GENERAL
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GENERAL
CAMPING, HIKING, HUNTING TIPS
Here we discuss the outdoors tips and tricks that I have gleaned over the years along with some that have been sent in from you the readers. We review, (my favorite part) all the cool bits of gear that may not otherwise get the recognition they so richly deserve!
GENERAL TIPS & TRICKS - Things to make life on the trail easier!
GEAR YOU GOTTA GET...
Send me YOUR SUGGESTIONS
This is just a small collection of Camping and Hiking tips that may save you time, money, and aggravation.
Do you have tents, tarps, ponchos or other fabrics that need to be waterproofed? Are you sick of spending big bucks on those silicone sprays that just wear off and need retreatment every year or two? Try using Thompson's Water Seal (yup, the same stuff you use to waterproof the deck!). You can paint it on, spray it on, or dip items in it, and it is a hell of a lot cheaper! Test a small area first, and if you are okay with it, go ahead and dip or coat the item.
Where you put your campsite or shelter is very important. Just as in the real estate business... Location, location, location! When building a shelter or site in cold weather, it is recommended that it should not be located in a valley or on a hilltop. It should be built 50 to 100 feet above the valley floor. This is because the cold settles down into the valleys, making the valleys 20 or more degrees colder. The hilltops are more susceptible to wind which will chill you all the more. Locate a shelter on the south side of a hill as the ground gets a lot of sun throughout the day and will be warmer both during the day, and at night as the accumulated heat is radiated from the ground.
NOTE: The reverse of this may apply in hot temperatures, ie: build shelters in valleys, and on North side of hills.
NOTE: Water is important, so be careful to locate your shelter or site near enough that it is easy to get at!
Do you do a lot of family or group camping? Ever have a rainy weekend turned your campout into a mudfest? There's a solution. Spend about $30 on a military surplus parachute. Suspend the chute over your site like a huge umbrella. The chutes are not waterproof, but if they are hung with sufficient pitch, they will shed water (just like a tent, do not touch the inside, or you will start a drip. These can also be coated with Thompson's Water Seal as mentioned above. They are typically 30-40 feet in diameter, and will therefore cover an entire campsite, tents and all.
Backpackers everywhere have been the beneficiaries of many advances in technology... cool gear and gizmo's abound these days! The primary advances have come in the area of weight and size reductions due to leaps and bounds in materials technology. One of the best examples is the sleeping bags offered by Snugpak. Their 2 and 3 season bags compress down to the size of a loaf of bread, and weigh about 1.5 lbs. The picture below is of my Snugpak Travelpak 650 shown next to a can of Coke for size comparison. This is a great bag for Spring, Summer, and some Fall camping (2-3 Season). One could fit this bag, a Bivy Shelter or poncho, some food, a water filtering canteen and a couple extra clothing layers in a day pack. At these size and weight parameters, a hiker has no excuse for being unprepared on the trail when weather rolls in.
The other area where technology has made great advances is in that of backpacking water filters. These save you from having to carry many gallons of water with you on camping and hiking trips. There are many nice makes and models out there, so I will not drop any one name as far as a brand. There are also Water purifying bottles, straws, etc for emergency use. There really is NO excuse for not having one or more of these in your possession when tromping into the wild.
Gerber Tools (or other multi-tools) are quite a commodity in the woods. Probably the best use when camping (that no other pocket knife can really claim) is that you can use the pliers to move hot cans, canteen cups, and other items in and out of the fire.
Tyvek as a camping/hiking/survival
item? Why not? Tyvek is wonderful stuff in that it is cheap, lightweight,
durable, waterproof, and breathable. It is essentially a "poor man's Gore-Tex".
You can buy cheap coveralls (about $8) and other outer clothing, or buy it by
the roll at your favorite building supplies outlet. By the roll, you can make
cheap tarps, groundcloths, ponchos or even emergency bivy shelters. Granted, I
would usually recommend a quality, purpose made poncho or rainsuit, but for
emergency purposes in the trunk of your car this stuff is ideal. I will say that
I wouldn't want to use it as a canopy for general camping as it gets a bit loud
in the wind, but again for survival or emergency purposes, it's pretty good
stuff. The best camping use is as a groundcloth. It is much cheaper than a nylon
groundcloth, and also cleans up a lot easier.
For survival kit use, I'm afraid Tyvek doesn't pack quite small enough. It is
about 5 mils thick (about the same as paper). Although this doesn't seem very
thick at a glance, a ten by ten foot sheet will only pack down to about 6"L x 4"
diameter roll, or a bit larger than a soda can. That's about the size of my
entire survival kit!
For my survival kit, I use a 0.35 mil painter's tarp (that's 0.00035" thick or
about one fifteenth the thickness of the Tyvek!). You can buy it in large rolls
at most hardware stores in the paint section. I bought a roll that is 9 foot by
400 foot for about $15. I pack a nine foot by twelve foot sheet of this stuff
into a roll about the size of your thumb! That's enough for both an emergency
shelter AND an emergency poncho! What it lacks in durability, it sure makes up
for in it's packability, and for a survival kit, small is the key factor. You do
sacrifice the breathability factor, but it is just as waterproof.
I recently tested a great little piece of
gear. It's a cook stove that works as well as the best $100+ hiking stoves out
there, yet weighs next to nothing, costs about $5, and runs on alcohol (IPA,
denatured, rubbing and other alcohols available at hardware and drug stores).
As a side note, I should have written this sooner, as I promised to test this a
while back, but work has kept me from any real camping until recently. I
purchased a small lot of these stoves, and brought them along on a campout. I
gave them to everyone there, and everyone fell in love instantly.
These stoves are made from aluminum soda cans, and weigh about an ounce. I had
read about these little gems here and there, and had planned on making one, but
all the instructions out there seemed to involve taping the seams and other
rather flimsy approaches. I don't like flimsy gear that could fail me at the
wrong times!
A guy called "Mechanic Mike" has solved this. He has made dies and tooling for use in a press to effectively produce these with no tape or adhesives, These are permanently pressed together, and are quite durable when compared to anything else out there. He sells these in his Ebay store (see link below) for about $5/ea.
http://stores.ebay.com/Thru-Hikers-Closet-and-More_W0QQssPageNameZl4QQtZkm
To use the stove, you just put in a small amount of alcohol (a few ounces, or
enough to cover the base). I use a small mil-spec plastic flask to carry the
alcohol. Light the alcohol, which will burn with a nice blue flame. As the stove
walls heat up, they begin to vaporize the alcohol internally, and within about
one minute, each of the 30 or so holes at the top is sporting a nice blue flame
jet. The effect is like cooking on a gas stove at home. A good size canteen cup
of water will boil in minutes.
As you may have noticed, I am fond of compact, lightweight gear (SnugPak bags,
bivy style tents, mult-tools etc). This piece of gear is about the nicest and
cheapest piece of kit I have seen in quite some time. I don't know who invented
it, but Mechanic Mike has PERFECTED IT!!
NOTE - Mechanic Mike, When are you gonna come up with a matching tin-can
alcohol lantern? If you do...I WANT ONE!
SUBMISSIONS, SUGGESTIONS, TIPS AND ADVICE
I will be adding lots of tips and tricks to this section soon. Feel free to send me your suggestions, tips and advice via email, or submit them directly using the submission box (below). I will read through them and post those any that are valid and interesting.
FM 21-76 US ARMY SURVIVAL MANUAL
I will add to this page as often as I have time, but if you want the original be-all and end-all source of survival information, it is the FM 21-76 US ARMY SURVIVAL MANUAL. I have crunched it all into an MS Word Document. I abridged it only by removing the Appendixes from the end. It is 233 full size pages in all, and the overall file size is about 2.5Mb, so it is relatively easy to download. Whereas your tax dollars paid for it already, please feel free to distribute it as you see fit. Simply RIGHT CLICK HERE and select "Save As" to Download.
Don't have MS Word? They give away the viewer for free HERE