Basics

Before you leave the house

Every good trip starts at the kitchen table. Check the forecast for the range, not the trailhead — valley weather lies. Write down your route, your bail-out points, and when you expect to be back, then leave the note with someone who will actually notice if you're late.

Pack for the night you don't plan to spend out: insulation, a headlamp with fresh batteries, a way to treat water, and enough food to be bored. The ten essentials are boring right up until they're the whole trip.

Camp Setup

Making camp before dark

Arrive with daylight to spare. A site that looks flat at dusk has a way of developing a slope by midnight, and the pretty hollow beside the creek is a bathtub waiting for rain. Look for ground that drains, above the waterline, away from dead limbs.

Pitch the tent with the low end into the wind and the door out of it. Set the kitchen a good sixty paces downwind — cooking smells belong far from where you sleep, especially anywhere bears do their shopping.

Before the light goes, stage the small things: headlamp in the tent pocket, water filtered for the morning, tomorrow's socks somewhere dry.

Knots

Three knots, ninety percent of jobs

You can get through most trips on three knots. The bowline makes a loop that will not slip and still unties after being loaded — it is the knot for anything that matters. The trucker's hitch gives you a three-to-one purchase for ridgelines and tarps that must stay drum-tight.

The clove hitch is the adjustable workhorse for tying off to a post, a tree, or a carabiner. Practice all three at home, with cold hands, in the dark — that is the exam condition.

Weather

Reading the sky

Clouds publish the schedule if you learn to read it. High wisps of cirrus mean a front inside a day or so. Lens-shaped caps sitting on peaks mean the wind aloft is serious. Cauliflower towers building by late morning mean your afternoon plans should become morning plans.

Count the seconds between flash and thunder and divide by three for kilometres. If the gap drops below thirty seconds, get off ridgelines, ditch the poles, and spread the group out.

First Aid

Small problems, handled small

Feet first, always. A hot spot at kilometre three is a strip of tape; a blister at kilometre eighteen is surgery in the dirt. Stop early, dry the foot, tape wide, keep walking.

For a rolled ankle, get the boot off before the swelling makes that decision for you, wrap it snug, and prop it on your pack while you decide whether the trip has changed shape.

Most backcountry complaints are dehydration wearing a costume. Headache, short temper, wobbly legs — pour water on them before diagnosing anything more dramatic.