Camping: Lesson 8
Backpacking and Long-distance Hiking
Concepts:
Your children will be introduced to one rather extreme form of camping, long-distance hiking.
Lesson:
Perhaps you’ve already gone on a long-distance hike with their scout troop for a week. Or perhaps in this lesson the germ of an idea will be planted for you to try it out someday! We will discuss long-distance hiking mainly in the context of the Appalachian Trail, a 2,170-mile footpath that stretches along the eastern seaboard from Georgia to Maine. It follows the crest of the Appalachian Mountains.
Each spring some 4,000 or more hikers start out from Georgia intending to hike the entire path to Maine in one season. About one in ten of them make it, taking an average of four to six months. The ages of these “thru-hikers” range from people just finishing high school to retirees.
In addition, many school, scout and church groups use the trail for weeklong hikes in popular areas like Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Over three million people visit the Appalachian Trail each year.
There are other long-distance paths besides the Appalachian Trail. The Pacific Crest Trail passes through California, Oregon and Washington on its way from the Mexican border to Canada. A little way to the east, the Continental Divide Trail follows the crest of the Rocky Mountains. Cutting across the top of the United States from New York to North Dakota is the North Country Trail.
In addition to these “granddaddies” of long-distance hiking paths, there are short- to medium-distance paths all over the country, suitable for a weekend or weeklong hike. You can probably find some not far from your neighborhood!
Long-distance hiking has a few considerations to add to the ones we’ve discussed above. Weight is a major one: the usual rule-of-thumb is never to try carrying a backpack that weighs more than a third of what you weigh. A quarter is a better target to aim for. What would your “maximum backpack weight” be?
If you are going to be on the trail for more than a weekend, you need to consider how you will restock your food. It’s unlikely that you can carry more than a few days’ worth at a time. You need to think about equipment wearing out, and what you can do to replace it.
Long-distance hikers will tell you, though, that the greatest obstacle to a really good long-distance hike is the mental one. Hiking a 2,000-mile path like the “AT” requires a major commitment to carry you through the inevitable bad days, when the rain has not stopped for a week or your feet have blisters on their blisters or you get to the trail shelter for the night only to find it full.
Use the Internet to research the answers to this ‘Appalachian Trail questionnaire’ about the history and legacy of the Appalachian Trail.
1. On what mountains will you find the southern and northern endpoints of the Appalachian Trail? Since the trail begins and ends on the top of a mountain, how do you get to it?
2. The Appalachian Trail originally was to end on what 6,500-foot mountain in New Hampshire, home to a famous cog railway?
3. Where does the Appalachian Trail cross the Susquehanna River? How does one get across the Kennebec River in Maine?
4. What will you find spaced about every seven miles along the Appalachian Trail to provide overnight accommodation?
5. What organization is charged with the oversight of the Appalachian Trail? Who actually maintains the trail?
6. The Appalachian Trail is itself a unit of the National Park System. What National Parks does it pass through?
7. What was the act of Congress that designated the Appalachian Trail as a National Scenic Trail and led to federal funding to protect the trail, by buying tracts of land from the private landowners over whose land the trail passed?
8. Who is credited with coming up with the idea for the Appalachian Trail? When did the Appalachian Trail begin construction?
9. The Appalachian Trail incorporated part of what pre-existing long distance footpath in Vermont?
10. Who was the first person to “thru-hike” the Appalachian Trail in a single season? How many people in total have “thru-hiked” it?
11. What is “Rusty’s Hardtime Hollow,” and where will you find it?
12. Appalachian Trail hikers have a language all of their own. What is “trail magic”? What is a “blue blazer”? What is a “mail drop”? What is a “ridge runner”?
13. Are mountain bikes allowed on the Appalachian Trail? Are dogs allowed?
14. Appalachian Trail hikers sometimes talk of hiking the “Triple Crown”. What do they mean?
15. What does it mean to ford a river? In what state do Appalachian Trail hikers need to ford rivers?
Answers
1. The southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail is on the summit of Springer Mountain in Georgia. The northern terminus is on the summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine. Because both ends of the trail lie in remote areas, you must reach them by access trails. The southern terminus is reached by an access trail from Amicalola Falls State Park. The northern terminus is reached by access trails from Katahdin Stream Campground in Baxter State Park.
2. The trail was originally planned to end on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. The trail through the White Mountains here passes above the treeline for a dozen miles along the Presidential Ridge.
3. The Appalachian Trail passes through the town of Duncannon, Pennsylvania, and crosses a highway bridge over the Susquehanna River at Clark’s Ferry before climbing Peter’s Mountain. To get across the Kennebec River in Maine, you need to use a boat. A free ferry service is provided from mid-May to mid-October.
4. Trail shelters, usually three-sided shelters known as “Adirondack shelters”.
5. The Appalachian Trail Conference, headquartered in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The trail is maintained by members of more than 30 local Appalachian Trail clubs that belong to the Appalachian Trail Conference and by week-long volunteer work crews that work on the trail each summer.
6. The Appalachian Trail passes through Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina/Tennessee and Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. It also passes through Mount Rogers National Recreation Area in Virginia and Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in Pennsylvania.
7. The National Scenic Trails Act, passed in 1968 and signed by President Lyndon Johnson.
8. The idea for an Appalachian Trail was first proposed by federal employee Benton MacKaye, who wrote about it in a journal article in 1921. The first portion of the footpath was opened in Bear Mountain State Park in October 1923.
9. The Appalachian Trail made use of the southern 100 miles of the Long Trail in Vermont. The Long Trail, begun in 1912, is the oldest long-distance footpath in the United States. It runs from the Massachusetts border to the summit of Mount Jay on the Canadian border.
10. Earl Schaffer of Pennsylvania, who passed away in May 2002 at the age of 84. A veteran of World War II, he hiked the path from end-to-end in 1948. According to official records at the Appalachian Trail Conference, 6,500 hikers have reported hiking the entire trail, either in one season or over several seasons.
11. Rusty’s Hardtime Hollow is a hiker hostel located near the Appalachian Trail, near Waynesboro, Virginia. Although accommodations are rustic (no electricity, no phone), they are a considerable step up from the three-sided trail shelters that hikers are used to. Hikers drop in for a night and often stay for a week!
12. Trail Magic. From FAQ and Gear List: “When something great and unexpected happens out here, we call it trail magic. Thru hikers from past years like to surprise us with sodas, food, or even rides to town. Today we met an older man named Pops who was trying to walk off a heart problem. I had been craving an ice cold Coca-cola all day, but the nearest town was 5 miles down the mountain. Pops offered us a ride in his truck and even took us back up to the trailhead after we picked up a huge meal at Burger King. He told me that if he could live long enough, he’d like to ‘start from Springer Mountain and see how far I can go.’ I wished him the best of luck and we hiked on.”
Blue Blazer. No, it’s not a piece of clothing! From Wondergimp’s Appalachian Trail Journey: “Blue-Blazer: Someone who takes easier trails to bypass going over all of the mountains on the AT…. Most side trails on the AT are blazed ‘blue’.” (The Appalachian Trail itself is marked with white blazes.)
Mail Drop: A place, usually a post office, where you have arranged in advance to collect food and other supplies.
Ridgerunner: A caretaker for a section of the trail, usually hired as a summer employee by one of the partner organizations that manage the trail. From Tidewater Appalachian Trail Club’s FAQ: “Ridgerunners hike assigned sections of the A.T., meet and greet hikers, provide trail brochures and literature to inform those unfamiliar with the Trail about the A.T., its location, regulations and traditions, and take steps to encourage the best behavior on the part of hikers.”
13. Mountain bikes are not allowed on the Appalachian Trail, which is a footpath. Dogs are allowed, except for Great Smoky Mountains National Park (North Carolina/Tennessee), Baxter State Park (Maine), and parts of Bear Mountain State Park (New York).
14. The “Triple Crown” means hiking the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail: all three. So far only a few dozen hikers have completed the Triple Crown, and only one hiker has done it in a single year!
15. To “ford” a river is literally to walk across (or rather through!) it. In the southern part of the Appalachian Trail, all of the rivers and streams have bridges. But in Maine, most of the rivers and streams must be forded.
Camping: Lesson 7
Entertaining Ourselves
Concepts:
Your children will learn ways of entertaining themselves and each other on their camping trips.
Lesson:
You’ve found your campsite for the night: perhaps a public campground, perhaps a lonely mountain ridge. You’ve parked your camper or pitched your tent. Dinner has been made and eaten; the dishes are washed and put away. It’s dark all around, but you have a good campfire going. It’s still early… it’s not even 9 o’clock yet!
What are you going to do? You don’t have your computer or Playstation with you. Any of your other toys that you might have brought you forgot. How will you entertain yourselves? Make a list of your ideas.
Telling ghost stories and singing songs around the campfire is a tradition that goes back generations. Story telling is a fine art! What ghost stories or songs do you know? If you’re stumped for ideas, look to Ghost Stories for some good ghost stories and Becky’s Campfire Songbook for some songs.
Backpackers and long-distance hikers who may be camping for days or weeks or even months on end make up trail names for themselves, or have trail names given to them.
The trail names may reveal an aspect of the person’s character, like Dreamcatcher or The Wandering Jew. They may relate to the person’s job: Suds, for example, was a retired brewery worker. Or they may be whimsical: the Weathercarrot, named for his flaming red hair; or Koogliac, or Jester, or Wondergimp.
So here’s another little entertainment for you: what trail name would you choose for yourself? Why?
Camping: Lesson 6
Edible Wilds
Concepts:
Your children will learn both the benefits and the potential dangers of eating from the wild.
Lesson:
You’ve set up camp, and you’re sitting down to dinner for the night. What shall you eat? You have the food you packed in with you. You have the dried vegetables we made in the last lesson. But what about something a little more exotic to add to your dinner?
Our earliest ancestors were probably foragers. Most of what they ate was plants they foraged from the forest. Many plants in the forest are edible, if you know where to look.
Many other plants, however, will make you very sick, and some are deadly. Never forage for plants without knowing what you are doing, and never forage without adult supervision!
One favorite treat in New England is fiddleheads. A fiddlehead is a baby fern that is still curled up in a spiral ball. Not all fiddleheads are edible! But the fiddleheads of the ostrich fern, common and easily identifiable throughout the Northeast, are. You will find the fiddleheads in early spring, into May.
From New Brunswick Fiddlehead Recipes we get these cooking directions:
“Rinse them several times, to clean off the remaining scale. Chop off the yellowish or brownish ends of the stems. Cover fiddleheads well in cold water, salted to taste, and bring to a boil. Cook until they are tender, about 8 to 10 minutes. Serve piping hot with butter and a sprinkle of vinegar or lemon juice.”
Something you can try at home are dandelions. Dandelions are most tender when they are still young, before the flowerhead forms. The traditional time to gather them is April. Make sure to gather them from a place that has not been treated with insecticides or other lawn chemicals! Open fields are better than lawns or roadsides. Those that grow in your garden are probably best.
All parts of the dandelion are edible, including the roots. The leaves are traditionally used in salads. The flowerheads can be lightly fried with a little oil and soy sauce. For dandelion recipes, visit the Seeds of Knowledge Web site
For even more adventurous recipes, try Dandelion Recipes.
Additional Resources
- Family Cookbook – Kids and Camping
- Brill, Steve. Wild Vegetarian Cookbook. Harvard Common, 2002. ISBN: 1558322140 (Ages 12+)
Camping: Lesson 4
Taking Shelter
Concepts:
Your children will learn about the different forms that “shelter” can take, and will practice setting up a tarp.
Lesson:
So we’ve decided to go camping. Where will we sleep for the night? As we’ve already seen, camping can take many forms.
Our shelter might be an RV…
Or a camper…
A cabin…
Or a shelter, such as this three-sided Adirondack shelter (open at the front)… 
A pavilion..
Or a tent…
Or a lean-to…
Or a tarp.
Camping under a tarp is easy and, if it’s set up correctly, can be nearly as comfortable as a tent at a fraction of the weight (a great consideration for backpacking!). The main things to watch out for are finding a site with really good drainage (that will stay dry in a rain storm) and tying your knots well.
The best tarps have grommets (metal-reinforced holes) in the corners. A really great tarp is the Space BlanketÔ, which is lightweight, reflects heat, and doubles as a groundcloth for your tent. (There are two rather different products that go by this name. This one is heavier, more durable, and has the grommets.)
Try setting up a tarp in your yard or any available space. All you need are some tent stakes (two or four, depending), some cord, and the tarp. If you do not have a grommeted tarp, any sufficiently large canvas or plastic tarp will do.
If the tarp is large enough, you can fold it V-style over a clothesline and stake down the four corners with cord and tent stakes. (If the tarp has grommets, run the cord through the grommets. If it doesn’t, bunch up the corner of the tarp and tie the cord securely around it.)
You want to make sure you have plenty of space under the tarp for your sleeping bags and gear. So if the tarp is a bit on the small side (such as the Space BlanketÔ mentioned above), tie two corners to available trees at a height of three or four feet, and stake the other two corners close to the ground.
Camping: Lesson 5
Making Dinner (Drying Your Own Food)
Concepts:
Your children will practice making their own dried food for camping.
Lesson:
Food is heavy. That may not matter much for car or trailer camping, but it matters a great deal for backpacking.
Most of the weight of food is actually the water that is in it. By removing most of the water, you remove most of the weight. Removing the water has other advantages, too. Most food that is dried correctly will last long periods of time without refrigeration.
Most fresh foods can be dried: meats, fruits, and vegetables. We don’t have to be as exotic as the dried ringfish (yes, those are fish!) you see above. Because vegetables are the easiest to dry, we will practice with drying vegetables.
Perhaps your family owns a food dehydrator already. But that’s not really necessary! An oven will do just fine, so long as you don’t have any very small children and don’t need the oven for the day.
Start this project early in the morning. Take two or three medium-sized potatoes. Wash them then dice them into cubes approximately ¼” to a side. Preheat the oven to warm (the lowest setting).
Boil half-an-inch of water in a saucepan. When the water reaches a boil, add the diced potatoes. Stir constantly, or the potatoes will stick! Boil for about five minutes, adding small amounts of water as necessary. We don’t want to cook the potatoes completely, only to parboil them!
Remove the saucepan from the stove and drain the water completely. Lightly grease a cookie sheet. (An aerosol spray works well for this.) Spread the potatoes on the cookie sheet so that no cubes are sitting on top of each other. You want them as spread out as possible. (Depending on the size of your potatoes, you might need a second cookie sheet.)
Place the cookie sheet in the oven. If you have more than one sheet, and you can fit them onto the same oven shelf, you should do so.
NOTE TO PARENTS: The oven door must be left hanging slightly open for this to work! If the temperature is set at warm, then it won’t be hot enough to burn; but you will still need to supervise children carefully.
Every two or three hours check the potatoes and turn them over gently with a spatula, to help them dry. Depending on your oven and the moisture in the air, they should be dry by the time you go to bed. If they aren’t quite dry, simply turn off the oven, leave the potatoes in the oven, and finish the next day. They’ll be just fine!
Make sure the potatoes are thoroughly dry (no signs of moisture) before you remove them from the oven and let them cool. Dried potatoes are extremely susceptible to moisture, and any moisture will cause the entire batch to go moldy over time. (This is not true of most other vegetables.) The finished potatoes should be small, shriveled, slightly waxy looking, and a pae shadow of their former selves!
When the potatoes are cool, put them into a zip-lock bag and store them on a shelf. Observe them closely for several days. If you see any moisture inside the bag, then put the potatoes back into the oven and dry for a few more hours.
If you enjoyed drying the potatoes, repeat the experiment with other vegetables.
Additional Resources
Camping: Lesson 3
Know Before You Go: A Checklist
Concepts:
Your children will learn the importance of good preparations to a successful camping trip.
Lesson:
When you go camping, one forgotten item can spoil the whole trip! You don’t want to take too much with you (especially if you are backpacking, and need to carry everything on your back!). But you don’t want to take too little as well. Some items may mean the difference between a safe and happy camping trip and a disaster.
What you take camping depends to a great degree on how you go camping. Your choices will be very different if you are going in an RV or camper, or if you are sleeping in a tent. But some things are important no matter what kind of camping trip you take.
Make a list of things you need for any camping trip. Then make a list of additional things you need for a tenting trip, one where you get to your campsite by car. Finally, make a list of additional things you need for a backpacking trip: one where you need to “carry your house on your back.”
Compare your list with our ‘Checklist of Things to Take’. Did you forget anything? Did you see anything we forgot?
Any Camping Trip:
• Camp soap
• Clothing (including clothes you can layer for warmth)
• Emergency whistles
• First aid kit (including bandages, antiseptic, aspirin, etc.)
• Flashlight (something small but powerful is best)
• Food
• Hat
• Money (at least in case of emergency!)
• Mosquito repellent, suntan lotion (unless it’s too early or too late in the season)
• Rain gear
• Sturdy shoes
• Toilet paper
• Towels (a “camp towel” works great and dries fast)
You probably also should have:
• A journal
• A map of where you are going
• A water filter, or water purification tablets (required, if you don’t have a safe source of drinking water!)
You may want:
• A book to read
• A “candle lantern” (what is that?)
• “Walkie Talkies” (two-way radios)
A Tenting Trip:
• A tent or tarp (see Lesson 4 for information on tarps)
• A ground cloth (a good one can double as a tarp)
• A sleeping bag
• A foam or air mattress (e.g., a Thermarest)
You probably also should have:
• Tent stakes (required, if your tent is not self-supporting)
You may want:
• A pocket knife
• Blankets, pillows
A Backpacking Trip:
• A backpack (a “daypack” will work as well, but you won’t be able to carry nearly as much weight)
• A cooking kit (pots, dishes, cutlery)
• A food bag
• A map (mandatory this time!) and a compass (know how to use it!)
• A “squirrel baffle” for the food bag (you can take a tuna tin and punch a hole in the bottom)
• A water filter or water purification tablets (mandatory this time!)
• Water bottles
You probably also should have:
• A lighter (or matches… waterproof are best, but a lighter works fine)
• A portable stove
• A rope (for hanging your food bag!)
• A trowel (for toileting)
You may want:
• A pair of “flip flops” or evening shoes
Additional Resources
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