Archive:Minimalist Trip
Contents
The Minimalist Trip
Can you survive a night in bleak November in BC with no tent, sleeping bag, or mat? Come on this trip and find out.
Details
Trip Meeting
already happened
Who
Organizer: Maria
Knowledgeable Person: Will
Participants: Sign up in the Interested People section.
When/ For How Long
(we have reached a decision) Trip scheduled for: Nov 18 and 19
Sat -- go, set up camp. Sat-Sun nite -- survive. Sun - clean up & come back.
What to take
Be prepared for cold, snow and wet. Have a dry change of clothes, sleeping bag, matress and maybe a tent in the car just in case. We won't be camped far from the car. I will have a stove just in case as well.
General idea: take what you would/should on a day hike; this trip attempts to mimic being stranded with no camping gear.
I carry a small pocket sized emergeny kit on all trips. There are far to many components to survival than we can prictice on one night out, so we are going to focus on shelter and fire building. Although there are lots of thing in my pocket kit, I will only list the items related to shelter and fire.
Duck Tape - several feet
2mm accessory cord - 30 feet
Mylar (space) blanket - 5' x 8'
safety pins - 2 med. 2 small
birthday cake candle
mini Bic lighter
tinder tabs (petrulium jelly impregnated cotton balls) - 4
ranger bands (1 cm wide cuts of bike inner tube) - 3
one handed flint and striker
Most things are the list are cheap and can be purchased at MEC on Canadian Tire. For the Space Blanket, I suggest the orange Adventure Medical one from MEC. The orange side can be used to signalling, of finding you camp, and it has survival tip printed on it - a bonus. It is $6. The cheaper Cohglans one is a little smaller, and can be good enough for practicing if you want to save money. These are single use items.
Ignore the flint and striker. The one I have is not readily available, you can practice with mine. I will also bring a bunch of candles and ranger bands to go around. The ranger bands not only help hold you gear together, they are great fire starters that are impervious to moister and work when wet. They will light with a match or lighter and burn for about 5 minutes. Cotton-ball based tinder tabs burn for about a minute or two per Vaseline soaked ball, and have the added benefit of being ignitable with only a spark. These too are waterproof.
Because the Vaseline soaked cotton balls are a little messy to pack, I have a few suggestions. Stuff a whole bunch into a film canister. Another idea is to cut a section of drinking-straw a couple inches long. MacDonald’s straws are good because they are wide. Using a q-tip or toothpick, push the Vaseline cotton ball into the straw, then carefully melt the ends shut. When it is time to light, cut off a tip, pull out a bit of the cotton and it will light with spark and burn for a few minutes. Rolled up 3" wide sections of newsprint dipped in wax then stuffed with cotton balls burns a really long time, but is messy and time consuming to make. I have a bunch of these that I will bring along.
other things to bring:
Basic first aid equipment is good idea, but I will likely bring a more complete kit.
Water purification tablets
WARM CLOTHES
food: we will have a pot for boiling water on the fire. Bring food that can be prepared in your bowl with just water. We need two lunches, dinner and breakfast. Lots of snakcs for the long cold boring night.
headlamp, Swiss Army type pocket knife, or preferably the more useful as safer Leatherman tpye multi-tools...whatever else you normally carry.
This is not a competition with each other, so we should be aware before we go of what each of us is bringing so we know where we stand as a group, and can modify our gear selection accordingly.
Becasue we want to practice these tasks, I see this trip as an excellent opportunity to practice using verious tool and techniques, so for this reason if there are thing not on my list that you want to bring to try using, by all means bring them, or suggest them.
Certain things need to be ruled out for safety reasons: Axes/hatchets, machetes, kukuris, parangs...
A proper fixed-blade knife that can be used to split wood is a mandatory piece of equipment. I have several of various sized that I will bring along, as well as folding pocket saws. If you don't own this stuff, don't worry, I have enough to share, and then after the trip you can decide what size knife, or combo of tools work best for you. Everyone is different. I prefer a 6" blade knife and a folding pruning saw. Others prefer a different set up - you won't know till you try.
I will also bring a good survival manual as reference to help in the learning process.
Where
(Update)
We will drive up to 2000 ft along the Brandywine Callaghan Forest Sevice Road (for several km) and park at a large cut out. From there we will walk along an old overgrown (now closed) road west several hundred yards and set up camp out of sight and earshot of the service road. There is fresh water, the ground in reasonably flat and clear, and there is a good variety of tree types and sizes for shelter/fire building. As of Sat Nov. 11, there is about 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground. The service road is snow covered right from the highway, but drivable on the 11th.
Several suggestions have been made.
- a side road off Squamish or Elaho roads a ways and then drive up a side road
- a logging road off Hwy 99 such as: Chance Creek, Roe Creek, Brandywine; roads up the Cheakamus and Mamquam rivers.
- the Chilliwhack Valley
- far end of Lynn Valley
- Mt.Seymour park towards the Elsay Lake Valley
Interested people
If yer interested
Put a (W) beside your name if you're completely OK with being Wet. If you do not put a W it's still assumed that you are somewhat OK with being slightly wet and accept the possibility of unintentionally becoming entirely wet.
- Maria(W)
- Will(W)
- Piotr(W)
- Rick(W)
- Tristan (W)
- Pawel(W)
Cars:
Rick's car (can take 4 plus driver).
Rental car. (leaving from campus)
- Maria (to be picked up at Broadway & Granville at [Will, pick a time and put it here])
- Will
- Pawel
- Piotr - live in Fairview, can meet at West gate. time?
Nota Bene Gas for both cars & car rental $ will be split evenly between passengers of all vehicles. Drivers don't pay.
