Camping, backpacking, hiking, et al

[go birds]

just signed up to go on a trip with friends to hike the Half Dome at Yosemite. It gives me slight pause considering i recently had knee surgery, but i'll be fully recovered by then, so YOLO right?

Anyone done this?

[Freed Roger]

just signed up to go on a trip with friends to hike the Half Dome at Yosemite. It gives me slight pause considering i recently had knee surgery, but i'll be fully recovered by then, so YOLO right?

Anyone done this?

Havent been myself. Do it though. Take a good multitool in case you have to hack yer leg off

[Freed Roger]

I need to read this. Lady seemed to have the experience for this -not that Nature cares.

[Hoot45]

I don't do as much backpacking, but I do a lot of light-weight kayak trips and have a few parts of my pack list that might be new or interesting to some.

For starters, I gave up tents years ago. I'll never sleep in a tent again after using a hammock. The benefits of using a hammock over a tent makes for a pretty long list. I use an Eagles Nest Outfitters ProNest. Seriously, this will change your [camping] life.
https://www.eaglesnestoutfittersinc.com ... LK-PH.html

For ultralight food preparation I use a Backcountry Boiler. There is a bit of a learning curve to start your fires and keep them going, but this thing is brilliant. I'll usually bring pre-made rice or noodle meals that just need to be prepared with boiled water. I'll use this in combo with an Aeropress for morning coffee.
https://sparkmade.com/product/backcountry-boiler
http://aerobie.com/products/aeropress.htm

For trips where we have a home base for cooking I use a Volcano Collapsible Tri-Fuel Grill. The versatility is nice, especially for trips where you have wet days that make it difficult to cook over a campfire.
https://www.volcanogrills.com/products/ ... ducts/1279

One of my last essentials is a Light My Fire knife which has been a reliable knife but also a handy firestarter when I need it.
http://www.lightmyfire.com/products/pro ... knife.aspx

[Freed Roger]

Watch out Thrill!


http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/03/us/wild-j ... index.html

awesome [expletive].

[thrill]

Yeah, i love that guy. Jags used to be all throughout the state, but their individual range is so big, that it's been really hard to conserve their AZ population until Mexico started protecting them better. Ever since, we've had one pop up in those mountains every now and then. AZ is doing a good job reintroducing Mexican wolves too. It's hard for our ranchers to restrain themselves from shooting pretty much anything wild that moves, but they're making an effort. What's interesting is that the Jaguar's path has been paved by cartel activity. Nobody wants to mess around in the border wilderness areas because so much trafficking comes through there and that has opened up area for them to migrate into the US.

[Freed Roger]

If I saw a jaguar in the wild - I'd probably jizz poop and pee my pants all at once.

[lukethedrifter]

So they work for the cartels?

[Freed Roger]

overkill, but cool mountain map stuff.
http://www.nicetrails.com/hello

[Gashouse]

We're camping in Yellowstone this summer at Madison Campground. it's starting to turn into what may be a giant C-F as our group has swelled to 14 people (my idiot S-I-L and her husband couldn't take a few simple steps to figure their [expletive] out sooner). I'll probably rant about the C-F of group dynamics later, but from a practical standpoint, what does Yellowstone actually allow for tent sizes? Our reservation says 1 12'x12' tent or 2 8'x8' tents. If it's 2 8x8 tents, does that mean I could get by with a 16'x8' tent and cram 7 people in there?

As of now, we have 2 sites, and I'm working on a third. Two of the people will be under 3 y.o., so I'm gambling a little that the park vendor will look the other way at the fact that we'll be over our limit of 6 people per site.