Hiking Terminology 101

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Anyone who has taken up a hobby on more than a semi-regular basis knows that with each hobby or endeavor, there are typically certain words that develop known only to the community devoted to that hobby. Hiking is no different, and if you want to become a truly avid hiker, you’re going to have to speak the language. Don’t worry; this isn’t like learning Spanish. It simply means picking up some basic hiking terms, some of which are listed here.

• Day Packs: Day packs are like smaller versions of backpacks that you’ll use for a common hiking jaunt, packing only what you need for a day’s worth. Backpacks are more suitable for more long-distance hikes and for the different activity of backpacking.
• “From the Skin Out” or FSO Weight: As the title suggests, “from the skin out” refers to everything you’re carrying with you that you weren’t born with. In other words, FSO weight includes everything you’re carrying, from your sunglasses and clothes to your backpack and hiking stick.
• Packweight: Different from “From the skin out” weight, the packweight refers to the actual backpack you’re carrying itself. Don’t include food and water in this weight: simply refer to the actual weight of your backpack.
• Pronation/supination: Both of these refer to the angle at which your foot hits the ground. Pronation refers to rotating your foot inward; supination refers to rotating your foot outward. These are also popular terms with runners, who need to make sure that their form is ideal for the pounding that their feet will take. As you can imagine, this is also important for hikers.
• Guiding stars: Guiding starts are ways that help you find your direction at night; they’re different in the northern and southern hemispheres. If you’re in the northern hemisphere, you’ll look for the North Star; if you’re in the southern hemisphere, try to find the Southern Cross.
• Cairn: A formation of rocks or simply a pile of rocks that helps indicate the direction of the trail. Needless to say, keeping on your trail is of vital importance to a hiker that doesn’t want to get lost.

These terms simply work as some “basic” hiking terminology: if you want to learn more, simply remain exposed to the hiking community and you’ll pick up more advanced terms. Don’t be embarrassed to ask another hiker what a term might refer to; after all, we all had to learn them at some point or another.

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Five Essential Items For Your Camping To-Do List

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Have you ever gone camping before and felt, well, terrible at it? Sure, you might have packed well, but when your feet actually hit the great outdoors, you’re in a whole different world, especially if your experience is going to be truly rustic. Good camping comes with good experience, but it also comes with the right kind of knowledge.

If you ever feel lost camping, this article is for you. Here’s your checklist to kick off your camping trip right:

1. Shelter first. I was recently on a camping trip with some friends and we arrived in the twilight hours. Luckily, we followed the idea of “shelter first” by setting up our tents with the limited light we had left. By the time we were done setting up camp, it was dark out and we were getting our fire ready. If we had built the fire first, putting up the tents would have been a major nuisance.

3. Get warm. The fire is useful for keeping warm at night, but you’ll also want to be ready for sleeping out under the stars. Even on summer nights the temperature can drop drastically and you’ll want to make sure you’re properly insulated. Bring some heavy flannel clothes even for camping in the summer and be sure you have a sleeping bag that really traps heat well.

4. Plan for the next meal. If your shelter is up and you’ve got heat taken care of, plan for the next meal – even if it’s tomorrow’s breakfast. Check your cooler and make sure you have all of the utensils and goods you need. When you wake up tomorrow, you should be ready to start a fire and get the bacon crackling.

5. Set up your wants. The three needs of survival in the wilderness tend to go like this: shelter, water, food. With all of that taken care of (you brought fresh water, right?), set up your “wants.” Have the DVD player ready to go in your tent. If you brought an outdoor shower, make sure you found a suitable place to put it, and that it’s filled.

Photo Credits: tranchis

Backpacking: Is it Better to Pack Light or Pack Heavy?

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

In the world of backpacking and outdoorsmanship – for lack of a better term – there are a few schools of thought. One of the most popular ideas for backpackers is that packing light not only reduces the weight on your back, but makes everything simpler when it’s time to set up a camp. Another school of thought feels that extra weight is worth the extra convenience. And yet another school believes that you should be able to survive with a flint, a knife, and the clothes on your back. Who’s right?

If you want to learn more about yourself as a backpacker, you’re going to have to tackle two different ways of learning: experience and experimentation. You never learn anything unless you actually do it, and in order to do something, you’ve got to take a leap of faith and actually experiment.

For those of you light packers out there, how many times have you actually gone backpacking without your light equipment? Is there better equipment out there that improves the quality of life you have when you’re backpacking?

Some people believe that packing light for hiking and backpacking is a great idea. But they don’t think it’s because you should pack light, it’s that you should pack next to nothing at all! Survivalists are people who enter the wilderness, striving to learn how to live by their wits and skills alone (with perhaps a tool or two). Although this skill certainly isn’t easy to learn, it can be easy to maintain with experience.

What kind of backpacker or hiker are you? Are you able to point to an experience in your life where you can definitely say “This is why I know the other way of doing it is wrong”? Have you given another way of doing things an honest try?

If you want to backpack more often, you should learn the many different skills that come with backpacking, not just a specific way of doing things. After all, isn’t the fun of backpacking the novelty of creating new experienced and seeing land you’ve never seen before? Why not blaze a few new trails?

Photo Credits: thechosenrebel

Heading Home: How to “Break Camp”

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Sooner or later, as fun as your camping trip may have been, it will be time to go home. If your camping trip has been a successful one, you may hate to break that bit of news to your family or friends, but as the old adage goes, “all good things must come to an end.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you’re out of the woods yet, friend. You’re going to have to break camp, meaning you’ll have to pack up all of your things, clean up your camping area, and get ready for transport. Here’s a quick guide to doing it as thoroughly and efficiently as possible.

First, don’t procrastinate cleaning up throughout your trip. A lot of the stress of breaking camp will be reduced if you do a little “mini-clean” before going to bed each night. These cleans don’t have to do anything major, but you should at least stop garbage from stockpiling next to your tent. The more prepared you are to break camp, the easier it will be to start it. No one wants to look at a huge pile of garbage and clothes at the end of the week and wonder how to even make the first dent.

Third, work together. As tough as it is to motivate a group of people to clean when they don’t want to clean, having more hands will make things easier for everyone involved. Work together to get a good system going – someone handles garbage disposing, someone handles packing and bags, and someone takes down the tent. If you get all cylinders going at once, you’ll be able to break camp in record time.

Fourth, do a review and final walk around. If you have that nagging feeling that you’ve forgotten to pack something, there’s a pretty good chance you did. Have a mental checklist of the things you’ll absolutely need – like a cell phone, wallet, car keys, etc. If you’ve remembered all of these things, don’t spend too much time looking for something that you can just replace anyway.

A good camping trip is not only relaxing, but it gets your mind to focus on nature, camp site maintenance, and the fun of being in the outdoors – just remember to leave the woods like you found them.

Photo Credits: heymarchetti

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