Cougar Allen
Buccaneer (ret.)
- Joined
- Oct 9, 1998
- Messages
- 75,847
I posted a rant about the good old days recently, and that got me thinking ... how about going camping at ZERO cost?
Most of the people on this forum have all kinds of gear -- leave it home! Bring nothing that you bought in a camping store! That includes all sporting goods stores and the sporting goods sections of discount stores. No camping gear! :grumpy:
Pack
I guess everybody has a book bag these days, but if you want to be fanatic about it roll your gear up in your blanket, tie it in several places (with rope, not string -- rope is much easier to work with especially untying), double it up and sling it from one shoulder to the opposite hip like a bandoleer. Tie the ends together with another bit of rope. Change shoulders whenever you feel like it. That's the way medieval soldiers did it....
Cooking
If your wife or mother won't let you raid the kitchen you can go to the Goodwill -- but no camping gear, not even if you find it at a thrift store! The pans you find in your kitchen or at the Goodwill won't have folding handles. It doesn't matter! You can pack it without folding the handle just as well.
If you don't have an old wool blanket or two (a quilt could be even better) in a closet you can raid the Goodwill for that too, but no down mummy bags for this trip, even if the Goodwill has one for sale.
The cheap flatware at the Goodwill is likely to be lighter weight than what you have at home. Wrap it in a plastic bag.
When I was a kid I thought a grill was essential. I would make them out of heavy wire and try to balance them on rocks or green logs and put my pot on the grill. Not a good idea; it always tips and collapses and falls off and spills. It's better to just set the pot right on the coals.
You can make an alcohol stove or a hobo stove or just make fires with twigs if that's not a fire hazard where and when you're camping.
Food
You don't actually have to live on nothing but Spam and Minute Rice; you can dine in luxury on food you find in your pantry or at the supermarket. Don't mind if it's heavy; you'll only be carrying a couple days' worth. If you want to stay out longer you can plant caches like I did.
Shelter
The ultralight approach is to buy the cheapest plastic shower curtain liner you can find (because the cheapest is the thinnest). You don't need grommets. Wrap the plastic around a smooth rock and tie it off with cord.
No 550 cord! Cheaper cord that size is easy to find, and you don't need it to be all that strong. I recommend against polypropylene, though; it doesn't hold knots well. It's usable if you know the right knots, but cord that can hold a square knot is more convenient.
Knife
We all have knives, and I don't suppose I could convince you to leave your favorite knife home if I tried, but ... let's raid the kitchen drawer. I bet you can find something there that you can sharpen up and make a sheath for (use cardboard & tape if you don't have leather or plastic) and I bet you'll find it works.
Water Purification
Two drops of Clorox per quart and wait half an hour. Frankly the water tastes heavily chlorinated. You can boil water when convenient.
I am suggesting this just as much for the old hands who have everything and have done everything as for the beginners who don't have any gear anyway. If you've already explored everything in your local area and can't think of anything interesting to do with only an overnight or a weekend available -- try leaving all your gear home!
You kids today don't know how good you got it! When I wuz yer age I wuz grateful fer whut I had -- and you know whut I had? I had nuthin'!
Seriously, when I started backpacking I was in my early teens. I had no gear and no money. (But I wuz happy!) I read Colin Fletcher's Complete Walker (from the library, of course) so I knew about expensive gear, but there was no way I could afford any of that stuff. Fortunately I also had a 1940s era Boy Scout Handbook (an invaluable resource, far better than later editions) and the library had some of Bradford Angier's books. I made blanket pins out of wire coathangers -- make oversize safety pins and pin up an old wool blanket and you got yerself a sleeping bag. Not because I couldn't afford a good sleeping bag -- because I couldn't afford any sleeping bag! Eventually I got a display model that had been sitting in the window so long the sun had faded part of it, so I was able to get it for four or five dollars. Until then I used blanket pins or borrowed a sleeping bag.
I had a canvas knapsack that was smaller than the bookbags every kid has today. I had to tie my blanket roll or borrowed sleeping bag to the outside with imitation parachute cord. Cheap imitation parachute cord is fine for most purposes; most of the time you don't need 550 pounds tensile strength. Eventually I got an external frame pack at a discount store, and that was immensely better than the plain ol' knapsacks the kids I went camping with had. (Theirs were bigger than my little old knapsack, but no frame, no padding, no hip belt -- just a sack with shoulder straps, a flap on top, and one or two external pockets.) My frame pack was wonderful! On the second trip it broke where the bag attached to the frame; I lashed that corner of the bag to the frame with imitation parachute cord. It lasted me for years with a few repairs. I bought a padded hip belt for it, and later bought nice padded shoulder straps. I still have that pack, though I haven't used it for quite a while. It cost me more than $10, I think....
I had an army mess kit of my father's. It sucked. Then I bought a modern thin aluminum mess kit at a discount store. That sucked too. You can't buy anything that bad these days.... I made a pot out of a coffee can. I loved that pot; I used to brag on it and people would look at me funny.... I gave it a bail handle and bent a spout into it for pouring and made a lid from a peanut butter jar lid, cut it out with tin snips for the spout. It was lightweight and I believed it was far better than any storebought pot. I guess I still believe that, come to think of it.... I kept my pot and messkit in plastic bags and never cleaned off the carbon. The carbon coating distributes the heat more evenly.
I couldn't afford freeze-dried backpacking food. I ate canned food, mostly Spam. I pretty much lived on Spam when I went camping, and the guy I went camping with the most pretty much lived on Minute Rice. When we went camping together we shared. Canned food is heavy -- so we only carried a couple days worth. If we wanted to stay out longer we planted caches. I had several caches and kept them stocked.
Colin Fletcher made his Svea stove sound wonderful, but I couldn't possibly come up with that kind of money. I used Sterno and I built fires of twigs.
Water purification tablets cost money. I carried an eyedropper bottle of bleach -- two drops per quart and wait half an hour.
Some kids had pup tents but they sucked and they were expensive -- $20! Ackkkkkkkk! I preferred a plastic tarp. Even when I grew up and had money to buy a tent I didn't for a long time -- I decided a tarp is better. I still think a tarp is better most of the time. Bugs? Don't camp in a goldurn swamp you goldurn idjit! Camp on a ridge and use bug repellent to keep off the occasional mosquito that might go that high. I camped mostly in hot weather and my favorite tarp configuration was to raise the bottom six inches or a foot above the ground for ventilation. I used a plastic poncho for a ground cloth. Sometimes I used two ponchos instead of a poncho and tarp.
My loaded pack weighed about the same as Colin Fletcher's. I didn't have food for as long but I used caches. I didn't carry unnecessary junk like binoculars, camera, stove (which I couldn't afford anyway, of course).... I ended up with the same weight as him. Nyaa nyaaaa!
The big investments were the external frame pack -- discount store junk-grade, but immensely better for heavy loads than a knapsack, and the sleeping bag, also discount store junk-grade and discounted further for the sun damage, but better warmth to weight ratio than the old blankets I used previously. I didn't camp in cold weather. Oh, I bought an air mattress, too. The cheapest plastic ones (less than $2 then) didn't last so I saved up for a coated fabric one, the most expensive one the discount store had at about 8 or $9. I used it for swimming, too, got a lot of use out of it.
Most of the people on this forum have all kinds of gear -- leave it home! Bring nothing that you bought in a camping store! That includes all sporting goods stores and the sporting goods sections of discount stores. No camping gear! :grumpy:
Pack
I guess everybody has a book bag these days, but if you want to be fanatic about it roll your gear up in your blanket, tie it in several places (with rope, not string -- rope is much easier to work with especially untying), double it up and sling it from one shoulder to the opposite hip like a bandoleer. Tie the ends together with another bit of rope. Change shoulders whenever you feel like it. That's the way medieval soldiers did it....
Cooking
If your wife or mother won't let you raid the kitchen you can go to the Goodwill -- but no camping gear, not even if you find it at a thrift store! The pans you find in your kitchen or at the Goodwill won't have folding handles. It doesn't matter! You can pack it without folding the handle just as well.
If you don't have an old wool blanket or two (a quilt could be even better) in a closet you can raid the Goodwill for that too, but no down mummy bags for this trip, even if the Goodwill has one for sale.
The cheap flatware at the Goodwill is likely to be lighter weight than what you have at home. Wrap it in a plastic bag.
When I was a kid I thought a grill was essential. I would make them out of heavy wire and try to balance them on rocks or green logs and put my pot on the grill. Not a good idea; it always tips and collapses and falls off and spills. It's better to just set the pot right on the coals.
You can make an alcohol stove or a hobo stove or just make fires with twigs if that's not a fire hazard where and when you're camping.
Food
You don't actually have to live on nothing but Spam and Minute Rice; you can dine in luxury on food you find in your pantry or at the supermarket. Don't mind if it's heavy; you'll only be carrying a couple days' worth. If you want to stay out longer you can plant caches like I did.
Shelter
The ultralight approach is to buy the cheapest plastic shower curtain liner you can find (because the cheapest is the thinnest). You don't need grommets. Wrap the plastic around a smooth rock and tie it off with cord.
No 550 cord! Cheaper cord that size is easy to find, and you don't need it to be all that strong. I recommend against polypropylene, though; it doesn't hold knots well. It's usable if you know the right knots, but cord that can hold a square knot is more convenient.
Knife
We all have knives, and I don't suppose I could convince you to leave your favorite knife home if I tried, but ... let's raid the kitchen drawer. I bet you can find something there that you can sharpen up and make a sheath for (use cardboard & tape if you don't have leather or plastic) and I bet you'll find it works.
Water Purification
Two drops of Clorox per quart and wait half an hour. Frankly the water tastes heavily chlorinated. You can boil water when convenient.
I am suggesting this just as much for the old hands who have everything and have done everything as for the beginners who don't have any gear anyway. If you've already explored everything in your local area and can't think of anything interesting to do with only an overnight or a weekend available -- try leaving all your gear home!
