​Habits Breaking Camp?

[Guest]

A Brad post got me thinking about end of camp habits.

Leaving a tidy pile of processed firewood. There is some quid pro quo there; if I arrived to find a plentiful pile of tinder, squaw-wood and a few spilt logs I’m more likely to leave something similar in quantity. But I’ll always leave at least enough of a tidy pile to get a fire started and feed it a bit, even if what I found on arrival was a Brad favorite pile of green branches and my beloved wet sock and decaying, sponge sodden log.

I love the tripper tradition of leaving the makings for a fire. I love seeing it awaiting me as a site gift, and love leaving same. It says something about the folks who were here before me, and hopefully influences the folks behind me. I can’t think of another pay-it-forward tradition I so often encounter, or cherish as much.

(I do leave the coupons I find I can’t use atop their respective foodstuffs in the grocery store, but it’s just not the same under fluorescent lighting)

Last scan of camp. After everything is dry bagged or barreled. Actually after everything is in or near the canoes, and camp is “clean”. I make a last sweep/scan to make absolutely certain that I have everything. OK, sometimes I walk back up to camp to look twice, and leave once.

I think the only thing I have overlooked in the past 10 year was a short length of damnable green paracord auxiliary clothesline. I eventually learned that the bright yellow stuff is harder to overlook. Or walk into.

Last scan of the launch/landing. Also done twice if I can; once from land and, if possible, once from an on-water vantage view of the launch as I depart. At that point, settling myself into the canoe, I really don’t want to espy anything left on shore and have to disembark again.

Most of the semi-weird breaking camp habits are old family tripping customs, some going back to my childhood.

Family gear staging. Before we commence much in the way of packing we spread a cheap nylon tarp on the ground and, as each of us stuffs their sleeping bag and clothes and packs their tent or hammock, we pile our gear on our respective corner quadrant of the tarp.

Then the gear goes into the correct dry bags for each boat, so we all have our own necessities aboard, and there isn’t an accumulation of stuff bag clinging pine duff, sand or dirt deposited inside the dry bags.

Well, not just family trips; I do that gear pile on (smaller) aux tarp or tent ground cloth even when solo. Laying it out for purview preview helps get it in the right bags, especially as consumables diminish on a long trip and the load becomes alt-packing more compact.

10 pieces of trash. We started this when the boys were toddlers, and still do so out of tradition. And familial competition. Each person needs to find 10 pieces of trash on the morning we pack up to leave. Since we tend to do site cleanup continually, picking up wee bits when we see them, that game can be challenging on a picked clean site after a day or two.

Think twist ties, or those square plastic tabs on bread wrappers, or wee scraps of WTF-was-this oddball plastic. And my personal favorite, cigarette butts. I alone in the family smoke, so those disgusting ciggie-buttskie-filters, while not mine, can quickly add up to ten disgusting pieces no one else wants to pick up.

Score, I found 8 miss-flicked butts scattered around the fire pit alone.

Group site inspection. If I am camped with friends, and even more so with random folks on a group site, I do an inspection of every vacant site before I leave. Which is often all the sites; I don’t mind being the last to launch in a group and often linger, sometimes for an extra day or two, especially on solo trips when camped amidst group site strangers.

I have found all manner of surprises on group sites. Enough that I will always take a walk-around before I leave.

Most often I find trash. Or failed gear that that idiots managed to paddle in with and then left behind.

Sometimes unfailed gear. Seriously, you paddled in with that that POS $5.99 Wal-Mart camp chair and left it as what, a “gift” to the next person? Asshat; I don’t need another cheap folding camp chair.

Sometimes not a camp chair; Willie and I found a very nice 4-legged office chair in a Waccamaw swamp pine hummock camp. I paddled it out, along with a mountain of other site trash (empty propane cans, a freaking fire extinguisher, and etc), in full Beverly Hillbilly mode, with the chair tied in the bow, praying there would be no strainers or limbo logs anywhere downriver.

https://www.google.com/search?q=bev...=GIbKWeX5CKuh0wKOt67QAw#imgrc=uiaFsNTEQtWohM:

Nice chair, still in use today.

Scariest thing I have found – a ¾ full plastic bottle of charcoal lighter fluid. Left atop the grate of a fire ring. In a dry pine forest. Just above a wind-renewed flickering yellow flame of an undoused campfire. I said the F word. Several times.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I don't have any unusual or interesting habits breaking camp. But at one site there were two quarters left on the fire ring stones. So I left a third. (Which makes me wonder why I was even carrying change.)

 

[sweeper]

In addition to Mike's well covered OP

Usually I leave most of the wood left for me, find my own and stack what's left in a neat pile.

Especially in Algonquin I attempt to make art with all the grills that are left behind

 

[goonstroke]

A Brad post got me thinking about end of camp habits.
...
Last scan of camp. After everything is dry bagged or barreled. Actually after everything is in or near the canoes, and camp is “clean”. I make a last sweep/scan to make absolutely certain that I have everything. OK, sometimes I walk back up to camp to look twice, and leave once.
...

I'm the same way. In my decamp rulebook, I don't consider the sweep to be valid if I have anything in my hands when I do it. I find if I'm carrying nothing, I'm just that much more eager to find something to pick up.

 

[Guest]

leaving something behind

 

[lowangle al]

After the final sweep and dousing the fire pit I always take a pee before getting back in the boat.

 

[Iskweo]

There have been times when I left part of my soul at a campsite.

 

[Guest]

About that group site inspection; the most revealing thing I have ever found was 6 nicely virgin Hersey bar wrappers. No big deal, but.. . . .

The wrappers were left as trash scattered in the (unused) fire pit of a companion after he paddled out early. A companion on a group trip where we had been windbound, and were essentially out of food, much less calories for an absurdly difficult paddle out. This after we had had fed and beveraged him for 2 days.

Leaving the trash behind was bad enough, but I am still haunted by visions of him hunched over Gollum-like in his campsite before leaving, casting about furtive glances while he unwrapped 6 Hershey bars and stuck them in a baggie for some precious-my-precious private stash of paddle-out calories.

I had not paddled with him much previously and nope, never again.

 

[Odyssey]

We only have one breaking - camp habit. Hurry up and slow down.
We generally want to be on the water by a certain time, and despite not wearing watches we can guesstimate time by the sun's slow ascent through the morning sky. Eventually we get it together and loaded up depending upon our day's agenda. Quick breakfast load-up or slow breakfast load-out. Whichever. But after we've stowed all gear aboard, ourselves slotted into our seats, and paddles in hand we...slow down. But just for the moment.
It's always a magical time of day, when the mist is just risen and burning off. The sky has expanded from closed in grey to opened up blue. And as we sit for a brief moment in our canoe suspended between heavens below and heavens above on the thinnest lens of water we pause and try to feel it. Our flying canoe. No words are ever spoken. Dew drips from leaf, raven croaks a call, wind whispers a direction, and then we're off. And the day follows.
And though every day starts the same with breaking camp, it never feels the same sitting in our beginning over water under sky. It's always brand new.

 

[boatstall]

The last thing that I take from a campsite is a photograph.

Usually from the water after loading and easing off the bank. Helps me to remember my stay, and also to identify the spot again from the water. I am rarely in designated sites, so returning to an excellent site simply from memory can be challenged by years gone by, foliage variance by season, water levels, storm damage, and whether arriving during daylight or dark.

A photo lets me quickly relive what made a particular site either suck, or be worth revisiting. Also helps to later evaluate if the site was completely returned to a "leave no trace" status, which is my normal goal.

 

[Canotrouge]

A lot of time I find tent pegs most of the time cheap one, but still worth keeping. Most of the time we leave with more trash that we came in with, lots of the site have multiple fire pit and lots of those fire pit have un burned aluminum foil and cans, people need to start making way bigger fire to get rid of that stuff, there fire are way to small dang "greenpeace" making little fires...

We always do a last sweep of the entire area we were in. But then one year I took down the kitchen tarp and got distracted and forgot my ridge line all nicely set up for the next people to come... 40feet of 6mm quality rope with prussiks and all! It was green in colour.... I replaced it with a much brother one now!

Most often we try to leave a bit of fire wood for the next one to stop by. Some people leave toilet paper....

We use a fire box, and that is usually the last thing to put away. after getting rid of the ashes. I love the fire box, no trace, no need to make a fire ring, uses way less wood and heat way faster and really safe even in fire ban area(up here we are allowed to use them even during fire bans).

Ho and no matter if we take our time or if we try to rush things to get on the water fast, it seams that 2.5 to 3hrs is the time it takes from the last up to the push off.... So now we take our time!! On the moose hunting trip, 3 hrs was the time it took to get up, start both fires(tent and fire box) make and eat breakfast, drink coffee, do dishes, pack up personal stuff, put the tent, stove, tarps away( last tarp to go down is the kitchen tarp) pile stuff by canoe, load up gear in canoe and raft, load up meat on top of all that, secure the gear and meat in boats, get rid of the ashes in the fire box, put the fire box away(when cold). Do a last sweep of the camps site... Go for a dump in the bush before getting on the water!!

Take a picture(usually I do that when the camp is still up and neat....)!

 

[Guest]

In my decamp rulebook, I don't consider the sweep to be valid if I have anything in my hands when I do it. I find if I'm carrying nothing, I'm just that much more eager to find something to pick up.

I never really thought about it, but I believe that is exactly why I tend to walk back up to camp empty handed after carrying down the last load. Even when I have done a “final” sweep; it’s just not the same when I am toting gear.

We only have one breaking - camp habit. Hurry up and slow down.

If the launch from camp isn’t immediately into current I always pause there and maybe spin a circle, both for a last look and sometimes a photo, but also so get myself and my gear fully situated. How does my trim feel for the day’s windage? Shuffle around a bit to make sure the seat, back band and foot brace are all still good. Do I need a hat or sunglasses this moorning? Is all of the gear in the right place, not launch jostled underfoot or poking me in the back?

Map ready to go, canteen and day gear accessible, gulp of water or sip of coffee. Now go.

If I am launching into current, or off an awkward ledge where it was difficult to perfectly emplace the gear, I am looking forward to the first big eddy or easy landing spot to stop and shake things out.

The one thing that too frequently escapes me, but only at the launch from the truck – I often get a few miles in before I realize that, crap, my truck keys are still in my pants pocket. I think that oversight is because I am usually tempted to make haste away from that initial launch, even more so if there are people around.

 

[Guest]

A lot of time I find tent pegs most of the time cheap one, but still worth keeping. Most of the time we leave with more trash that we came in with, lots of the site have multiple fire pit and lots of those fire pit have un burned aluminum foil and cans, people need to start making way bigger fire to get rid of that stuff, there fire are way to small dang "greenpeace" making little fires...

Yup, most often found items are cheap wire stake tent pegs or someone’s overlooked clothesline. Or not clothesline, often just some ratty length of crap rope dangling from a tree, tied off with four granny knots and apparently cut free instead of impossibly untied. I have found a couple of good tent stakes; I’ve yet to find rope that didn’t go into my trash bag.

I too have come to favor bright color rope and line, although I still have some quality rope that is oft invisible black or green.

I don’t mind a big blaze with companions, but people need to stopping putting foil and cans in the dang fire and leaving the sooty remains. If it didn’t burn up take that crap with you. I guess foil and cans (if fully consumed) are not producing toxic ash or smoke, but I don’t really know. Then it becomes a slippery slope; burning plastic? Why not old batteries?

Even if it is all invisibly consumed by the fire what exactly is in the fire ring ashes, and do I really want to cook over that?

I’m no angel; years ago on a big group trip with some pyro companions we had a giant blaze on the shale banks of a drawn down lake. That pyre was eventually capped with a massive driftwood root ball; if you got within six feet of that blaze it would take the hairs off your arm. Folks were freely feeding empty beer cans into that furnace. And we had a lot of beer.

The next morning working the still red bed of coals we found a smelted aluminum objet d’art, a misshapen metal platter one guy deemed a “cowboy beltbuckle”. I wonder if it is still there.

We use a fire box, and that is usually the last thing to put away. after getting rid of the ashes. I love the fire box, no trace, no need to make a fire ring, uses way less wood and heat way faster and really safe even in fire ban area(up here we are allowed to use them even during fire bans).

Some of my favorite places either require a fire pan or box, or simply prohibit fires altogether. I’m not a fan of regulations, but frequently used desert or beach/sand sites would be a charcoal landscape if free range campfires were allowed.

Unless there is a total fire ban even places that prohibit campfires outright have always allowed the Fire-in-a-can, although I sometimes had to show them what it was/how it worked.

Canotrouge, now I’m curious about your firebox. I have probably overlooked CT threads on that subject, but; manufactured or DIY, size, functions, folds? Got photos?

I can see all of the advantages you mention of using a firebox; cleaner, faster, less wood, safer and maybe more wind directional.

Do tell. I think I want one.

 

[alsg]

Haven't done this enough to have habits, but on my just finished Allagash trip, I found two different pairs of prescription glasses left at two different sites. We left them on the picnic table even though I doubt anyone is coming back for them.

 

[Canotrouge]

No Title

Yup, most often found items are cheap wire stake tent pegs or someone’s overlooked clothesline. Or not clothesline, often just some ratty length of crap rope dangling from a tree, tied off with four granny knots and apparently cut free instead of impossibly untied. I have found a couple of good tent stakes; I’ve yet to find rope that didn’t go into my trash bag.

I too have come to favor bright color rope and line, although I still have some quality rope that is oft invisible black or green.

I don’t mind a big blaze with companions, but people need to stopping putting foil and cans in the dang fire and leaving the sooty remains. If it didn’t burn up take that crap with you. I guess foil and cans (if fully consumed) are not producing toxic ash or smoke, but I don’t really know. Then it becomes a slippery slope; burning plastic? Why not old batteries?

Even if it is all invisibly consumed by the fire what exactly is in the fire ring ashes, and do I really want to cook over that?

I’m no angel; years ago on a big group trip with some pyro companions we had a giant blaze on the shale banks of a drawn down lake. That pyre was eventually capped with a massive driftwood root ball; if you got within six feet of that blaze it would take the hairs off your arm. Folks were freely feeding empty beer cans into that furnace. And we had a lot of beer.

The next morning working the still red bed of coals we found a smelted aluminum objet d’art, a misshapen metal platter one guy deemed a “cowboy beltbuckle”. I wonder if it is still there.




Some of my favorite places either require a fire pan or box, or simply prohibit fires altogether. I’m not a fan of regulations, but frequently used desert or beach/sand sites would be a charcoal landscape if free range campfires were allowed.

Unless there is a total fire ban even places that prohibit campfires outright have always allowed the Fire-in-a-can, although I sometimes had to show them what it was/how it worked.

Canotrouge, now I’m curious about your firebox. I have probably overlooked CT threads on that subject, but; manufactured or DIY, size, functions, folds? Got photos?

I can see all of the advantages you mention of using a firebox; cleaner, faster, less wood, safer and maybe more wind directional.

Do tell. I think I want one.

The fire box, I bought it here http://www.canoemapscanada.com/custom-gear/the-environmental-fireplace.html. it is not light or cheap, but it is wonderful!! It packs out to about 2" thick, weight 13lbs(wish I could find someone to make me an exact copy of ours but in Ti...) We have the Medium long. It has a double bottom, so the ground doesn't get scorch unless you set it up in the same spot for a prolongated period. The one we have works great for up to about 6 people.

The picture below show the box in action with a really heavy wind and the fire is pretty much contained with ion the box, the same wouldn't be true for just a fire ring.

I'm not sure what else to say!!

 

[lowangle al]

I have an older version medium one and they do contain the heat right where you need it and make good use of fuel for cooking. It is also nice to use at home if you don't have a fire ring in the yard. I rarely took it tripping though preferring to bring a two burner coleman stove for cooking for about the same weight. On my last trip I brought a 9x9x11 woodstove and pipe that weighs 7 lbs, it's not too good for cooking but what it added to the comfort factor made it well worth it in the cool weather.

 

[Canotrouge]

I have an older version medium one and they do contain the heat right where you need it and make good use of fuel for cooking. It is also nice to use at home if you don't have a fire ring in the yard. I rarely took it tripping though preferring to bring a two burner coleman stove for cooking for about the same weight. On my last trip I brought a 9x9x11 woodstove and pipe that weighs 7 lbs, it's not too good for cooking but what it added to the comfort factor made it well worth it in the cool weather.

On our last trip we had not only the fire box to cook on, but the wood stove in the tent as well!! I don't remember the last time I brought along a gas stove for cooking. Some other people in our group some time do but I rarely use them. I do everything on the fire, that is what I prefer!!

 

[Odyssey]

We just got back from a short trip today. We started with a 2 burner Coleman for it's convenience but I soon switched to my Littlebug twig stove. Man I love that thing. Fast and easy cooking, light and packs small. I may retire our stoves in favour of my twiggy.

 

[yellowcanoe]

We just got back from a short trip today. We started with a 2 burner Coleman for it's convenience but I soon switched to my Littlebug twig stove. Man I love that thing. Fast and easy cooking, light and packs small. I may retire our stoves in favour of my twiggy.

What is the stance on twig stove use during fire bans?

 

[jefffski]

My partner and I rarely travel with anybody else, and we are often alone at camp. This makes organizing a bit easier. We divide the packing tasks. In the evening before we leave, my partner arranges the food by putting the next day's breakfast and lunch at the top of the food containers.

In the morning, she pulls out what we need for that breakfast and packs the day's lunch and snacks. Soemtimes I make my own lunch.

Meanwhile, I am packing up the sleeping bag (a double), thermarests and everything else in the tent, strike the tent and pack it all away in the barrel and drybag.

Next, we sit down for a simple but filling and hearty breakfast. I'm into a glass of milk (from powdered milk) and PBJ. She drinks a cup of tea and a bowl of oatmeal or rice pudding. Before we move our gear to the water's edge, we pack the breakfast food, lunches, stove and utensils and any other small items. At some point(s), we use the toilet and brush our teeth.

Then, we move the larger items ((barrel, pail, stove bag, cooler, large drybag, and duffel, water containers) to the water's edge and put lighter objects into the canoe. Finally, we move the canoe down to the water, load it and get in.

All this takes under an hour at a fairly relaxed pace and nothing gets left behind. Not making big cooked breakfasts helps us move reasonably quickly as does never making fires.