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A fabulous source for detailed information on north american plants suitable for glue production can be obtained from Native American Ethnobotany by Daniel E. Moerman. Here are quite a few that com...
If you're hiking in dry, hot weather places, and you have a whole backpacking setup your best bet is to store your water deep in your pack. The sun is your only real enemy here. In the desert, I'...
Before you make any decisions, you need to decide whether it's just rain or it could have the potential to turn into a storm. If you're not sure then err on the side of a storm, just in case. If i...
I am going to assume your in a wooded area not large open area and it's raining but not snowing. First thing to do is get out of the water flow and onto higher ground If you can build a "higher g...
As already stressed by others, the backpack has to be comfortable. If the back system does not fit you, other features won’t make a difference. But there are plenty of good back systems and therefo...
Hammocks are great for hot weather. I have backpacked with a hammock in the Virginia summer, when the nights were 85°F-95°. There are certainly enough trees here, and in any densely forested area...
It's pretty hard to check gear without some high-tech equipment. Metalwork really needs to be x-rayed to see if there are any hidden cracks, and rope can be checked by cutting a length off and send...
It's probably worth pointing out that a lot of people reading this question may be thinking along the (commonly quoted) line that about 80% of body heat is lost through the head - which is much mor...
First, you have to figure out the dimensions you're looking for. Too big is uselessly bulky to carry, but too small can prevent it from being useful. This will depend on the size of your tent/hammo...
Out of all the things that I listed bellow I think the most important is warm clothing and a water container. A knife you can make by splinting hard rock. Remember you need this (in order of import...
I would throw some type of foliage over the tent, to "break" the fall of the rain... so long as your tent is strong enough to support the weight!
Humidity Keeping clothing dry in normal weather can be challenging, but high humidity or precipitation regions can make this even more difficult. That's because humidity is really a "relative" m...
You're making a big safety mistake by putting your gun in your pack when you climb into a tree stand. In reality, it is safer to haul up all of your gear, including your pack, and your gun unloade...
Overboots are a solution I don't see above. Some fabric based ones take up less space in the pack than an extra set of boots, and they can be taken off relatively easily when the rain abates or wh...
This is especially problematic if you dress up in layers, the last one being, for example, a raincoat. Putting a burn hole through your rain coat let's the rain in... Are there some tricks in fire...
There are several types and configurations of mosquito nets that you can use: ones that hang (from a single center point, or from four corners), ones that drape over your bag with one or two pol...
Sometimes just choosing the location of your tent can make a huge difference in the amount of rain it receives. For example, you can protect it by placing it under thick foliage, or near a cliff if...
From my experience there are two good ways to do this depending on the weather conditions you expect to encounter. Place waterproof tarp outside tent Good for rain conditions or where rocks and d...
The friends I know who have done this have said that it is just a long uphill walk - but the altitude increase means the temperature drop is incredible - from +25 Celsius to -25 Celsius, the equiva...
Hammocks are cold. The weight of your body compresses the clothes or sleeping bag, and air circulates underneath you, as opposed to a tent where you usually have a pad and the ground for insulation...
Ive heard that climbing Kilimanjaro doesn't require any mountaineering skills and is really just a (very difficult) hike? Is that true? Is there any gear I would need besides traditional hiking eq...
It is of course possible, but definitely not something I would recommend. The most common method for repelling without gear is the Dülfersitz method (invented by climbing pioneer Hans Dülfer). It i...
I like to fish trout with sweet corn. They seem to like it and it comes in small cans. Bringing a roll of fishing line and some small hooks should be enough. You can roll up the fishing line on a s...
Several of the places we hike every year have trout. I'd like to have some fresh fish on a couple of those hikes but I'm pretty new to trout fishing and I don't want to carry the weight of full fi...
I've been in pretty big storms before on campouts, but only two were big enough that the water would seep in through the sides of the tent. One of those times I used a tarp, rope, trees, and leaves...
