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Ultralight Down Jacket
Mountain Hardwear Ghost Whisperer UL Hoody

$400, 6.7 oz./190g (men’s medium)

Sizes: men’s S-XXL, women’s XS-XL

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At under nine ounces/255 grams, Mountain Hardwear’s classic Ghost Whisperer/2 Down Hoody has long held the distinction as one of the very lightest, most packable, and warmest-for-its-weight down jackets for backpackers, climbers, and other backcountry travelers—and arguably the best among the tiny number in its weight class. So why make one that’s even lighter? That question occupied my mind while using Hardwear’s newer Ghost Whisperer UL Hoody, which whacks about two ounces/57 grams off its older sibling’s weight while excelling for many of the same reasons—and differentiating itself.

I found it impressively warm for its shockingly low weight on evenings and mornings in camp while backpacking a section of the Arizona Trail along the Gila River in the first days of April, when the Ghost Whisperer UL Hoody was all I needed over a T-shirt and midweight long-sleeve top on calm mornings in camp with temps in the 40s Fahrenheit. I may have felt the need for another layer if the temp had fallen much lower or a significant wind kicked up. Nonetheless, this puffy is warm enough for many people in typical evening and morning temperatures in the mountains in summer or the desert Southwest in spring and fall.

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Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Join The Big Outside to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Click here for my e-guides to classic backpacking trips. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip.

The Mountain Hardwear Ghost Whisperer UL Hoody.
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” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mountain-Hardwear-Ghost-Whisperer-UL-Jacket-3.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mountain-Hardwear-Ghost-Whisperer-UL-Jacket-3.jpg?fit=900%2C600&ssl=1″ decoding=”async” width=”900″ height=”600″ src=”https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mountain-Hardwear-Ghost-Whisperer-UL-Jacket-3.jpg?resize=900%2C600&ssl=1″ alt=”The Mountain Hardwear Ghost Whisperer UL Hoody.” class=”wp-image-59553″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mountain-Hardwear-Ghost-Whisperer-UL-Jacket-3.jpg?w=1024&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mountain-Hardwear-Ghost-Whisperer-UL-Jacket-3.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mountain-Hardwear-Ghost-Whisperer-UL-Jacket-3.jpg?resize=768%2C512&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mountain-Hardwear-Ghost-Whisperer-UL-Jacket-3.jpg?resize=150%2C100&ssl=1 150w” sizes=”(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px” data-recalc-dims=”1″ />The Mountain Hardwear Ghost Whisperer UL Hoody.

At just 6.7 ounces/190g (men’s medium), the Ghost Whisperer UL Hoody just may be the lightest hooded insulated jacket out there today—and even at this low weight, it still has two zippered hand pockets with good space for small, light items like three-season gloves and a hat, and an adjustable hem. It’s also certainly one of the most packable hooded insulated jackets, stuffing down to the size of a liter bottle. You might even be able to pack it even
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Déjà vu All Over Again: Backpacking in Glacier National Park

By Michael Lanza

In the second week of September, the cool air in the shade of the forest nips at our cheeks as we leave our first night’s camp beside Glenns Lake in the backcountry of Glacier National Park, starting at a reasonably early hour for a day where we will walk nearly 16 miles and 6,000 feet of combined uphill and downhill. I’m hiking in a fleece hoodie, pants, and gloves and my friends Pam Solon and Jeff Wilhelm are similarly layered up. Once the sun reaches us within an hour, we’ll strip down to shorts and T-shirts.

Where the trail crosses a meadow, the expansive view west across a calm and insistently blue Cosley Lake reveals what looks like a long wall of overlapping stone shields jammed into the earth, each 2,000 or more feet tall and tilting at different angles. At the lake’s outlet—now in warm sunshine—we ford the Belly River, ankle- to calf-deep here with just a few tiny riffles and not very cold. More hiking through quiet forest brings us to the refrigerated, cliff-shaded alcove below Dawn Mist Falls, which spills thunderously over a sheer drop and crashes onto fallen boulders at its base, its force releasing a perpetual mist. Moss wallpapers the alcove’s short cliffs.

A backpacker hiking the Ptarmigan Tunnel Trail in Glacier National Park.
” data-image-caption=”Pam Solon backpacking the Ptarmigan Tunnel Trail in Glacier National Park.
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Gla7-35-Pam-Solon-backpacking-the-Ptarmigan-Tunnel-Trail-in-Glacier-National-Park.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Gla7-35-Pam-Solon-backpacking-the-Ptarmigan-Tunnel-Trail-in-Glacier-National-Park.jpg?fit=900%2C600&ssl=1″ src=”https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Gla7-35-Pam-Solon-backpacking-the-Ptarmigan-Tunnel-Trail-in-Glacier-National-Park.jpg?resize=900%2C600&ssl=1″ alt=”A backpacker hiking the Ptarmigan Tunnel Trail in Glacier National Park.” class=”wp-image-61144″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Gla7-35-Pam-Solon-backpacking-the-Ptarmigan-Tunnel-Trail-in-Glacier-National-Park.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Gla7-35-Pam-Solon-backpacking-the-Ptarmigan-Tunnel-Trail-in-Glacier-National-Park.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Gla7-35-Pam-Solon-backpacking-the-Ptarmigan-Tunnel-Trail-in-Glacier-National-Park.jpg?resize=768%2C512&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Gla7-35-Pam-Solon-backpacking-the-Ptarmigan-Tunnel-Trail-in-Glacier-National-Park.jpg?resize=150%2C100&ssl=1 150w, https://i0.wp.com/thebigoutside.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Gla7-35-Pam-Solon-backpacking-the-Ptarmigan-Tunnel-Trail-in-Glacier-National-Park.jpg?w=1200&ssl=1 1200w” sizes=”(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px” data-recalc-dims=”1″ />Pam Solon backpacking the Ptarmigan Tunnel Trail in Glacier National Park.

After a thoroughly relaxing lunch break on the pebbly beach at Elizabeth Lake—where the perfect combination of solar warmth and soft breeze probably converts in direct value to about a thousand hours of counseling—we start the long climb to the Ptarmigan Tunnel. Reaching the open alpine terrain, I repeatedly stop to spin 180 degrees and take big bites of our view of the valley of Helen and Elizabeth lakes and the peaks on the other side, which shelter what remains of a couple of glaciers in the shade of north-facing cliffs just below the mountaintops.

I’ve backpacked this trail before; this isn’t new to me. But time slowly renders a bit fuzzier the memory of how constantly breathtaking it is—which is, in a funny way, a gift to us: We get to experience that awe anew each time.

Everyone laughed when the legendary Yogi Berra said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again,” but I think I knew what he meant.

https://mansbrand.com/fly-slowly-through-enceladus-plumes-to-detect-life/

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Fly Slowly Through Enceladus’ Plumes to Detect Life

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Enceladus is blasting water into space from the jets at its southern pole. This makes it the ideal place to send a dedicated mission, flying the spacecraft through the plumes with life-detection instruments s. A new study suggests that a spacecraft must proceed carefully through the plumes, keeping its speed below 4.2 km/second (2,236 miles per hour). Using a specialized, custom-built aerosol impact spectrometer at these speeds will allow fragile amino acids to be captured by the spacecraft’s sample collector. Any faster, they’ll shatter, providing inclusive results.

One of the biggest surprises of the 20-year Cassini mission to the Saturn system was the discovery of the active geysers at Enceladus. At only about 500 km (310 miles) in diameter, the ice-covered Enceladus should be too small and too far from the Sun to be active. Instead, this little moon is one of the most geologically dynamic objects in the Solar System.

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Geysers spew from Enceladus in this image from the Cassini spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Cassini mission.

Cassini’s stunning backlit images of this moon show plumes erupting in Yellowstone-like geysers, emanating from tiger-stripe-shaped fractures in the moon’s surface. The discovery of the geysers took on more importance when Cassini later determined the plumes contained water ice and organics. Since life as we know it relies on water and a source of energy, this small but energetic moon has been added to the short list of possible places for life in our Solar System.

During three of Cassini’s passes of Enceladus in 2008 and 2009, the spacecraft’s Cosmic Dust Analyser measured the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds of 6.5–17.5 km/s, and vaporized instantly. While electrical fields inside the instrument were able to separate the various constituents of the resulting impact cloud for analysis, for a future mission, scientists would like to measure the particles in the plumes without completely vaporizing them.

Back in 2012, researchers from the University of California San Diego started working on a custom-built unique aerosol impact spectrometer, designed to study collision dynamics of single aerosols and particles at high velocities. Although it wasn’t built specifically to study ice grain impacts, it turns out this instrument might be exactly what planetary scientists are looking for to use at Enceladus, or even at Jupiter’s moon Europa, where there is growing evidence of active plumes of water vapor erupting from its surface.

Robert Continetti’s one-of-a-kind aerosol impact spectrometer was used in this experiment. Ice grains impact the microchannel plate detector (far right) at hypervelocity speeds, which can then be characterized in-situ.

Continetti and several colleague have now tested the device in a laboratory, showing that amino acids transported in ice plumes — like at Enceladus — can survive impact speeds of up to 4.2 km/s. Their research is published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“This apparatus is the only one of its kind in the world that can select single particles and accelerate or decelerate them to chosen final velocities,” said Robert Continetti, a professor from UC San Diego, in a press release. “From several micron diameters down to hundreds of nanometers, in a variety of materials, we’re able to examine particle behavior, such as how they scatter or how their structures change upon impact.”

From Cassini’s measurements, scientists estimate the ice plumes at Enceladus blast out at approximately .4 km/s (800 miles per hour). A spacecraft would have to fly at the right speeds to make sure the particles could be captured intact.

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This composite image shows suspected plumes of water vapour erupting at the 7 o’clock position off the limb of Jupiter’s moon Europa. The plumes, photographed by Hubble’s Imaging
Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/the-international-space-station-celebrates-25-years-in-space/

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The International Space Station Celebrates 25 Years in Space

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NASA recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the International Space Station (ISS) with a space-to-Earth call between the 7-person Expedition 70 crew and outgoing NASA Associate Administrator, Bob Cabana, and ISS Program Manager, Joel Montalbano. On December 6, 1998, the U.S.-built Unity module and the Russian-built Zarya module were mated in the Space Shuttle Endeavour cargo bay, as Endeavour was responsible for launching Unity into orbit that same day, with Zarya having waited in orbit after being launched on November 20 from Kazakhstan.

“I cannot believe it was 25 years ago today that we grappled Zarya and joined it with the Unity node,” said Cabana during the call from NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “Absolutely amazing.”

While this milestone marks 25 years since the first two ISS modules were attached, it would be another two years until the ISS had a crew, Expedition 1, which arrived at the ISS in November 2000 and stayed until March 2001, beginning an uninterrupted human presence on the ISS that continues today. During the two-year period between the first mating and Expedition 1, the Russian-built Zvedza module was attached to the Unity and Zarya modules on July 26, 2000, after launching from Kazakhstan two weeks earlier. Assembly of the large modules of the ISS would continue until 2021 when the Roscosmos-funded Nauka module was attached in July 2021.

Now in its final configuration, the ISS is approximately the size of an American gridiron football field consisting of 8 solar arrays that provide the station’s power while maintaining an average altitude of 400 kilometers (250 miles). Its massive size consists of a pressurized module length along the major axis of 67 meters (218 feet), a truss (primary body) length of 94 meters (310 feet), a solar array length (measured along the truss) of 73 meters (239 feet), and a total mass of 419,725 kilograms (925,335 pounds).

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Artist rendition of the ISS compared to an American gridiron football field. (Credit: NASA)
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Image of the ISS taken by SpaceX Crew-2 mission on November 8, 2021 after it successfully undocked from the ISS Harmony module. (Credit: NASA)

Ever since the 3-person Expedition 1 crew first took command of the ISS, a total of 273 individuals from 21 countries have visited the orbiting laboratory and have been comprised of trained astronauts and private visitors. From most visitors to least, the following visitor countries include the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Great Britain, Israel, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Netherlands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, and Sweden.

“One of my favorite aspects of the International Space Station is the international part of it,” said NASA Astronaut and Expedition 70 Flight Engineer, Jasmin Moghbeli, during the call. “We each bring our unique perspectives, not just from our different nationalities, but also our different backgrounds. I think we’re definitely strengthened by the international partnership. It’s just like gaining redundancy when you have multiple partners working together. It’s stronger and more resilient to any sort of problems or obstacles that come our way and so it definitely makes us stronger. And I think that’s why we have had the International Space Station up here for 25 years now.”

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