Backpacking Questions You Might Be Too Embarrassed To Ask (#4)

hey y'all dixie here today i want to answer some silly questions about backpacking [Music] this is actually the fourth silly questions video i've made and i don't actually think the questions are silly but it all started back a couple of years ago when i made a post on the homemade wanderlust backpacking forum group on facebook inviting people to ask any questions they've been a little bit intimidated to ask about backpacking in a no judgment zone where myself or other people in the community because we've got over 60k members now could help answer the questions and so i've been doing that ever so often since and today is a continuation of that if you want to check out any videos in the past the link to those videos will be in the description of this video the first question is about bear bagging and this particular hiker asks hey i know i am supposed to hang all of my toiletries in my food bag when i'm hanging a bear bag at night like toothpaste bug spray sunscreen etc but what about when i use those things during the day on my body am i supposed to wash that off before i climb in my tent at night you could but if you think about it you're coming from civilization into the woods probably really good smelling anyway you've got fresh laundry detergent on your hacker clothes shampoo and your hair soap on your body you might even put a little swipe of deodorant before you get started now you could go through the trouble of using all unscented products before you hit the trail and then washing before you get in your tin at night with unscented soap but even still you've probably hopefully brushed your teeth before you went to sleep at night so you've got the scent of toothpaste in your mouth or if you don't brush your teeth in the smell of the food that you ate so i really feel like that's just overkill but if that's what helps somebody literally sleep at night then they should go for it and do whatever makes them comfortable just make sure if you're using soap that you're at least 200 feet from water sources but again i don't really think it's necessary you just want to make sure that you get the main source of those items out of your tent at night when you sleep because they're going to be a lot more concentrated than the little bit you've got on you next i want to talk about bidets on trail now this is coming from a place of doing research i don't have any personal experience with this yet after looking into it it might be something i'll test out going forward just because i'm always looking for ways to mix things up anyway currently i'm a tpeer who comes behind and cleans up with a baby wipe just to feel you know a little bit cleaner but according to the dayers ust peers are gross because basically we're just smearing our doo doo all on our booties and pulling up our pants and calling it clean and they're not really wrong so apparently a bidet is as close as you can get to feeling shower fresh at least you know on your booty so the main arguments i've seen for using a bidet are one you don't have to carry the weight of toilet paper you don't have to deal with packing it out creating more waste etc two again you get a lot more clean than you would with toilet paper and i could see this being a great idea for folks who are plagued with butt crack chafe to try because i feel like helping that area get really clean could help prevent the chafing now some people are true warriors and they squirt with the bidet and then once they feel like most of the stuff is squirted off they'll rub with their hand and then they're done and then they wash their hands with something like dr bronner's and of course again if you're going to use soap on trail make sure that you're 200 feet from a water source which if you're going number two you should be 200 feet from a water source anyway some folks are like heck no i'm not touching my butt with my hand and they'll still tote toilet paper but they just tote you know a fraction of the amount that they normally would because they just do a little a little dab will do you type thing and make sure that it's actually clean and dry back there and then some people even take like a reusable small towel type thing and wash it when they get home and use it again on the next backpacking trip one of the big questions that i saw about bidets though is should you use filtered water and i would say i don't know that it really matters as far as getting sick something like giardia because if you go swimming in rivers and lakes and bodies of water that haven't been treated your butthole is probably touching water that has giardia or something that you wouldn't want to ingest through your mouth so the idea of filtered water is you know you're you're drinking that stuff and putting it down into your guts but but it's probably a good idea to use the filtered water through your bidet anyway because you don't want to clog it up with sediment especially if that's the only thing you have to you know do the job while you're out there there were two main bidets that i saw people buzzing about in the comments and that is the kulo clean i don't know if i'm pronouncing that correctly but c-u-l-o clean and it's just a little attachment that you can put into pretty much any water bottle you would have and then there was the buttler b-u-t-t-l-e-r and that is its own separate bottle that has an extending spout so some people might find that a little bit more convenient especially if they're afraid of mixing it up with their regular water bottles but i think if you use the bidet properly then that doesn't matter anyway but anyway if this is something that i move forward with in the future i will let y'all know how it goes the next question is how do i know if my tent needs to be seam sealed and this could be true for other things like a tarp etc but your shelter does need to be seam sealed in some way because if you think about it even if it's a waterproof fabric and you punch holes through it to stitch it together you've created holes where water can come through so most companies that are selling a shelter that has been seam sealed they want to brag on that because it's not something that you have to do yourself so you should see that in the description you know already seam sealed but it is something that i would check with the manufacturer before i purchased a shelter but if you're sitting at home with a tent already and you're like okay well that doesn't help me now i need to know you should be able to get on the website and figure that out but the bottom line is if you pull the shelter out and you look at where it is stitched together some might be seam sealed on the outside some on the inside but you should see either a tape type seam sealing so it'll look like you know it's stitched together and then they put tape over it or it'll be a liquid that has now dried and you can see that on the stitching and it might look like it's kind of a hardened gel now like hot glue or something like that but if you don't see anything but material and stitches going through it then it needs to be seam sealed and this is something to even look at on your rain gear because some rain gear comes not seam sealed some companies will offer a seam sealing service extra on top of the price of the product and then you know some won't offer that at all they'll just already do it and some won't do it at all but you can get the stuff to seam seal yourself but you want to make sure that you're getting the right product for the fabric that your shelter is made of so that's something that again you can check with the manufacturer to find out what they recommend for seam sealing or find out what that material is and then look up the exact product for that type of material what about going to the bathroom at night if you're either scared to get out of the tent at night or you just really hate getting up or if it's really cold out there and you don't wanna this particular lady that asked the question says that one of her friends uses a ziploc bag in her tent to go to the bathroom in and then she seals it up and goes back to sleep but she says i'm a little nervous to do that i feel like it would spill or i'd make a mess and me too girl me too the first thing i thought of when i read this question is my friend perk because he hates getting up in the middle of the night to have to go pee so he just uses a gatorade bottle and i feel like that would work well for most guys and probably a lot of y'all guys have done that before just don't confuse the two bottles that you collect your water in and urinate in but anyway uh for us ladies you know it could be a little more difficult to ring a hole like that so they do make urination devices i don't know exactly what they're called but they allow women to stand up and go to the bathroom like the she-wee or the peace style or you know other creative names i've never used one of those personally but i've heard great things about them there are a lot of ladies who love using those because they don't have to pull their whole bottoms out of their britches while they're going to the bathroom on the trail during the day so i think in this instance it could come in handy again i've never personally tried it but i feel like if you can stand up to use it then you can probably get up on your knees in your tent and use it the same way go into a gatorade bottle and then you know deal with it the next morning i have read that it's good to not just throw yourself out there on trail with this and and try to rely on success the first time so a lot of ladies recommend trying it in the shower first and then practicing going into a toilet while standing up and you could even practice you know in your bathroom kneel down like you would be in your tent and see if you have success with that so what about hiking with dentures this particular hiker says that at night they typically take their dentures put it into a cup when they're at the house put a tablet in there and let them soak all night on trail they've been using a camp cup but they just didn't know if there might be a better option out there i've never had the full set of dentures but i used to have a flipper with one fake tooth on it and that's why i actually have the braces and all of that going on so i can make room for an implant and be done with that thing but what i would do is just brush it really well and rinse it off when i've brushed the rest of my teeth and then put it in a hard container case but if you're really set on soaking it every night if that's just something that you feel like you definitely need to do then maybe you could get something like a small tupperware container that has a twist on lid so if it does get knocked over in the middle of the night while you're sleeping you don't have to worry about it leaking out everywhere and that's something you know i try out at home turn it on its side and make sure and then if you are in bear country and you're worried about the scent of that tablet you could get one of those op sacks odor proof sacks seal it up and then keep it in the tent with you or if it's in one of those things like i was saying that doesn't spill then you could put it in your bear bag with all of your other stuff i would be a little nervous about putting in the bear bag just in case a very skilled bear got it and then ran off with it because that is something expensive i know for just my one tooth on the flipper it was like 300 bucks every time i had to replace it but anyway that odor proof sack should help you out and also act as a redundancy in making sure that if your tupperware thing was to leak it would be in a closed-up bag the next question is what are the rules or what is the etiquette when you're in the situation of a steep slope and you've got a hiker ascending and one descending who has the right-of-way there the rule of thumb is that the uphiller has the right-of-way and the downhiller is supposed to find a safe spot ease over to the side and let the uphiller squeeze by and the reason for this is when you're going up a climb a lot of people say that they get this momentum about them and that if they stop they lose all of that wind in their sails but for me personally anytime i see a hiker coming downhill and i'm struggling and out of breath on the uphill i'm happy to move over and let them come on through so a lot of times that happens you'll have both parties kind of step off no really you go no really you go but technically the uphiller does have the right of way so it's best if you you know at least offer them to come by first and and if they need a break they'll move over and let you go and if they don't want to lose that momentum then they'll just go on full speed ahead the next question is do you ever come to a point where you just accept that you're a dirty stinky hiker and you have to deal with it and i think the answer is that depends on everybody there may be some people who still aren't over it and they obsess with it while they're out on trail but i think it depends on you know what type of hiking you're doing if you're going out for shorter trips and you're doing shorter days during the day and spending more time in camp in the evenings or in the morning you might like to take extra care and be more clean then the through hiker who's going to be out there on a six-month trip and is trying to do more miles during the day and is probably too exhausted to worry with too much when they get to camp and also i mean there are some people who just don't have an issue with being the dirty stinky hiker and and some who might not really ever get over that but for myself i've found the more years that i go backpacking and certainly the length of my trip makes a difference and how much i obsess over being clean but i think the main thing that's important is each individual person is covering their bases at least to the bare minimum so they're not causing themselves issues out on the trail you don't want to end up with really bad chafing in your nether regions or some other swampy stuff going on down there and also foot care having trench foot or other types of foot funk is no fun out on the trail so making sure that you've got at least a couple pairs of underwear and a couple pairs of socks where you can rotate those out while you're on trail maybe rinse a pair out after wearing it a day or two let it air dry put the other pair on and then you know do the same thing after a couple of days and that again is going to depend on the individual and what their body needs but as long as you're covering those bases then i feel like everything else is bonus if you want more information about hygiene on the trail i've got at least two videos on the channel about that topic and there are some other videos where i mentioned different things about hygiene so i'll put some of those in the description of this video the next question is do people and this person ask specifically do i shave on trail and i will say this i think that shaving is a personal thing for men and women if they want to shave on trail great if they don't want to shave on trail great not shaving and having hair on your body is a natural thing because it grows there but also if you find yourself wanting to shave while you're out on trail i don't think there's anything wrong with that either i've seen people online especially women shame one another for a woman wanting to shave while she's out on trail and to me it's your body and whatever makes you comfortable and happy that's what you should do so for me personally when i started my through hike of the appalachian trail i did carry a razor with me and i would shave my armpits sometimes in my tent in the morning before i would go hiking now i'm one of those weird people that can dry shave and it doesn't bother me but i know that there are people who cannot do that so you could always carry something like dr bronner's soap with you and lather up and do that out on trail if you wanted to or maybe even some lotion would work but you definitely don't want to be getting in the water sources directly and lathering up and shaving there so make sure you're 200 feet from the water sources after a couple of weeks i decided i didn't want to fool with that out on trail so i would shave when i got into town for my resupply sometimes i'd carry a razor with me sometimes i just purchased a disposable one in the town somewhere and use it until you know it's time to get a new one and that's pretty much what i still do if i'm on a smaller hike a week or less i just don't worry about it i don't carry one with me and if i'm on a hike long enough that i'll have to resupply then again i either take one with me or get it while i'm in town both things are possible both things are okay it really depends on the personal preference of the hiker the next question is who is entitled to use shelters on a hiking trail is it the section hikers or the through hikers and the answer is both most of the hiking trails i've been on that have shelters it's like a first come first served thing so it doesn't matter if you're just there for a couple of nights or if you're doing the whole trail it's whoever walks up there first gets to use the shelter now the only area where i've seen that it's different than that is in the smoky mountain national park on the appalachian trail and i assume that that's what this question was aimed at there they have an interesting system that i feel like causes a little bit of animosity between the section hikers and the through hikers but it's neither of the hikers fault it's just the way that the rules are so what the smoky mountain national park does is requires section hikers to reserve a shelter each night that they're going through the park you don't get to camp in a tent or a hammock i mean you can break the rules you know and a park ranger can come through and find you for it but that's the way that it's set up they're supposed to reserve the shelters and i assume that once the shelters are completely booked then they don't you know allow a section hiker to make a booking for that shelter now through hikers get a special permit to go through the smoky mountain national park so they don't have to declare where they're going to sleep ahead of time but it does make things a little weird when you get out on the trail because they require you to sleep in a shelter whether you're a section hiker or through hiker all hikers must sleep in a shelter unless the shelter is full so if you come up to a shelter as a through hiker and it's full then you are permitted to set up your tent or your hammock but you still have to do it there at the shelter and i assume they're just trying to minimize traffic and impact on the trail so they don't have people camping at all these different areas so everyone has to stay there at least near the shelter but if you walk up to the shelter and it's not full and you're through hiker you must sleep in the shelter so the problem comes in and the animosity i was talking about when the shelter is full everybody's all nestled in there together and a section hiker rolls up and says hey i have a reservation for a spot in the shelter tonight so the last through hiker that came to the shelter now has to pack up all their stuff and go out and set up their tent hammock tarp etc so while it might not sound like it's fair it's the way that the rules are set up and i have seen this happen on trail where even in the cold rain a three hiker had to pack up and leave because the section hiker and i promise you the section hiker probably felt bad but i assume they probably didn't even have a tent hammock whatever with them because they are relying on these places that they reserved by orders of the smoky mountain national park so national parks can be a little iffy but the shelter structures themselves other than that area where i've been backpacking it's first come first serve the next question is how do you check for ticks in places that the sun don't shine on the places that you can't see on yourself you can ask other hikers to take a look for you now of course i understand there might be some areas that you don't want just everybody looking at but i mean on your back or in your waistband of your pants you know areas like that where somebody can take a quick look and can see you better than you then that's always nice now if you just don't want anybody looking at you at all or feel weird asking somebody i promise if you ask them they'll probably be happy because then they'll ask you to return the favor but if that just makes you uncomfortable then it helps to have a mirror i always carry a mirror brush combo with me so you can check by you know looking at those areas holding your mirror behind you and you know looking in the mirror also just feeling if you slowly rub your hand across your skin then you should be able to feel at least any ticks of any decent size but those little bitty bitty guys can possibly be on your skin and you not feel them so i do think it's good to have a mirror also if you do feel one it helps to have the mirror for removing it but this is a lot easier in the daylight if you're trying to do this in your tent with a headlamp it can make it a little bit trickier but i've still managed to get it done because i do typically not hike and so when i get in my tent at night and i'm checking for ticks it's usually dark but i tend to check for ticks twice if i've been seeing them a pretty good bit once when i go to sleep at night and the other when i wake up in the morning and i know you're thinking well if you've been in your tent the whole night why would you check for ticks again but sometimes they can hang out on your pack or other gear that has brushed trees during the day and find their way to you for a midnight snack while you're sleeping at night but trying to catch them within 24 hours is important because if you catch them in that first 24-hour period it really minimizes your chance for getting a tick-borne illness after a day of hiking in the rain and you get to a shelter and it's still raining outside and there are other folks in the shelter get in there start setting up how do you change out of your wet clothing to the dry clothes that you want to sleep in that night without everybody seeing you some of the roofs on shelters create kind of a little overhang so you could announce to the shelter and i'm telling you if you've got shyness about this it will go away because you would rather announce it than somebody accidentally see you or at least i would so i would just announce to the shelter hey i'm going to go to the side of the shelter right over here and change my clothes so unless you want to see you know a full moon then don't step to the side of the shelter right now but if you're in a situation where you're going to get rained on you know regardless of where you are outside of the shelter then you can ask somebody if you've met a hiking friend along the way or you got a hiking buddy already with you to hold up a sleeping bag in the corner of the shelter so you can change my friend riggan i did that for one another on the at so it's like hey everybody i'm fixing a change in the corner here so if everybody could just look that way and then hopefully your friend will hold up the sleeping bag and turn their head and let you do your business there behind your quilt or sleeping bag also you can set up your sleeping pad and sit on top of that and just kind of drape your quilt or sleeping bag over the top of you and and change under it while you're sitting under there and i mean most people will have the decency to know that you're you know trying to change um i've i've laid flat on mine before and and draped mine over me and pulled my britches down and done all what i needed to do of course with that method you want to make sure that you're not getting what's going to keep you warm that night your quilt or sleeping bag soaked from your wet clothes so you got to be kind of careful also you can do this in the corner of your shelter by yourself if you don't have a partner just again announce to everybody who i'm gonna change nobody look and make sure you say it first because as soon as you say hey don't look everybody's gonna look and then they're like oh yeah she said don't look and then they'll turn uh but anyway so you can go to the corner turn your back to everybody if you're a lady and you don't want to show your lady bits to the world take your shirt off and sports bra again you got your back to everybody so at most they'll see you naked back put on your dry top and then turn back around and face everybody and you can take your quilt or sleeping bag and just kind of tuck it under your armpit so it's hanging down in front of you and then pull your britches off shimmy them off and then put the dry ones on and voila you now are warm and dry so there are several different ways that you can get a little bit of privacy to change your clothes while you're in a shelter with other people the bottom line is everybody is in the same boat as you are and if you're not the first one to suggest hey this corner over here is the changing corner everybody look that way so everybody can get can get changed somebody else probably will well all right y'all those are all of the silly questions i have for y'all today if any of y'all have other suggestions or answers for these questions please feel free to share that in the comments below i am just one person with limited experience so i'm always happy for others to weigh in or if you have questions that were not answered in this video or the other videos that i've done about random questions then feel free to leave that in the comments too and we'll see if myself or somebody else in the community can't help you out and again judgment-free zones so y'all be sweet to folks commenting it can be intimidating to throw these questions out there and you know i always felt like when i was learning the backpack that people would be like well if you don't know these answers then why are you going backpacking and it just shouldn't be like that it's okay to ask questions and it's okay to learn from people who have different experiences than you thank y'all so much for watching don't forget to subscribe before you go and we will see you all next time

Channel: Homemade Wanderlust

Views: 146,297

Keywords: travel, hiking, backpacking, hike, gear, adventure, fun, story, Appalachian, Trail, PCT, CDT, thru-hike, Auburn, Alabama, epic, climbing, canyon, national, nature, mountains, update, park, lake, trail, tents, camping, summer, University, Aubie, River, stream, Mountains, National, Scenic, Dixie, Camino

Id: etGhrBQUycc

Length: 26min 12sec (1572 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 21 2021