UltraRob's Adventures

Don’t get me wrong. I love being comfortable in the outdoors. I’ve been lusting over a Big Agnes sleeping pad for our late-fall camping trips, and I balk at backpacking without carrying a camp chair.

And I'm not even against a stay in a luxury mountain cabin now and then (I wrote about the concept of "roughing it" last year in a column for the Rocky Mountain News).

But when I'm going camping - with a tent - I think part of the fun is packing, unpacking, and setting up the gear.

Apparently, others don't feel the same way. A recent news story described a special perk at a regional park in Montgomery County, Md. Campers at Little Bennett can pay an extra $25 for the park staff to set up their campsite with chairs, tent, a lantern and propane stove.

The story also details other luxurious outdoor “adventures” – feather beds at a KOA site near Santa Cruz, Calif., butler-prepared meals at The Resort at Paws Up in Montana, and hand-woven willow beds on wooden platforms in California’s El Capitan Canyon.

The luxury details are part of a trend to get comfort-seekers out of their comfort zones and away from their technology.

The new trend is called “glamping,” named for the glamorizing of camping. Comfort, technology and service all transform a traditional camping trip.  If it catches on, we might have to retire the phrase "roughing it".

- Deb Acord

SIERRA DESIGNS WU HU 4 TENT Price: $328.95

Sierra Designs ASP 2 Tent Price: $259.95

Sierra Designs ASP 3 Tent Price: $299.95

Labels: camping, gear

In the 1952 “Your Own Book of Campcraft,” author Catherine T. Hammett enthused about the “new trick” in outdoor cookery – aluminum foil. Today, foil is still a great way to cook if you have a campfire. At home, create meals in foil packets and freeze them. At camp, build a small campfire and bury the packets in the hot coals until they are hot and steamy. Try these combinations: Sausage, peppers and potatoes; stew meat, potatoes and carrots; chicken breasts, Japanese vegetable mix and rice. (Works best to cook the meat at home and freeze it before you pack it up.) When you leave your campsite, don’t forget to take the foil with you.

For camping trips where you don’t have to carry your gear on your back, Jack Daniels from REI’s Denver flagship store says the classic double-burner Coleman stoves are still popular and perfect for those elaborate pancake breakfasts. For backpacking, the newest compact stoves, some practically pocket-sized, are perfect for one-pot meals.

“The iso-butane self-contained stoves and cartridges are a big trend,” Daniels says. “You just screw the fuel cartridge onto the stove, turn it on, light it, and you’re ready to go.”

Not sure what kind of stove you need? REI offers these guidelines:

1. Think about the kinds of trips you’re planning, and choose the lightest, most compact stove for your particular needs. How many people will you be feeding? What will the air temperature be where you are going? How elaborate will your meals be? Will you need more than one burner at a time?
2. Look for these features: stoves you can disconnect from the fuel source (easier to store, harder to break); stoves that fold up or collapse; and stoves that can fit inside your cookware to save space.
3. Choose your fuel.
   
   
   • Butane, propane or isobutane blend canisters are convenient, easy to light and burn cleanly. Downside – they are more expensive than other fuel types; you have canisters to throw away and they are not readily recyclable; they aren’t as effective at low temperatures.
   • Kerosene is inexpensive and easy to find, but it can burn dirty and it’s smelly. Downside: Priming is required.
   • White gas, also inexpensive, is easy to find and burns cleanly. Downside: It can be volatile if it’s spilled and it requires priming.
   • Denatured alcohol is a renewable resource that burns very quietly. Downside: It doesn’t put out as much heat as other fuels so it increases cooking times.
   • Unleaded gas is relatively inexpensive and easy to find. Downside: A dirty fuel, it can clog your stove and it’s extremely volatile.
   • Multi-fuel stoves do just what their name implies – they are engineered to burn more than one kind of fuel. Downside: they cost more than single-fuel models and can be hard to maintain.
   
   
4. Decide what’s important for your backpacking or camping needs – average boiling time, efficiency of the stove, and burn time at maximum flame.

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How to improve the performance of your stove, from REI:

• Invest in a heat exchanger (a corrugated metal wind screen that wraps around your pot).
• Use alcohol to prime your stove.
• Clean your stove and maintain it at home before you head out.
• Pour your liquid fuel through a coffee filter.

- Deb Acord

MSR WHISPERLITE INTERNATIONAL MULTIFUEL STOVE Price: $89.95

Primus Gravity Multifuel Stove Regular Price: $109.95 $49.48 on sale

Primus Multi Tool For Varifuel MultiFuel Stove Regular Price: $15.95 $12.76 on sale

Labels: camping, gear

My family has always preferred fall camping to summer. Our favorite backcountry haunts and favorite trails are uncrowded and the weather is more predictable. We’ve had many nearly perfect camping trips through the years, but for some reason, it’s the ones that weren’t so perfect that stand out in our minds:

The time my boots caught on fire. It was Thanksgiving. It was really cold, so we built a campfire in a fire ring. I put my feet on a stone near the fire and after about 20 minutes, we smelled rubber burning. I backed away from the fire, and after a couple of hours, my boots had stopped smoking.

The time(s) the dog took the fire. We don’t always have a campfire, but if there’s a fire ring and wood available, we’ll build one for warmth, using small sticks and pine cones. Our irrepressible yellow Labrador retriever, Waldo, loved fire for a different reason – it was a collection of sticks. He would wait for the perfect moment to retrieve a flaming stick from the fire and then stand proudly, waving it like a sparkler.

The time the dog retrieved the bait (related to the previous incident.). I mentioned that Waldo was a retriever. We spent a long weekend fishing for brookies in a mountain stream, and each time we would throw a line into the water, Waldo would jump in and retrieve it.

The time we were surrounded by a herd of cows It’s not funny. We were hiking in a wilderness area where ranchers hold grazing permits, when we met a dozen unfriendly black cows that felt they deserved the right-of-way. We were on a narrow path with a raging stream on one side and a steep, rocky hillside on the other. We yielded by crawling up the hill and allowing the unfriendly group to pass.

The time we forgot the food It was OK. We didn’t forget the whiskey.

- Deb Acord

Eureka K 2 XT Tent Price: $499.95

Eureka Equinox 6 Tent Price: $409.95

Eureka Timberline 4 Tent Price: $179.95

Labels: camping, hiking, outdoors

We hadn’t been camping for a while, so when my husband I headed out last weekend, we were a little rusty. Sure, we tested our headlamps at home but when the sun went down, we realized neither one would stay on unless we held them upside down (a minor inconvenience).

We ditched our old but reliable camp chairs for two new ones we picked up at a sidewalk sale last summer and had never used (and which broke as soon as we set them up and leaned back). We packed trail mix with unsalted almonds, and sorely missed the salt after a long, hot hike.

But we did a couple of things right – along with our GPS unit, our lightweight single-wall tent and state-of-the-art down sleeping bags, we packed our umbrellas, the small foldable kind, and we threw in our old Radio Shack transistor radio.

Yeah, that’s right – umbrellas and a radio – two decidedly old-school ways to make a great camping trip even better.

I learned the umbrella trick years ago when I interviewed Ray Jardine, who was a pioneer in ultra-light backpacking.

Jardine, a native of Colorado Springs, made a name for himself in the 1990s with his unconventional camping and hiking methods – he chose tennis shoes with the tongues cut out instead of hiking boots; a quilt instead of a sleeping bag, and rayon instead of Gore-Tex. And he always carried an umbrella. (He still preaches the lightweight way on his Web site.)

Ever since then, umbrellas have saved us from stinging hailstorms and blazing sun. Earlier this summer, when we were caught in a storm that threw quarter-sized hail at us, we opened our umbrellas, linked our arms and walked down the trail, our beagle trotting comfortably between us.

On our most recent trip, we set up camp in full sunlight. It would be perfect the next morning because the sun’s rays could warm it quicker, but it was hot in the afternoon. So we opened our umbrellas and relaxed in comfort. The only challenge? Keeping the beagle from hogging the shade.
- Deb Acord

GoLite Dome Umbrella Regular Price: $24.95 $19.96 on sale

GoLite Dome Umbrella Spring 2009 Price: $25.00

Go Lite Dome Umbrella Price: $24.95

Labels: camping, outdoors