3 Essential Camping Skills
So you can set up a tent in two minutes, roast a marshmallow to perfection and you’re a pro backpack-packer? Well, here are three more essential camping skills to master:
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<div class="imageCredit">Credit: Jason Schneider</div>
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Learn to Fly Fish
Fly fishing merges hunter-gatherer heritage with Zen sensibility. Here is how to get started:
General-Purpose Setup: five-weight rod, large-arbour reel (with two spools), one weight-forward floating line, one sink-tip line, tapered leader and fluorocarbon tippet (6X). Staff at your local fly shop will sell you flies appropriate for the waters you fish.
Technique
• Hold the rod in your dominant hand, the line with the other. Strip out a few metres of line from the spool.
• Lift the rod in a smooth and quick motion; bring it back to two o’clock and stop the motion abruptly, allowing the line to unfurl behind you as the rod bends.
• When the line is fully extended behind, snap the rod straight-forward to 10 o’clock; stop abruptly, the line should curl out in front of you.
• Repeat a few times, letting out a little more line with every forward cast — finally dropping your elbow to point the rod parallel with the water and shoot the line forward. (Cast the line, not the fly.) Retrieve the fly slowly with a strip-strip-pause motion.
• It takes some practice to get it right — but keep in mind the most important aspects are fluidly moving the rod back-and-forth in a straight line, minimizing wrist movement and stopping the motion abruptly to transfer power from the rod to the line.
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Keep Warm in Your Tent
In Canada, summer and fall camping can mean chilly nights and mornings. Here are three tips to stay cozy:
• Eat a Clif Bar (or similar) before bed — we recommend Clif’s new White Chocolate Macadamia; metabolizing food keeps your body warm.
• Pack a hot water bottle, fill it with campfire-warm H20 and tuck it in the foot of your sleeping bag. Stays warm all night. (Secure the lid!)
• Store the next day’s clothes in the sleeping bag with you; they’ll be toasty when you put them on in the morning.
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Make a Matchless Fire
Making a matchless fire is the ultimate outdoors skill. Let’s be honest though, few of us are really going to rub two sticks together or invest the time and energy in making a bow-drill. Here is a way to build a matchless/paperless fire that works in wet and dry conditions — and in the real world:
• Purchase and carry in your pack the Light My Fire Firesteel 2.0 — this magnesium spark-maker comes with its own stainless steel striker and will produce a 2,900°C spark with a single stroke; it even works when damp. Good for 3,000 sparks. ($12.50; MEC)
• Saturate a dozen cotton balls in petroleum jelly (Vaseline). Stuff them into a zip-lock, compress and store in your pack.
• When it comes time to make a fire, for survival or for marshmallow toasting, pull out a cotton ball, fluff it up and spark the fire-steel atop it. The ball will burn for a couple of minutes or more; add progressively larger bits of tinder and get a flame roaring in no time.
• Why is this better than a match and paper? Simple: lightweight (29 grams for firesteel), compact, near-indestructible and hydrophobic.
