How do I learn camping/survival skills?

Snow

Snow

Joined
Jun 3, 2001
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I've grown up in white middle class suburbia and always been interesting in camping, but have never gone. Nobody I know is really interested and I'm not really sure where to start in my area. I have collected some cool gear over the years that I want to use to its full potential and I have the SAS Survival handbook that I read regularly. How do I get started camping and learning to put the gear and knowledge to use? And how do I learn the tips and tricks to camping and where to camp in my area?
 
One book that I used as a kid was "Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills," about the 3rd edition. The bulk of it is mountaineering information, but the first quarter or so of the book is really excellent information on backpacking and wilderness travel.

Another is Colin Fletcher's "The Complete Walker." He is pretty much out of service now. I think he had help writing the last (4th?) edition due to being hit by a SUV.

I think it is good to hit the survival references too, as well as the "back to basics" type references. All sources taken together make you a well rounded outdoorsperson.

Hope that helps.

Scott

P.S.

Amazon links:

Freedom
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/08...002-2033116-2824044?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

Walker
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/03...002-2033116-2824044?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

P.P.S.

Oops, I guess I never answered your question, how to get started. I think a good way is to dive right in, but stick to trails. Once you get your skills "squared away," go out into the backcountry. You really do need to know your stuff or you can get into real trouble -- that's not just an admonishment from an "old hand" to a newbie. But it is pretty easy to develop the skills, so I would highly encourage you to dive right in and get started. Just be careful and know your limits!
 
beezaur said:
Oops, I guess I never answered your question, how to get started. I think a good way is to dive right in, but stick to trails. Once you get your skills "squared away," go out into the backcountry. You really do need to know your stuff or you can get into real trouble -- that's not just an admonishment from an "old hand" to a newbie. But it is pretty easy to develop the skills, so I would highly encourage you to dive right in and get started. Just be careful and know your limits!
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Let's be clear about what "dive right in" means. :)

Start with dayhikes in county or state parks where the paths are well tread and the maps are easy to read. Try to meet people while you're doing it. Learn the importance of paying very close attention to your compass. I used to routinely get lost in some state parks in northern minnesota because you couldn't see the horizon for all the trees and the trails on the ground were never quite what the map said they should be.

While you're at it, take some orienteering courses. This is an actual sport in some areas and it will really help you learn how to use a map and compass. Use the internet to locate orienteering organizations in your area. Try to meet people while you're doing it.

Move up to camping overnight in a country or state park. This might be irritating if you pitch a tent next to a bunch of bozos who think that parks are for getting drunk. OTOH, I've met some cool people in communal camp grounds. Anyway, your goal here is to get comfortable pitching your tent, making a fire (if allowed) or using a camp stove, and cooking in the out of doors. Try to meet people while you're doing it.

You'll notice that you need to meet people. The truth of it is, you shouldn't go into the wilderness without at least one other person. Not only is it dangerous to hike and camp alone, especially as a novice, but it's also kind of lonely. So ... try to meet people.

Having met some people, organize an overnight hike/campout to a more remote corner of your local state or federal parks (county parks might not be big enough for this). What you want to do here is get away from the campsites that you can just drive up to, so look for camping sites that are 1 - 3 hours aways from the trail head. This is your opportunity to try out real backpacking. You'll have to carry everything in and figure out what to do with your food so the critters don't come looking for it. But hopefully you'll be close enough to your car that if things go bad (a racoon gets into your breakfast supplies, for example) you'll still be able to bail out.

Once you're comfortable with that (shouldn't take more than a season if you're consistently into it), start working up to increasingly more difficult hikes/outdoor experiences. Try to figure out what you really like doing. Don't think that it's all about backpacking. Maybe you just like to car camp (drive up to a campsite, pitch a tent, and do day hikes from there). Check out the BLM lands in your state for a less regulated experience than is offered at state and federal parks. In my state (CA), the BLM lands are pretty much open to whatever you want to do, within reason. Just don't burn the place down, and stay out of the woods during hunting season or you might get shot by some drunken bozo.

And if you get REALLY into it, go take some actual survival courses. I might be a bit old for it, but I keep eyeing the Boulder Outdoor Survival School, which looks like a serious challenge. Those are places where you can REALLY find out how to handle yourself in the great out of doors. I bet your state has one or two survival schools where they'll really teach you what you want to know.

About meeting people: I always had trouble finding people to camp and hike with too. Still do, for that matter, but I'm so busy with my family it doesn't really matter. That said, the internet can be your friend here. Try advertising on Craig's List or similar for hiking buddies (you know, looking for people online isn't always about hooking up). Also, your profile says you're a student. Try looking for outdoor groups at your school that you can hang out with. Check out the biology and geology majors, both of which attract "outdoorsy" type. Don't overlook the photographers; plenty of them will be into nature photography which will mean various outdoor experiences.

In short, your goals are to (1) get out, explore, practice your skills, and enjoy yourself and (2) meet people who want to do this with you so that the experience is both more fun and safer.

I hope this helps.
 
The first place I would go to learn about camping areas and interesting places in your state would be the National Park Service.

They have a very good website here:

http://www.nps.gov/

The best way to start is to start easy, and for a limited time to begin with. A good place is an established campground that you can drive to, without having to trek too far. You will probably be carrying way too much at the beginning of your skills training- no big deal if you have transport close by.

Pack all the gear that you think you will need (there are many lists here on BF- use the search facility) and keep a list of what you use, what works and what doesn't.

When you have done your couple of nights, sit back at home and analyze what went wrong, what was there, but not good enough, what you didn't use (and stike it off your equipment list), what you wished you had more of i.e. "more instant soup", "another 50' of paracord". Keep a record of your first trip, and refer to it when preparing for the next trip.

While you are out camping, try not to use all the civilized facilities in the campground, i.e. showers, fresh water taps, BBQ pits, but try and live as if you had travelled far from civilization, and none of these were around you. If you have to, the comfort items are there for you, but try not to use them.

Good record keeping is essential. Keep a notebook in your pocket and note down everything you do, particularly if it goes wrong; "boiled eggs keep cracking open", "knife too thick to slice onions", etc.

Camping skills are not rocket science, but there are many pitfalls,and there is no susbstitute for practice. Start easy, refine, refine and practice. Before you know it, you will offering advice to newbies based on your own skills.

Good luck with your adventures. It's a wonderful wide world out there, and it's all there to enjoy.:thumbup:
 
bulgron: I dont know if it helped Snowbut it sure helped me.......And I use to camp every 3rd week in each month with the Scouts. Those were the days, I like to be alone though, no one else to not tell me what to do. i do what i want when i want.DOnt have to wait fer anyone to catch up to me. well that was a good read thanks.
 
I pretty much learned by doing, by myself :eek:

When I was a kid I had a friend with an uncle's copy of Freedom. We studied that thing religiously. Every weekend I would go on at least one day hike, and I practiced a lot of skills after school in the woods by my house, all alone. My friend and I camped out a lot in the summers too. Nothing very far. I don't think we went more than a few miles away from somebody's house until driving age.

However, one huge confidence and skill builder was when I joined a search-and-rescue group when I was 14. I sharpened my skills tremendously with the search team. That was an all weather sport -- it seems people never get into trouble in good weather. Go figure. It was really good training, which is rare.

Start small, and practice a lot. There are a lot of things that can (and will) go wrong in the wilderness. Being in the search team and later in the volunteer fire service, I learned many times over how easily things go terribly, terribly wrong.

I think the most important thing is to have a healthy respect for what you are doing.

Be careful, have fun, and be careful. And then be careful again. You can't do too much of that. :)

Scott
 
Learn to use your equipment, especially the stove and edged tools, prior to heading into the wild. Then like has been suggested, head to a county, state or National park that allows camping in designated areas and have fun.
 
CEALLAGH said:
I agree with most of the above, but some of prefer to call this "solitude"

:)
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lol.

Straight out of college I had a job that (without my consent) stuck me on 4-day work weeks for almost an entire year. All of a sudden I had lots of time to hike and camp, but no one to do it with, because everyone I knew was working.

So I saw a good chunk of the north shore of Lake Superior all alone.

Now, I understand the need for solitude completely, but after a while it gets real old, especially if you make a habit out of it. I also got myself in a few jams that either wouldn't have happened or would have been easier to get out of if I had someone with me.

Eventually I met a girl who had the same schedule as I did, and the same interests, and the camping got a lot more enjoyable. :)

The lesson that I took away from that time in my life is that I'm not afraid to go into the woods alone, but it's a lot more fun if there's one or two other people with me whose company I enjoy.

In any case, my advice still stands: a novice should not engage in serious wilderness excursions all alone. Until you grow your skills to a certain degree, it's a rather dangerous thing to do.

By the way, I learned everything I know about the woods from either the scouts or from my uncles. Both the scout troop that I was and my uncles (all WWII vets) were particularly good about teaching wilderness survival skills, so I was reasonably well-equipped to be heading out on my own. But ... I still got myself into those jams.

Caution is a good thing to have, but also hard to have when you're young and immortal.
 
Big philly 1 said:
bulgron: I dont know if it helped Snowbut it sure helped me.......And I use to camp every 3rd week in each month with the Scouts. Those were the days, I like to be alone though, no one else to not tell me what to do. i do what i want when i want.DOnt have to wait fer anyone to catch up to me. well that was a good read thanks.
Click to expand...


You're welcome Philly. :)
 
Snow,

A book called the "2oz Backpacker" by Robert Wood is excellent, although his material on sunglasses and fabrics is somewhat dated.

You really need to decide if you are first going to be :
a car camper
a climber/camper
an ultralight through hiker
a trail runner/day tripper
or ?

Because all of the above are so different, they require vastly different gear selections and trip planning, as well as trip partner choices. You can morph from one to another, but you cannot be all of them on the same day.

For example, I will often cover 10-15 miles a day, at altitude, scrabbling up every thing I can as I go. I do this because I often function as a ultralight through hiker and have my gear and body and partners set up accordingly. If I were climbing, with ropes and protection and route choices, my distance would have to drop to 1/4 that, and I would need to carry vastly more food, because climbing requires more calories.

I am often physically very uncomfortable in my common mode of camping, huddled in some forgotten place in a small nylon pyramid sharing elk jerky and hot tea with my dog, while car campers are sleeping on thick air matressess and eating hamburgers with their family. Both approaches have their advantages.

My advice would be to decide, realistically, what you want to do, and then start looking into the specialist periodicals devoted to that flavor of the outdoors. By narrowing your field, at the start, you can save a lot of gear money and heartache with camping partners who may have a completely different idea of what camping is about.

Also, I would second the suggestion of at least trying to join your local Search and Rescue team. Those guys normally have pretty good "survivial skills" for non combat wilderness emergency situations.

Have fun,
Jeff

PS--- Trailheads are not anyplace to leave a car. I have seen dozens of vehicle break ins at trailheads. Nothing sucks worse than to come limping into a trailhead in a rainstorm, day 14 of 14 day trip, and realizing that your car is gone or heavily damaged. Get dropped off and picked up.
 
Snow,

I just noticed that you are posting from Overland Park. That makes it tough, because most of the outdoor areas there are so saturated or developed as to negate any chance of feeling "remote".

KU did, in the early nineties, have a great Wilderness/outdoor club, which organized a lot of kick ass trips on the cheap. You might try that. I remember everything from canoe trips to the Mark Twain NF to bicycling in Maylasia.

Also, build up your skills somewhat, and go hiking/camping in foul weather in the midweek. A good rainstorm will empty out the areas fast.

Jeff
 
gallowglass said:
Snow,

A book called the "2oz Backpacker" by Robert Wood is excellent, although his material on sunglasses and fabrics is somewhat dated.
Click to expand...

This is good advice. The whole ultralight backpacking thing is new since I was doing serious backpacking in the late 80's. I'm now finding that some of the gear they recommend makes good sense as emergency gear for day trippers. For example, siltarps make excellent lean-tos and weigh virtually nothing. There's no real excuse not to have one with you in your pack.

gallowglass said:
My advice would be to decide, realistically, what you want to do, and then start looking into the specialist periodicals devoted to that flavor of the outdoors. By narrowing your field, at the start, you can save a lot of gear money and heartache with camping partners who may have a completely different idea of what camping is about.
Click to expand...

Yes, but a novice may not know what they want to do. These things take experience. Anyway, learning how to build a fire, pitch a tent (or tarp), keep yourself dry when it rains, how to read a compass and map, etc, are all basic skills that carry over into the more specialized activities. IMO, I'd spend a season focusing on these before worrying about the rest of it.

Anyway, outdoor activities are often gated by (1) where you live, (2) the people that you meet, and (3) your budget.

The whole thing is an adventure. Start with the basics. See where the trail leads you.

gallowglass said:
Also, I would second the suggestion of at least trying to join your local Search and Rescue team. Those guys normally have pretty good "survivial skills" for non combat wilderness emergency situations.
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Interesting. I have zero experience with SAR teams, so what I'm about to say may be off base. But I met a guy recently who was once a regional SAR commander (can't remember the exact title that he said he had) up in Oregon. Anyway, he indicated that the SAR training was extremely difficult with a very high drop out rate. Recruits were expected to have very good outdoor skills going into it, and you had to have VERY good orienteering skills to make it through.

He told about how in his training he had to follow a course through the woods with each checkpoint giving him the heading and distance to his next checkpoint. One such checkpoint was underwater in a stream. If you weren't careful, you would've missed it and ended up flunking out.

I could be wrong, but if these tales are true, then it seems to me that a SAR unit is a bit much for someone who is just starting out.
 
bulgron said:
SAR training was extremely difficult with a very high drop out rate. Recruits were expected to have very good outdoor skills going into it, and you had to have VERY good orienteering skills to make it through.

He told about how in his training he had to follow a course through the woods with each checkpoint giving him the heading and distance to his next checkpoint. One such checkpoint was underwater in a stream. If you weren't careful, you would've missed it and ended up flunking out. . . .
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I did those things as a 14-year-old. We all had hardware store raingear, military surplus (in the 1980s) gear, and whatever we could scrounge. I think the only decent gear any of us had was boots, sleeping bag, and compass.

Anyway, the compass courses were really tough. One run that I remember still to this day was to take some heading for ~2000 feet and find a marker. We paced distances over hills, through ravines and around obstacles, "leapfroging" through the woods with compass sightings to stay on course. We found our marker; our search line was something like 10 feet off to one side.

Generally our markers were tin can lids. They were placed up in trees, on the undersides of logs, next to the ground in ferns, etc. We had to pace distances to within 2% on flat(ish) ground and sight our compasses to within 2 degrees. There was a lot of map work too.

The dropout rate sounds like a symptom of a hostile evaluation process.

You have to work hard at it, but the skills are far from impossible to master. With careful practice you'll surprise yourself at what you can do. We were just a bunch of middle school kids, but were way more competent than the vast majority of backpackers I have encountered since.

Scott
 
Start in your back yard. Learn to setup your tent, build a campfire, and cook on it. Then hit the state parks where you get to camp near your car. When you're more comfortable with just camping is when you start hiking. Don't just start hiking. Start by packing your pack. Then unpack your pack and do it again. Mainly just get out there man. You've been collecting this stuff and haven't used it? Take a lady with you, a good woman likes camping too.
 
Wow lots of good info here. Thanks for all the advice, guys. I'm ordering those books recommended from Amazon to start reading and planning. I need to study right now but I've got a couple more questions and whatnot for later.
 
yeah- car camping, then short walks using your compass. Another CRAZY idea i just had is; I've always found that when in the bush it is always a great motivation to have a *reason*/excuse for being there. You might consider taking up fly fishing or even BIRDWATCHING!! to give you an excuse/motivation to got to areas you may otherwise not have travelled to. I'm serious; having a mission is sooo beneficial to sustaining your motivation, and when out in the wild, its fascinating to study the habits of wildlife, as it teaches you about the whole ecosystem - this means that without consciously focussing on it, you are learning very very valuable survival skills. The key is to make it fun fun fun, and i can only agree with a previous poster that having a keen female companion makes it HEAPS more fun! ;) Have fun,
W
 
Why not find a local Boy Scouts of American troop and talk to the Scoutmaster about being a youth leader or assistant Scoutmaster. Explain to him about you wanting to learn about the outdoors. Scouting is the best way to learn about the wilderness. Even when I went through survival training in the Army the first thing the instructors asked was "anybody here been in the boyscouts?" It would take you years of reading and even more learning on your own to find out what you could learn in a few months of Scouting.

phxbigdog
 
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