General Q&A about the great outdoors and outdoor pursuits.
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Seen today (5/5/19) in an area north of Boston.
When buying a sleep system it is important to consider the R-rating, referring to the thermal resistance of the product(s) and how that compares to the conditions that one will use them in. Some pe...
I've done a lot of backpacking in my home state of Colorado. My pack and its contents is pretty light but not "ultralight", maybe 20 pounds including food. I'm considering something like these fo...
I've noticed when climbing and bouldering I have a tendency to get occasional flappers on my palm. A flapper being a callus or blister that has peeled back and hangs on like a flap of skin. I trim ...
In all of my Wilderness First Responder classes and books, they have said that people who have been struck by lightning and need CPR have the best chance of it working (in general save rates with C...
I live in the Willamette Valley region of Oregon, USA. A few days ago I noticed these rodents digging in my compost pile. This was in the early-afternoon. If I got too close (closer than 4 ft) they...
On top of one of the peaks in the Uinta mountain range I found this plastic thing with small black flat glass marbles in it. It was several feet long and there were small holes underneath of the f...
I saw a bird with an injured wing among the rocks on a beach in Portugal (Algarve). The bird has been on the beach since Friday evening, and her wing feathers have completely dropped off by now. I...
I have a propane/120 volt refrigerator/freezer in my camper. For safety reasons I turn off the propane when moving. I keep the freezer section mostly full of the blue ice containers, which keeps t...
On April 12, 2019, my sister-in-law was hiking on a mountain close to our home in Central Massachusetts, USA. There was a pond at the end of an established trail. Near the water's edge were jelly...
I have been climbing for a short while and loving it. Now that I've gotten a fair bit of practice with indoor climbing I'm thinking about where this new love of mine can take me. The obvious answer...
Some knives have gut hooks, and some have line cutters, Source It basically the same notch just optimized for different purposes. How exactly would one sharpen the gut hook/line cutter? Its...
For those of you who haven't noticed, your GPS may have become a time traveler this week. Background The GPS system was invented in the 1980s and uses an epoch of Jan 1, 1980 as the starting poin...
While hiking to see the Grand Canyon on the North side, I found this grey and orange lizard running through some downed brush and logs (center of picture). Would anyone know what type of lizar...
I live in Berlin, Germany and in the last couple of years it's been know as 'wild boar capital' since there are lots of wild boars in the surroundings. I wanted to start camping and bushcrafting an...
I've asked all of my trail running friends and the general consensus is to simply hose them off in the sink (some even just wear them in the shower...). I'm concerned that leaving soaking wet shoes...
An example of the earthen material I have in mind, this video shows some daub prepared for a wattle-and-daub house at timestamp 7:45: https://youtu.be/wPWLlVVVDN0 Cob, cobb or clom (in Wales) i...
Take for example the picture below, taken in the Erawan National Park. The surface of the waterfall is a shade of white, maybe from calcium(?) and it actually very coarse. Even though it's somewhat...
Doing a Prussik with a small cordellete that is tied together in a O is relatively easy. Now some maneuvers require to do a Prussik/blocking knot with only one side of a long cordelete... how do yo...
I was taking a hike through Khao Yai National Park when I came across the centipede below. Can anyone identify what animal it is more specifically? It's been a few years and I only took this pic...
Certain calibers such as the 300 Winchester Magnum are often called flat shooting. What does that mean and why would a hunter care that the caliber is flat shooting when selecting a rifle to go h...
tl;dr What is a likely value for fuel consumption for a small portable 4-stroke gasoline-powered inverter power generator in, say, litre / ( kilowatt * hour )? At times I attend music festivals wh...
I'm planning what will realistically be my first backpacking trip. It'll be in Yosemite this summer. I've already been going through checklists of things we need, the trails we'll take, what we'll...
I am travelling to Goa in March and I am mostly crazy about water. Elementally, closest to it. Started swimming an year back and still a very naive swimmer but mostly comfortable with it. I want t...
I'm a bit curious about this since the day I read an infographic tip from a veterinarian. The reason stated by her is that it helps to not enlarge the site of the snake bite. Is this correct? Bec...
What product or combination of products best protects your hands while kayaking in winter? I’m interested in a system which provides comfort for extended paddling but also the peripheral activitie...
Recently there was a news article about a Colorado jogger who was attacked by a mountain lion and killed the mountain lion with their hands (ie, no weapon). What are the effective ways, with no we...
I am climbing for quite a while now and would consider myself a beginning-intermediate climber. I feel my technique has significantly improved over the last year. I am very heavy (1,80m and ~100kg)...
There are a number of places where salt can easily be found at or near the surface. Notably Salt Lake Utah, but there are also other Salt lick places of note. How would I recognize a natural sa...
A recent question about travelling with dried food where the recipe did not include salt caused the OP some concern. As far as I know salt just dries out food. So if you get the food completely d...
This question is prompted by reading The Dive by Pipin Ferreras. It is a story of a world-class competitive free diver, in the subclass of free diving called No Limits. According to the second li...
Which is the best knot to use as a stopper in the upper & lower part of a beads T - Holes? Also which knot is preferable for the horizontal line?
Alpine slings are usually 60cm long and while they can be slung over one shoulder, it's much easier to carry them on your harness at 1/3 of the size in an alpine quickdraw. How would one shorten t...
Having just bought my first pair of skis, I am unsure how to best stack them in the default side-by-side position in which they are alligned at the tip and at the tail ends. I thought the bindings'...
While researching a driving trip to Alaska, I came across an Alaskan motor law, 13 AAC 04.265. Antispray device (a) No person may drive a motor vehicle unless it has a device which effect...
I'm an international hitchhiker and I've never been sure what kind of shoes to buy. I do the vast majority of walking on roads, carrying 15kg or so. Sometimes I'll be off-road in the same shoes. I...
Conditions: I live near a wide (~1000ft or 300m) and fairly deep river across from the area where I work. This area is slightly earthquake prone -- near a fault line that has had multiple magnitu...
Does anyone know if the forearm grab/hold (both people holding each other's forearms) provides more grip/strength then the normal wrist to wrist grab (similar to traditional handshake) if you are t...
On the Genshtab (Генштаб) Soviet military maps, I can read that this ford through the stream Вертный has a stony bottom, a depth of at most 4 dm, and a width of 29 m (under typical circumstances)¹....
I am wondering about the "cross country like" aspects of Alpine Touring gear. I am in Ontario Canada, where hills as small as 75 meters can be referred to as "mountains". I'm a relatively experie...
Having read about the recent foot traverse of Antarctica by Colin O'Brady I was wondering which means the polar explorers of former, pre-GPS times used to determine that they had reached the North ...
When you're sailing upwind (in close reach) and there comes a stronger blast of wind, how should skipper behave? Should they turn away from the wind (because modern yachts are constructed so that w...
We were out on a night hike. A helicopter showed up, by behavior it was search and rescue, looking not too far away from our group. It might have simply been doing training, but if it was a real ...
I have a 120cm nylon runner that I want to use to tether me to an anchor bolt while cleaning the anchor. The runner has a small fray (pictures below). Is it safe to use?
As I look for a new hunting rifle, I see that some have fluted barrels, such as the Mossberg Patriot for example and some do not. What would the advantage of a fluted barrel be?
One summer evening we drove to Race Point, the farthest tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA. We were told there was a lighthouse at that spot, and wanted to see the light shine through the darkness...
While there have been some accomplished climbers who have done this in the Himalayan peaks, alpine style remains relatively rare in the Himalayas. Most climbing is done in the expedition style with...
Does anyone have a recommendation for a mountain hike to catch the sunrise and is within driving distance of Vancouver, BC, (< 2 hours)? What are winter conditions like?
Could you please provide information regarding the tools (hook, swivels, hooks, main line, line for hooks, floaters, stoppers etc) and right distances & dimensions among each tool needed to cre...
While hiking in western Sweden in October this year, I came across a bunch of feathers on my trail: To me it looked like the leftovers of a small to medium bird of prey, which was seemingly eaten ...
