Solo Tripping is Safer

[Black_Fly]

Benefits will include fewer deer mice infesting campsites, which in the past have come close to driving sleep-deprived campers crazy. Also, since cats hate water, they're less likely to jump overboard... like these contented cats pictured below.


Also this... the old saying about herding cats, plainly not true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ0ur5GKC0w

That's just wrong.

 

[Iskweo]

Awwwww those would be awesome camp kitties.I would need one with separation anxiety though so they didnt wander off.

Erica...I dont take any locators or GPS or fancy stuff either. Just a gas stove. I have a compass and maps but I hardly use them. I know how, I just dont bother. Have I ever gotten lost? Yes a couple of times, but I am still here. I like to travel the way the grandfathers did. It truly makes you feel alive.

Oh yeah.And soap, I take soap, because realllllllly people.

 

[Alan Gage]

I have a compass and maps but I hardly use them. I know how, I just dont bother. Have I ever gotten lost? Yes a couple of times, but I am still here. I like to travel the way the grandfathers did. It truly makes you feel alive.

Good for you. I've always thought it would be a rewarding way to travel without constantly watching the map but haven't convinced myself to do it yet.

Alan

 

[Guest]

I usually have studied the map so much before the trip that I seldom look at the map. it's more fun not looking at the map or compass--till you have to.

 

[Black_Fly]

I'm never lost, but I do get bewildered from time to time.

Nothing wrong with making sure you get from A to B as necessary, in time to get that special campsite and fish. I like to know where I am. Been tripping and wandering new places for half a century, was an aerial surveyor for 13 years. I visualize my surroundings like a topo map. My stereo vision so trained I see topo maps in 3D. I have an inclination that while not romantic, is just as inspired as any professional social media snob I can think of.

 

[Mason]

Good for you. I've always thought it would be a rewarding way to travel without constantly watching the map but haven't convinced myself to do it yet.

Alan

So Alan, did the maps come in handy for you on your Wollaston trip? That's one place I don't want to be without maps.

 

[Alan Gage]

So Alan, did the maps come in handy for you on your Wollaston trip? That's one place I don't want to be without maps.

Oh yeah. Can't imagine doing a trip like that for the first time with no maps. Would be quite bewildering. But I have had daydreams of doing routes in that area another time or two to get to know it better and then trying to go mapless....or maybe bury them in the bottom of a pack just in case.

I think I'd record more features to long term memory without a map. With a map it's match up islands, bays, and peninsulas and then forget about them when it's time to match up the next set. When I turn around on my long trips to retrace my steps I'm shocked how little I remember. It's like seeing it all over again.

Alan

 

[Guest]

Sometimes being pleasantly,temporaraiy lost is fun. When it stops being fun I pull out the map.

 

[lowangle al]

Solo tripping MIGHT be safer for the experienced, but certainly not for the bumbling idiot that can screw up a group trip.

 

[Odyssey]

I love maps. I even have a few books just about maps. Years ago I included a cart course in my studies, long before the GIS came into play. Many happy hours spent hunched over drawing freehand maps in the Geography Lab imagining what those contours and hydrology looked like in real time in situ. I still "go exploring" with nothing more than a map and a cup of tea sitting in my armchair. Still, a map and compass are no guarantees I'll not get lost. I never have but I have gotten "turned around". I used to think I had a sixth sense for finding my way but I've lost my car in too many parking lots to trust myself without some kind of aid like a landmark, map or friendly reminder "We parked right next to that giant billboard Brad." Oh, right. A summer ago I momentarily got turned around twice on the same trip. I couldn't believe it. The only thing we really lost were a few minutes of our time, not ourselves. And a bit of my pride, but that's okay. I actually believe we should all lose a bit of that now and again. But not our maps, never our maps. And not ourselves, if we can help it.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Solo tripping MIGHT be safer for the experienced, but certainly not for the bumbling idiot that can screw up a group trip.

That is the conundrum, eh?

 

[Black_Fly]

As a bumbling idiot, I resemble that remark.

 

[sweeper]

Base on the 99 posts I've read of yours B_F my guess is your not.

 

[yellowcanoe]

As a bumbling idiot, I resemble that remark.

I bet that on your solo your smarts will amp up and beat the S out that bumble thing.

 

[yknpdlr]

I like these quotes and quips about experience:

The trouble with learning from experience is that you never graduate.DOUG LARSON, attributed, The Ship of Though

The trouble with using experience as a guide is that the final exam often comes first and then the lesson. ~Author Unknown

Experience is what you got by not having it when you need it. ~Author Unknown

Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment. ~Rita Mae Brown

The problem is that when you get it, you're too danged old to do anything about it. ~Jimmy Connors, on experience

There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience, and that is not learning from experience. ~Laurence J. Peter

 

[Canotrouge]

Wow I guess I missed this thread all together, just getting in after four full pages of replies and exchange... I think solo tripping is, well, when you go by your self alone(dog is ok).

I trip a lot with others but I'm mostly alone in my canoe usually a tandem 16' tripping canoe, I don't consider my self a solo tripper, even if I the time on the water traveling is away from the group either ahead or behind them, sometime by as much as a few km...

I have friends(couple) that do remote trips of many weeks(4 to 8) every second years or so they always crave just the 2 of them, totally self supported and on crazy remote rivers(Thelon come to mind) and for some reason I think of them a solo trippers, maybe because they never ever trip with other people, they always only the 2 of them, I think of them as one! But that is the exception.

Interesting thread

Anyway, that is my take on it...

 

[Black_Fly]

Having a friend you can spend that long alone with, let alone trust as a paddling partner, is indeed special.

 

[jm0278]

Having a friend you can spend that long alone with, let alone trust as a paddling partner, is indeed special.

The issue with having anyone else along is that when we're within earshot, a part of my brain is always "prepared to listen" to whatever the other person may say. It's a subtle distinction/feeling, but it is key difference.

My definition of "solo tripping" is going alone as opposed to a group trip (two or more people) in two or more solo canoes. Almost all my trips, backpacking and canoe, have been solo with just a handful of backpacking trips with a friend. So I can't say based on personal experience whether one is safer than the other...but I can most definitely state that I am very aware that my safety is entirely up to me and the choices I make when solo tripping. As a consequence, I tend to be rather conservative in my decisions. On the other hand, decision making does tend to suffer once I get tired or get in a hurry.

 

[Guest]

The issue with having anyone else along is that when we're within earshot, a part of my brain is always "prepared to listen" to whatever the other person may say. It's a subtle distinction/feeling, but it is key difference.

The “companionability” issue is just that. We all have our personal companion type preferences, and I have become more persnickety about paddling company the older I get.

Family members work well; we have known each other through many years of tripping, know the routine and subtle leave-me-alone indications, and leave each do our own thing for much of the day.

24/7 of anyone attached at my hip is too much for me. Especially incessant talkers.

Some companions, whom I love dearly as friends, have proven a need to yammer on about nothing all day long, in canoe or in camp. A day or two of that is all I can stand. Take a hint; if I am paddling away or wandering off to be quietly on my own, shut the heck up. And for god’s sake don’t follow me and keep yammering.

A quiet companion, or two, cognizant and aware and hopefully wandering away on their own, can be a wonderful thing.

 

[gumpus]

Good thread Black Fly. One time I was out paddling solo canoes with my buddy and he slumped over in his boat from a diabetic coma. Good thing I was there.