Estimating distance is a crucial skill in various scenarios such as daily life, hiking, and survival situations. It helps you maintain your sense of direction, calculate distance and height, and estimate travel time while hiking relative to your pace. Did you know you can estimate distance using only your finger? Estimating distance using only your finger is based on this known fact about human anatomy: Your arm is about ten times longer than the distance between your eyes. Here’s how you can use this information to estimate distance: Imagine you’re […]
Camp Tips
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White gas, kerosene, isobutane, and denatured alcohols are common fuels for backpacking stoves. Fuel savings greatly depend on the efficiency of the cooking process, as well as the stove and type of cooking pot. One of the best ways to conserve fuel is to avoid energy loss during cooking. You don’t want to run out of fuel mid-hike and be left eating cold freeze-dried entrées. Here are a few strategies to conserve stove fuel. No flame in vain Only allow the fuel to burn when it is at work, or […]
Whether you have recently started backpacking or are a veteran, you could probably benefit from a few cooking tips. First, we’ll describe the common method that backpackers use when cooking dried foods and strategies you can use to conserve your cooking fuel when using a backpacking stove. This cooking method is a great concept and works well both on and off the trail. We call it boil-soak cooking. It is incredibly efficient because it uses less fuel and water. Boil Soak Cooking Instructions Set up your backpacking stove. Find a spot to cook […]
Anyone spending time hiking, cycling, or skiing, has experienced chapped lips. The condition of dry, chapped lips often starts as a minor annoyance. Left untreated, it can lead to painful and unsightly cracking and bleeding. A more severe condition called angular cheilitis (also called perleche) is a fungus that causes painful splitting at the corners of the mouth. Chapped lips are caused by a lack of moisture when the layer of oil naturally produced by the body to coat the lips dries up. Exposure to cold and dry air, intense […]
Did you ever wonder if fresh food contains the same nutrients as its dried counterpart? Let’s examine what happens when food is dried. These four steps are involved in preserving food by drying: Harvesting Storing Processing Drying From the moment it’s harvested or picked, raw food contains the highest content of nutrients. The nutrients decline as the food gets exposed to light and air during handling and transport. Additional nutrient loss occurs when the food undergoes processing (peeling, slicing, chopping) and declines further once exposed to heat for either cooking, […]