Night Hiking And Additional Backpacking Ideas
Swamp cooler t-shirt. This is for sizzling desert hiking. Just soaking your t-shirt in a stream and wearing it wet is an excellent way to keep awesome from the evaporative effect, but twenty minutes later on you are far from the stream and the t-shirt is dry. The idea here, then, is a shirt that has water hand bags attached. Once packed, they slowly leak the water into the fabric of the t-shirt, keeping you cool for hours.
Solid fuel fire starter sticks. Add a strike-anywhere match head to army gas sticks and you have an instant fire starter. It might be something like a mini emergency flare.
Rain cape tarp. Not of a poncho, but a tarp that has a chin strap and a few velcro attachments down one part. It might be cheaper and simpler to manufacture, and better to actually use as a tarp. It would also very easily cover you and your backpack. If you have ever held a rectangular tarp around you and over your head to keep the rain off, you get the idea.
Disposable water container. The idea here is to possess a water container for those long hikes in the desert when you need to carry extra water. When you have used it up, the container, which is made from wax paper, doubles as a good fire starter, eliminating its excess weight from your pack. Existing waxed milk and orange juice cartons could be used for this.
Create body warmth. You can carry less cold weather wear and sleeping gear if you have more body warmth. To create more, eat fats before going to sleep. Fat create heat when they are digested (for this reason eating whale blubber helps Eskimos stay warm). Corn chips are oily enough to help if you can't stomach a half cup of olive oil before bedtime.
Air conditioning your tent. On sizzling and dry days, try wetting any large piece of cloth in the nearest stream and laying it over the roof of your tent. The evaporative cooling can lower the interior heat of the tent by ten degrees. If you are using a shirt or additional clothing that you'll be needing, allow enough time before dark for it to dry completely.
Night hiking. I purposely planned a five-day backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevadas to coincide with the full moon. Each night I slept until the cold bothered me, then easily hiked through the rest of the night time by moonlight. It got to carry a lighter sleeping bag, and it was a unique experience - one of those backpacking suggestions I had wanted to try for a while. However, it did mean taking a leisurely nap in the sun every afternoon.
