Hiking/Camping Catch-all

I have a latest bit of amazingness for sleep systems. Get yourself a roll of Reflectix from a hardware store. Cut lengths the same length as your sleeping pad of choice. When you roll your sleep pad up to stow it on your pack, roll up the length of Reflectix inside it. It weighs next to nothing (although it does make the rolled pad a bit bigger), but when you put it under your sleep pad, it is immensely insulating, and will stop the ground from leeching all your heat away overnight, as well as adding a teeny bit more cushioning.

Best hiking hack I've found.

That is an awesome camp hack.

gore wrote:

We finally took the kiddo (4 years old) car camping last weekend and it worked OK. We had to use a lot of borrowed gear. We're thinking of doing more, longer trips this fall, hopefully doing bike camping (we have touring bikes already) canoe camping (we'd need to rent) and backpack camping.

We need stuff. I've read back through this thread and found good advice but I need to save money. That means buying items that I can use for everything, rather than buying e.g. one set of items for car camping and another for backpacking.

Tricky. For backpacking you go for light weight and small size, which generally trades out convenience and comfort. It's more expensive too. That said, sleeping bags are easy. For a kid I'd get the REI Kindercone. It's maybe a bit warm for mid summer, but the kid can always sleep with it open. The bag is affordable, well made, packs small, and has a stuff sack attached. All of my kids have them.

Sleeping mats are an absolute necessity, not so much for comfort but rather to insulate you from the ground. I'd get something like LarryC mentioned. If you really want comfort you can carry a single full length and then a second 1/2 to 3/4 length for your upper body.

For stoves, I'd go for something like the MSR Whisperlite for backpacking. It's reasonably affordable, runs on nearly any fuel, and packs incredibly small. For car camping, I'd just bite the bullet and get a two burner propane stove like this Coleman. You could get by with a backpacking stove for car camping, but then you're basically limited to one-pot meals, which I think takes a lot of the fun out of the car camping experience. For the Whisperlite (or nearly any backpacking stove), get a heat reflector (basically a length of heavy-duty aluminum foil) and carry it wrapped around the fuel bottle. When you're cooking you wrap it around the stove and pot to keep the heat in and the wind out. Stuff cooks in half the time.

For packs, I strongly suggest going to an actual camping store and trying different ones out. Like shoes, fit is crucial for not hating life at the end of the day. And while internal frame packs have gotten really popular, for your purposes I'd suggest external frame packs like this one. They're less expensive, and as they sit farther away from your body your back won't get all hot. Internal frame packs are great for off-trail hiking when you're trying to avoid having the pack catch on stuff, but I honestly don't think they're worth the expense for casual use.

For cookware, get a basic set of nesting backpacking pots, plastic bowls and silverware, mesh bags for washing and drying the stuff, and a collapsable washbasin. Some of the fancier sets (like the GSI ones) have everything as a single unit, so the pans fit inside the washbasin, with eating stuff inside. These are really cool, but you can get similarly functional stuff for a lot less if you just go for stainless steel whatever.

For water treatment I' get a ceramic filter hand pump with a carbon filter cartridge. The ceramic part will filter out all the biological nastiness, and the carbon filter will help with chemicals and stuff. Forget the UV pen. It might kill microbes but it won't do squat for anything else. If you really want an emergency backup I'd carry chlorine tablets or iodine.

You can go pretty crazy with addons, but I'd at least get headlamps if you don't already have them. And always plan for a storm. Throw a fleece and a cheap poncho in your pack and bring a decent medical kit. Screw band aids. You want good antisceptic, antihistamines (for insect bites), ibuprofen, gauze pads, etc. Also duct tape and a leatherman.

I'd go with a headlamp and a nice high-lumen flashlight. Interestingly, I found that mountain biking bike lights were excellent for this. The Cateye Volt 700 has a very long battery life, is fantastically bright, and has rechargeable but replaceable batteries. This means you can recharge them off a socket, but also carry spares for week's trek outside of civilization.

We do have headlamps and a lot of miscellanea already. Got a hatchet, multitools, led lanterns, etc.

Found a good deal on a whisperlite and found some dirt cheap mats and sleeping bags from Sierra Trading Post. It seems like the big advantage to spending more on that stuff is weight and bulk, and given where we are in the process it's just not a priority. I've read that toddlers can hike about one mile per year of age pre day so we won't be going all that far at first anyway.

I'm getting pretty excited. I think we'll do a longer car camping run in August. I'm going to start scoping out hike in spots soon. Thanks for all the advice guys.

I'm thinking about pants for hiking as it gets cooler. What's the best material for the job? Good old nylon?

Something not cotton :p Any pants purpose made for hiking will be some kind of synthetic blend. So yeah, basically nylon, though the blends feel more like actual pants and less like you stepped through some time portal from an 80s brakedance crew.

I've got a pair each of EMS and REI brand convertible hiking pants. If I had to pick, I like the REI ones a bit better, but they're both good. They're fairly lightweight, so if it's farther into fall, I sometimes need to put a light layer under them. They're great for mountains though, because you can start with shorts at the bottom, then add the rest of the legs when you get closer to the top.

Also good for travel, when going from a cold city to a warm one or vice versa.

I keep old uniform pants around for this, old ABU/BDUs and the like.

This is interesting. A backpack with a bottom section mounted on a pivot so you can get to it without taking the pack off.

http://paxispax.com/

IMAGE(http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--2f9pRrHf--/1382284406206192742.gif)

Edit: Bonus: Not a Kickstarter

I can just imagine having that backpack open and you tripping over something.

IMAGE(http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_super/9/93770/1671360-4cb8e0af_00f6_58c9.jpg)

That being said, I think that's a pretty sweet idea.

Did some hike-in camping with the lil one this weekend. Much preferable to car camping although they still had potable water and composting toilets were near.

I'm wondering if people have suggestions on what to use when it's too warm for a sleeping bag. I've read that poncho liners are good but they seem kind of expensive?

gore wrote:

Did some hike-in camping with the lil one this weekend. Much preferable to car camping although they still had potable water and composting toilets were near.

I'm wondering if people have suggestions on what to use when it's too warm for a sleeping bag. I've read that poncho liners are good but they seem kind of expensive?

ENO hammock

gore wrote:

I'm wondering if people have suggestions on what to use when it's too warm for a sleeping bag. I've read that poncho liners are good but they seem kind of expensive?

There are sleeping bag liners as well. Also, summer weight sleeping bags, though I imagine that's even more than a poncho liner.

Would it make a difference if you slept on the sleeping bags rather than in them?

LarryC wrote:

Would it make a difference if you slept on the sleeping bags rather than in them?

It does, although when hike-in camping there are three of us in a two-person tent (the 4 y.o. snuggled in the middle). We have found that 1) even sleeping on top of the bags gets hot > 70F (since you tend to "sink in" a bit), and 2) as it got near 65F we started to feel a chill and want something to warm us up, but the bags were overkill.

Also, it would be nice to avoid the bulk of the bags. Since we have to pack for the little one (who is too small to carry her own bag), eliminating three bags from our two packs would result in a pretty big space savings.

I ended up ordering some used Army issue poncho liners, which are basically just durable, thinly insulated nylon blankets, at $15/pop. I figure we can make a "bed" of sorts with one liner on the bottom and one on the top.

I know this is a bit morbid, but when I used to do SAR, a couple of us would carry bodybags because they made great emergency litters and were actually really good quick shelters.

After years of cringing while watching campers use hatchets in unsafe ways, I've decided to put that nervous energy into helping some folks who might listen... YOUSE GUYS. Here's a couple of tips for using a hatchet. These cover splitting just about anything except very large logs or rounds of wood.

Method 1 - The baton method: Position the hatchet where you wish to chop and hit the flat back of the hatchet with a wood baton (a small log or whatever is handy). Some hatchets have a handle which is designed to be hit with a baton as well, which can help in finishing the split with tougher pieces of wood.

Method 2 - The stump/log method: If you have a tree stump or large log handy, you can also use a method where you position the hatchet where you want to cut on the /side/ of a piece of wood, blade going with the grain, and hit the top of the stump/log with both at the same time - hatchet on top. This keeps the hatchet positioned exactly where you want it to chop. You can swing both multiple times, repositioning the hatchet as needed to split the wood.

Here's a guy using method 2... (go about 6 minutes 30 seconds in)

Both of these are more accurate, take less work, and are a heck of a lot safer than swinging the hatchet on its own. That's especially true for people who lack experience.

A pack saw does not add much weight and can make your life a LOT easier. I have a Sven, but other folks I know have pull stroke saws that work wonderfully as well.

Paleocon wrote:

A pack saw does not add much weight and can make your life a LOT easier. I have a Sven, but other folks I know have pull stroke saws that work wonderfully as well.

Yup. The video above shows that as well. Before he uses the hatchet to split the wood, or at least attempts to many times. I like videos which show the reality of imperfect materials and conditions, which his does in spades!

The Husky hatchet is made by Wetterlings, I think. They make a great axe. On someone else's advice here, though, I went with the Fiskars. It works a charm and is cheap besides.

OK, been having fun camping lately! The kid is getting much more used to sleeping in a tent which means we all sleep better.

I'm wondering if anybody can recommend a ground cloth. My tent has no footprint and right now I'm using a $3 blue tarp. It works but we need to keep pack space down as much as possible, since we have to carry all of the kid's stuff too. So something smaller would be nice.

I can't imagine spending a ton of money on this but it seems like I should be able to find something that works better than the blue tarp but is still affordable.

gore wrote:

OK, been having fun camping lately! The kid is getting much more used to sleeping in a tent which means we all sleep better.

I'm wondering if anybody can recommend a ground cloth. My tent has no footprint and right now I'm using a $3 blue tarp. It works but we need to keep pack space down as much as possible, since we have to carry all of the kid's stuff too. So something smaller would be nice.

I can't imagine spending a ton of money on this but it seems like I should be able to find something that works better than the blue tarp but is still affordable.

Go look at the website of the manufacturer of your tent and see if you can get a matching ground sheet that'll fit perfectly.

There's not one available, it's an older tent. I've looked at footprints for similarly sized tents thinking that something in the right ballpark would be good enough, but they seem really expensive for what they are!

gore wrote:

OK, been having fun camping lately! The kid is getting much more used to sleeping in a tent which means we all sleep better.

I'm wondering if anybody can recommend a ground cloth. My tent has no footprint and right now I'm using a $3 blue tarp. It works but we need to keep pack space down as much as possible, since we have to carry all of the kid's stuff too. So something smaller would be nice.

I can't imagine spending a ton of money on this but it seems like I should be able to find something that works better than the blue tarp but is still affordable.

We always used cheap blue nylon poly tarps, since they took well to foot traffic, and protected the bottom of our tent from rough objects and ground moisture. If you go to Amazon.com and type in 'tarp', there are many different sizes.

You could also buy a sheet of material and cut your own if you want. I know some folks who buy a buttload of polycro/painters drop cloth plastic for really cheap from a big box home improvement store and cut out a new footprint every time the old one is worn out. That stuff is really inexpensive.

When I have to make one and can't get one just for the tent I have liked making one out of Tyvek.

I have gotten them by the foot and then cut to size. No trimming needed and you can add grommets if you like or just place it nicely and make sure it is smaller than the footprint of the tent so it doesn't catch water.

MonoCheli wrote:

When I have to make one and can't get one just for the tent I have liked making one out of Tyvek.

I have gotten them by the foot and then cut to size. No trimming needed and you can add grommets if you like or just place it nicely and make sure it is smaller than the footprint of the tent so it doesn't catch water.

Thanks, that's just the kind of thing I'm looking for! Looks like a worthy upgrade from the blue tarp

Some great tips from a pro here!

Here are some links to some of the overnight backpacking trips I have taken this year. A couple of have been solo and the others have been with a friend/co-worker of mine:

Bloodroot trail

Two Lakes Loop trail

Low Gap Trail

Charles C. Deam Wilderness (only a couple of pics here, need to upload some more)

And here are some pics of day hikes I have taken over the last several months:

Wabash Heritage Trail - Burnett's Creek section

Wabash Heritage Trail - Wabash Corridor section

Shades State Park

Grotto Falls Trail - GSMNP (family trip, a few non-hiking pictures)

Rainbow Falls Trail - GSMNP (family trip, a few non-hiking pictures)

Turkey Run State Park - 2014 (I've got some newer pictures of Turkey Run, from a 10-mile day hike I did this past August, just need to upload them)