Preparedness in terms of equipment and experience in terms of outdoor skills are, today, for me personally to a lesser extent a matter of concern. In my more than 20 years of trekking and hiking experience done mostly alone and mostly in climate regions similar to Disko Island I am reasonably skilled in outdoors skills like map reading, navigation, basic survival skills, and so on. My equipment including clothing is, as well, reasonable and appropriate in terms of good enough. I tend to select my gear mostly based on personal experience and do not introduce big changes from trip to trip.
My favorite stove is a modified Coleman Apex II. That’s a fuel (gasoline) stove with a detached fuel bottle modified to include wind protection and to stow nicely into the aluminum pots I use. I use that stove since 1993 when I bought it on a business trip to the United States. I once tried a small Swiss Army stove instead of it but I was disappeared in that it offered to little comfort in cooking and I turned back to my Apex II stove.
My tent is a Seedhouse II which is a very light two person tent. I use that tent only in summer as it is not really suited for winter tours. It is not very well suited in windy conditions either. Otherwise it is just fine being set up in a minute or two. Of course being very light, it is a natural compromise of weight and comfort.
For this time, I changed my backpack for the first time in a very long time. I used to carry an old Halti outerframe 120 liters backpack that I once bought in Finland some 15 years and used since then. During that time I was very satisfied with that backpack as it provides good stability even when fully loaded much more than a overloaded 80 liters innerframe backpack I tried once. However, in the meantime the trend in backpacks went more and more towards innerframe constructions. The mainstream market goes for backpack sizes of 60-80 liters and total weight when moving of up to 20 kg which is definitely far too small for my purposes. The options for big backpacks are actually quite small and it took quite some time for me to find one that would be constitute a significant improvement over my old Halti backpack. The improvements I was looking for where first of all reduced weight, less pockets, a good carrying system as well as robustness considering the kinds of trips I make.
Finally, with the Cyclops II backpack used in various special forces around the world and manufactured by the renowned company Berghaus I found one that is totally up to my requirements. It is lighter, it is extremely ruggedized and very flexible for example in that the side pockets can be detached and used as separate daypacks. The size of 110 liters is sufficient and stability even fully loaded to total weight above 30 kg is very good and last not least its weight is about 1 kg smaller than of the old Halti backpack.
Regarding, clothing I believe in onion shell like layering of thin clothes. I try to keep the single layers as thin as possible. I am not a believer in the extra benefit of those well known outdoor clothing brands. I am not a believer in the benefits of membrane textiles such Goretex and similar. When I am hiking, I am sweating and when I am sweating there is up to now no techno-textile that keeps up to its promises, at least not in my case. Still, I am up for a sponsored trial. Anyone interested?
What I am believing in are clothes preferably thin with high content of synthetic fibers such as Polartec and similar. My set of clothes for crossing Disko Island consists of a 15 year old rain jacket (actually an old single layer Goretex jacket with above properties), very light rain trousers, a 15 € windstopper jacket from Tchibo, a German coffee chain, light hiking trousers, actually again quite cheap ones made of synthetic/cotton fiber mixture, synthetic short sports underwear, three sets of synthetic long sports underwear (similar to Odlo type of underwear), a light cotton/synthetic fiber hiking shirt, three sets of woolen socks, and one or two Coolmax sport T-shirts. In total nothing really expensive. Everything is readily available in normal department stores.
In total, that makes my clothes less expensive than peoples’ expedition-like clothing on their way from the city malls to their cars. That is what I call successful marketing of Jack Wolfskin, North Face and the likes.
Regarding shoes, I stay with my 15 years old Meindl Island Pro shoes which were actually very expensive but totally reliable. I will rather get them repaired, which I am told is possible, as purchasing new ones even if it would result in the same expenses.
Additional, for crossing rivers I took a pair of fake, because of being much cheaper and as good as, Crocs with me. They are very light and provide good front protection to ones toes when crossing rivers. When wearing them an additional belt for each foot is necessary to attach them tightly so ones feet do not to slip out of them when traversing a river.
I think one of the most important single piece of clothes are the trousers. The most important requirement is that they dry very fast as it generally cannot be avoided that they get wet because of rain or because of sweat. The material of the trousers need to be thin, so that it can dry fast, but at the time ruggedized enough not to break apart to easily. When getting wet I usually keep the trousers on. At normal conditions, i.e. not freezing not raining, they will dry up in less than two hours. If not moving with some patience than can be dried quite easily in the tent using the stove.
If that is not possible for some reason, plan B is to wear long underwear instead. Two layers of long underwear trousers are usually sufficient with rain trousers providing additional rain and wind protection.
To summarize, my key principle in clothing is the use of several thin separate layers of clothing. During hiking clothes will get wet not necessarily because of rain but because you are sweating on the move or just because of some stupid unforeseen incident. Thus, the challenge is not that much to keep you clothes dry. That is something of which the likelihood you have to minimize. The real challenge is to find a way to get wet clothes dry even in unfavorable situations. Using several thin layers of clothes help you in tackling that challenge as thin clothes preferably made of synthetic fibers dry up much faster compared to single thicker layer of wet clothes.