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How to Hike With Your Dog
Have you ever gone out on a hike by your lonesome – or with a friend – feeling guilty at the prospect of leaving Man’s Best Friend home alone?
There’s no reason to feel guilty, particularly as you can even start bringing your dog along with you on your hikes. Doing so will help you bond with your dog, bringing you both into a situation where you feel somewhat dependent on each other to keep going. With your dog with you, you won’t have to exit the house to the pattering of Fido scratching on the wall, hoping to come along.
But before you do bring your dog on a hike, make sure to follow these tips and guidelines:
- Make sure your dog has all the vaccination he/she requires. You might already have this covered, but it bears mentioning because of the unpredictability of introducing a dog back into the elements. If you’re not sure, make sure to call or check with a veterinarian before you bring your dog hiking with you.
- Get your dog in shape. Just like you wouldn’t expect yourself to tackle Mount Everest after many years as a couch potato, you can’t simply expect your dog will be in hiking shape, even if you take daily walks. Introduce your dog to hiking with a small hike to begin with – this will both help them get into shape and familiarize them with the environment you’ll be bringing them in to.
- Bring a leash. This is often required at certain hiking trails, but even if not, you’ll want to make sure you have control over your dog. You never know what kind of critter might come along and steal away your dog’s attention. Even if you have a good verbal command over your dog and leashes aren’t required, bring a leash the first couple of times just to be sure. You can always let go of the leash if the dog wants to go explore.
- Remember that you’re drinking for two. Don’t forget that your dog, just like you, will need to keep hydrated, particularly on hot summer days. This might mean a little extra packing. If your dog pants heavily, it’s a fair sign that he or she is already getting dehydrated and needs some water.
- Consider your dog to be like bring a smaller person along with you. How would you prepare to bring another person along with you? You’d need extra supplies of the same things like food and water, yes, but you’ll also need to be prepared with a first aid kit.
Following these simple guidelines a few times will get you used to the idea of taking your dog with you on your excursions into the woods and the great outdoors. But as with anything, make sure you and your dog are ready before you start embarking on your adventures.
Photo Credits: Artbandito -
How to Train for a Long Hiking Trip
So you’re finally ready to do it: heading out to the Grand Canyon in a month or two, you feel excited for all of the views you’re going to see. But are you ready for all of the exercise you’re going to get? If you need to shake off your hiking rust, this article will help whip you back into hiking shape so you can concentrate on the nature – not the nuisance.
There’s No Training Like the Real Thing
You might be putting in extra hours at the office in order to make sure that you can have this extended hiking trip, but that doesn’t mean you can’t squeeze in a few hiking jaunts on your own. If you can, bring your spouse on these hiking trips so that you both receive the benefits. If you venture out alone, make sure you don’t venture far off the beaten path – your goal is simply to re-acquaint yourself with the experience of hiking. If you must have adventure, make sure you bring equipment like a compass and GPS device.
There is no training like the real thing: hiking up and down hills will help you not only build up the leg strength you’ll be requiring, it will help you work out the details of your own trip. What did you forget to bring on this hiking trip that you’ll need on your hiking trip? What was uncomfortable about your hike, and what can you buy out there on the marketplace that will help you feel better?Training Near or At Home
Of course, it’s not always possible to get out there and hike in the woods. How should you exercise and prepare today?
First, take a look at your daily routine. Whether you’re sitting on the couch all day or simply taking a daily walk, you might want to change things up to better reflect what you’ll be doing on your trip. If you’ve been avoiding that big hill on your walk, it’s time to take on the challenge. If your treadmill has an incline feature, be sure to make avid use of it.
Second, make sure you feel okay about leaving indoor civilization for hours at a time, even if your exercise routine keeps you on the treadmill. Ask yourself what you’d need to feel comfortable: plenty of water and snacks, sure. But also remember that on your hiking trip, you’ll want to bring gadgets like binoculars and a digital camera. Most importantly: be cautious and safe, and you should have plenty of fun.
Photo Credits: tricky ™
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How to Find North on the Hiking Trip
If you’re out hiking at night, or in an unknown area, while on a hiking or camping trip, it will be important to keep your bearings. This is especially true if you’re camping in a place you’ve never been before, where almost every location will look new and consequently, a little confusing. But if you always know how to find north and have the resources to do it effectively, you’ll be in better shape. Here are some ways to find north while you’re hiking.
Bring the right equipment:
Most of your problems will be eliminated if you bring a GPS device or a compass with you – or both. Of course, not every one of us has access to these once we’re out in the woods, so you don’t want to rely on technology alone. That’s why having other ways of determining direction will be extremely valuable. If you are informed and bring the right technology with you, you’ll have no trouble determining your direction.
On a clear night, use the stars.
Navigating by the stars has been important for seafaring civilizations for hundreds – maybe thousands – of years. On a clear night out in the woods, you should have an excellent view of the right stars to help point out where north is. In the northern hemisphere, locate the Big Dipper. At the “spoon” end of the dipper (not the handle end), the two end stars point toward the North Star.
Click here for an illustration. Note: in the southern hemisphere, you can use a similar technique with the Summer Cross. Research this more to learn how it’s done.
During daylight, use the presence of the sun.
If you know what time it is, you should have a good idea of where the sun is. In the northern hemisphere, the sun will be due south at noon – this won’t help as much the closer to the equator you are. It will rise in the east and set in the west, although you don’t want to use the sun’s rising or setting to indicate exact directions east and west.
Most importantly, in a situation where you need to use navigation like this, try to keep calm. Staying relaxed will help you to remember tips and tricks like this, so keeping your wits might be the most important tip of all.
Photo Credits: cwalker71
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Hiking Speed vs Walking Speed
When many aspiring hikers are interested in learning how to get into “hiking shape” for the summer, a frequent question that comes up is the issue of pace, or speed. While many people don’t care to measure their hiking speed, so long as they work up a sweat, others like to know their speed for navigational and even physical purposes – it helps them measure their progress and calories burnt. If you want to understand your hiking speed, however, you’ll also want to know how it measures against your normal walking speed.
That’s why many people are so interested in the speed at which they hike. To them, their speed reflects their results – if they can make it up a hill in an hour when they used to take an hour and a half, they know that they’ve made tangible progress in their development. So let’s take a look at how hiking speed and walking speed can tell you about the kind of shape you’re in.
A Rule of Thumb
Generally, for every hundred pounds you weigh, you’ll burn about 45 calories per hour going at a speed of two miles per hour – but that’s just on a smooth level surface. The energy output required will approximately double for every mile per hour you increase, meaning you’ll burn about 90 calories per hundred pounds at three miles an hour, and so on.
The reason so many people enjoy hiking is that the incline adds a significantly greater energy requirement to your workout routine, increasing the amount of calories you’ll need to burn in order to go the same distance or the same speed as you would on a level surface. Because an increase in speed requires a similar increase in energy on a smooth level surface, you can expect the same to happen when you’re hiking up an incline.
Don’t Measure Against Walking Speeds
A mile hike is quite different than a mile walk, so don’t try to compare your speed going up a hill with the kind of speed you can expect to see when you walk on an incline. Anyone who’s used the incline feature on a treadmill knows what kind of power requirement gravity can add to any exercise. If you find that you were hiking at two miles an hour but you still feel like you had a decent workout, it’s safe to say that you should judge the quality of your workout by how challenging it felt, not by what the numbers always say.
A good hiking speed will rival a pretty calm walk. Avoid the beginner’s mistake of hiking too fast so that you can build endurance – intermittently include periods of greater intensity.
Photo Credits: justinjohnsen
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How to Build the Ideal Campfire – Part II
In Part I of this series on how to create the ideal campfire, we spent most of our time looking at site preparation and planting a good foundation for the fire. Up to this stage, you should have a neat, shallow, but large hole in the ground surrounded by rocks, as well as a pile of dirt nearby and a bucket of water for fire extinguishing.
In this article, we’ll finally get down to the fire itself, taking advantage of our well-place foundation to make one spectacular (and practical) campfire.
Keep in mind the tools to have handy: A bucket of water, a shovel, matcher/lighter.
First, you’re going to need to gather wood, but before you even do that, you have to know what kind of wood to look for.
Understand the ideal structure of a fire: a lower layer of tinder, such as dry grass or shredded paper, a middle layer of small sticks, and an upper layer of larger wood that will keep you fire going. When you look for wood, you’re going to have to look for all three different types in order to structure your fire properly.
Gather these types of wood, avoiding “alive” limbs and branches as much as possible – they don’t burn as well as dead or “free” wood. Gather more than you think you need, because there’s a good chance you might underestimate how far your wood will stretch.Once you have plenty of each type of wood (you’ll particularly want plenty of small sticks for the middle layer), it’s time to build the structure itself. A tee pee shape is usually recommended, especially if you have longer sticks that can stretch out for a nice, wide fire. This structure allows you to easily pile tinder low and place sticks over it, allowing the wood to rest on other pieces of wood.
This shape is also ideal because it will allow plenty of air for the fire to consume and a natural progression of tinder to wood that makes for a quick-developing, long-lasting fire.
Once you have plenty of tinder and your structure in place, simply light a match or hit a lighter and get your tinder burning well. The fire from your tinder should be in direct contact with the smaller sticks of the next layer, which in turn should start burning and heating the larger logs.
Before you know it, you’ll have a great campfire that burns high, wide, and long! Set a cooking tripod over it for well-cooked hot dogs or find some more branches for roasting marshmellows, and enjoy.
Photo Credits: independentman
