream, pond, or lake), moves it through the heat exchanger, then out to the shower nozzle. Naturally, the engine needs to keep running whilst performing a wash-down, but who cares? You have an unlimited supply of hot water!
Now, with all of these wilderness hygiene options, you’ve no excuse for smelling like a water buffalo at the end of the day’s trail run. Leave the mud on your truck.
Cheap and Easy
Stearns Air Power Sunshower
Although a day’s end cleanup can be as simple as jumping into a lake or stream with a bar of soap in hand, a strip-and-scrub cleansing can be less than satisfying. Our focus, therefore, is on warm- and hot-shower options for backcountry travel, and nothing is as simple or inexpensive as solar-heated showers.
These units are as basic as they come, typically consisting of a five-gallon PVC bladder with a shower nozzle. The bag can be filled with cold water and left in the sun to warm, or you can add heated water and get right to business. Since water flow is gravity-induced, the bags are often hung from a tree limb or other point that’s high enough for the user to stand under. When empty, the bag rolls flat for easy storage.
There are several manufacturers of solar-heated showers, but some of the better showers are made by Coleman (www.coleman.com) and Stearns (stearnsinc.com). In addition to the gravity-fed units, Stearns even has a bag called the Air Power Sunshower, which includes a foot pump to pressurize the bag for a two-minute pressure spray. The bag also is quite durable thanks to its polyester fabric cover.
New Product
Locked Up
Whenever you have to leave your bike or ATV unattended at camp or at the trailhead, security is always a concern. If you’re using OnGuard’s Rottweiler lock, your mind can rest a bit easier. The Rottweiler features a strong, twisted cable covered with hardened steel links for dual protection against cutting and is covered in tough vinyl to protect your machine from scratches. Available in three-, four-, and 5.5-foot lengths, the Rottweiler is secured by dual steel ball locks.
OnGuard (www.onguardlock.com)
Forced-Flow Shower
Coleman Hot Water On Demand
If you’ve taken showers using bags, you know that it’s not always convenient to find a suitable location to hang the bag — especially if you’re traveling in the desert southwest or camping on a beach. For those locations where bag-type showers present difficulties, solutions are available thanks to the many pump-fed camp showers on the market.
The more common of these showers use an electric pump that runs off of simple batteries. One example is the Coleman Battery Powered Shower. It consists of a submersible pump, an intake hose that goes into the water source, and an outflow hose with the showerhead at the end.
Soap
Be Bio-Safe
Environmentally responsible outdoor recreation includes not only following the Tread Lightly! principles of off-highway driving, but also minimizing impact on your surroundings during activities as simple as clean-up time. Standard soaps and detergents contain chemicals that can be harmful to aquatic life. Biodegradable soap breaks down over time to minimize environmental impact. Always use biodegradable soap for all of your wilderness cleaning, and use as little soap as possible to get the job done.
Privvies
Zodi Hut Shower Enclosure
Although our 4x4s can take us into the remotest locations, we don’t always have the privacy we’d like. And even if there’s not another soul for miles around, it can be uncomfortable to stand butt-naked and dripping wet when temperatures are dropping and a crisp nighttime breeze is blowing down the mountain. A portable privy, like this one from Zodi, is a great companion to your wilderness shower system. And it will keep men from suffering the George Castanza syndrome.
New Product
Pick Your Power
Now here’s a darn good idea. Energizer has found the cure for battery fumble with its new Quick Switch flashlight. This light’s trick is that it can run on two D, C, or AA batteries. Whatever you have on hand, that’s what it takes. Simply drop the batteries of your choice into the unit, turn the switch to that battery setting, and you’re good to go. Light output is the same regardless of the battery size, although burn times will vary.
Energizer: www.energizer.com
Forced-Flow Shower
Zodi Hot Tap
For the ultimate in wilderness showering, as far as convenience and simplicity are concerned, Zodi’s line of propane-heated electric-pump shower units is hard to beat. These beauties run off of bottled propane-either directly from small one-pound bottles or larger bulk propane tanks. The six-volt (4D cell) pump draws water directly from the source (some models include a four-gallon plastic case that doubles as the water reservoir and heats the water as it passes through the single- or double-burner heating unit, depending on the model). From here, hot water is channeled through the shower hose. Another nice aspect to this system is that you can hang the shower hose just about anywhere (definitely easier than trying to hoist a five-gallon water bag overhead). Furthermore, the shower can run as long as there is gas in the tank and juice in the batteries.
Another trick product produced by Zodi is the Extreme Series water heaters. This consists of a stainless-steel tank that’s air-pressurized via an integral hand pump. Simply sit the filled tank atop a burner (Zodi makes one specifically for this application, or use your own propane heat source), pressurize the tank, and let the hot water flow.
A bit less cumbersome, perhaps, than all of these is the Coleman Hot Water On Demand portable water heaters. A one-pound propane cylinder and one battery charge can heat 40 gallons of water. What’s good about this product is that it places all of the necessary hardware into a single, compact unit that’s fully self-contained and weighs an acceptable 22 pounds.
Another effective design is the Hott Wash made by America’s Acres, Inc. These portable, self-contained units (available in 2.5-, four-, and eight-gallon capacities) use an electric heating element that plugs into any 110V outlet, portable generator, or into a truck’s 12V power inverter.