Thoughts on GHB's

[Scythe13]

Okay, this is something that quite a few of us will be testing soon, and I've been asked quite a bit about, so I'm going to do a little write up to help people get started, and to give some new ideas to the more veteran of us on here.

Okay, first up, your BOB and GHB are very likely to be different. If you are as fit as MikeA or have an ultralite BOB like myself, you can get away with carrying around your BOB as your GHB. But even MikeA or myself would agree, carrying a lighter bag is still going to make life easier.

If you think your BOB is okay to be your GHB, because that's what you believe, then I'm not going to knock you with your view. Get your bag on your back and go for a 10-15 mile walk. Then get hardly any sleep, and do it all again. After a week of this, tell me whether you'd rather carry your hefting BOB or whether you wished you'd packed lighter. Considering a situation where you're going to use your GHB, is the kind of high stress situation where a good night's sleep could make you into a target, it might make sense to look more at speed than comfort.

I can already hear what some people are saying. You want to move stealthily, not quickly. Okay then, I will not disagree with you on this, because that's an opinion. There may well be times when you need to move quickly, but that's my view. Now comes the fun question, how stealth are you going to be carrying a hefting huge bag, as opposed to carrying a much smaller bag that's about 1/4 the size? How much easier will it be to hide with a small bag than a large one?

Okay, so we know we'll probably do well not to have a huge bag for our GHB. That's one step forward. Now, where do we put our next foot for that next critical step?

You place that foot right here! What things will your bag NEED, and what things do you WANT from the bag? Those are your next considerations. Firstly, you need it big enough to carry the gear that you NEED for the journey. Secondly, you want it to have straps....duhhhh!!! You should be looking for nicely padded straps. Two shoulder straps, a waist strap (nice and thick, preferably padded too), and a chest strap. The reason you want to be as strapped up as this, because you don't want the bag jiggling around and making noise, but also, you don't want it to tick you off and put you in a bad mood. The last thing you want is to carry a bag 100 miles and have an uncomfortable bag from mile 2 to mile 100!!! 98 miles of discomfort is no fun!

Do you need to have a CamalBak with a 3 litre bladder, insulated straw, etc? HAHA, no. You really only NEED to carry a water bottle, about 1 litre, and a load of water purification tablets. That'll sort most stuff out. If you have a water bladder system, awesome, I do too. But I would just as happily have a 1 litre Bobble water bottle. It really makes no odds. Living in the UK means you're pretty much always so close to water, that refilling is as simple as loading up the water, drop a couple of purifier tablets, and enjoy. This is why I like the Bobble bottle so much, because the lid has a built in filter! No lumps of sand in my water.

Next up, food. Will you be cooking hot meals? I doubt it very much. If you want to do that, you can loot a tin and start a fire. While you're cooking that meal, I'll be eating on the move and will have passed another couple of miles by the time you've put your gear away. Because we're looking at having the potential to move quickly, and keeping the weight down, I have opted for dried food in my GHB. Trail Mix style food is ideal. But while you're at it, add a little chocolate. That'll help keep your spirits high if you start getting down.

Okay, so now that you have a bag, food, and water, what more do you need? Well, honestly, not too much, to start off with. If you think that you're actually just doing a one day hike, for a week or two, day after day, then you start to realise that to walk, you just need yourself and your feet. So, you need to take care of them both.

Firstly, you need to make sure you don't screw yourself over. Look after your body and feet. One of the best ways to do this is to avoid injury. If you do get any damage, treat is ASAP. First aid kit, loads of Compeed, and spare multi vitamin/mineral, all vital!!! That takes care of your body and feet, right? Wrong. Spare socks, flip-flops (they will help dry out your feet if you walk on a sunny day. They also help keep your shoes/boots dry if you're walking through damp areas. Shoes can take days to dry out. Best off changing to flip-flops or sandles, get wet feet for a bit, and then dry out later. Next day, you know you've got a nice dry pair of boots waiting for you. WAIT...What's that you also have waiting for you? Dry spare socks and undies?!?! Whose a clever hiker? Give yourself a pat on the back. I know what you're thinking, Why flip-flops? Simple answer is, they weigh nothing, dry in minutes, and usually last a damn long time. Easily fixed with paracord (check Hurachi's on youtube if you need to), and if you see a survivalist chick, you can look like a cool surfer dude! haha.

Other than that, staying dry is next up, in regard to looking after yourself. Waterproof jacket, trousers, and gaiters. These are best kept in your Throw Bag (I'll post about this another time). But if you don't have any, get some!

Other than this, any more equipment is more of a luxury. Well, I say that, but there is one more item you need to be able to use well. A knife. With a knife you can build shelter and stuff like that. But that's a bit more advanced than I'm going to cover in this post.

For my personal GHB, I like a few more items.

I have cable ties. They're so versatile, it makes sense to have them.
Emergency shelter. Damn right it's an emergency. If I'm trekking back to my wife (and mental puppies) I'm only sleeping in a pure emergency, or if I run out of Pro-Plus. I know some people are against stimulants, but if that's what it takes to get me back to my loved ones, then that's what I'm going to do. Yep, LOADS of Pro-Plus. More than is probably safe. But you don't take them all at once.
Okay, on with the bag contents. Space blankets. Great for so many reasons! With that, a space bag (think mummy style sleeping bag, but just one big space blanket style bag). This will be used with my emergency shelter for sleeping. I never want to drop into a really deep sleep. The idea of trying to get home isn't to get there as slowly as possible. It's to get there as quickly as possible, while still being safe. A deep sleep means you may not hear people coming in your direction. The emergency gear is to make sure I'm getting recovery sleep, but not to the point where I am fully knocked out dead to the world asleep. A fire kit is always a good idea too, because if you do have to hunker down, a fire would be a nice way to warm up.
Other than a few energy endurance drink powders, and recovery powders, that's about it. I'm being a little lazy, because my GHB is in the car, and I'm relaxing and not opening it to double check the contents. But, there is one more item you NEED to have, that I've not yet mentioned, toilet paper. You need it. If you're a woman, tampons are also a good idea.

[Highlander]

GHBs will differ from people to people depending on the distance and conditions that you expect to endure.

First of all, I think that the most important thing is weight, the less the better, so I would always be looking for equipment that will do more than one job where possible.

I agree, for water all you need in the UK is a belt water bottle

Personally I disagree with you on food,.. yes I believe that hot food will be needed, you really cant expect to travel any great distance on cold food or eating on the move. reasons are that you will need to rest, so you have the time to eat, you will also need a moral boaster, and there is nothing like a hot meal to set you up and keep you going.... if a small fire is placed in the right spot, its well worth taking on hot food and drink.

You will need shelter, I would be carrying a tarp in a GHB as a tent will be much heavier,... you could get away with a good poncho for shorter distances

I agree that your feet will need to be looked after above all else,.. a good pair of boots will be the most important thing here,... but I still wouldn't carry anything else for my feet like flip flops,... I would remove my boots whenever I could and give my feet an airing when ever possible, dry them off with powder, if you do this then it doesn't matter if your boots are wet,... the likes of flip flops will add un necessary weight to your pack

I disagree with you where sleep is concerned, I would try if possible to get regular sleep, someone who moves too fast with sleep derivation is more likely to make mistakes

I agree with the rest

[Scythe13]

(14 August 2013, 23:01)Highlander Wrote: Personally I disagree with you on food,.. yes I believe that hot food will be needed, you really cant expect to travel any great distance on cold food or eating on the move. reasons are that you will need to rest, so you have the time to eat, you will also need a moral boaster, and there is nothing like a hot meal to set you up and keep you going.... if a small fire is placed in the right spot, its well worth taking on hot food and drink.
...
You will need shelter, I would be carrying a tarp in a GHB as a tent will be much heavier,... you could get away with a good poncho for shorter distances

I agree that your feet will need to be looked after above all else,.. a good pair of boots will be the most important thing here,... but I still wouldn't carry anything else for my feet like flip flops,... I would remove my boots whenever I could and give my feet an airing when ever possible, dry them off with powder, if you do this then it doesn't matter if your boots are wet,... the likes of flip flops will add un necessary weight to your pack

I disagree with you where sleep is concerned, I would try if possible to get regular sleep, someone who moves too fast with sleep derivation is more likely to make mistakes

With food, I understand why you would disagree. It seems totally counter intuitive to eat cold food all the time. Well, annoyingly (for some people) that's pretty much how I live day to day. I eat cold food, almost every meal, and I have a very active lifestyle. Would you agree that people manage to travel 26 miles a day without a hot meal? Marathons. Ultra-marathons can be upto and over 100 miles, travelled without a hot meal. All in a single push. One effort of a constant 100miles. With that in mind, there are a lot of considerations to think about in a different light.

A hot meal for moral? Partially agree. For me, knowing I'm travelling closer to my wife will keep my spirits as high as a kite in a tornado! But considering I plan to make a push of the whole journey, as a single effort, stopping for an hour or so to cook up a hot meal, and become a static target, not cool. Plus carrying the extra equipment and weight, as well as the possible clunking noises, not on my to endure list. If that's how you want to do it, that's cool. By all means. But for me, I'm happy to survive on what gives me sustenance to travel, not what fills my belly and puts a smile on my face. But I get where you're coming from. If that's how you want to play it, that's your call.

Shelter is important, but for my plan (single journey, here to home) shelter will slow me down. Got to set it all up, then take it all back down again, and all that boring stuff. If I want a shelter, it's the UK, it won't be too hard to find a derelict building somewhere. Beyond that, I could always just cut a load of branches, lay up against a tree (sleep sitting upright to not drop into too deep a sleep) and use the leaves as cover. Plus, the space blankets, emergency shelter tube tent, and the emergency mummy-space-blanket-tube-thing, are shelter enough.

For the flip-flops, they weight nothing, and if you're passing through water, boots getting wet can really suck. Plus it still poses a greater risk of getting blisters. When walking through puddles and the alike, I'd be in flip-flops. They weight pretty much nothing as it is. I have Vibrams with my GHB, and flip-flops next to it. So they're there if I need them. Having said about boots. I know this sounds counter productive, but boots are awesome, if you're used to them and are comfortable in them. Personally, I can out pace most people in boots, while I'm in Vibrams or skate shoes. Not because they're magical, or anything like that, but just because that's what I'm used to. Only bad thing about skate shoes is deep mud means you need to shop for new shoes haha.

As for sleep. We only NEED 1 hour of REM sleep to be fully recovered. This is where people start going nuts about how stupid I am. Okay, keep laughing. While you all laugh, I have a question, would you be surprised if I told you that nearly 50% of the population go for around a year with about 3 hours sleep in a 24 hour period? If you would be surprised, then it probably means you're not a mother. The average mother in the UK goes for 11 months with an average of 3 hours sleep for the first 6 months and 4.5 hours sleep for the next 5 months. Pretty shocking hu? But why do we, as people, sleep for 8-9 hours a day? Simply because we're weird. There is no logical reason for this, just as there is no logical reason for shops to close after 5.30pm or for an average work day to take 8 hours. It's just because that's the way we have been brought up. Check out sleep patterns for other places, not all people sleep 8 hours a day, but we all have 24 hour days! How weird a species are we? Oh, and considering I plan on doing the journey in a single push, I can go 2-3 days without sleep. I know this because this is what I regularly do now.

[Highlander]

Aye, I am not saying that your way wouldn't work for some people, you think it would work for you, that's good, but I would suggest that it might not work for most others.

Personally I can only revert back to my Army days, when where possible we stopped and rested properly in order to continue strongly

[bigpaul]

firstly my GHB(which is NOT my BOB) is VERY light, its literally a bum bag with some small bits and pieces in it, plus an olive green shoulder bag (£6 new at a certain car boot sale) which has my (dehydrated) food in it+ a compass, a folding saw and a £3 basha shelter and a water bottle(plastic canteen), in a SHTF event I want to move EARLY morning and late evening and hide up/rest during the day(more so if it a VERY hot summer) so that I don't get spotted by the looters/yobs/lumpunts: movement will be easily spotted in the daytime.

[Grumpy Grandpa]

Scythe, I think your approach is a good one - for you - and maybe for others who are young, super-fit and have boundless energy. In a 'get home' situation, I would be as desperate to reach my loved ones as you or anyone else would but I don't think your method would work for me, not even when I was able-bodied. My way would have been what I know - having effective shelter and sustaining food.

I don't know what kind of mileage you've put in wearing flip-flops but for me, they cause 'hot-spots' on the skin of my feet, particularly at the strap contact areas but also where they move against the skin - everywhere! A pair of lightweight sandals or similar, would have a use for me but it would be for moving around wherever I was laying up, to keep my clean dry socks clean and dry! No - it would have had to be well broken in, comfortable boots for me. Removing them for fording perhaps but not even then, if I couldn't see the bottom - the last thing you would need in the circumstances would be foot or ankle damage from sharp debris or uneven boulders. In typical British weather, they're probably going to get wet but with the right sock arrangement and with powder and dry socks to wear when laying up, my feet would bear up just fine. I know that because I've done it many times; I'm familiar with it.

I don't think I would have considered travelling any significant distance without factoring in quality rest. If they distance was short, I'd probably push through but if not, I'd want effective shelter. You mentioned putting some branches against a tree for shelter and climbing into a space bag. I don't mean to sound negative but have you tried those a few times? I think I'd rather have something wind and water tight - being wet and cold day after day is bloody demoralising! Putting up and taking down a tarp shelter takes only a couple of minutes, when you've had practice doing it; a lot less time than cutting a load of branches. Once, on a really cold (sub-zero) night, I had the bright idea of using my space blanket as a liner for my sleeping bag. It was great! Warm as toast! Then I woke up just an hour or two later and swam out the bag because I'd sweated like a pig! I was stuffed for sleeping until I had an opportunity to get the bag dried.

As for weight, while instructing students it was necessary that I carried all those things I was teaching them that they should have but I found that using modern, lightweight items (and this was twenty years ago! ), the weight of an exped. sack could be minimised. How much more so now, with further advances in design and materials?

So, what we know is this (sorry, borrowed and paraphrased ) your method will work well for you and those others that it suits. Others will find their own methods and those, will work well for them.

After all - horses for courses...

[Scythe13]

That's cool GG. I'm not against boots at all. I'm just saying, if you're not used to them, either get used to them or go with what you know. You can walk 10 times further in comfortable shoes than you can uncomfortable boots. That's the main thing I want people to realise. Flip-flops or sandles makes no odds to me. It's just about keeping boots/shoes as dry as possible. Personally, I'll have a pair of vibrams and flip-flops, as well as my shoes that are on my feet.

With the space blankets and all that stuff, yeah, I've tested them loads. From sleeping on the roof in Bristol (technically Bedminster) to Scout camps in the UK, to winter camps in the UK. My findings: Blankets are great as 'roof liners' but not ideal for wrapping yourself up in. Same as the tunnel. I've used the tunnel a few times. It's ideal....from the waist down. Too high and you do sweat like a beast. But again, it's not all about comfort, it's about movement (for me at least). I'd much rather find an abandoned building, an allotment shed, or something like that. Even a greenhouse. Those kind of things would be my primary shelter options.

One of the reasons we're having the second Dartmoor trip is to test our GHB's.

Please note, I'm not saying don't heat your food. I'm not saying don't bring a tarp. I'm just saying, realise that you don't NEED hot food for nutrition, neither do you NEED a tarp for a shelter. I would take the risk and try to do it in one push. If it didn't seem possible, maybe because of storms and flooding, I'd look for shelter. But I'd go for a shed or something other than a tarp (I love tarps, so don't think I'm banging on them). A tarp would be a last resort, in my opinion.

[Lightspeed]

Scythe,

This ties in well with Highlander's thread about Seasonality.

I have a lightweight GHB in the car the whole time. My motivation and logic in the what it contains is almost identical to yours.

But my bag is nor a fixed item. It changes all the time, both seasonally and to cover any immediate climatic expectations. I just want it to get me home as efficiently and rapidly as possible, and that means different stuff in different conditions.

Cold high energy food is fine for this, provided you eat regularly and adequately for the energy you are expending and the climatic conditions. Going hyperglycemic ( Bonking as it is humerously called in distance cycling) from insuficient energy intake forces a complete stop and in this condition warm food and drink I find are the best solution.

[bigpaul]

abandoned building would be my first choice too, barns,allotment sheds even a polytunnel would do, but depending on your area your not always going to find them, so having something with you which you can shelter under, a tarp, a poncho, anything would be an advantage and dosent take long to do, the last thing you want to do is expel more energy building a shelter.

[Binnie]

(15 August 2013, 11:57)Lightspeed Wrote: Going hyperglycemic

hypoglycemic

Hyper is too much/a lot, hypo is not enough/a little

I always carry carb gels with me whilst cycling and what a difference they make, 1 gel pouch contains as much carbs as an average sized banana, and can sustain me for 45mins to an hour on the bike. i'll deffo have some in my kit. gels are a lot easier to carry than bananas!

As for GHB's, i always carry a small tarp and some paracord in mine, it hardly takes up any room, weighs next to nothing and can be used for loads of different things