Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Recreation/Camping Skills I

2. Understand and practice wilderness and camping etiquette, regarding preservation of the outdoors.
Memorize the 7 Leave No Trace Principles:


 * Plan ahead and prepare.
 * Travel and camp on durable surfaces.
 * Dispose of waste properly.
 * Leave what you find.
 * Minimize campfire impacts (be careful with fire).
 * Respect wildlife.
 * Be considerate of other visitors.

Note: If you ever plan to go camping in a location that allows hunting- such as a national forest, bright colors is an important safety consideration. Camouflaged or dark color tents will not aid hunters in quickly identifying that there are people in the area.

6. Plan and participate in a weekend camping trip.
There are a lot of aspects to planning a camping trip, including selection of a campground, choosing the dates, the menu, equipment, and solving the problems of getting there. Get your whole group involved in as much of the decision-making as possible. Where do they want to camp? When can you go? What will you eat? Who will go? How many tents will you need? Who will sleep in which tents? Is all the gear in a good state of repair?

When all these decisions are made, someone needs to go out and buy the food, repair, replace, or buy any gear that's needed, etc. Every camper under the age of 11 should also have a signed permission slip and an up-to-date medical release form. The forms should be photocopied (reduce them if necessary and use two-sided copies - that way you can have four forms per sheet of paper) and every staff member should carry them at all times.

On the day of the camp out, everyone should meet to load the equipment, and finally, you are ready to go. When you get back, everyone should help unload the equipment. Some should be taken home and cleaned, and if the tents and tarps were even slightly damp, they will need to be pitched again and allowed to dry completely. Then they will need to be put away.

7. Know how to properly pitch and strike a tent. Observe fire precautions when a tent is in use.
assmant poles Keep any fire at least 20 feet (6 meters) from the tents. Sparks sometimes fly out of a fire or are projected into the air (such as when an inexperienced camper throws dry leaves into it). If these sparks land on your tent, at best they will burn a little pinhole in it, but at worst can cause a deadly tragedy.

Never light a fire of any kind inside a tent, be it a candle, lantern, or a stove unless you know for a fact that the tent has been designed for that purpose.

c. Know how to properly strike a match.
Three things are needed for a fire to start: oxygen, fuel, and heat. The match head is a fuel that can be ignited at about 360 °F (182 °C), which can be obtained through friction. The oxygen is supplied by the air. To strike a match, quickly and firmly drag the match head along the striker pad on the side of the box or outside of the package. Keep your fingers away from the match head. Once the head ignites, the temperature will increase sharply and ignite the match stick. Fire prefers to climb uphill, and you can control the size of the flame to a certain extent by tilting the head down (for a bigger flame) or up (for a smaller flame). Carefully shield the flame from wind (which lowers the temperature) by cupping your other hand around the flame and move it to the tinder you wish to light.

d. Practice building a fire with the use of one match, using only natural materials.
There are three factors that govern a fire:
 * 1) Oxygen
 * 2) Fuel
 * 3) Heat

You need all three to get a fire going, and the way you lay the fire will determine how much of each of these are available. To get a fire going, you will need to ignite some tinder. The tinder will need to burn long enough to ignite kindling, and the kindling will need to burn long enough to ignite the fuel. Before lighting a match, it is important to have all three types of fuel available.

Start by laying your tinder in the center of your fire ring. Tinder consists of small, easily ignited material, such as pine needles, shreds of birch bark, thin twigs (whose diameter is about the same as a pencil lead), or even dryer lint. Once the tinder is on place, lay some larger pieces over it (this is the kindling). Kindling is wood whose diameter ranges from pencil thickness to. It should be arranged with the smallest-diameter pieces nearest to the tinder.

An effective method of doing this is to get two small fuel logs - about 3" in diameter, and lay them parallel to one another and apart, with the tinder in between. Then lay a small, straight stick across them and over the tinder. Call this stick the "ridge pole". Next lay more pencil-sized sticks with one end on the ridge pole and the other end on the ground. Lay them alternately on both sides of the ridge pole as if you were framing a roof. These can be called the "rafters". Once this is done and the rafters make a "roof" that spans the distance between the two logs and covers the tinder, lay two more ridge poles, one on either side of the first ridge pole, and then lay more rafters from them to the ground (but leave a little space between the rafters). You can repeat this a third time if you like, but it's important to leave a gap somewhere so you can get a match inside to light the tinder. The sticks in each layer of rafters should be a little larger than the ones that came before.

Do not light this pile until you have gathered sufficient fuel for the fire! Fuel consists of wood that is greater than in diameter. The tender pile described above will burn for about five minutes or so, and that does not leave much time for you to scrounge around looking for something to pile onto the flames. Therefore, you should have your fuel ready to go.

Once the tinder is lit, you can use the fuel to lay a hunter's fire, teepee, a log cabin or a council fire on top of the first two logs. It works well, because there is a great deal of kindling stacked close together, but not so close as to reduce oxygen flow. The kindling is also laid close to the tinder so the tinder has no trouble igniting it (assuming it is dry and pencil-sized).

e. Demonstrate how to protect firewood in wet weather.
Obviously, you will want to keep your firewood dry, and there are many ways to do that. One effective method is to put a tarp on the ground, stack the wood on top of it, and fold the tarp over the top. Place one or two heavier logs on top to hold the tarp down. Those logs will get wet, but they will prevent the wind from blowing the tarp off and soaking the rest of your wood. Having a tarp beneath the wood will keep water from running under the stack and soaking the bottom logs, but this not entirely necessary.

You can also keep firewood in an enclosed trailer, or the trunk of a car if those are available to you. Another option is to keep it under a kitchen tent or canopy.

12. Describe the proper procedures for washing and keeping clean the cooking and eating utensils.
Make up a mess kit for each camper, consisting of a plate, cup, bowl, knife, fork, and spoon. Store each kit in a mesh hosiery bag. Every mess kit should have a number, and every item in the kit should be labeled with that number. Every camper should be assigned a number. After the meal, each camper will wash his or her own mess kit. If a dirty plate is found abandoned on a picnic table, a quick check for its number will reveal who is responsible for that item.

Use three large tubs for washing the dishes. One will be filled with soapy water (heated if possible), the second one will have rinse water and the third tub is for sanitizing. Plates should be scraped clean or wiped with a paper towel before placing them in the soapy water. This will allow the soapy water to be used longer before the food debris and grease prevents plate from being cleaned thoroughly before rinsing. The sanitizng solution is made by adding one measured tablespoon of Bleach per gallon (do not use scented or high efficiency bleach; old fashioned cheap chlorine bleach is what you need). This solution should have about 100 parts per million (PPM) of chlorine. It can also be used to sanitize food contact surfaces such as cutting boards etc. The key is that the chlorine solution needs to come in contact with the item being sanitized for 60 seconds. Using the third sanitizing tub to soak items for 60 seconds ensures that the plates are properly sanitized. To conserve water on the camp-out you may rotate the water (and bleach) down the line from clean to dirty. That is you dump out the soapy wash water, wipe out the tub and add fresh soap. Now dump the rinse water into the wash tub and wipe the tub out. Finally dump the sanitizing water into the rinse tub and refill the sanitizing tub with fresh water and bleach.

Each dish should be washed, rinsed, sanitized, and returned to its mesh bag for drying. The mesh bags will then be hung from a clothesline. If the clothespins used to hold them to the line are also numbered, it is a lot easier for each camper to find his or her own kit if they are hung in numeric order. Whoever is on kitchen duty for that meal (and everyone should be assigned at least once) is responsible for washing the cooking gear. Again, they should wipe the pots, pans, and utensils as clean as possible before subjecting the wash water to them. They will need to be dried after rinsing and then put away. The kitchen crew should then take steps to properly dispose of the trash, lest the camp attract critters. Critters may be cute, but they sure do make big messes!

14. Draw a spiritual object lesson from nature on your camping trip.
There are many possibilities for meeting this requirement. Jesus used nature to illustrate object lessons on many occasions:
 * Birds: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. Matthew 10:29 - NIV
 * Flowers: And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even (AL)Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. Matthew 6:28,29 - NIV
 * Water: Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, John 4:7-38