Hiking – Essential Items

Just a walk in the woods!

Imagine this, you are at your campground and decide to go for a walk; the sky is a beautiful blue, the temperatures brisk with the oncoming spring. You decide to go out and look for some of the beautiful spring wild flowers others told you they have found in some of the hollows and near by streams in the area. Your day is wonderful, and you hike back up into the hollows and find trilliums, Lady’s slippers, Indian pipes, and sprays of violets from purple to yellow. Your camera is full of pictures and your stomach empty, feet tired.

You look around and realize that, in your wonderings, you have left the trail and have hiked over a few hills while you followed the flowers. You aren’t sure where you are but decide to follow the nearby stream down to the campground. While this is usually a wise choice, you find swamps and blow downs in your way, and, before you know it, it is getting dark and the formerly brisk spring air is now down right cold.

If you went hiking with only your camera bag in you are up that mythical creek without a paddle, and you are in for a miserable night. To keep warm you will have to keep moving so you don’t get hypothermia. So, you are going to spend a long, tiring, cold night. Unless you are like that guy on the Discovery Channel® who eats bugs and can start a fire with a spare camera lens in a snow storm.

For the rest of us who can’t build a log cabin with a pocketknife, what can you do? For me, I like a back pack. Yea, it is a little hard to crawl into to get warm but what you carry in a day pack could save your life. It doesn’t have to have everything in it but a few small items can make a day trip safer and night lost in the woods much easier.

Now you don’t always need even a back pack. When we went to Yellowstone last summer, my 10 year old daughter had a fanny pack that also had a water bottle on each side. In it, she would put her camera, the two liters of water, extra batteries, some Band-Aids, some candy bars or snack bars, a cloth bandanna and a rain poncho. A coat or jacket was worn or tucked in to the waist band of the pack. For her and what we were doing, (mainly boardwalk trails) this was enough to help her Survive when she was cold or dying from hunger (As in Dad I am starving to Death!!! When are we going to get something to EAT???) And to be honest, Dad would often beg water from her.

Above Gabrielle fights off two scroungers trying to eat the candy bars and drink the water out of her fanny pack in Yellowstone!

Now, if you are going a little further a field or in worse conditions, what you might need will change as will the size of the backpack. If you are going away from major trails or in worse weather, a day pack might have the above items and an emergency blanket, either a water proof match safe or a fire starting stick, compass and map or a GPS unit; a cell phone might also help. A small first aid kit, a signal mirror and some warm clothes, gloves and stocking cap might complete it.

OH yes I have no idea how I forgot it but in areas where biting insects are a problem (where the heck aren’t they?) As Bob Difley points out you should have some form of repellent and Deet is the preferred effective ingredient. Thanks Bob for catching that mistake.

If you are really going into the back country, some freeze dried food, bivvy shelter and small sleeping bag and a way to purify water in a larger pack might be needed.

Pick your pack and your walk in the woods will be safer and more fun. That empty stomach and parched throat could be a thing of the past. And, if you know any campgrounds that have lots of wild flowers and good fishing near Western Pennsylvania, you need to let me know so I can start planning too.

Your Obedient Servant,

Gary C. Smith, Jr.