Help With My First-Ever Ranger Trek!

[Eothain]

Good to see that you've planned your first trek as a ranger! And smart of you to consult others before you do so. To be honest, my first ranger camping experience was a disaster, but was a great learning experience. Everyone has already given advice that I too would give. So I very much look forward to hearing about it, the best of luck to you friend!

[Greg]

Anothing thing worth mentioning...STRETCH.

Hike for ten minutes to warm up, and then stop to stretch; legs, arms, and back. Focus especially on the legs. Do it again before you sleep, and again, after a quick warmup walk, when you wake. You'll start your next day back at work without a limp.

[ineffableone]

Anothing thing worth mentioning...STRETCH.

Hike for ten minutes to warm up, and then stop to stretch; legs, arms, and back. Focus especially on the legs. Do it again before you sleep, and again, after a quick warmup walk, when you wake. You'll start your next day back at work without a limp.

Very good advice, something not enough people think to do.

[Udwin]

You might also try sleeping in similar conditions to how you'll be sleeping on the trail, a few days before your outing, with the goal of 'acclimating' your body to sleeping slightly uncomfortably.
You might even stretch it out over a week or so--first night or two, sleep in your bed without a sheet (blanket(s) only); next night, sleep with your window open; next few nights, sleep on the floor; finally, sleep in the backyard with only your trail blankets and some ground insulation.
I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I find I consistently sleep better on my second night out.

[Greg]

I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I find I consistently sleep better on my second night out.

Definitely not just you.

[ineffableone]

You might also try sleeping in similar conditions to how you'll be sleeping on the trail, a few days before your outing, with the goal of 'acclimating' your body to sleeping slightly uncomfortably.
You might even stretch it out over a week or so--first night or two, sleep in your bed without a sheet (blanket(s) only); next night, sleep with your window open; next few nights, sleep on the floor; finally, sleep in the backyard with only your trail blankets and some ground insulation.
I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I find I consistently sleep better on my second night out.

Acclimating to conditions is defiantly a good call if the temperature is dramatically different. As in winter or fall camping, or hot summer. When your body is used to a nice heated or air conditioned environment suddenly not having that makes it uncomfortable and difficult to sleep. It is amazing how much the body can acclimate to what we modernly consider uncomfortable temperatures if we just ease our bodies into it.

A big part of why people report such varied success with sleeping bags and wool blankets camping is often a lot to do with how much they acclimated to the temperature first. If they go from a nice toasty 70 degree house to try and sleep in 35 degree weather with a wool blanket, it is going to seem extremely cold and like the wool blanket is doing nothing.

If however one take time to acclimate like you suggested Udwin, then that wool blanket might even seem too warm depending on the quality of the wool blanket.

As for sleeping better the 2nd night, well I am usually just too excited to be out in nature to sleep too well. Like a kid on X-mas eve I struggle to sleep because my mind is racing about all the fun I will have in the morning.

[wulfgar]

I second what Udwin says about acclimation. Before cold CW campaign events I used to try to open a window in the bedroom. If my wife said no, then I slept without any blankets on me. It was funny because after sleeping out for 2 or 3 nights in the cold at the event, I would get home and just sweat in my warm bed at home.

[RikJohnson39]

Sorry for the new profile. Check the Prancing Pony for the reason.

am probably going to bring along some kind of toilet paper, because that's one area where I'm totally willing to deviate from authenticity in favor of comfort and cleanliness.

As for rations Any suggestions on camping food for this purpose? I just want to make sure that whatever food I bring takes up as little room and is as lightweight as possible.

I've often thought about getting a LifeStraw, I will certainly be taking along a filter of some kind and something with which to boil collected water, at the very least.

Toilet Paper is ALWAYS a necessity. I've served in many a third-world country where wiping with leaves sucks! In Belize when I built the hospital, they sold you TP by the square. In Honduras during the invasion, people had to use whatever they found on the ground.
I NEVER travel without TP and hang Authenicity!

As for food. I use a dehydrator to create my own foods, then rehydrate them as needed. Frozen peas & carrots dehydrated, fruits dehydrated, meats dehydrated... saves weight (water weighs 8 1/2 pounds per gallon) and slows those pesky bacteria that ruins food.
Of course this leads to your third part...

Water. We need a gallon a day for drinking and eating. you can cook and then drink your cooking water after it cools down.
IF you travel along a stream or havbe water along your trek, be aware that no matter how clean it looks, that rotting animal just upstream is contaminating your water.
I like the sawyer BUT, PRE-filter your water before you feed it into the water filter! With a 0.3 micron filter, it doesn't take much to clog and ruin your filter.
And yes, you can make field-filters BUT, there is no guarantee that the materials are clean and field filters are for an emergency only.

Good luck!
Have fun!
and even the worst trip turns into a great tavern story!
So go with a great attitude and you will survive and do good!

[Manveruon]

Step one: rid yourself of the concept of a "totally positive" first rangering experience.

Something will go wrong. Will.

You'll sleep on a rock funny. You'll not have enough bedding. A squirrel will get into your food. You won't pack enough food, and will come home famished. You'll leave your water bottle at home (did it for the distance trek with Odigan a year back.)

This is how we learn!

The best advice I can think of would be to not try to cover too much distance so you can spend a little extra time at camp getting things situated to make your night as positive as possible.

Can't wait to hear about it!

Haha, yeah, I suppose that's an excellent point, Greg. But the truth is, I'm already expecting things to go wrong, I just don't want anything to go catastrophically wrong, if that makes sense. I can have a few negative experiences along the way and still come out feeling overwhelmingly positive in the end. I just don't want to be fearing for my life, or somehow in danger of serious bodily injury, heh.

That being said, I think we MIGHT have figured out where we're going, finally! It's called the Fourmile Creek Trail, or the Fourmile Lake Loop, and it looks pretty spectacular! Long drive from Denver, unfortunately, but I think it'll be worth it. I'm expecting to see some other people out on the trail, but I'm hoping that the distance from Denver and the slightly strenuous nature of the hike will put off most day-trippers so we can have a little bit of relative peace and quiet. here are a couple of links that talk about the hike. The first one in particular is an excerpt from the book where I found the info originally, and it paints a pretty epic picture:

http://www.utahtrails.com/Colorado%20pa ... Creek.html

http://alltrails.com/trail/us/colorado/ ... alls-trail

http://www.trails.com/tcatalog_trail.as ... HGR199-018

[Greg]

Certainly...avoiding catastrophe is good to plan for. I just didn't want you to become so obsessed with planning that you have a list of tasks memorized once you get to camp, and other such "preventative measures", that you over-plan and under-enjoy. You don't seem to have that problem; good!

As for the location...that looks fantastic, and appears to be in an established wilderness area -- bravo on both counts!

[Manveruon]

Haha, yeah, trust me, "over-planning" is not something I tend to do most of the time. I'll be doing plenty to get ready for this, but I'm trying not to sweat the small stuff.

[MasterStrong]

Hey all. I'm the one that's heading off with this guy for his first trek. Thanks to everyone for the input, advice and suggestions. For my part, I grew up on a ranch and knew the woods and mountains before I met asphalt. I'm excited to adapt my survival knowledge to the Ranger lifestyle, though I'm admittedly more Hobbit-like in my culinary interests. I can give up Second Breakfast, but I doubt I can survive on Lembas alone!

[Urthgard]

Sounds like a great trip you and MasterStrong have got planned.

And wow there are some great tips in these posts.

Mind if I just toss a few more your way?

I'm too am gonna echo the advice about not trusting weather forecasts. The mountains make their own weather systems. Even without inclement weather, July in The Rockies equals hot days and chilly nights.

Making camp early enough to let the sun evaporate any sweat or moisture built up from the days hike makes for a bit warmer night when you sleep in what you wear.

For this trip go ahead and take a small flashlight or put your cell phone light to use for those midnight nature calls. A branch in the eye could be a trip-ender or spooking a skunk will have MasterStrong staying upwind from ya as much as possible.

Perhaps you could tuck in small notebook & pen to make quick notes of what is working for you and what isn't. You'll be glad you did when your prepping for the next trip. Mental notes can be elusive as time goes by.

Position your camp where it can get those first warming rays of morning sunlight. So very welcome after a long cold night.

You may even want to check the sun and moon rise and set times before you head out.

I can't remember the name of this obscure song but I love this line:
"It's a by God state of misery, But damned if it ain't where we wanna be!"

A positive attitude and a sense of humor can be some of the best gear that you pack.

Oh and, if I may speak for everyone else, take pictures. We want pictures. Lotsa pictures.

[Manveruon]

Thanks once again for everything, guys! There are some excellent suggestions in here.

As for acclimating myself to sleeping outdoors, I'm afraid that's not really an option for me, as I live in a townhouse with no yard, and I think the HOA would frown upon my pitching a tent or hanging up a hammock on the lawn behind the clubhouse. I suppose it might be possible for me to rig up a hammock on my small balcony and try to sleep a night or two out there ahead of time, but I'm afraid my fiancée is already going to be a bit put out with me being gone for three days, and I don't think she would be too keen on me deliberately sleeping out on the porch for an additional few nights, heh. In the end, I think the only thing for it is to just suck it up and deal with what might be a somewhat uncomfortable first night out. That being said, we have officially decided to camp for two nights instead of just one, so if I have a somewhat restless night the first time around, hopefully the second one will be more comfy.

STRETCHING! Haha, y'know, I would have totally forgotten to do so had you guys not said anything about it. Hell, I still might forget, but at least this will help me think of it when we get out there. Stretching is not usually something I do even when going to the gym, but I'm by no means a teenager anymore, and I need to remember that these things are important.

And Urthgard, those are all fantastic bullet-points, thank you! I will definitely be bringing along my cell phone, just in case (it's a helluva multi-tool, even if it's not getting cell signal wherever we happen to be), so I will at least have that as a flashlight if I need it in an emergency. I've also got my "find my phone" feature turned on, in case the worst should happen, and we find ourselves lost in the wilderness (in which case I hope like hell we'll have a little bit of signal at least... but hopefully we won't have to find out). I'll probably be keeping that in a Ziploc bag inside some other, more period-looking pouch or bag, along with some other modern amenities - like a camera, a couple foil emergency blankets, a modern first-aid kit, etc. Your thoughts about making camp early enough to air-dry a little, and also placing it somewhere we can count on a little morning sunlight are brilliant, and I'll absolutely be taking that into consideration, as well as checking sunrise and sunset times. A notebook is something I had considered bringing along, myself, but it really depends on if I have enough room with everything else. Note-taking would certainly be a good plan though.

And overall, I think you're very right, in that my attitude going into this is, it's going to be an adventure! I'm sure things will go wrong, and of course it won't all be perfect, but with a good sense of humor and a positive outlook, I have no doubt we'll have a blast, and plenty of stories to tell later on.

[Manveruon]

In preparation for my trip next week, I wore my full current ranger kit to the Colorado Renaissance Festival yesterday, just for a test-run. I figured, what better place to test everything out than the hot, dusty, up-hill-both-ways CO ren faire? I still don't have a tarp for the outside of my bedroll, so instead I used two wool blankets, one inside the other, to simulate the extra weight. In the end, I think the bedroll actually turned out bulkier and heavier than it will be with the tarp and only one blanket. At least, I hope it will, because today my right shoulder feels like someone hit it repeatedly with a baseball bat, heh. Other than that, however, I think it went really well! All the different parts play relatively well together (the emphasis here being on "relatively"), and I think I can manage it all pretty well for the trip; I'll just have to remember to switch shoulders periodically during the hike. I wish I had gotten some shots of the back, but it sort of slipped my mind. I definitely will make sure to get some during the trip itself.