Blind hiker Randy Pierce participates in endeavor to memorialize the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

09.06.2010 – Nashua, New Hampshire – Blind hiker, Randy Pierce will join in the long standing September 11th memorial, Flags on the 48. The idea emerged just days after the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001, when a group of hikers climbed to the top of Mount Liberty in New Hampshire and flew a large US flag. Since then, the group expanded, flying flags upon the “New Hampshire 48″, on the Saturday closest to September 11th. Pierce will participate by hiking and flying a flag upon Mt. Liberty, the mountain where this poignant memorial began. Read more.

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Hiking and backpacking have their annoyances, and one of these is insects. So, it is common for hikers and backpackers to carry some form of insect repellent with them on the trail. There are a number of active ingredients that manufacturers use to create insect repellents. These include, but are not limited to, citronella, DEET, and Picaridin.

One of the most effective and most popular of these active ingredients is DEET. Having been around since 1946, this chemical-based repellent has attained the honored status of the gold standard of insect repellents. But it has one nasty side effect: It is hard on clothing.

PERMETHRIN: AN ALTERNATIVE

What I want to concentrate on briefly in this post is another active ingredient used in insect repellents: permethrin. This repellent, approved and used in the United States since 1979, has a unique property. It does not, unlike DEET, harm most fabrics. In fact, it is designed for use on clothing. You can treat clothing by spraying on permethrin or by soaking clothing in a permethrin-based solution.

Permethrin has some other laudable qualities as well. Here are a few:

1. It kills or repels more than 50 insects, including mosquitoes, ticks and mites, that come into contact with the clothing or bed netting treated with it.

2. It seldom irritates skin.

3. Considered biodegradable, it has proven to not accumulate in the environment.

4. One application of permethrin can last up to six weeks and six washings.

5. It can be effective against some insects, including ticks, without the additional use of a topical repellent.

CAUTIONS

One caution about permethrin is that it should not be allowed to enter a sewer system or water supply in liquid form. Once it has dried on clothing, though, the risk has disappeared.

Another caution is that it is toxic to cats.

CONCLUSIONS

Permethrin, one choice among several insect repellent ingredients, might just be the right choice for you and your hiking or backpacking situation.

By Richard Davidian, Ph.D.

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Few hikers or backpackers want to ponder the possibility of getting lost or the need for acquiring survival skills. But, as in many endeavors in life, there lurks behind the pleasure of this sport the possibility of an unforeseen emergency. And, it is always in your best interest to be prepared for an emergency that you hope will never materialize. (Photo Author: nicholsphotos)

AN ILLUSTRATION FROM AVIATION

Let me illustrate. I was a bush pilot in Central Africa for a number of years. As such, I needed to – indeed I was required to – have the skills to make an emergency landing if the need arose. In fact, a frequent feature of my training was to practice these anomalous landings.

My flight instructor would, with no warning, pull back the throttle and tell me to make an emergency landing. I had to find a suitable open field, check for wind direction, look for obstacles, set up an approach and glide without power to an appropriate landing spot. Just a few feet from touchdown the instructor would push the throttle in and tell me to climb back to altitude. Even though I hoped I would never need to use these skills, it gave me more confidence in my piloting to know that I had a good chance of making an emergency landing in a real situation.

SURVIVAL KNOWLEDGE IS A CONFIDENCE BUILDER

Likewise, as a hiker, backpacker and wilderness visitor, your confidence that you will be able to survive in a wilderness emergency will increase when you acquire survival skills, through study, practice or both.

It’s a well-known fact that one of the most important factors, a psychological factor, in successful wilderness survival is the will to live or the will to not give up. And, in my view of things, right up there in importance is having survival knowledge and skills. In fact, as I think about it, the two probably go together and reinforce each other.

If you have survival knowledge and skills, you will undoubtedly be less likely to relinquish your will to live. You will have more hope because you will know that the skills that you possess will greatly increase your chances of survival. Looking at it the other way around, if you have a strong will to live, you will be more psychologically prepared to put into practice the survival skills that you have developed.

RECOMMENDATIONS

My recommendation is that you, as a regular visitor to the wilderness, start learning and mastering survival skills now. You don’t need to know everything on the subject before you embark on your next foray into the wilderness. Just get a good start and keep on adding to your survival knowledge as time goes by. It can actually be a fun endeavor.

Wilderness Survival For Dummies is a good book to get started with. You can buy it on Amazon.com. There are also a number of good websites that can be of help. This is the best one that I have found so far: Wilderness-Survival.net. Also very useful are these Survival Cards. They are playing cards with survival information on each card. If you like, you can even throw a deck into your backpack with the duel purposes of on-the-trail entertainment and ready-at-hand survival knowledge.

I plan to post more on this blog on the subject of wilderness survival along with other topics on hiking and backacking. So, come back often.

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Learn. Know. Survive.

by Richard Davidian, Ph.D.

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A good pair of hiking socks will perform the following functions:

Keep your feet at a comfortable temperature. A couple of factors relevant to choosing an appropriate pair of socks are the season and the climate when you will be hiking. Consider whether you will need your socks to help keep your feet warm or keep them cool.

Provide shock absorption. A good pair of hiking socks will distribute the pressure over a wide surface area, thus diminishing pressure on any one spot. Look for socks that are thicker at the heel and at the ball of the foot. These two areas are where the most pounding occurs when you hike.

Transfer friction away from your skin. Boots cause friction. And friction causes blisters. When your heels, for instance, don’t move up and down at exactly the same time as your boots and socks, you can get friction between two surfaces. When one of those surfaces is your skin, a blister can easily form. But, if you can transfer the friction away from your skin to another surface, you can help prevent blisters.

The other surface should be a second pair of socks called liner socks. When you wear a good pair of liners under your regular pair of socks, two things can happen. The friction can be transferred away from your skin to the surfaces of the liner and the outer socks, and moisture can be wicked away from your feet.

Synthetic fabrics like polypropylene, acrylic or polyester are good for wicking moisture away from your feet.

Wick moisture away from your feet. OK we mentioned wicking already, but it bears repetition. Moisture on your skin is a major factor for the development of blisters. So wearing socks, especially liner socks, that wick moisture away from the skin on your feet will help provide comfort and blister protection. Keeping your feet dry can also help prevent such problems as athlete’s foot.

Promote proper blood circulation in your feet. We talked about shock absorption above. Well, the same properties that play into shock absorption, like fabric thickness where it counts, can also promote proper blood circulation in your feet. Your feet work extremely hard, so give them plenty of energizing blood flow by providing good cushioning.

When shopping for hiking socks, look for socks that will provide these vital functions. Choose good equipment. Hike well.

by Richard Davidian, Ph.D.

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Some folklore that I followed, when I was a kid, was that moss grows on the north side of trees. It always seemed to be true when I checked it out. My perception of North always matched the side of the tree on which the moss grew the thickest. Oops! Now that I think of it, my perception of North was probably strongly influenced by my folk knowledge of where the moss was supposed to grow. I wasn’t much into carrying a compass back then.

Of course, now the thing to do is take a GPS along with you. And, as long as you have charged batteries and you haven’t dropped your device into a brook along the way, this is a great way to navigate with ease.

CONTOUR LINES

But, let’s take a look at one feature of that old standard of navigation, the topographical map. What I want to talk about is those curvy lines that you see on the map, officially known as contour lines, also referred to in this post as “contours”.

Topographical maps purport to represent not only two dimensions, but three. Not only do they depict North, South, East, and West and all points between, but also relative measurements starting from the center of the earth and projecting out. In short, a topo map claims to represent also mountains hills and valleys. In other words, it tries to represent elevations.

But, a map is two-dimensional. So, how do you represent elevations on a two-dimensional map? The answer is “contour lines” (contours).

A DEFINITION

A definition of a contour line is a line that connects points of equal elevation. The word “contour” gives us a hint that these lines are supposed to represent the contours of the landscape – the valleys, the hills, the cliffs and the peaks.

LEARNING TO READ CONTOUR LINES

So, how do you read the contour lines? Let me see what kind of a job I can do teaching you with the map that I’ve included below.

First, we’ll start with what I call “index contours”. One of these is just below the center of the map (above). It is a thicker line compared with other lines on the map. It also has an elevation printed in the contour. In this case you can see that the elevation for this index contour is 2500, which represents 2500 feet above sea level.

So, can you find another index contour? Well, there are several on this map. One is just to the left of the intersection of the North-South and the East-West lines (blue).

The vertical distance between these contours is fixed by the cartographer and is typically 500 feet. We’ll assume that’s the case for this map so that we can discuss further how contour lines work. So, if you look at the map and locate the first index contour (the one including “2500″) and go to the next contour line on any side, you know that all points on that line are at 2000 feet in elevation (above sea level).

So, taking this information we can get a rough indication of the elevation at any point on the map. Let’s take for instance the town of Kerriston near the bottom right corner of the map. At what elevation would this town be? Well, the contour lines will help us answer this question. Starting at our index contour we go east to the next line which represents an elevation of 2000 feet and one more line to the east which represents an elevation of 1500 feet. Kerriston, according to this rough calculation, is somewhere below 1500 feet and above 1000 feet in elevation. Checking my work, I found online that the town of Kerriston, a ghost town, is at an elevation of 1266 feet. Our calculation worked quite well.

One more thing that contour lines can tell us is the relative steepness of the terrain. Take a look at the hill on which we find the index contour that we have been working with (just below the midpoint of the map). Notice that the steepest part of this hill is on the northeast side. We can tell by the fact that the lines are closer together than on the opposite side (towards the town of Hobart). When you see contour lines practically on top of each other on a topographical map, you’ve got a representation of a cliff.

The contours on a topographical map are designed to help people navigate safely in the wilderness. Knowing how to read them could save your life someday. But, reading contours on a map and comparing them to the surrounding terrain can also be just plain fun.

By Richard Davidian, PhD



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This is the itinerary we actually followed, as opposed to the planned one; as a few adjustments were required:

Day 1 – Tuesday, June 29th – Bow Valley Parkway, Lake Louise, Plain of the Six Glaciers, Lake Agnes and Mirror Lakes (not the smartest choice as a first day hike) Read more.

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I’m sure I don’t have to convince you that hiking offers major benefits. First of all, this enjoyable and inexpensive sport can be practiced almost anywhere, in urban, rural or wilderness environments. It is noncompetitive and can be enjoyed by any age group, gender or fitness level. Each participant can set their own limitations.

Hiking is an aerobic exercise that offers major health benefits. These include physical, social and mental health benefits. Here is a list of some of the benefits of hiking:

Physical Health Benefits of Hiking

1. Increases fitness;

2. Prevents and reverses obesity;

3. Provides the lungs with clean air;

4. Helps decrease hypertension;

5. Helps prevent heart disease;

6. Being a weight-bearing exercise, it helps improve bone density and decrease osteoporosis;

7. Helps control diabetes;

8. Helps diminish arthritis symptoms;

9. Increases stamina.

Social and Mental Health Benefits of Hiking

1. Refreshes your state of mind and gives you a new and improved outlook;

2. Provides solitude when you hike alone;

3. Provides healthy social interaction when you hike with other people;

4. Gives time with family.

Oh yes, there is one more benefit that I can readily relate to. Hiking, with all of the above physical, social and psychological benefits, helps to slow the aging process. Now, if I could just find a sport that would reverse that process!

By Richard Davidian, Ph.D.

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Traveling lighter in the wilderness is a philosophy in the sense that you must change your way of thinking about what to throw into your backpack. Instead of thinking, “What else can I fit in?”, you start thinking, “What can I get along without and leave at home?”. Thus your philosophy is changed, in minimal terms, from inclusion to exclusion.

Oh yes, I also said that lightweight backpacking is a journey. I’ll use a journey by foot as an instructive metaphor. When you attempt to reach a destination by walking, you must proceed step by step.

Just as taking a journey by foot is a gradual undertaking, one step and then another and another, so becoming a lightweight backpacker is best accomplished gradually. Also, a step at a time. Let your philosophy of finding ways to leave things at home guide you on your step-by-step journey to becoming a lightweight backpacker.

One of the first steps you can take is finding ways to multipurpose things that you normally take backpacking. If you can find two purposes for one item, it’s likely that you can leave another item at home. For instance, you can use trekking poles to hold up the awning of your tent. Instead of bringing a cooking pot, a bowl and a cup, you can use the cooking pot for all three. In the place of moleskin for hotspots and blisters, use duct tape, which has many other uses, for dressing your blisters.

Once you adopt the exclusion philosophy and decide to take the journey towards lightweight backpacking, the process of planning and packing a lighter backpack can be just as fun as the backpacking trip itself.

By Richard Davidian, Ph.D.

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I’m not bothered a lot by mosquitoes, so when one landed on my hand, I slapped it off and continued trekking and enjoying the scenery.

My wife’s different. When she gets bit by a mosquito, nothing much happens until 24 to 48 hours later when ugly, itchy welts begin to pop up. They don’t go away easily, either. So, when she discovered a blood sucker on her arm, she called an all points bulletin and grabbed the insect repellent. We didn’t have much with us. She had given away one canister. After she had sprayed every inch of exposed skin, she handed me, in a business-like manner, the canister. I dutifully applied a couple of squirts and tucked the canister back into the back pocket of her day pack.

When we reached the top of Minaret Falls, we decided to push on another mile or two to Johnston lake. Rounding a bend, we came upon a work crew constructing a new log bridge. They, to the last worker, were wearing hats and mosquito netting that shielded their faces and necks from the attackers.

A half mile up the trail we encountered a group of backpackers heading down the trail. We asked about mosquitoes, and they replied that they were pretty bad, especially up around Johnston Lake. They were all wearing broad-brimmed hats and mosquito netting as well.

Indeed, the lake was, not amounting to much more than a shallow pond, a perfect breeding ground for the tiny vampires. We took a quick peek and a photo of the mist-covered lake in the morning light and started back down the trail. When we finally reached our car at the Devil’s Postpile Ranger Station, we took an assessment of our bites. Nothing much to write home about. Our small arsenal of repellent had done its job.

I was reminded of the worst encounter with mosquitoes I had ever experienced in my life. I was hiking with friends on the John Muir Trail. We came to a fence and a gate with a sign that said, “Livestock pasture, close the gate behind you”.

As soon as we passed through that gate, we were besieged by droning mosquitoes. It was like we were walking (more like trotting) in a dark cloud. Our backpacks were black with mosquito hitchhikers. We had no netting and no repellent. In that half mile of insect hell, we stumbled, flailed and swatted like madmen.

When we fell through the gate on the opposite side of the pasture, it was like turning off a tap. Virtually no more mosquitoes. And heaven was just a few yards away – a hot spring where we stripped and soaked away the itch.

Would I recommend mosquito netting? I don’t know. Personally, it makes me claustrophobic. Repellent works for me. It’s a personal choice.

by Richard Davidian, Ph.D.

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