Travel Equipment
In general, the destination, the season, and the type of trip determine the equipment.
As a rule, I follow the principle of minimizing what I pack in order to have space for my extensive photo equipment. When in doubt, the thermos flask stays at home so I can take one more lens instead. On motorcycle trips, the amount of equipment is severely limited, and on trekking tours, every gram counts.
Traveling in dry deserts or the tropics basically requires less equipment than traveling to the Arctic and Antarctic. I I learned from experience that on a windy day in February in the High Arctic, you can quickly end up in a life-threatening situation if you are not adequately equipped. Even something as simple as losing a glove can lead to life-threatening frostbite.
When I rode my motorcycle along the Dempster Highway in the Canadian Arctic in temperatures below minus 40 degrees, even the limits of the most advanced modern polar gear were exceeded. At that point, the only solution was to borrow a few tricks from motorcycle outfitters: heated underwear, heated gloves, and heated insoles.
What exactly does my equipment look like in specific natural landscapes?
By motorcycle through Australia's Simpson Desert
During the Southern Hemisphere winter of 2011, I rode my motorcycle along the Oodnadatta Track on the southern edge of Australia's Simpson Desert. I had packed the following on my BMW 1200 GS Adventure, which was equipped with two Touratech aluminum panniers: a Hilleberg dome tent, a Thermarest sleeping pad, a warm down sleeping bag, a gasoline stove with simple cookware.
My supplies consisted of coffee, sugar, a few bottles of beer, spaghetti, pesto, and ten liters of water. Apart from spare underwear and a pair of lightweight shoes, the only clothing I brought was what I was wearing: jeans, a T-shirt, a fleece sweater, a leather jacket, a kidney belt, a back protector, and motorcycle boots.
In addition, I packed a first-aid kit and a travel medical kit. As always, I brought my Garmin GPS device and my Iridium satellite phone.
Dog sledding through Spitsbergen
In February 2010, my friend Jörg Reuther and I undertook a multi-day dog sledding tour through the high Arctic region of Spitsbergen.
I packed the following items into a large North Face duffel bag: my Hilleberg tent, two sleeping mats, a high-quality and extremely warm down sleeping bag, a petrol stove, a second set of gloves, a face mask, socks, underwear, and a North Face down parka. Standing on the runners of the sled, I wore thermal underwear, a fleece jacket and fleece trousers according to the proven layering principle, with thick down trousers and a thick down anorak from Mountain Equipment over the top, as well as Baffin polar boots. I protected my hands with mittens from Mountain Equipment, and my face with water-free grease cream, a frost protection mask, and a warm hat.
The most important piece of equipment, however, was our guide’s rifle, because no GPS and no satellite phone can help against a hungry polar bear.
Trekking through Zanskar in the Himalayas
The planned route took my wife Elly and me through a remote part of Zanskar, a former Buddhist kingdom in the Indian Himalayas, through lonely valleys and over high mountain passes.
I knew that during the fourteen-day tour there would be neither shopping facilities nor electrical power, but at the same time I had to carry 60 kilograms of camera equipment. It was therefore clear that we would not be able to complete this tour without horses, because there are hardly any roads in Zanskar. I hired a horse handler and eight horses, on which we distributed our equipment: tent, sleeping mats, sleeping bags, gas cylinder, stove, food, and of course my camera equipment.
One of the horses carried a power generator and gasoline. This allowed me to charge my cameras, the drone, and the notebook every evening.
On skis through Antarctica
Expeditions in the vast expanses of Antarctica still rely on muscle power to this day, because vehicles require enormous logistics as well as extensive permits, and sled dogs are prohibited. Thus, Christoph Höbenreich, his friend Mario, cameraman Ralf Leistl, and I were traveling with pulk sleds in the Drygalski Mountains region.
Besides the plastic sleds, two Hilleberg tunnel tents and polar-grade down sleeping bags were our most important pieces of equipment. We slept on two extra-thick sleeping mats each. Lightweight aluminum shovels were of great importance, as we used them to shape the interior of the tent and build a windbreak wall out of snow blocks. Our gasoline stoves ran almost continuously to melt drinking water from the extremely dry snow or to prepare meals. Also important were our cross-country skis, which were connected to our bulky boots with touring bindings. To prevent the socks from icing up, we wore plastic bags over silk stockings and wool socks, which acted as a vapor barrier.