So You Wat to Go Hiking, Volume 4

Noah's Unofficial Guide to Not Dying in the Backcountry

Trash and Poo: Your Guide to Wilderness Waste

Hi.

Come, have a seat.

Take my hand. 

I care

Let's look each other in the eye so we know we're approaching this with the sincerity of sincere people being really sincere and forthcoming.

Let's talk about a...delicate topic. 

Let's talk about pooping in the woods.

At some point, you're going to have to "get rid" of all this food you've consumed. But we're not bears. We're not deer or rabbits. We don't just dump it anywhere we want. You see: we're civilized when we poop in the wild outdoors. 

...yes

One of the basic premises of backcountry camping - for humans, anyway - is "leave no trace." It means that, to the extent possible, work to minimize your footprint. Literally. You can't be ham-handed about how you recycle your ham. But here's the thing: nobody - no matter how tough, no matter how macho, no matter how "up hill both ways barefoot in the snow" - nobody wants to be the sad sucker who's got to haul around a trash bag of gut-butter. And I see all sorts of silly shit (pun mildly intended) like the "Luggable Loo," which is really just a 5-gallon bucket with a lid, or the PETT Portable Toilet, which I feel like wouldn't support a full-grown adult. And come on folks. Whose pack gets to haul a whole 5-gallon bucket in or on it? Who's gonna be the sucker to walk around holding that PETT briefcase-of-shame?

The answer is: no one.

What is one to do when one has to poo?

Dig a hole. I'm here to tell you: it's responsible, it's minimal, and really, when you think about it, you're giving back. To nature. 

The best, tried-and-true method is called a cathole. Not caththththole. Cat-hole. When you hear about "digging latrines," that's just a long cathole so a bunch of people can poop side-by-side, nearly touching, all uncomfortable-like. Anyway, before I get too far down the group-poo rabbit hole:

Noah's Advice on Sound Cathole Practices

1. You want to dig about 200 feet from trails and water. That's both for sanitation reasons as well as, frankly, privacy; nobody wants to actually watch that happen any more than you want to be seen. Parents with toddlers: AMIRITE??

   

   Don't just use any hole you see in the dirt
   

   
   
2. If you've arrived at where you're base-camping or camping for the night, find that spot and dig that hole a) downwind!; and 2) before you have to do the deed, cuz there's nothing in the world like fighting a peeping turtle while straining to dig a hole in rocky clay. N...not that I've...I mean...
3. An ideal spot, along with being downwind and 200-feet from trails and water and your site, includes a stout tree or even better, a fallen tree. So much easier to squat when you've got back support, no?
4. Pack one of these. All these websites talking about garden trowels or tent stakes. Pfft. Get you an e-tool. Bonus: good for fending-off curious mid-poop wildlife.
5. Dig a hole about 6-8 inches deep, and 4-6 inches wide. Like you're planting flowers.
6. ONE CATHOLE PER PERSON PER POOP. No sharing. Pooping is a stingy business. A few yards between catholes is fine, but no multi-use holes. 

7. 

   CRITICAL
   

   I cannot stress enough the importance of pooping like a samurai. It is critical to do the deed with pants around 1 ankle and off to the side. I will detail the reasons as to why and what happens with an off-target dump if you need me to. N...not that I've...I mean...
8. If you can, find and pack unscented, thinner-ply toilet paper. You want it to biodegrade. You don't want a badger thinking it smells like lovely flowers, digging-up your cathole, and spreading used toilet paper all over your camp. N...not that I've...I mean...
9. When you're done, bury your business with the dirt you dug up to make the hole. Pat it down.
10. A note on wipes and feminine hygiene products: pack those like you pack your food trash, as discussed in Volume 3. Human poo, even buried, can be both interesting but also a deterrent. But flowery-smelling things and bloody things? Irresistible.
11. A note on smells, especially if local regulations allow for poo-burial but not paper burial: triple-ziploc that waste, and pack some baking soda to sprinkle over it to mitigate...aromatics.
12. A note on pee: you don't need to dig a cathole to pee, boy or girl. Try to pee on dirt, and not on vegetation. Only reason: it protects plants. Animals want to chew on salty things. Take that as you will.

There. That wasn't so bad. I feel like we really covered a lot, got a lot done, came to understand how it's safe for us to talk about personal things together.

Now, the easier topic: trash!

You know the old commercial, with the silent tears

Here's where "leave no trace" really shines. Challenge yourself to pack trash-making things (like food; again, see Volume 3) that would be rather minimal in nature. You don't want to haul around a 20-gallon kitchen-sized trash bag because 1) that means you're packing stuff that's in some serious packaging; and ii) space! Your pack is finite. Like I said in a previous post, 4 of us over nearly 3 days produced 1 single gallon-sized ziploc of waste. Not bad. 

Osprey is good, but not THAT good

During the day, who cares if you and your pack smell like an open-air wedding reception buffet in a rose garden. Wildlife isn't just gonna walk up and be like "how are the chicken sate' bites and may I have a crab cake?" Instead, what these thieves and burglars do is  wait until you're asleep to ransack your packs and tents. So anything that smells - anything -  needs to get smell-proofed. Don't think that just cuz it's in a ziploc with the air all mushed-out and double-bagged that it's smell-proof. It's not. Animals really want to put their faces in your leftovers. And toothpaste. And deodorant. And bagged toilet paper for the can't-bury-it places. Animals are gross.

Noah's Advice on Sound Trash Practices

1. Buy a high-quality waterproof, scent-proof "dry bag" like this
2. Bag each smelly thing you own in different ziplocs: toiletries, trash, other scented stuff. Please don't pack your toothbrush in with the used tissue. If you're packing dehydrated hiker food you haven't opened yet, toss those in the dry bag; no need to bag those bags
3. Seal the dry bag. This is important. 
4. Make the dry bag hard to get to; i.e. hang it. Watch that video at the link. Read my Facebook Post about how I screwed this method up once. ONCE.
5. Not a possibility (like you can't hang a bag because there are no trees)? Buy a bear canister and repeat steps 1-3. As for step 4, put it about 100 - 200  feet from where you're sleeping. It defeats the purpose if you put a bear canister in your tent. Then you just have a pissed-off and hungry bear ransacking your stuff inside your tent while you're trying to sleep and bears take up a lot of room. 1/10, don't recommend.

Do this for places where bears aren't. Do this for places where bears are. Always look for state and federal guidance about bear-proofing, because in some places it's an absolute requirement (like in my lovely state, the Porcupine Mountains and Pictured Rocks require bear-proofing). But it's always good practice, because storing trash and smelly stuff in your packs and tents and hammocks is a good way, even in the total absence of bears, to get your packs ripped to shreds by mice, raccoons, chipmunks, and wandering space aliens looking for samples. Whodini was right: the freaks really do come out at night.

And don't be That Guy who sleeps with a sneaky midnight snack. Unless you like to share it with a hundred furry friends.

Look at you, almost ready to hit the trail!

Next up in Volume 5: FASHION!

So You Want to Go Hiking, Volume 3

 

Noah's Unofficial Guide to Not Dying in the Backcountry, Volume 3

Things to Put in Your Belly

We've got packs. We now understand how to sleep. We're on a roll! Here's the thing: as you carry you foldable/inflatable televisions and solar powered king-sized mattresses all over Zod's Creation, you're going to burn a lot of calories. Fitness disguised as a nature walk! But fitness...I mean...lovely and calm nature walks make one hungry. And so one wishes to eat.

But how does one eat on The Trail and without the Collapsible Flyweight Ultralight Minimalist Camp Oven and Microwave Duo? Must one subsist on nuts and berries and twigs and roadkill? What of your blueberry muffins enjoyed with hand-muddled Tibetan tea at that one Zen-like bend in the River Trail?

Pad Thai along the trail with a side of gently-fried rangoons? Lies.

Good news! You can have that muffin - probably - and that lovely tea - kinda - and not everything needs to be freeze-dried or an MRE! Basically, I look at food on overnight or long day-hikes in two categories: 1) meals on a break or a site; and b) snacks whilst you walk. But before we even get to the what-to-put-in-your-face part, we should talk about the how-to-make-it-edible part: 

A Cooker Thing and Things to Put Food On Instead of Your Hands

Some - and I stress some - land through which you hike allows for controlled fires, either in provided individual firepits or group firepits. Find dead wood (everywhere prohibits you from cutting your own wood, and besides, freshly-cut "green" wood doesn't like to catch on fire), pile it up, make fire (we will actually cover this in future episodes of the blog), heat dead thing or plant over it like caveman. But a lot of state and federal land doesn't allow fires, and when you're hiking not in the lovely old forests on my native Michigan but instead in a canyon in the desert, wood is hard to come by. Plus, trying to boil water in your bare hands is inadvisable, as is eating uncooked rice.

So, one needs a source of flame that's not a giant bonfire, and some pots and pans that aren't Gramma's cast iron.

This hiker may have overdone it...

My boys and I carry the MSR WhisperLite. It's small, light, collapsible, and relatively easy to use. It's not exactly wind-proof, but it comes with this bendy piece of metal you can wrap around it if it's windy, and it does just fine. Heats 1 Liter of water to boiling in like 3 minutes. Do yourself a favor: also get a couple 20-oz MSR fuel bottles and some SuperFuel (or "Coleman Gas"), or you'll have this lovely little stove-as-sculpture, that's not cooking your food. I'm telling you: my 12-year-olds can operate a WhisperLite. It's not hard.

As for pots and pans, my boys and I carry the MSR nesting pot set (2 pots, 2 stoves gets 4 people eating quickly), and when we want to get fancy, we have an MSR skillet that will nest under that pot set. Nesting stuff is very important; it makes packing easier and puts all the related things you need in one spot in your pack.

You're already dirty, so...

And finally: I don't suppose you want to eat with your hands. You can, and it's very caveman so to do. Ahhh, the satisfying mush of handling mac-n-cheese with your fingers... Uh, anyway, we carry these mess kits. We don't use the cups, but they are gradated on the inside to be measuring cups, like these hiking companies thought of everything or something. And this kitchen utensil kit is perfect, as it has a little cutting board, measuring spoons, and even some squeeze bottles if you're getting super fancy and want to carry cooking oil, and some dish soap. You are going to want to clean your dishes, after all.

Things to Put in Your Face

Equipped now with your Chef's Deluxe Cooking Set with Sautee and Omelet Pans, let's eat! The goal is

A gastronomic delight!

not only delightful, tasty food; it's also about calories, because you burn more than you think hauling around packs on uneven trails.

Freeze-Dried

The most expensive but the most convenient option is: freeze-dried hiker food. You can't beat this stuff for convenience: heat water, dump water into the package itself, reseal, and wait a few minutes. Voila: dinner is served. In general, one pouch feeds one person (even though it says two servings; nah). Now, not all freeze-dried food is created equal. Some is downright awful. Lucky for you, the Smith Boys have sampled a wide variety of freeze-dried creations, and offer unto you our recommended brands and selections:

• Packit Gourmet; yowza, some good stuff here. My boys would murder each other for the All-American Works Burger if we didn't bring enough for everyone (requires you to pack your own tortillas, which is brilliant), the Poblano Corn Chowder is outstanding, the Pasta Beef Bolognese is lovely, and the Burrito with Fajita Chicken was a great meal. Explore these guys; we haven't had a bad one yet. The Breakfast Tacos are also a big hit.
• Good To Go; some more just amazing meals, taste- and convenience-wise. Pad Thai was outstanding, and made so much that 1 pouch fed 2 of us. I loved the Mexican Quinoa Bowl. The boys loved the Smoked Chili and the Corn Chowder.
• Mary Jane's Farm; I mean, the name is...funny? If.. anyway. Lovely Garlic-Pesto Fry Bread, and the breakfast Bac'Un Scrambler (vegan, for the vegan cultists) were superb. Pack that frying pan I talked about for these.
• Backpackers Pantry. Haven't had a ton from this company, but the Three Sisters Stew was lovely and filling.
• Mountain House; is...fine. Not amazing, but for younger palates who normally subsist on chicken nuggets and Chef Boyardee, Mountain House hit the spot. Chili Mac was a hit and the Chicken Fried Rice was both enough for 2 people, and a nice supplement/side dish to other meals. The Scrambled Eggs with Bacon was actually pretty good.

The other benefit here is waste. Remember: you pack everything on trips in the backcountry, including your trash. When you're done with these, just mush that little packet flat! 2 days on the trail not-quite-filled 1 gallon-sized ziplock as our trash bag. Perfect. 

Home-Made

What you're trying to do here is replicate home-cooked meals, understanding you can't (well, you shouldn't anyway) pack a cooler. Eggs will actually keep a couple days - put them in hard plastic, though, because...EGGS - and cheese and sausages and apples even longer, like all those Lord of the Rings movies (I mean the food lasts as long as the movies...). That stuff just takes a little more room and weight than the freeze-dried stuff, but if it's a luxury you can handle, then luxuriate away.

I mean, I guess you can pretend...

How is one to satisfy their carnivorous cravings if one can't haul slabs of steak and ribs on the trail without all the flies and rot? Ah, the modern era provides us with plentiful pre-cooked options! WARNING: don't pre-cook your own chicken and put it in a ziploc. You will barf and die. I have not experienced this barf-and-death scenario, because I have a brain.

Canned chicken, beef, and fish if fine, but the cans are just a little clunky and have sharp edges when it comes to packing your trash. But the modern era has delivered unto us many lovely options of pouched, pre-cooked meats to add to your home-made/trail-made meals! This is handy because it saves you from having to hunt and/or fish it yourself, which will almost always lead to disappointment and starvation.

I have several homemade hiker recipes, which turn out to be pretty darn similar to this guy's stuff. Using various combinations of minute rice, dried beans, couscous, spices, and lovely meat-in-a-pouch, you can eat like an experienced trail king! Seriously, this dude has put some of the most common homemade hiker recipes all in one place, and carrying a box of minute rice and such is light and will cover several meals.

I really respect this blog's thoughtfulness on trail food ideas. They've really thought about calories and ease and weight, and anything I type - apart from prolonging this slog of a post already - would be repetitive. This is some amazing advice on "what the Hell should I carry??" Well, everything, that is, except item #41. That's some bullshit. Don't you dare "brew beer on the trail." I have a whole other blog about beer brewing I should reawaken. Anyway...

MREs

Don't.

Snacks

Can you walk and chew gum? At the same time? Then this is for you! 

Dried fruit, peanut butter cups (not the candy, but those little cups of actual peanut butter), trail mix, Cliff Bars, granola bars, granola. These are the staples of eating-and-walking. Honestly? Stay away

Actual mountain of Skittles

from the candy, and I don't just say that as a diabetic who gets jealous of all the people enjoying Skittles. Processed sugar offers empty calories that will give your energy peaks-and-valleys and no other nutrients that you're burning away as you haul your U-Haul of stuff through the woods.

A Note on Trash

What you carry in, you carry out. My boys and I carry gallon-sized Ziploc bags as trash bags for 2 reasons: 1) that forces us to stay minimal in what we bring that needs to be thrown away; and B) they close easily, which matters...because animals.

Animals like your smells. Everything from mice and moles to raccoons to bears, and maybe crocodiles. And while you'll probably be fine as you walk around in the daytime with your packs on and your tiny trash bag in it - and your uneaten food - it's what you do with your trash at night that counts.

This is so exciting: our next post, dear reader, and I just can't wait: Trash and Poo - Your Guide to Wilderness Waste! 

Good times. So, there be it: filling your face in the woods! As always, we hope this has been informative, and we wish you the best for not dying in the backcountry!

So You Want to Go Hiking, Volume 2

Noah's Unofficial Guide to Not Dying in the Backcountry, Volume 2

Things to Put in the Things

Congratulations! You bought your pack, and it probably fits! Now the fun part: look at all those gadgets and foldy things I can stuff in it! Foldable forks! Solar-powered flashlights! A foldable TV that runs on granola! Packable fire pits! HOW AM I GONNA FIT IT ALL?

You're not. I've broken your heart, and I'm mildly sorry for that. 

The goal here: cover some of the very basics of what you should carry in your back-thing-carrier if you're camping in, say, the Upper Mid-West in late Spring, Summer, or early Fall. If you want to add over-priced but really awesome extra-dimensional ultralight full-bake ovens, that's on you. Weight is weight, and it's your back.

Initial drafts of this post were meant to be all-inclusive. But you know what that reminded me of? Those recipe blogs that, like, go into great detail about some asshole's life, and after 26 paragraphs, you're like "WHERE'S THE RECIPE?" Let's not. Let's do this by themes. I think we'll start with one of the two most important things to a human being: 

At Some Point, You May Want to Sleep

Hammock Sleeping

Aesthetics over function

My boys and I use ENO DoubleNest hammocks, ENO Guardian bug nets, and Atlas suspension straps (to save the trees!). If it rains or rain is predicted, we pack light tarps to drape over the system, but we did just purchase the ENO rainfly and found it just as easy to set up, even preemptively. 

All you need for hammock sleeping from Nature: 2 trees, at least forearm-thick, about 10' apart. My 12-year-olds can hang their own hammocks, bug nets, and rain fly...that's how easy this is. Like, you cannot mess up hammocks. They're so easy, you can set them up in the dark for those rare circumstances where you're like "nah, just push one more mile, there'll be a better spot" and before you know it, the sun disappeared. Not that that's eeeever happened to me.

Let's get back to that "your ass is literally swinging in the breeze" bit:

Looks cozy!

Physics, entropy, wind: it can get chilly. We're in Michigan, so we all know the truth behind that "if ya don't like the weather wait a minute hurr hurr" joke; but it's a joke because it contains a kernel of truth. Even in the summer up North it can get a little chilly at night. For the most part, sleeping in a fleece blanket in the hammock is fine. But if it's going to get south of 60 degrees, a handy piece of survival gear does just the trick: my oldest and I carry the SOL Emergency Bivvy and the twins carry the NanoHeat Blanket. We don't actually get in them; you'd sweat like crazy! We line the hammock with them like it's a camp pad. Keeps the wind off, toasty warm! Only downside: they're a mild pain in the ass to re-pack into their tiny little carry sacks, but it's a small price to pay. And for Spring and Fall trips, then we actually do wrap them around us, in our light little fleece blankets for some comy-wumfy sleepy-time joy.

Our favorite brand of hammocks also happens to carry a brand new line of hammock insulation and blankets for hammock -sleeping in the dead of winter. I have not tried any of this. I am tempted, to the point of adding this stuff to my Christmas wish-list...hint-hint.

We'll get into "winter camping" in another post regarding "How Not to Freeze to Death." 

There you have it: everything you need for a great night's sleep! Small, packable, light, and efficient way to crash anywhere on the trail. No need to clear brush, sticks, rocks, or hammer (and thus bend...) stakes into solid bedrock. You're - literally - above it all! 

Join us in the next volume, wherein we talk about what to eat.