The Bluffer's Guide to Hiking by Simon Whaley

Author:Simon Whaley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bluffer's Guides

A hiker always has four-season walking boots, crampons, a survival bag and a two-week supply of dried food – and that’s just when going to collect the morning newspaper.

VITAL EQUIPMENT

Telling the difference between each grade of walker is relatively easy. The more dedicated a walker is, the more technical the equipment. An ambler, for example, wears slippers and smokes a pipe, whereas a hiker always has four-season walking boots, crampons, a survival bag and a two-week supply of dried food – and that’s just when going to collect the morning newspaper.

A bluffer should always aim to look like a hiker, even if he or she is really an ambler at heart.

Novices tend to think that all you need in order to hike is a good pair of feet and some legs that work. They certainly help, but dedicated hikers also need the right stuff in order to navigate their way back home. Getting lost (or being temporarily misplaced) is so much more dignified if you can blame it on a poorly designed piece of equipment.

GPS SATELLITE NAVIGATION

With all those satellites floating above the earth, it is possible to use a GPS device to help you navigate. These work by searching for the nearest satellites and then measuring the time taken for a signal to travel between the two. From that, they can calculate your position.

The system was developed by the US military to improve the accuracy of long-range missiles and other artillery. Initially, the accuracy of the system for hikers and other civilians was to within 10m (33ft), but this is improving all the time, which is of particular benefit to hikers following cliff paths when a sea mist has rolled in.

The US system of satellites is called Navstar, the Russians have Glonass, and not to be outdone, the European Union version is called Galileo.

In the early days of GPS, many sceptical hikers often teased those who used the devices – mainly because if a hiker walked through a dense canopy of trees, the device was no longer capable of finding the satellites it needed to calculate a location. Today, such receivers are far more sophisticated, and many smartphones now have built-in GPS receivers.

Bluffers using their smartphone GPS unit should always get out a paper map when encountering other hikers in order to show off their traditional map-reading skills. Remember to turn down the volume on your smartphone or the next instruction to ‘Turn right at the spitting llama’ will expose you.

Of course, all parties agree that a GPS device is only useful if the batteries aren’t flat.

RUCKSACKS

Rucksacks now come in two varieties: daysacks and backpacks. Women can get away with wearing a daysack: small, delicate affairs with room inside to carry the merest of basic equipment for a short hike around the local common (mobile phone, replacement make-up, emergency chocolate bar, emergency nail file, emergency tweezers – in fact, anything they like as long as they qualify the item with the word ‘emergency’). Many female hikers feel they are

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