Safety and Conservation
Wherever a camper stays, safety and conservation should be foremost concerns. The rule at any campsite, whether primitive (without any modern conveniences or facilities) or modern (with facilities such as bathrooms, electrical hook-ups for RVs, and perhaps a small grocery shop), is to leave the area clean and undefiled. Thoughtful campers respect the privacy of others and keep noise to a minimum. All fires should be extinguished before the camper leaves for the day; all sharp implements should be stored in a safe place, and food should be kept in a vehicle to prevent attracting wild animals.
Exercises and Tasks
Vocabulary
Find English equivalents for the following words and phrases:
активный отдых; закаленный; уединенное место; точно указывать; укрытие; суровая погода; неблагоприятные условия; скоропортящиеся продукты; аптечка; портативность; сверхпрочный; фляга; ручей; местность; разжечь/потушить костер; нетронутый; снаряжение; термическое белье; современное оборудование/удобства; безопасность; охрана окружающей среды; средство передвижения.
Paraphrase using vocabulary from the text:
a place for camping; to get away from everyday routine; mobile homes for camping; special routes for hikers; to take off unnecessary clothes; hard to get wet; equipment for camping; to require; a campsite with recreation facilities and conveniences; a campsite without any conveniences; clean and undamaged place; to make the fire; to put the fire off; to fix a tent; hiker.
Discussion
Who is considered to be the founder of modern recreational camping?
Where is most of modern camping done?
What are the purposes of camping?
In what way do one’s purposes influence his/her choice of a campsite? Is it difficult to find a suitable place?
What is an RV? What makes it popular? Who prefers this way of camping?
How has camping gear progressed since 1900s?
Describe proper clothing for camping and hiking.
What equipment is used for shelter?
What cooking utensils are used at a campsite? How does the choice of gear depend on the route and type of the campsite?
What are the main principles of safety and nature conservation at any campsite?
Describe advantages and disadvantages of staying at a developed / primitive campsite.
What is your idea of a ‘True Hike’ and a ‘True Hiker’?
Listed below are the basic items the first-aid kit should contain. Match the items with their uses.
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Are there any other items that you would include in your first-aid kit?
14) Make up a manual for inexperienced hikers going on a 10-day hike to some secluded area. Consider the following items: proper clothes, equipment for shelter and cooking gear, rules of behavior, principles of safety and nature conservation.
Text 2. Camp in comfort
Try out the kit that can make your tent a home from home
Eurohike 225TS tent
T
he
Eurohike 225 TS
is Millets’s best-selling two-person tent and you won’t get a
better one for under £50. Easy to put up (even for complete
novices), light to carry and surprisingly hardy too. On a two-week
test in the desert, it withstood sandstorms, gusting winds,
torrential rains and hamsters trying to chew through the ropes. The
entrance incorporates a built-in mosquito net. £49.99 from Millets.
Blacks Micro 4000 sleeping bag
Boasting an impressive warmth/weight ratio (1.24 kilos, yet warm to -9C) this two/three seasons sleeping bag feels flimsy but is surprisingly snug. Roomy, so you won’t feel like an Egyptian mummy once you’re zipped in, yet the compression sack allows you to squish it into the smallest of spaces when not in use. £89.99 from Blacks
Hi-heat portable gas cooker
T
his
is about as compact and bijou as camping cookers get. It comes in a
heavy-duty moulded case, has an automatic flame ignition and a burner
control from simmer to 2 kW, in case you happen to be performing a
complicated sauce reduction al fresco. The necessary butane gas
cartridges are not included, so remember to pack some. £30 including
delivery.
Rosker Lexan wine glass
Just because you’re camping, there’s no excuse to start swigging wine from a mug. The glass is tough enough for outdoor living, but adds a touch of elegance to the proceedings.
Roxer Lexan cutlery set
For people who don’t like their camping cutlery made of sheet metal and tied together with a ring at the top, this set is made of a durable plastic that’s apparently tougher than steel, one third of the weight and doesn’t look bad at all. £2.95 from Snow+Rock.
Leatherman Flair
Leatherman has long been the favourite all-purpose tool of campers and its Flair gadget improves on previous models with the addition of a corkscrew. As well as this feature for hedonists, there’s a spreader knife and a fork, scissors, four screwdrivers, a partially serrated knife and all manner of other bits and pieces that will come into their own when you find yourself in the wild. £69.95.
Tefal camping cook set
This set has everything but the kitchen sink. It includes 18cm and 22cm frying pans, 16cm and 20cm saucepans, a 22cm stewpot, a universal pan lid and a clip-on handle. It’s all made of lightweight aluminium with a non-stick coating and comes in a protective travel bag.
Swinging fire basket
If you hanker after a real campfire, but performing the balancing act with twigs necessary for building one on the ground is beyond you, try this swinging fire basket. Meant for patios, it will lend a warm glow to your camping. £40, including delivery.
Tasks
Which of these kits do you think may be really useful on a hike? Why?
Which of the kits would / wouldn’t you include in your camping gear? Why?
Make up an advertisement of any camping gear you think to be useful and necessary on a hike. Use the descriptions above as a model.
Text 3. Tin-Can Tourists
“They
drive tin cans and they eat outa tin cans and they leave a trail
of tin cans behind ‘em.
They’re tin-can
tourists”. So joked
Floridians in the early
decades of this century
when they spotted the new breed of middle-class travelers who came
south each winter to
find a temporary place
in the sun.
The first generation of motorized campers were a far cry from today’s recreational vehicles. Some were just ordinary sedans, loaded down with tents, stoves, blankets, and as much house-keeping paraphernalia as could be strapped to the roof and running boards. Others were one-of-a-kind campers, home-built or customized on an automobile chassis. And campsites in those early years were equally casual – a sandy beach, a schoolyard, a clearing by the side of the road.
As for the “tin-can tourist” epithet, most motor campers wore it with pride. In 1920 a few stalwarts even organized a TCT club, complete with a chief executive (the Royal Can Opener), a secret password (nit nac), and two social get-togethers a year. Within 10 years some 100,000 motorized free spirits had joined. Honor-bound to help fellow TCT’s in trouble, they signified membership by driving with an empty soup can hanging from the radiator cap.
T
he
rigors of travel in these homemade “RV’s” left many tourists
wishing for greater comfort. The answer came in the late 1920’s
when Detroit businessman Arthur Sherman introduced a humble sort
of two-wheeled camp
trailer that could be hitched to the family car. While a few
elegantly appointed “land yachts” were already in use by the
rich, Sherman’s compact six-by nine-foot box on wheels - complete
with bunk beds and cooking facilities - could be mass-produced at a
price that ordinary people could afford.
Known as the Sherman Covered Wagon, the prototype was introduced at the 1930 Detroit Auto Show, and its inventor came home with a fistful of orders. But scarcely had Sherman launched his new business when the bottom fell out of the American economy, taking any enthusiasm for house trailers with it. Suddenly, the notion of being “on the road”, of living at casual campsites, no longer seemed a happy adventure. Too many unemployed Americans were already doing just that out of painful necessity.
Text 4. PEAK TIME FOR RESCUE TEAMS
Lead-in
You are going to the mountains on your holiday. Discuss:
- what you should do before you set out;
- what you should take;
- what you should do in an emergency.
Summer is the busiest season for the volunteers who save those stranded in the mountains. Tony Durrant reports.
AND they’re off. Like alpine cattle heading for the high pastures in the summer months, the nation’s army of fair-weather ramblers, scramblers and danglers is dusting off hiking boots, unknotting ropes, packing egg sandwiches and heading for the hills.
Which is why that hardy band of souls who volunteer for the country’s mountain-rescue teams are busiest when the weather is at its best. That’s right - emergency call-outs do not peak in the bleak midwinter when the winds gust to 100 mph on the summit of Snowdon and the wind chill factor reaches 20 below zero on Scafell Pike’s rocky peak. (And there will be walkers and climbers up there during those times.) No, the silly season for the rescue teams who serve tourist hotspots in Snowdonia and the Lake District is June to September.
The Keswick Mountain Rescue Team, which covers 440 square miles of the Lake District, was called out 67 times last year - 14 times, for example, in September. Six of those were on one day. All serious - a fell runner who crashed 150 ft down a gully; a girl of 10 with a sprained ankle; a heart attack on Helvellyn; a paraglider with a broken leg; a woman with a locked knee; a paraglider falling down a cliff on take-off. Quieter days in the team’s log, such as September 7, read: “Search for suicidal person. Later found in Wigan”.
September 10 reads: “A girl aggravated a previous ankle injury while trying to get a mobile-phone signal to report an aggravated ankle injury.” Meanwhile, on the night of July 12-13, an RAF helicopter, a search dog and 16 members of the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organization, which covers the northerly peaks of Snowdonia, were looking for a 29-year-old woman who had set out to cross the Glyders - two of the highest mountains in Wales.
The log reads: “She had no equipment and was wearing a light shell suit and training shoes.” She was found unharmed, and presumably put on the first train back to Wigan. The following day at 9.30 pm, six members of the Ogwen team toiled up the west face of 3,000 ft Tryfan to rescue a pet dog stuck in a hole between rocks. And with the dogs, Wigan wanderers and shell suit hikers come the upwardly mobile-phoners. With their map and compass packed at the bottom of their rucksacks, or back in the car boot next to their common sense, they reach for their trusty Nokia, assuming rescue teams are a sort of free AA service for hikers and RAF search and rescue helicopters are a taxpayers’ right.
Mark Hodgson, die Keswick team leader, highlights a particular mobile phone incident as probably the most unnecessary call-out for 1999. It came from a female walker on 2.950 ft Great Gable. “She had all the right equipment and a mobile phone.” says Mark, 45, an estate director at a further education college. “Having lost contact with the rest of her group she sat down, dialed 999 and waited to be shepherded from the mountain. This we did, only to find that her group were drinking in a pub, totally unconcerned.”
The nature of mobile phones also causes confusion. A flummoxed walker in Snowdonia used his to call for help and was put through to a mountain-rescue controller who had never heard of the peak the walker claimed he was lost on.
“I’m in Snowdonia,” came the panicked voice over the airwaves. “That may be, sir,” replied the controller with a lilt to his voice. “But I’m in Dublin,” which was the site of the nearest phone mast to pick up the stranded walker’s signal.
However, the message for mobile users is take it with you if you go into the hills. “In the right hands, mobile phones are incredibly useful,” says Chris Lloyd of the Ogwen Valley team. “They save vital time in an emergency.”
At the other end of the scale from those who call 999 at the drop of a woolly hat are those who would never dream of bothering anybody with their predicament. Like the woman who slipped while out walking in the Lakes then crawled for half a mile with a broken ankle rather than call out the team. Her husband eventually did.
Like her, most users of the mountain-rescue service are neither foolish nor lazy. They are just unlucky. “Around 60 per cent of our call-outs are to people who have slipped on wet grass or rocks, resulting in a broken leg or ankle,” says Mark Hodgson, “You can be an experienced mountaineer wearing good walking boots and still break a leg through slipping.”
Despite the litany of mountain madness, our rescue teams are quick to point out they are all volunteers who do their job because they love the mountains. So they won’t charge you or chew your head off for calling them out in an emergency, day or night, 365 days a year.
As Hodgson advises: “People should do their thing in the mountains. They are there for everybody.” Even if you’re from Wigan.