The Eco community at Daily Kos has produced so many wonderful diaries encouraging us to visit the US National Parks and Forests. Hike On! is one such series, and there are plenty of other diaries that appear with the tag DKGreenRoots. Since the fair weather hiking season is upon us, it is a great time for new hikers to get outside and see this magnificent country.
What is here contains some quick tips and hints for new hikers and backpackers -- many are things that a hiker needs to know for safety, but some are things that worry new hikers, and others will keep them out of a tough spot. There are a few comfort tips, too. Much is specific to overnight camping, but a lot of it applies to day trips, as well.
Tread lightly, and enjoy the out of doors. Be safe, be warm, be fed.
Don't disappear.
Hike with a buddy:
It is true that many hikers take to the woods alone -- my husband is one who likes solo trips, and has taken several long treks by himself. While this is great adventure for a seasoned backpacker, let me suggest that going into the wilderness alone is a risk. And that risk is greater with lack of experience.
Ask me about how we almost lost my husband to a bog in Scotland.
Be in shape for the hike:
You're in great shape. You can treadmill for hours, you powerwalk everywhere, and you just ran a 10K last weekend. (Good for you, by the way.) There are strains on the body that are unique to hiking the wilderness, though, and you can pretty easily end up with an injury or in a conundrum that your physical strength cannot manage if you aren't prepared. Make sure that your quadriceps are strong enough to keep your knees stable when you have to climb under a fallen tree or over a pile of boulders. Make sure that you have enough core strength to carry that backpack you are wearing, even in the wind when you're scrambling over rocks. And if you have stiff ankles, be sure to pack a couple of Ace bandages, just in case.
It is a major undertaking to haul you out of the wilderness if you can't walk out on your own.
Know where you're going:
Take a map, please. Trails are often not regularly maintained, and maps go out of date year after year, so if you're not going with someone who has traveled there this season, be sure that you get information about the trail status. A Ranger Station is the best place, as the people who work for the Forest Service are most likely to know where the trail crews still need to make repairs. If you can't find a Ranger, you will often find the latest trail status on the bulletin board at the trailhead. You can also do an internet search to find recent comments by people who have walked the trails. But I've been forced cross country more than once because I bought an old map, and it is sometimes a struggle to keep from getting lost, especially amongst a lot of trees.
Make sure that you have a compass and know how to use it with your map. And make sure that several people know exactly where you intend to be going. If you are camping overnight, register at the trailhead or at a nearby Ranger Station if possible.
Make sure that you have enough water.
Know where your water sources are, and carry enough water to get you there:
Without water, you will die. Make sure you know where the creeks, lakes, and rivers are -- and do not assume that you will be able to draw water from every one. Also look at your map and see how much elevation change you're going to cover. You will need one liter of water per 1000 foot climb, and another liter of water per 3-4 miles distance. So, if you are walking six miles and covering 2000 feet of uphill, you should drink 3-4 liters of water on the trip. Sounds like a lot? Yes. But if you break your ankle and have to wait for a rescue team to carry you out, you won't die of dehydration.
Carry two water purification methods if you will depend on drawing water from streams.
Some people live symbiotically with parasites like giardia, but I don't. I prefer to filter water from streams and rivers to drink when I'm backpacking. There are a number of nice filters on market for this purpose -- the problem is that the filter often gets plugged, or the pump misbehaves in some way -- so I always take a backup source of water treament. I buy chemical tablets for water treatment at outfitting shops (REI, for example) -- I do not like ingesting the chemicals, but I prefer it to the trouble of getting rid of beaver fever when I get home.
Stay alive.
Understand hypothermia:
The threat of hypothermia is probably the most important reason that you should never hike by yourself. The problem is that when your body temperature drops, you lose your judgement before your body starts to break down. Even experienced mountainsmiths succomb to this, and they wind up dying because they decided snuggle up to a tree in a blizzard or to go to sleep laying down in a river.
Hypothermia usually happens when you get wet. If you are walking in wet clothes, be sure that you have a wool or polartec hat, and preferably mittens or gloves. Do not wear cotton in the rain or snow if you can possibly avoid it. If you are particularly chilly, be sure that you ask yourself questions, and double check that your head is giving you sound answers (also check with your buddy once in a while.) Chances are that you will still have enough sense to realize that your head is getting soft before it is so mushy that you don't stand a chance.
I once got a mild case of hypothermia while I was backpacking. It had been raining for two or three days, and a storm blew in that was bad enough we moved downhill a couple thousand feet in altitude. The only place we could find to camp was an abandoned horse camp that was covered with horse apples. My husband and I spent the next hour or so clearing up dung and making a place to sleep where we could stay reasonably dry. When we were done I got into the tent, shivering.
I'd forgotten that my husband had gone down the river to look for a flyfishing spot, so when I poked out my head and yelled, I couldn't find him. He didn't answer. And while I was looking for him, I found a series of Blair Witch Project jokes left behind by other hikers. It was moderately amusing at the time I found the little piles of stuff, but I got back into the tent and started thinking that I'd never see my husband again. It was when I started thiking that someone was going to toss his severed head into my tent, and damn it was going to be a hassle to walk off that mountainside by myself...I realized that I was hypothermic. But it wouldn't have been long before I lost the ability to recognize that I was thinking crazy things.
Happily my husband showed up, head attached, and rescued me. Perhaps even more happily, the most effective treatment for hypothermia is to jump naked into a sleeping bag with another naked person. The moral of this story is not only do you need a buddy for hiking -- but never backpack with anyone that you're not willing to jump in a bag with...
Learn more about avoiding hypothermia here.
Mountian lions and critters and bears, oh my! Most of the time, large mountain critters are not a problem. For the most part, they will avoid you at every possible turn. There is an increasing problem with large animals becoming accustomed to hikers and campers, and some make their living off of stealing food from the camps. If you are hiking in one of these territories, there are certain precautions that you must take.
I am no bearologist -- but I think there is some wisdom to the jokes about finding bear droppings that smell of pepper spray. For my money, you don't want to piss off a bear. And most of the time when you encounter a bear, it doesn't give a damn about you -- it just wants your food. It also doesn't give a damn what you think about losing your food. Go ahead and read up on bear psychology if you must, but you won't see me throwing rocks or shooting pepper spray at a bear.
If you are backpacking in bear territory, you must keep your food and cosmetics in bear canisters. Make two camps -- one for eating and one for sleeping -- that are a sizeable distance from one another. Keep your bear canisters locked up and away from where you sleep. And do not bring food into your sleeping camp. If there are bears in the area that know about hikers, they will come to your camp and look for food. Most of the time they just beat the canisters around a little bit and leave. But if you have food in your tent, they will find it.
Similarly with your car at the trailhead. If there are coolers or other objects that look like they might contain food, a bear will open your car just like a can opener opens a can.
Bears are big and scary, but most of the time they are happy to ignore you. Black bears are sometimes brown, so the word "black" is a misnomer. There is a joke about how to tell the difference between a black bear and a grizzly -- if you run up a tree, the black bear will chase you to the top, and the grizz will knock the tree down. The other way to tell them apart is by the shape of their backs. A grizzly has a hump (see picture up and to the right), and a black bear (looting the picnic tables) does not.
The overwhleming majority of bears in the United States are black bears, and you can almost always avoid a confrontation with one. Stay out of their food and away from their young -- and do not startle them. Some people put cowbells on their backpacks, but I've never done that. I do tend to make a lot of noise when I'm hiking in an area where there is low visibility. Most of the time a black bear will run away from people long before they are anywhere nearby.
I've seen bears in the wilderness, and I've so far been fortunate to not meet an angry one. I'm told that it's usually good to be submissive around a bear, but everybody has an opinion. Bears are much bigger than I am, though, so I think I'm in no position to argue.
The mountain lion population is coming back, and many of these cats are also living from looting dumpsters and such. Mountain lion attacks are extremely rare, but it is still wise to never stray too far from your dogs or your kids.
My husband thinks I'm crazy for worrying about large cats, but my cousin got attacked by a mountain lion when she worked for the forest service in Colorado. She was by herself taking water samples at dusk in the mountains, and a cat tried to drown her in the river she had been standing in. The cat was sick and starving, or it probably wouldn't have attacked her -- and she was able to fight it off and survive, although she got hurt pretty badly. She had a set of hemostats sewn into her jacket sleeve, and she forced those clips through the cat's eye into its head in order to escape.
I do not mean to scare would-be hikers from the woods. I want to stress that I am certain that this would not have happened if she was working with a partner. Try to stick by your buddy, particularly at dusk, and you will be fine. Adults are bigger than these animals, so there is safety in numbers -- you are very unlikely to see a cat -- but your safety increases a lot if you hike with one or more people.
Never, ever run from a large predator.
Leave no trace.
The wilderness is fragile, and we need to tread lightly on it. Quickly, I want to give you some tips to help you minimize your impact. Some of these things are more obvious than others, and some might be outright annoying to you. But these are sacred places, and I hope you will please try to leave the wild stuff unharmed.
Do not build a fire unless there is an already established fire circle, and the fire risk is low. (Learn about fire safety here.) The reason for this is not limited to fire safety, though. If every backpacker broke new ground anywhere he or she wanted a fire circle, the wilderness would be damaged in short order.
Do not cut across switchbacks. It is also important to try not to kick up dirt or plants when you camp. Some impact is inevitable, but you can really minimize the damage you do if you proceed consciously.
Be careful how you do your business. Do not pee near a lake or a stream, and give some thought to how you are going to do the other. It's good to bury your droppings under a rock or something, to give it a chance to dry up and crumble away. Your flora and fauna and your diet are foreign to the critters that live in the woods. Do your best to protect them from you. And do not leave toilet paper in the wilderness! If you use toilet paper, keep it in a ziplock bag and burn it when you come across a fire circle -- or throw it in the garbage can when you meet a trailhead or car camp.
Wamsutta correctly points out that sometimes the rules for peeing and such vary from place to place -- especially at sites that have a lot of visitors. Make sure that you check the local rules for any campground or area you might stay. You can almost always find them online, at a local visitor's center, at a Ranger Station, or posted at a trailhead.
Pack out what you pack in. If you give real thought to leaving no trace, you will probably do a great job.
Last words.
Always carry a warm hat and jacket, even if you're only dayhiking in the middle of summer. If there is an accident, you might end up being there through the night. (An extra comfort snack helps, too, if you have the space.)
Wrap your sleeping bag and clothes each in two layers of garbage bag to keep them dry and separate from the wet stuff in your pack.
Have a small first aid kit. Carry lots of different style bandaids, foot blister protection, your favorite analgesic (I'm an ibuprofin fan), sunscreen, extra Ace bandages, a little antiseptic, and some neosporin cream. I've never failed to need something from this little kit on a trip. And I always take ibuprofin before I go to sleep on the first night out.
This diary is an edited repost from last year. Some of the comments people offered were pretty useful. If you're interested, please have a look. Two of those comments follow:
From Norbrook:
Carry a whistle. If you do get lost, this is much more effective (and lightweight) way of calling attention to yourself than yelling.
If you do get lost, find a good spot and stay put!
From Otteray Scribe:
Which I will paraphrase as -- don't assume that shooting a griz will do more than make it angry.
A note about bears, grizzlies in particular. Some hunters have found to their dismay that a shot that should kill a grizzly only annoyed it. A rifle that can kill a deer might not do much damage to a grizzly because the bullet has to make its way through a thick, layered, fur coat. Think of nature's version of a Teflon vest. Not bullet proof but bullet resistant. If one is going to defend oneself from one of these monsters, you better be prepared with a firearm that can do what you need it to do. Otherwise, stay away from them. Until you see one up close, you do not realize how formidable they are.
This diary is part of the Earth Day @ DKos Blogathon! Several excellent diaries have already been posted, with more to come:
(All times Eastern!)