Photo by Gerry Gosselin
Guest post by Gerry Gosselin
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Every hiker should have a compass right? Eventually I got around to picking one out, not because I felt I needed it, but because I’m a gadget whore and that itch needed to be scratched. A Suunto A-10 found it’s way into my possession for about $15 US. Then it sat in my bag for 2 years barely getting any use. I’m a novice day trip hiker who usually sticks to marked trails. Every now and then I get turned around but the areas I hike in Western MA don’t usually extend more than 10 miles in any direction before hitting a road. Getting truly lost was never a concern, only a minor nuisance.
This last Saturday June 12, 2010 I took a Compass, Map, Survival Course offered free by the State of Massachusetts. It’s a 10 hour course, half classroom and half in the field. The course was light on survival but very detailed on the map and compass work. Read more »
Photo by: Darren Lone Fight
Guest post by Darren Lone Fight
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Day Hiking, Multi-Day Hiking, and Weight
Getting outside and enjoying the outdoors is a great way to maintain and increase fitness levels, burn calories, and has the potential to be a very enjoyable hobby. Nevertheless, the enjoyment can be quickly lost when you’re lugging a pack, pouring sweat, and trying to remember why it is you’re on a trail in the first place. Lowering pack weight, then, becomes a very important component to maximizing your enjoyment of the outdoors and create a positive, healthy experience that you’ll want to repeat in the future. Hiking with a backpack falls very generally into two categories: day hiking and multi-day hiking.
Day hikers don’t need to carry such items as a tent or a sleeping bag, but the pack itself and whatever other supplies that are brought along with the hiker might weigh anywhere from 2-10+ pounds. While this weight is not negligible, it is nevertheless a significantly lighter weight than the average multi-day pack. This article will focus primarily on reducing weight in the larger packs of a multi-day hiker, but most of the general points made here can apply to a lesser degree to the day hiker as well.
For a multi-day hike, one has to carry many supplies for daily use. I’ll be speaking here of a weekend trip, since this is the kind of backpacking trip most of us are able to fit into our schedule (not to exclude the bearded and smelly Appalachian Trail thru-hikers and other multi-week and multi-month hikers). This means a half-day Friday, Saturday, and half-day Sunday (or roughly two full days of supplies). A Base-pack weight for a multi-day hike of this nature includes the “Big Three” of backpacking: the pack itself, sleeping system (sleeping pad/bag), and shelter system (tent, tarp, etc.).
The (Other) Things We Carry
On top of this base-pack, a backpacker will often carry: a first-aid kit, food, water, a compass, Read more »
Healthy Eating Nightmare
Eating out is a part of life and when you are trying to loose weight it is a huge challenge to stay on track. Here are some tips to help keep that meal out a little better on the belly…
1. Split your meal! Portions are HUGE, big enough for 2 in most cases. Miss HuskyHiker and I have starting doing this a lot. Not only are you saving calories your saving money too. Heck, even the grilled chicken at chilli’s has 850 calories and 45 grams of fat! That is without fries! Even if you are not with someone who is willing to split order your meal with a to go box and split it right when you get it. Enjoy the rest the next day for lunch…
2. Avoid sugary soda. Get water instead, you should drink more water anyway… One regular soda packs Read more »
With spring comes ticks… It seems to be worse and worse every year. On an average hike I can pick at least 3-4 ticks off me and if I have the dog with me double that off him. Ticks carry lyme disease and rocky mountain spotted fever. The risk of contacting lyme disease increases after 24-72 hours after the tick attaches. At least with pets you have the availability of Revolution, Advantage, Advantix, and the like. For us two legged folks we are not so lucky… We don’t have any magic topical drops to repel ticks. In this post I will go over some ways to help keep you tick free.
Read more »
What we will cover in this article:
(Part 7) Advanced Geocaching
If I did a super in depth post about even some of the “advanced caching practices” it could fill a book… Here I am going to give you the jist of it and give you a link to go learn more. so here we go…
Travel Bugs and Geocoins – Travel Bugs attach to an item and are tracked at geocaching.com. They move from cache to cache (not for you to keep). When you take a travel bug out of a cache you enter the tracking code on the geocaching website and then you report on the cache page when you drop it off. Geocoins are the same for the most part just they are coin like. more on travel bugs - more on geocoins
Paperless Caching - Paperless caching is just that geocaching without paper. When most people start out caching they print out the cache pages to take with them… This can be a bit much if you plan on trying to find multible caches in a day (cache run). So people have turned to using PDAs to store the cache data. You can read more about paperless caching here & a two part how to here (part 1) (part 2)
Geocaching Bags - Most cachers have a caching bag. Some have this bag with them at all times and in this bag you will find everything would ever need to find a cache plus some. You can read more about what you might find in a caching bag here
Multi Stage Caches and Puzzle Caches – These caches are a little harder than your normal cache… Multi Stage caches you have to visit multiple caches to get the location of a final cache location. and Puzzle Caches off a puzzle that has to be solved to get the location of the cache. You can read all about the different cache types here
That wraps up my how to on caching…
Here is a list of geocache blogs for you to visit if you wish to learn more…
What we will cover in this article:
Photo by cmiked
(Part 6) – Caching with kids
Geocaching with kids can be tons of fun and educational for kids. Keeping them interested might be a bit of a challenge. I am going to share a few tips that I might help.
Kids these days are very good with computer so let them be part of the of every part of the hunt even learning to use the GPS, finding the cache on line, the hunt, and logging the cache. It will be more rewarding for them. The most important thing is letting your kids find the cache, even if you spot it let them find it. If they are having a hard time give them hints until they find it. Also when it comes trading items you should teach them it is not about what is in the cache it is about the hunt, and being out in the woods. Some caches bring you to places of great history teach your kids the history of the area. Make sure that when you head out that you are extra prepared. Bring water, bug repellent, sun screen, snacks, ect. This stuff will help keep kids happy when the times are getting tough on the hunt…
Things to remember:
- Let them find it
- Let the kids be pare of every aspect of the caching experience
- Teach them about leave no trace
- Teach them item trading is not all that caching is about
- Go prepared
Part 7 – Coming Soon!
What we will cover in this article:
Photo by René Ehrhardt
(Part 5) – The Hunt
Drive near the cache you are trying to find… With your GPS on and satellites found you will want to select the cache waypoint. This will once again vary by model but you should be able to do it from the map screen or the main menu by choosing waypoints. After you select the waypoint (geocache) you want to find it should take you to the navigational compass screen. It will have an arrow (that points in the direction of the cache you are looking for) and some data fields that you can customize.
So here is where it gets fun, At the very least you should be looking at an arrow and distance on the screen. Walk in the distance that it is telling you to go. When you get close, around 20-30 feet start looking for a hidden cache. Places to check, base of trees, in downed logs, the the crevices of large rocks. Once you find a few you will know where to look. Most times the hiding place will look just a little to unnatural, like a pile of sticks, or a leaning log, ect. If you are having a hard time you can decode the hint on the cache page, if that still doesn’t help just move on try the next one and come back for that one after you find a few… Hey! look there you found it! Congrats! Now open it up sign the log check out the contents. Remember you DON’T have to trade items and if you do ALWAYS TRADE UP leave something or equal or greater value to keep the cache contents alive. Next when you get home you have to log your find on geocaching.com. Go back to the cache page on the website (did you save that paper you printed) and click on “log your visit” in the upper right corner. Publish your log and move on to the next. Now you are HOOKED!
Part 6 – coming soon!
What we will cover in this article:
Photo by LollyKnit
(Part 4) – Picking a good first cache to hunt:
All caches are rated 1-5 stars in difficulty and terrain. For your first hunt you are going to want to pick a cache with a low rating, something between 1 or 2 stars would be good. Also you are going to want to pick a cache with a larger container, no micro or small caches they will frustrate you in the hunt. It would also be helpful to pick a cache that is away from populated areas this way you can have a leisurely hunt and not worry about muggles. A muggle is a non-geocacher, you want to make sure a muggle never sees you remove or replace a cache. When a non-cacher sees someone remove a box from a secret hiding place and rummage through the contents and put it back in said hiding place it’s gets their curiosity flowing. They will take it out, look it over, and hopefully realize what it is and put it back. But sometimes people are not so nice and the cache can become vandalized or stolen. Now this location has been ruined for other players. Nothing is worse that coming to a muggled cache site and seeing cache contents strewn about and the cache container smashed to pieces.
Now that you have picked a cache lets get it loaded on your GPSr. Different brands and models of GPS units have different loading instructions, it would be best to look at your user manual for loading waypoints to your specific model. Here I will just go over the basics…
The coordinate info is only available so I hope you signed up for that free account. The coordinates of the cache are located at the top of the cache page just below the title and are formatted something like this “N 42° 21.138 W 072° 40.334” you can enter the coordinates in to your GPSr manually (did you read that manual?), or better yet you can download the GPX file and transfer it to your GPSr using the software that came with your unit. Even better yet if you have a Garmin GPSr you can download Garmin Plugin Communicator and use the “send to GPS” button and it will do all the work for you.
Now it would be a good idea to print the cache page. The info on the cache page will help you in the hunt once you get to the cache site as well as help you find the cache page again so you can log your visit on line after you find that cache…
Part 5 – comming soon!
What we will cover in this article:
Cache Index Page
(Part 3) Now What – Finding caches on line
Next you need to sign up for an account over at geocaching.com. They offer both free and paid accounts, the free account gives you plenty of access to get started. You can get stated here.
Now lets find some caches on line now that you have your geocaching.com account. Now that you are a geocaching.com member you can view full cache pages. All the info you need to find the cache is on the caches page.
I would assume you want to find a cache close to your home or work. You can search for geocaches from the geocaching.com homepage by clicking on the “hide and seek a cache” button on the left of the page. From the “hide and seek” page you can search by address, zip code, state, country, latitude & longitude, keyword, area code, waypoint, found by user name, and hidden by user name. I would search by address or zip code then click go.
This will bring you to the geocache search index page. This page lists all the caches in the area you searched closest being first. Also on this page you will find the cache size, type, difficulty, cache title, last find date, and whether the cache contains a travel bug or geocoin (more on travel bugs or geocoins in part 7). Clicking on ant of the cache titles will bring you to the cache page. This is the page that has all the info you need to find the cache. From the cache page you can do things such as, read logs from other users, view cache location in a map, get driving directions, and more. I suggest browsing different cache pages to get the feel and learn the layout of the site.
Part 4 – Picking a good first cache to hunt
What we will cover in this article:
Photo by RoyP
(Part 2) What do I need:
The only thing that you need is a GPSr. You can get one as basic or as advanced as you would like, the only requirement being that you can input coordinates in to the GPS unit. Many cell phones now-a-days are GPS enabled and ca be used for geocaching. A basic GPSr can be found for $100 or less, if you feel like you need more bells and whistles you can spend upwards of $500 or more. Both will get you to the cache. I recommend a handheldGPSr rather than an automotive unit. Both can get you to the cache but handheld units are made for outdoor use and are much more rugged than automotive type. A common GPSr used for geocaching is the Garmin Etrex Legend HCX.
Part 3 - Now What – Finding caches on line
Uncategorized, how to, outdoors, survival | Husky Hiker - Jim Bradley | 
June 17, 2010 9:00 am | 
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