Bushcraftin
After I hiked the southern AT in
2009, I thought I knew everything about backpacking. I remember watching TV in
a motel room near Pearisburg, taking a rest day, and ridiculing Bear Grylls’ methods of living outside. Here I was, having lived among nature for
an entire month and a half, and I had never found myself needing or wanting to
do so much as make a fire, let alone fishing or chopping down trees with a
sword-sized knife. I ate some more eclairs while Bear instructed me on how to *safely* run down a scree slope and backflip
into various bodies of water. This guy was stupid, I said. I like my alcohol stove,
I said. Change the channel then, I said. And I did.
3 years later, I found myself thru-hiking the PCT, the AT’s western
sibling. And I did it chopping wood with my sword-of-a knife and making fires
all the way. Not only did I just make fires, I made a bunch of them with those
sparker things that have sat on the wall
of outdoor stores everywhere since the dawn of time. And I hiked faster, lighter and more
comfortably than I ever did on the AT.
To be fair, I can’t honestly give survival
skills all the credit for that fact-I gained a lot of knowledge and experience
on the AT. Nor can I credit Bear Gryll’s with being some sort of wilderness
guru; it’s an understatement to say that Man vs Wild is a little dramatic and I
don’t backflip into swimming holes (very often). I do, however, credit the show
with helping me discover bushcraft-which is basically outdoor survival. And I
credit bushcraft with helping me hone down my pack weight and bulk up my
comfort level on long trails and weekend treks alike.
So without further adieu, here are
several cute, bushcrafty techniques that have helped me whittle down my pack
weight while boosting up my fun rate.
Heat up without (much) extra gear
1. You can improve your nighttime warmth in any season by carefully choosing your campsite-rivers, lakes and valleys are usually cooler than higher terrain. The reason? Cold air sinks to the lowest spots, and rivers and lakes are generally that. Add this to the fact that most rivers and valleys are surrounded by sun-blocking mountains, and you can easily find yourself signed up for a chilly night followed by a chilly morning.
1. You can improve your nighttime warmth in any season by carefully choosing your campsite-rivers, lakes and valleys are usually cooler than higher terrain. The reason? Cold air sinks to the lowest spots, and rivers and lakes are generally that. Add this to the fact that most rivers and valleys are surrounded by sun-blocking mountains, and you can easily find yourself signed up for a chilly night followed by a chilly morning.
Don’t go up to
peaks and expect to be warm though-the lack of
tree cover, and high winds often end up being as cold or colder than the
low spots.
**When I’m looking
to be warm, I look for a mid-height forest that has a thick bed of needles or
leaves covering the ground and a thick tree cover up above and all around. So
does Andrew Skurka, and I think that dude might know what he’s talking about
maybe**
2.
Hit the hay! Make yourself a bed. One adage
repeated in survival books is that you lose body heat to the ground much faster
than you do to the air (at least when you’re wearing clothing)-that’s why you
double up on sleeping pads when you go out in the winter. So when you’re a
torso pad kinda person, you can find yourself getting cold in the middle of the
night if you camp on sand, snow or a puddle.
So use mother nature-a 3 or 4 inch thick pine needle mattress will make
you sleep like you have never slept before and it takes around 15 minutes to
“assemble”; just shove a bunch of pine needles, grass or dead leaves underneath
the floor of your shelter (repeat after me-after you set up the tent, but
before you put your stuff into it). You can use pine boughs as well but since
we’re all happy, go-lucky, LNT hikers, we’ll save that one for emergencies.
Scatter your mattress around after you use it so the next hiker can have the
fun of putting it back together again. It’s like a puzzle that everybody can
do!
**I started doing this out west to
combat some of the cold desert nights, but now I do it all the time because I
like being warm.**
3.
In snow camping situations, many people bring
hefty tarp or their tent in quick-pitch mode-why carry bug netting if there are
no bugs? If you’re all about that move, use a survival blanket as a
groundcloth. Sol makes great, heavy duty survival blankets. You will notice the
difference and you will annoy people trying to sleep nearby when you thrash
around on what is essentially a giant and expensive potato chip bag. Win-Win.
4.
Remember the rule about cold air sinking into
valleys? Use it when you snow camp. Dig out a cold well (also known as a ditch, imprint or hole) out of the snow underneath your
vestibule. Now stick your hand in there at some point during the night-chilly,
huh? Aren’t you glad that air isn’t up in your sleeping space, making you even
colder than you would otherwise be?
**I guess you could also try doing
this with dirt but I never have and probably never will. Let me know what you
find out though.**
5. Hot water bottles-in survival, people
typically use rocks warmed by a fire to stick under their clothes for extra
warmth, but with all the silnylon in high tech gear nowadays, I don’t recommend
that particular route unless you know what you’re doing. You can simulate the benefits
of this technique through of that age-old tip-hot water in your Nalgene, but I
find the most efficient way of heating up in the cold night is to throw one or
two handwarmers at the bottom of your bag-that secondary source of heat cannot
be ignored, it lasts pretty much all night and it’s a small weight penalty to
pay for a good night’s sleep.
Cool Down, Lighten Up
1.
Think like a camel. Don’t carry 3 gallons of
water when you’re passing a beautiful spring every 3 feet. Sit down at one of
them and drink a liter or more of water, and only carry 1 or ½ a liter of water
if you’re passing another reliable source within an hour or so. Caveat-this
technique only works if you know where you are, the location of the next source
and how reliable that source is.
2.
Bird baths. Take them whenever it’s hot. Make
sure to get your head, your hair will hold the water in and keep you cooler,
which means you use less sweat which means you’re more comfortable. Your lucky bandana? Soak it in water and tie
it around your neck-if you cool down your arteries, the blood going to your
head will cool down and you’ll instantly feel better. A cold bandana directly
on the head is amazing too.
3.
Make time for Siestas. If it’s a really hot, dry
day, take a nap around the nastiest part, 1-3pm. You’ll wake up refreshed,
happy and cooler. Bonus; now you’ll have enough gas to go until dark, and you
get to check out all the pretty colors that sunset brings while you’re hiking. If you’re in the
desert , take night hikes but only if you know the trail well.
4.
Know thy berries. I’ll never forget the day I
ran out of water on a long, hot climb in Virginia, and thought I’d just have to
gut out the discomfort until I hit the next water source several miles away. Thankfully, near the top
of the mountain I found copious amounts of blueberries and wineberries. I
nudged the feeding black bears out of the way and went to town. Even though
they were small, sweet and not especially juicy, those tiny little guys helped
me get up the mountain, down to a town and into a pizza hut booth. I wrecked
that pitcher of mountain dew and learned more about edible plants to bolster my
meals. Nothing like fresh wild onion in dehydrated chili or a handful of
blueberries in the heat of a summer day.
Into the Flames
1.
Get comfortable with fire. Make them small
(softball sized is plenty big), make them safe and make them in established
fire rings. You can carry less liquid fuel and/or cook gear if you’re able to
make fire in all circumstances, so practice in bad conditions often. Here’s
some sweet tips to get yr firemaking up to snuff.
a.
Fire needs 4 things to work right.
i. Dry
Fuel
ii. Dry
base
iii. Oxygen
iv. Windbreak
v. Pinecones
I. I guess that
was 5 but they’re all super helpful. Dry fuel can be found in the wettest of environments
by looking for dead-wood that is standing and not lying in a puddle, soaking up
water like a sponge. It can also be found on the inside of wood; if you have a
knife capable of batoning or a hatchet, splitting sticks can ensure that you
have a good fire even in freezing rain.
II. If you’re
making your fire in snow or rain, you have to give it a fighting chance. Set
down a dry rock or several split logs before you try to fire up your kindling ,
otherwise your fire is likely to stay a pipe dream for good. Pine bark from a downed pine tree is an excellent base to build a fire on, as it is very flammable. I also like putting my dry base on something that has a better chance at drying out once the fire gets going, meaning that if you put that dry base on a rock, rocks or sand your fire will be much better off than it would be if that dry bark was on muddy ground.
III. You will need
to get comfy with sticking your face next to your starting embers and probably
inhaling enough smoke to fill up a gymnasium. The more you blow, the bigger the
flames. You can also apply this rule to your fuel-don’t smother your poor
fire-the line between cutting down airflow and putting enough fuel on isn’t
exactly a fine one, but you’ll know when you cross it.
IV. Windbreak-you
gotta be nice to that bad boy before it comes to life. Use rocks or even logs
to shelter your baby-flames from the cursed wind.
V. Pinecones-not
much to say here, but once they get going, they can make a fire in a hurry.
Pine wood is also ideal for hot, fast fires-exactly what you need when you’re boiling
water to rehydrate noodles and then going to bed. Pine readily available in almost any
mountain environment and burns well even when it’s wet-thank the high levels of resin in
the wood.
Caveat-if you
don’t wait to cook your stuff on the coals, you’ll probably notice that resin is
getting on the outside of your pot. Chalk it up to a lesson learned and scrub
it off with sand and water.
2.
Fire isn’t just a useful tool, it’s a morale
booster. Anybody who has ever been winter backpacking or has been completely
and utterly lost in the wilderness knows what I mean. I could tell about 50
anecdotal stories-Like the time our group thought about aborting a trip into
Dolly Sods after we had already reached camp, sorely tempted by the promise of
a warm ski cabin and a hot tub- but the most revealing story I have was when I
was on the AT. It was a particularly wet
and gloomy year and after about 500 miles of soggy trail, some of us started to
buy cheap candles in town to burn in shelters- the small flame was a constant
reminder that you have some control over your heat and your environment, and
that level of confidence is a powerful asset to any backpacker’s repertoire.
Stay warm, stay dry.
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