Importance of Your Outdoor Gear

Camping is a wonderful activity. It allows you to disconnect yourself from the urban life and enjoy being close to the nature for a while. At the same time, it is an activity which requires you to survive away from the comforts of home. The best thing is that while you are sleeping in the woods, you are actually preparing yourself for an emergency situation. As a matter of fact, camping away from the city in the woods can prove to be a litmus test of your preparedness against any emergency situation.

In this scenario, it is worth talking about the outdoor gear that you are going to require while camping.

Shelter

When you go out camping, what’s the first thing that comes into your mind? It will definitely be a tent because that’s where you are going to keep yourself safe from the weather changes and other elements which can be dangerous in the forests or mountains.

With the help of shelter or tent, you can make your camping experience quite enjoyable. But this is not all what you need a tent for. You need a tent when you need to set up a place to get cover in a post-disaster situation. It is a place where you and your kids are going to sleep. And this is where you can maintain your privacy.

Food and water

When you are camping, it is not quite easier to bring food and water for your family to the place where you are camping. But it’s something you are going to have to do because your survival depends upon it whether you are camping or trying to survive in a post disaster situation.

Gallons filled with water are heavy. However, if you are going to stay in a place where there is a stream of water, you just need a water purifier. When it comes to the foods, make sure that you have non-perishable foods. Granola bars and jerky beef or chicken are the best choices. You can also consider having canned foods.

Cooking gear

While you have enough food and water, you are not going to use them to the fullest if you are unable to cook your foods. This is where you are going to need cooking gear. For this purpose, you need to make sure that you have the equipment to start fire. As a matter of fact, cooking on fire is one of the major reasons people go out camping.

When you are in the woods, you may be able to get the kindling very easily. However, situation becomes a bit trickier when you are camping up on the hill because the environment there is fairly windy. It is not going to be easy to start the fire. Make sure that you have got cover around the fire pit so that the kindling is allowed to catch fire. The situation gets even tougher when you are camping in a snowy weather. In that scenario, you will have to make sure that you have enough of the dried kindling to start the fire without any trouble.

First aid

Accidents can happen anywhere. The best thing is to be prepared to deal with the effects of those accidents. When you are out there camping, the chances of accidents are higher. And the probability is even more increased when you have to get displaced due to a disaster situation.

Make sure that you have a first aid kit to deal with any unforeseen circumstances. This first aid kit is going to have essential supplies to deal with injuries. Moreover, it needs to have medications to treat allergic reactions. If you or anyone in your family is on prescription medicines, make sure that you have those medicines in the first aid kit.

Tips for Making Fire for Wilderness Cooking In the Snow

Camping in the snow can be quite challenging from a number of perspectives. It is more of a survival practice than camping. The biggest challenge to deal with is how to start fire to cook foods and to keep you warm. Good thing is that you may need more tools than what you pack in the survival backpack properly. However, it’s the skills that you are going to have to learn.

The challenging part during snow camping is to find the wood that can catch fire easily. He trees and branches are usually covered with snow; and there is a mighty chance that the branches are going to be quite wet.

Let’s talk about the tools that you are going to need.

• A folding hand saw
• Small axe
• A high quality knife with a sheath
• A flint
• An army mess kit which usually contains a couple of pans, spoons, and fork for cooking

Since you are planning to do the camping in an area which might have a temperature as low as 0 °C, you are going to have to plan well because in case if the fire cannot be started, you need to have supplies to keep you warm.

Finding firewood

Finding burnable wood can be found pretty easily in dry conditions. However, you are going to have to work a bit harder to get burnable firewood when things are covered with snow.

You can cut several branches of nearby tree using the folding hand saw. The branches are going to be wet on the barks’ surface. In this scenario, you can first divide these branches into 12-18 inch segments. This segmentation will allow you to slice off the outer wet layer, leaving the dryer core of the wood.

While most of the wood segments are going to be used as firewood, the remaining pieces can be used for tinder. Even the shaved wood is going to be useful here. Since you are going to put this thin bark in a dry place, it is also going to dry up and, so, it can be also be used as kindling.

Building the fire

First of all, you are going to have to find an area free of snow. You are going to have to create a fire pit in that area. You can cut off more branches to make a wooden base for the pit. Now, you are going to need flint and steel fire starter along with the tinder that you have created. Kindle pieces and other wooden segments should be placed nearby.

By striking steel on the flint’s surface, the sparks will be created. You will have to make sure that the sparks created are going directly onto the tinder. It is going to be a bit slow process because it takes time for the steel to heat up and come into the molten state. The consistent shooting of spark into the tinder will result in tinder building up heat and catching fire eventually.

Once the tinder has caught fire, you need to place it on the fire pit and start adding kindling gradually. Placing twig-sized pieces of wood over the flames in a cone-shaped pattern will allow oxygen to aid the flames. At this point, you will be able to cook your foods. You can also use this setup to warm up the place.