Collins Complete Hiking and Camping Manual: The essential guide to comfortable walking, cooking and sleeping

Collins Complete Hiking and Camping Manual: The essential guide to comfortable walking, cooking and sleeping
Rick Curtis

Field tested by one of the most respected outdoor programmes in the world, ‘Collins Complete Hiking and Camping Manual’ is the most comprehensive guides available. It is broad in scope, while still focused on the essential skills and information that you need to travel safely and comfortably in any wilderness.Any backpacker knows that space in your rucksack is limited, but on your next trip pack the only guide that you will need. Use it for:• before you start your trip – for deciding on an itinerary, selecting equipment and figuring out what food, clothing and other supplies to pack, depending on whether you are going some where tropical or temperate• once you’re out in the wilderness – for choosing a campsite, setting up camp, navigating with map and compass, identifying trees and plants and preparing meals• if something unexpected happens – for finding a lost person, seeking shelter in bad weather (like thunderstorms) and first aid for common injuriesScattered throughout are Tricks of the Trail – additional tips for successful wilderness camping.CONTENTSTrip Planning, Equipment, Cooking, Nutrition, First Aid, Navigation, Wilderness Travel, Safety, WeatherSample Tricks of the TrailCotton What’s the worst thing to bring on a backpacking trip? Blue jeans. In most climates and environments, you should minimize your use of cotton clothing. Although cotton is comfortable to wear, cotton fibers absorb and retain water. Once wet, cotton loses heat 25 times faster than dry clothing. Wet cotton clothing can be a significant factor in hypothermia (see Hypothermia, page 293).

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_66dd17e8-097e-5502-ae3c-01f8fc067eed)

First published in 2007 by

Collins

An imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

London

W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Collins is a registered trade mark of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

First edition 2007

Copyright © 1998, 2005 by Rick Curtis and Princeton University

Illustrations copyright © 1998, 2005 by Ron Hildebrand and Rick Curtis

All rights reserved.

Originally published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint excerpts from Mountain Safety, Research Inc.’s instructions for the Whisperlite stove and for artwork illustrating the Whisperlite stove; Arc’teryx for providing a backpack for the cover art; the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics for permission to use the Leave No Trace logo; MapTech, Inc. for U.S.G.S. quadrangle maps generated from MapTech Terrain Navigator Pro; Sierra Club Books for excerpts from Weathering the Wilderness, by William E. Reifsnyder; artwork showing the SAM splint from the Seaburg Company; the MapTools UTM grid artwork from John Carnes at MapTools.com; The Physician and Sports Medicine Journal for excerpts from the article “Self-reduction of Anterior Shoulder Dislocation” by Dr. Elizabeth Joy (November 2000); Prentice Hall for an illustration of the Situational Leadership Model from Management of Organizational Behavior by Paul Hersey, Kenneth Blanchard, and Dewey Johnson.

Rick Curtis asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

A catalogue in publishing record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007247639

Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007598113

Version: 2014-07-09

CONTENTS

Cover (#u4963aa40-4abf-58b7-8b90-281d4bc84742)

Title Page (#u40d491a9-d6d6-5a96-b65b-857eed49afd9)

Copyright (#ulink_f9b2bd35-e05f-5a18-b3aa-14009b510fa6)

Introduction (#ulink_bee50e72-f93f-56f8-ae81-f6c3e3706f1a)

CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_8dabd13b-9c42-5358-a3d9-ddce4ec2075f)Trip Planning (#ulink_8dabd13b-9c42-5358-a3d9-ddce4ec2075f)

CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_07a2cc96-dbb5-585c-af5f-a38b414cf411)Equipment (#ulink_07a2cc96-dbb5-585c-af5f-a38b414cf411)

CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_a1e181b1-52bf-5573-bb8a-0e95c554fcde)Cooking and Nutrition (#ulink_a1e181b1-52bf-5573-bb8a-0e95c554fcde)

CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_4f43cfbb-c769-5d02-a601-2643cda976d9)Hygiene and Water Purification (#ulink_4f43cfbb-c769-5d02-a601-2643cda976d9)

CHAPTER 5 (#litres_trial_promo)Leave No Trace Hiking and Camping (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 6 (#litres_trial_promo)Wilderness Travel (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 7 (#litres_trial_promo)Weather and Nature (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 8 (#litres_trial_promo)Safety and Emergency Procedures (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 9 (#litres_trial_promo)First Aid and Emergency Care (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 10 (#litres_trial_promo)Outdoor Leadership (#litres_trial_promo)

Appendix (#litres_trial_promo)

Bibliography (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

INTRODUCTION (#ulink_014479a8-ba85-5af3-a289-c100e3747492)

Back in 1996, when I was writing the first edition of this book, the World Wide Web was still in its infancy. Since then the Internet has revolutionized the way we search for information and interact with one another. Backpacking and outdoor sports are no exception to this, from finding hiking trails to searching for gear reviews. Backpacking and outdoor recreation, like everything else, have become “information-driven.” Your knowledge base is a key part of maximizing your enjoyment, your safety, and your stewardship of the natural world.

Since the first edition, backpacking itself has changed. Advances in gear design now mean that a seven-day trip no longer means a seventy-pound pack. We’ve expanded our comfort range in all sorts of seasons and learned how to hike thousands of miles with less than twenty pounds of gear in our packs. We can use GPS receivers to pinpoint our exact location and tell us how to hike to our next campsite. At the same time, backpackers face new challenges today. The growth of outdoor recreational sports has put millions of more people on the land. Leave No Trace practices and wilderness conservation have become increasingly important to safeguard the wild lands we all love.

With all our advances in technology, there still exists a set of core skills that people need to travel in the outdoors. We seem to forget that the earliest “backpackers,” in the United States and Canada, from native peoples to wildnerness explorers like Lewis and Clark, didn’t have Gore-Tex, polypropylene ultralight tents, and a gas stove. They survived the harshest conditions with wool, leather, canvas, and yes, even cotton, through their deep knowledge of how to take care of their own needs in the outdoors.

With all these changes it was time to write a new edition of this book. I’ve used the first edition as our main textbook for teaching new outdoor leaders at Princeton University. Other schools and outdoor programs across the country use it as a textbook for backpacking and outdoor recreation courses and as a staff field manual. The first version of this book was a twenty-page manual written for our trip leader back in 1985. The manual continued to grow each year until 1996, when I began working with Random House to produce a book-length version. This new edition brings the book up to date with changes in backpacking and expands the book to cover more aspects of outdoor leadership and education. It’s a great book for beginners who need comprehensive instruction for planning and running their own outdoor trips. For experienced hikers it’s a solid reference manual and refresher for your next trip. There are lots of good backpacking books out there, and I reference a lot of them in the Bibliography. Unlike any other book on the market, Collins Camping and Hiking Manual is designed not only to be something to read on the couch at home when you are planning your trip but also to be a manual you take with you in the field. Every part of the book is designed to allow you to get the information you need as quickly as possible.

DISCLAIMER