Serving Bay Ridge since 1948
I’m working on a map that I’ll eventually publish here for reference with locations of the peaks, but that won’t be ready in time for this trip. What everyone should be doing, is checking the weather:
https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/phoenicia/12464/weather-forecast/2128411
Dress and pack appropriately!
I’ve been searching for a while on ideas to be a bit more creating in first aid. We have, of course, done drills with Halloween supplies including fake blood. In the Wilderness First Aid classes, the instructors have stage makeup to simulate cuts, scrapes, and bruising, and that was what I started out searching for. Enter the joys of internet searching….
It took only a few minutes to come up with several sites that have good information on low-budget mock injuries and I learned a new word: moulage.
Brian Potter provides a few tips, the most useful (to me) is the idea for fake blood. The problem with most fake blood is that it leaves stains. That’s probably possible for his suggestion, too, since it involves food coloring, but the base liquid is dish soap. Yep, dish soap. It has the right consistency and it is intrinsically washable.
Clark Green has a nice article with a couple of additional links on ideas and props you can build. Additionally, there a step-by-step instructions on simulating shock and heat exhaustion/stroke with just a bit of makeup, well worth reading through.
Last, and I love this one by “First Aid Dude” because there are detailed instructions for making reusable prosthetics. They may not be quite so realistic as something built directly on the “victim’s” skin, but the ability to remove them and put them on someone quickly for a drill is worth while to me. Time for a quick trip to the local hardware store to pick up some flexible caulk.
This is mostly a place to hold several links to places that provide good information on selection. So you can skip this and scroll down to the bottom with the links and get the full picture. Go ahead, I won’t be offended.
Still here? Okay, here’s a few bits of my personal advice. If you are looking to buy, you’re going to want to target 40-60 liter packs to have enough space for your gear. For smaller scouts, target the lower end of that range mostly for the torso size. Realize your scout will grow out of the pack before they finish scouting. And realize that the upper end of that range is marginal for multiday trips. You can fit everything in, but it comes with a cost. Literally, you’ll pay more to get lightweight, compact gear to fit in your pack. If you continue with backpacking, go for it, because it will be more fun with less weight to carry.
Avoid getting a frameless pack. Frameless packs are fine as daypacks. The problem with a frameless pack is that the weight will be supported completely by your shoulders. The stiff frame is what allows the load to be partially shifted to your hips. External frame packs are typically better suited to on trail hiking, or at least places where there is not a lot of brush to catch on your gear. This would be most scout trips. Internal frame packs tend to have fewer external tie-down points which is the point; with fewer of those, there are less things sticking out to catch on brush as you bush-whack.
Features you may want to look for:
I have three backpacks. The first one I purchases was was a classic external frame pack, the Kelty Super Tioga 5600 (92 liters). It’s the heaviest of the set, but you can tie things all over it and it’s all but unbreakable. But it’s nominally about 6 pounds of pack empty; I weighed mine at nearly 8 pounds, so I’m skeptical of that 6 pound specification. But this pack will let you carry stuff like a mule. Not that being a mule is any fun….
The second is a Kelty Red Cloud 90, a 90 liter pack. The hip belt stiffener broke and Kelty replaced the pack…for free. This weighs about 5 pounds. It has lots of compartments for organizing your gear.
The third is a ULA Circuit, a 68 liter pack with no compartments, everything goes into the bag, so I use ditty bags to organize my gear. It’s the lightest of the bunch at a mere 3 pounds and has very nice pockets on the hip belt. It was also the most expensive. Weight down, price up.
For my sons, the first pack they had was a Kelty Tioga Jr external frame pack (34 liters). This worked for the first couple years of scouting at which point I purchased a Kelty Red Cloud 5000 ST (short torso). This is a 82 liter pack. The adjustments on this are enough they they are still using them.
Although I have an obvious history with Kelty, and they do make good packs, they are far from the only name in the game. Campmor, REI, EMS, all sell multiple brands and have staff to help with fitting and selection and they sometimes have sales. If you can borrow a pack from someone first, great. If you are comfortable ordering online, CampSaver.comalso has deals (where I got the Red Cloud packs), and never underestimate Amazon.comfor deals, too. As with anything, for some items, you’re paying for brand name as much as for quality. Don’t get me wrong, Arc’teryx makes great stuff but it’s like buying a Lamborghini, you didn’t just buy it because it’s fast but because, hey, it’s a Lamborghini.
Here are some links with good advice. These are all from REI, but they are not about buying REI gear specifically.
Should the placement of carbon monoxide (CO) detectors be influenced by CO’s weight relative to air? J Emerg Med. 2012 Apr;42(4):478-82. doi: 10.1016/j.jemermed.2011.03.015. Epub 2011 May 4. “Contrary to a significant amount of public opinion, CO did not layer on the floor, float at the middle of the chamber, or rise to the top. In each case, the levels of CO equalized throughout the test chamber. It took longer to equalize when CO was infused at the top of the chamber than the bottom, but levels always became identical with time.”
There’s no such thing as one perfect sleeping bag. If you do a lot of camping, you may end up with a couple. The major factors that go into picking the right bag for the trip are temperature rating, construction, and materials. But choice of ground pad as well as how you clean and store your bag will make a difference in how well it holds up for you.
The first thing people talk about is the temperature rating of their sleeping bag. In the past, temperature ratings where at best rough guides, but in the past few years, the European Norm 13537 (EN) rating system has been adopted widely as the standard and reliable way of rating sleeping bags. The EN rating actually include 4 temperatures, but most EN rated sleeping bags will have three listed: comfort, lower limit, and extreme. The comfort temperature is the lowest outside temperature at which an average adult women will sleep comfortably. The lower limit is the lowest outside temperature at which an average adult man will sleep comfortably. The extreme temperature is a nominal lowest temperature at which an average adult woman can survive (not at all comfortably). All ratings assume the person is sleeping in a single layer of long underwear and wearing a hat while sleeping on a 1-inch thick insulation pad. (The actual standard is very specific about the range of thermal insulation values the pad can have for testing, it’s gets quite technical….)
In principle, when using the EN 13537 method, bags with the same rating should be very close to the same in terms of performance for you. Given the same temperature rating, construction and materials will make a difference in weight.
There are down bags and synthetic bags. There is goose down and duck down. Most (all?) synthetics are various types of polyester fills differing in (microscopic) shape of the fibers and how the fill is assembled. Down is rated by its fill power which is a numeric rating of how much volume a given mass of down occupies. The higher the fill power, the better the insulation for the same weight. And the more expensive…. Goose down is capable of higher fill powers than duck down, but for a given fill power, both will do exactly the same: fill power is fill power regardless of the source of the down.
There are two many different synthetics to cover. They are not all the same, but when shopping you’ll be looking for a trade off between cost, weight, and termperature rating. The lower the temperature rating, the more the bag will cost, but that’s not usually the biggest issue. The lower the weight the more the bag will cost and that’s where it will really hit your wallet.
There are a few different sleeping bag styles. The two most common are the rectangular shaped bag and the mummy bag. The mummy bag will keep you warmer since it has less internal volume that your body heat needs to warm up. However, you’ll want to pay attention to a few things on a mummy bag. First, mummy bags are designed to fit snug. Some will specifically say they are cut larger to give you a bit more internal space. If you’re aging (like me) and starting to fill out in the middle, get a looser cut. Second, the foot box can be very different. Some are square boxes, some are trapezoidal. If you tend to sleep on your side, the square box is fine. If you sleep on your back, you’ll probably want a trapezoidal foot box which allows your toes to flop outward without putting pressure on the bag (stretching it tight) which allows heat to seep out more easily. Third, cold weather bags usually are sewn in styles called baffles, shingles, or quilted layers, to preven cold spots. Fourth, there may be additional features, especially on extreme cold weather bags, to limit heat escape such as draft tube along the zipper line, a draft collar just below the neck line, and a hood with a draw string.
Some sleeping bags come as part of a multi-bag modular system; the multiple bags are intended to next within one another when in use allowing you to take all or part of the set for a particular trip.
Often neglected in the discussion of sleeping bags is the ground pad. The EN 13537 standard specifies particular insulation values for the ground pad, but I don’t know of any ground pads that specify their insulating properties in the units of the EN 13537 standard or even reference it.
In general, a closed-cell foam pad is your best all-around ground pad for all but the coldest conditions. In warmer weather, an inflatable is nice since they will often give you a thicker cushion for similar weight. However, closed-cell foam is cheap. For extreme cold, using two pads will prevent body parts on the ground (back, sides) from getting cold. The standard foam pad is 3/8-inch thick, weighs about 1 pound, and costs about $20. There are variations with reflective mylar on one side, egg-crate patterns, and more that can slightly improve the thermal properties, but none of these are that great. Buy two for extra padding or cold weather.
Sleeping bags keep you warm by trapping air, warmed by your body, and slowing it’s escape to the environment. To do that, they have to be fluffy. Every time you stuff you bag into its sack or compress it in the bottom of your pack, some of the fibers that make the bag fluffy get damaged. Down tends to be more resilient, but it too suffers from stuffing and compressing. When not in use, sleeping bags should not be stored in their stuff sacks and most definitely not in compressed compression bags. Ideally, bags should be stored they way they are displayed in the store, hanging in a tall closet someplace. But few of us have that luxury. Some of the more expensive sleeping bags come with storage sacks which are just large mesh bags you can hang on a hook. These storage bags allow the bag to expand so the fibers are not compressed which in turn helps them last longer. Mesh bags can typically be bought at discount stores for a few dollar, or the more expensive ones at sporting good stores (mesh equipment bags). We separate the components of our multi-bag modular system in and store part in a large mesh bag so the bags can remain uncompressed.
You’ll need to see the instructions that came with your bag. Down bags require special care and you’ll want to make sure the cleaner you take it to knows how to handle it. For synthetics, you can usually wash them in a front loader. Be aware that every time you wash your bag, down or synthetic, it’s doing damage to the fibers. So the short answer to “how do I clean my bag” is “try not to get it dirty.” If the weather allows, you can include a bag liner on the inside to keep sweat and body oils from soiling the inside and a bivy on the outside.
This really goes under the heading of “how do I pack my backpack” but I’ll mention two things. For the first option, you can use either a stuff sack or compression sack for your sleeping bag. The main reason for using one of these would be to have a water repellent bag to help keep the sleeping bag dry. A compression sackhas the advantage of letting your really squeeze the air out and shrink the volume used in your pack. A second option it to just put your sleeping bag at the bottom of your pack. After you start loading things on top of it, it will end up naturally compressed for the weight of those things and you save the weight of your stuff/compression sack.
Because Troop 13 camps year round, you’re going to need a sleeping bag that can keep you warm in cold temperatures. In the coldest months, we usually try to find cabins, but sometimes we’ll be in lean-tos (3-sided structures with a floor, but open to the air) even in January or February. In the past, we’ve recommended a rating of no higher than 20F, but that really isn’t enough for our winter camping trips. We recommend a rating of 0F as a good fall-winter-spring bag. For summer camp, you can pack blankets or get a second (cheaper) sleeping bag with a 30-40F rating. Temperatures during summer camp have occasionally dipped into the 40s, but that’s rare.
I have two sleeping bags, one has a 15F rating, the other is a 3-bag modular system (military surplus) with a nominal rating of -40F. I don’t really think it comes close to that, but it’s certainly comfy down below -10F, so long as I have a good ground pad.
Sleeping Bags for Backpacking: How to Choose. Long and thorough guide on understanding what you’re getting when you buy your sleeping bag. There’s more than just temperature ratings involved.
Extract from the EN 13537 european standard. Includes some of the actual text of the EN 13537 standard.
Testing Sleeping Bags According to EN 13537:2002: Details That Make the Difference. Research paper on sleeping bag testing, includes images of the test rig in two postures, including the posture used for \[T_{\rm max}\], the upper limit temperature that doesn’t usually appear on sleeping bag ratings.