How do I camp?

Ok I know this is kind of a stupid question but....I've grown up in a city like area most of my life and never camped until last year I camped twice. When I camped it was in the summer so all I did was set up a 3 season tent, built a fire, and ate some food. The weather was perfect not to warm not to cold, slept like a baby with a light blanket and my shorts and t shirt on.

My question is how do I camp when the temp or weather are less than ideal. How do I stay warm when its really cold? What kind of temp difference will is there from inside the tent to out side? To get warm do I add more clothes or more blankets or a sleeping bag? I know there is some science to it ie: keeping moisture down, choosing thin layers of certain type material, etc etc

I mean I don;t know how to do any of this stuff, it took me an hour just to get a fire going last time we camped. Any tips or tricks ? thanks

Good equipment always makes a big difference. Sleeping in a tent will take the wind chill away while helping insulate from the cold a fair amount. One big thing in the cold is to get off the ground with some sort of a pad. When cold camping, I usually like to use a decently warm mummy bag and a good pad but dont get all bundled up in lots of clothing layers. You'll be more comfortable with a pair of shorts and a tshirt inside a mummy bag than with 3 pairs of sweats and a parka for added layers. If your sleeping bag is too cold, get a fleece liner. Key is to stay dry and stay off the ground when sleeping. A beanie or getting your head cinched down inside the mummy bag hood makes a huge difference.

Dont get too hung up on space age materials. They are nice and beneficial but expensive. If you get into it more, youll find what you like and what you want to spend money on. As for fires,,,, tinder kindling and fuel, all dry. Start small and slowly work up to a bigger flame. Dont get too ambitious and take your time setting it up before you torch it. Its an artform If you want more detail lemme know.

Jeremy

Also when building a fire make sure it can breath. Set up ur kindling like a Tee pee. if all else fail dry wood and a small splash of gas.

^^ Getting off the ground is a great advice. I typically take several thinner blankets, as I do not have space age materials haha. My girlfriend has these really cool foam mat things that unroll, and kinda inflate (the foam just kinda unflatens). I have also seen smaller, cheap air matrices. I never used them personally, but I'm sure they would be great.

For fire starting, my one friend is all hyped up about using his home-made cotton balls covered in vasoline this year! haha. We actually lit one just to see how it did, and it actually burned very well, and for a good 5 minutes! So, package a few of them in a small zip lock bag, and you should be set! And as mentioned, prepare first, then light. Start with real thin, dry twigs, and stack them up rather densely. Enjoy!

Ya, what jimmydaux said.
There are an almost unlimited way to stay warm while camping, and the same ways to spend/waste your money.

Easy way to start campfire:
Sawdust + styrofoam egg carton + wax = easy fire starter (cardboard ones work too, but the styrofoam won't mind getting wet)

Fill the egg pockets to just below flush. Cover/seal with melted wax (candles work). Cut individual 'eggs' from carton for use as kindling.

Set on fire by lighting the styrofoam bit with your preferred method. If you've got/found some nice dry firewood, a carton will last a long time. Wet/damp wood may take a few. Pack accordingly.
Not the best method for backpacking as the 'eggs' tend to break, but still usable. Put 'em in a freezer bag if you need to pack 'em in.

For car camping, a propane or MAPP torch works well too. If you've got an air mattress to sleep on, or inflatable boat/float toys, the electric pumps can make great fire stokers too. They do have a way of getting forgotten by the fire and ending up melted tho.

4WDlifeform said:

^^ Getting off the ground is a great advice. I typically take several thinner blankets, as I do not have space age materials haha. My girlfriend has these really cool foam mat things that unroll, and kinda inflate (the foam just kinda unflatens). I have also seen smaller, cheap air matrices. I never used them personally, but I'm sure they would be great.

For fire starting, my one friend is all hyped up about using his home-made cotton balls covered in vasoline this year! haha. We actually lit one just to see how it did, and it actually burned very well, and for a good 5 minutes! So, package a few of them in a small zip lock bag, and you should be set! And as mentioned, prepare first, then light. Start with real thin, dry twigs, and stack them up rather densely. Enjoy!

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X2, you're probably talking about Therma-Rest mattresses. They don't do that much for me as far as padding is concerned (I'm kinda bony) but they do keep the cold away.

Best thing for cold - bring heavy blankets to put over your sleeping bag. I have a single summer sleeping bag, don't have the money for a winter bag yet. Went camping last fall and it was 25 degrees in the tent when we woke up, I was perfectly comfortable till I got out of my sleeping bag...

As for fire stuff - check your local DPW, a lot of the time they'll have a big huge pile of trees that came down over the last winter, ask someone and they'll probably let you take a whole bunch free. Saw/split it up and you've got firewood... kindling, I like the very dry old dead pine branches that fall off the taller trees. In fact, if you can get enough of those, you can get a hot enough fire going to smelt aluminum, that was a project me and my brother did while camping in high school.

When setting up a tarp, don't just tie the corners to the tallest branch you can reach - you'll be making a great swimming pool right over your head. A proper tarp setup takes a bit of work, but is well worth it... you'll need at least six to eight pulleys and probably a couple hundred feet of rope, as well as a large (comfortable throwing weight) fishing line sinker and ~50 feet of much thinner, lighter rope. I won't get into details on how to get the ropes into the trees (it's better done with pictures), but you want a ridgeline between two trees directly across the campsite from each other (tie this line to the proper grommets on your tarp before you put the line up), along with a line from each corner to another tree and perhaps lines from each of the low sides of the tarp to the ground / a low tree. I've weathered torrential downpours that had almost everyone in the campground leaving using a setup like this - we were playing Monopoly and cooking dinner as everyone else packed up their gear and left.

Hopefully I'll have time to draw some diagrams on putting the ropes for a tarp up later tonight, just got a new camera so I should be able to actually post them easily instead of trying to MSPaint things.

EDIT: another thing to consider is hammocks. If you have a screwed up back like I do, regular sleeping arrangements may not work, for some reason I'm really comfortable in a hammock but feel like I ended up in a cage match if I sleep flat on my back on the ground. If you mostly keep the camping to the summer, keeping cool enough will be more of a concern than keeping warm enough. Some of the best camping I ever did was an 80 mile canoe trip on the Allagash in high school, we didn't even bring tents, just small tarps, sleeping bags, hammocks, rope, and mosquito nets. I quickly discovered that mosquito nets that fall on your face are useless, but that if you get in your sleeping bag headfirst and leave your boots on, you'll be fine...

That reminds me. BRING BUG SPRAY!

Get a motel room and leave the camping gear in the Jeep.

Also, proper clothing. The biggest thing that will make you 'cold' is being 'wet' .. meaning body sweat.

Get yourself a good base layer of clothing - something synthetic or silk, NOT COTTON. In the cold, cotton kills. You need something that will wick the fluids off of your body and not retain them. I wear polypropolene long underwear (shirt and pants) and wool socks when its cold - I can throw jeans, a t-shirt and hoody over that and go snow wheeling with no windows, and be very warm.

Some good reading on it:

http://friends.backcountry.net/m_factor/cotton.html

http://www.hikingintherockies.com/other/clothing.htm

Myself, I bring my self contained RV, and even in it, I bring a hatchet, matches and a working lighter to help get the fire going.

Mary

I am a hammock camper. It keeps me off the ground and is more comfortable. If it is just mildly cold a sleeping bag in the hammock works well. If it is going to be colder then I have a second cheapo walmart bag that I will also put around the outside of the hammock. If it looks like rain I hang a tarp over the hammock. Weighs less than a tent, and since I carry an internal frame pack it also saves me a lot of space.

It is nice, I have hiked into a shelter on the AT where it was full and I was getting "go away" looks, so I just slept about 3 feet above them.

You guys who need gasoline and fancy fire starters to start a fire are a bunch of pansies.

I'm a fan of the 6" fisheye lens to start fires. As a bonus, it will melt solder in bright sunlight.

i used to do backcountry hiking all around the country....everything you need to sleep in even below freezing temps are a 3 season small tent (can fit two usually) a sleeping bag pad and a mummy sleeping bag, if you get cold take you clothes and ball them at the bottom of your sleeping bag.........
if you can't build a good fire, bring a can of sterno with you and start it with that, it's small and burns until the stupidest person can get a fire going :firedevil:explosion I'm kidding about the sterno


I can still taste the freeze dried meals hmmmmmmmmm

doug

kastein said:

I'm a fan of the 6" fisheye lens to start fires. As a bonus, it will melt solder in bright sunlight.

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Seriously? Like a camera fisheye lens? I've never heard of this before.

On the firestarting thing.

I've experimented with all of these ideas and here is the one that I have found to be the cheapest and also the most effective.

Take an egg carton, not Styrofoam but the cardboard ones. Save all the lint out of your dryer. Fill the cups all the way to the top with lint.

Now here is the secret. Go to walmart and get those HUGE candles that have three wicks in them. They are about as tall as a coffee can but fatter, maybe ten inches in diameter. Throw in on the stove (very low heat, don't burn the house down) and wait till its liquid. Poor over the cups of lint and let dry. It's best to do this on wax paper or an old baking pan as the wax will seep through the cups and leak out on the surface below.

You can do a ton of these with one of those candles. Probably four to five of the dozen egg cartons.

Then when you build a fire, just take one and break it off from the pack. The wax makes them brittle and easy to tear away. One of these will burn for a good 5-10 minutes and HOT long enough to get even damp wood burning nicely.

Yeah. If you want them, find some poor jackass trying to sell a huge projection screen TV (you know, the ones the size of a vending machine) that's broken, buy it for whatever you feel is reasonable for a bunch of neat optics. You'll get a mylar mirror about 2 by 3 feet, a first surface mirror about 1 by 2 feet, 3 6x4" first surface mirrors, 3 6" plano-convex lenses that'll start fires VERY nicely, 3 4" plano-concave (VERY concave) lenses that make great cereal bowls / decorative something or others, and 3 4" fisheye lenses that'll start fires or melt solder extremely well. Junk the rest of the TV, or tear it apart and build things out of it if you're electronically inclined.

EDIT: here is another way to camp

I go with Mary in her RV. :roflmao:

whatever you do, don't watch a tv show and think you can do what they do after watching a few episodes.

find or meet up with people that camp, tag along and find out what works for them, that will work for you.

if you want to invest in basics that will last and be useful, figure out where and when you want to camp so you can figure out what you actually need.
by that I mean, winter camping up here (Ontario, Canada) will be different than winter camping in New Mexico, same as summer camping would be different also. Instead of buying multiple sleeping bags, look for modular or multi-layer ones. If you plan on doing some cold weather camping, get a foam-air mattress combo (one that self-inflates, and/or bag acts as inflation pump) as opposed to pure foam... it will make a difference.
clothing, invest in good next to skin layers, and water proof top & bottoms first. silly as it may sound, army surplus' that carry actual military surplus can be a good source of thermal clothing for cold weather stuff, and weather proof layers.

really tho, take what ya got, find some campers and go camping with them, learn, take note, spend and enjoy.

Flint + steel + tinder = fire.

Nuff said.

DrMoab said:

On the firestarting thing.

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15min road flares = best firestarters I've found...short of liquid chemicals

Thanks for the info guys...that was more than I even expected. I want to start camping more with my family. My wife could take it or leave it but my 8 yr old absolutely loved it and my 3yr old hasn't gone yet, but I think she will be old enough soon. I don't plan on taking the kids when it's too cold, but I would like to go in the fall or spring time when it's not so hot, and I know the higher elevations can be below freezing even when it's fairly warm during the day.

From what everyone is saying I think I under estimated the how warm you can stay from your own body heat, if you keep off the ground and keep dry. I remember about the no cotton from my mountain biking days about 50 pounds ago, it makes you sweat.

I was worried about all the new space age type stuff they have out now, and I didn;t want to make a huge investment just to go a few times a year. But I see I don;t need all that stuff as long as I use my head.

As far as the fire thing goes, I know it's a simple thing to do but I just couldn't get it going last time then I couldn't keep it going. Then to add insult my wife knew how to do it cause she is from the country and knew how to make and keep a fire going. So after watching me struggle she finally butts in and says let me do it. I got mad that she butted in then even madder when she got the damn thing blazin about 6 foot in the air. Then she told me I was not getting the right wood, so I said you collect it than, well she did. When she came back she looked like she went for a swim, I asked what happend, she said I fell off a large bolder into a small river. After I asked if she was ok I laughed and made fun of her for hours.

Anyway thanks for the tips.

+1 on the mummybag. Mine is good for IIRC -20*