... For fire making. Q: I wonder what percentage of the people who will go "backpacking" this year will attempt (or even think about) making a fire?
Awesome question / point! On my "backpacking" trips, once I get to camp, I am generally thinking about: 1. Setting up my shelter (tent / tarp) 2. Clothing change (dry socks and shirt and a fleece sweater of some sort) 3. Food / calories / hydrate 4. Relax and recover. As long as plenty of water is available, I'll often ask my friend Jack Daniels to assist. Moderate doses of him is a weight luxury I often allow myself on backpacking trips. This is also when I typically deal with blisters, splinters, minor equipment issues, and etc. Environmental impact aside (and I do take that seriously), a fire to me seems like a lot of effort for little pay off compared to a stove when "backpacking."
Depends how people use the term backpacking. There are places where hiking from campsite to campsite also allows pre-made fireplaces at each location. Many folks also do base camp backpacking where folks take a long hike to a single location and do long day hikes from there. Both those situations get people to areas where fire can be permitted and nice to have. With all that said, whenever I am hiking long distances I enjoy having all my cutting implements total less than a half pound. Only a few times a year do I need more gear for making fire and even then, I am not doing what I would consider a more minimalist backpacking trip. Bottom line: do what you enjoy and enjoy what you do. Especially outdoors, try not to let anyone tell you otherwise.
I have basically the same arrangement, a Silky 240 Gomboy and a Camillus Bushcrafter. A quick hint ... one of the two very stiff closure-snaps on my Silky's plastic case broke within a month. Perfect solution? A ten-second repair (and actually an ergonomic improvement) with a home-made "ranger-band" ... and I added a second one for just-in-case. Plus it's a simple way to have a couple of ranger-bands readily available for perhaps-more-urgent other stuff.
I use a gas stove most of the time. A Thermos sometimes. On my own property I can do as I like. On others then I like to leave no trace at all. Backpacking I tend to go as light weight as I can dare. I have a Gonboy 270 too. The more work the more I take. Here is my walking the dog pair:
Some people enjoy bringing or using more than an opinel and a leatherman squirt or micra, whichever you always post/suggest. Q: Why can't you accept that not everyone likes the same thing as you?
Not as big an impact as the mining, logging, and similar extraction industries. They own our government. It's not even apples and oranges, more like polar bears and pipsqueaks. Carrying extra and unnecessary weight makes one (an outside observer, such as a forest ranger, land manager, or bureacrat) question your decision-making. Hence, your decision-making is then questioned when it comes to making a fire. It's a pretty simple equation really and the effects are being played out across our public lands with increased legal restrictions. What used to be left to common sense now has to have a law attached to it because people cannot sensibly regulate themselves, including the building of fires in remote backcountry. Since we're debating the meaning of words such as "backpacking", a brush up on the term "wilderness" might be in order as well as it means many different things depending on the participant.
Who said i don't accept things. In my home state of Vermont, people shoot (yes, shoot) pickerel during the spring spawning season with their deer rifles. I'm not making this up. But nobody calls this "fishing". "Backpacking" as a term has a certain meaning in the world outside of knife forums. Don't blame me for this. I'm just pointing it out. Go to your local library and look at the books on the topic. Use Google and look for Backpacking forums. Point your browser to the Wikipedia page that discusses it. Pick up a magazine like, I dunno..., like Backpacker and read through it. People can drag 10 pounds of cutlery into the woods and pack it all in in their backpack and as long they're having a good time and not wrecking the land or hurting people, 'zall good. But the fact that they use a pack to haul around a lot of cutlery to make fires doesn't make what they're doing recognizable as "backpacking" (the word in the subject line of this thread, after all) any more than blasting pickerel with a 30-06 is recognizable as "fishing". As I said many pages ago, the OP would have had better luck if his subject had been, "Stout [pick one: bushcrafting, wood bumming, survival] knife" if that's really what he was looking for.
Nod. And you probably aren't "backpacking" when your walking about on your property. Old joke... A Texas rancher was bragging about the size of ranch to a Vermont farmer. Rancher: Why, it takes all day to drive across my ranch." Farmer: Too bad. I used to have a truck like that.
I know what backing is; I've done it for work (stupid heavy) and for pleasure (light weight). You know if you are carry too much because you are looking at your feet. When you are fit and get it right then you can watch the view.
A knife that fits in my pocket is a pocketknife. If I travel out in the woods while carrying my stuff in a backpack, it is backpacking. All the definition Nazis can shove it.
Forgot to say, one meaning for backpacking is student travel around the world. My son did it for a year before college. He took a Victorinox Huntsman (had a bigger SAK but sent that home). Backpacking: have backpack and off I go (where ever that is??).
Words have meaning and to effectively communicate there must be a common understanding of the meaning.
That's a pretty good point. But of course some of us watch where we walk so we don't step on snakes or trip on things. Lots of young people carry their books and "stuff" in back packs to school and so forth. Guess they have to leave the fire making supplies at home. Trying to decide what I'm going to haul around in a "backpack" biking this week. Or is it a bikepack? Been a couple of years since I rode a bike and have decided it's time to get back in the saddle. I'm going to ease into this especially with these hot summer temperatures. And Yes, I will probably have a stout fixed blade on me. Of course it won't get used. If I can't bend it with two hands, it's stout.
Exactly. There's no definitive way or set of rules to backpacking. If I want to carry a back pack full of dryer lint (wink wink), ferro rods and 20 knives to a camp site, it's still called backpacking. Transporting gear and supplies from one location to another is the basic definition of backpacking.
