Questions tagged [wilderness]
Questions related to regions that generally appear to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable.
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How do I locate a company that will remove deadfall from my property?
I own about 30 acres of sloping, high desert land at about 8500' near Pine, CO. It is moderately densely forested with 30-60 yr old ponderosa pine, blue spruce, and juniper. When a tree dies and ...
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How to defend from animals while camping (golden jackals, boars, foxes)?
I want to go camping somewhere (I am from Eastern Europe) but the zone is full of golden jackals/foxes. They are a bit larger than a fox, but they stay in packs. I have a husky dog that wouldn't be ...
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How can I remove a tick I cannot reach and no one is around to help? [duplicate]
How can you remove a tick on your back if you cannot reach it with your hand and you have no one to assist you?
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Portable antenna for better phone reception when hiking remote areas?
This year I want to hike some more remote areas. There is an issue of safety. The areas will be 10 - 50 km away from civilization, lots of bears(0,5 bear/km2),.. The cell phone towers will be up till ...
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Help identifying this animal
Anyone can help me identify this animal? It walks like a cat and climbs trees like a monkey. No tail is visible in the video. This video was captured in Arunachal Pradesh, a provincial state in the ...
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I need a personal guide/assistant for backpacking [duplicate]
I have probably asked this question before, but I have not received a specific enough answer.
My husband and I backpacked for more than four decades, but he died in early 2019 -- and then Covid. I am ...
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What percentage of the world is “true wilderness”?
A comment on a different post of mine triggered my curiosity:
There is little enough wilderness left in the world as it is.
Are there statistics on what percentage of the world is still “true ...
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Are wheelchairs allowed in US Wilderness Areas?
From the text of the Wilderness Act:
there shall be no temporary road, no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motorboats, no landing of aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport, and ...
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Can lions hunt on cloudy moonless nights?
Lions have truly remarkable night vision, to the extent that they not only hunt at night, but actually prefer to do so when there is no moon in the sky, because the lack of moonlight makes them nearly ...
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Do wolves hunt on moonless nights?
Wolves have better night vision than we do, enough that they can quite happily hunt on moonlit nights.
But what about when there is no moonlight? Intuitively it seems to me that with no moon or nearby ...
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How do people who don't have a driver's license yet live remotely solve their food/survival needs? [closed]
I never leave the apartment anymore, because the outdoors have become a frightening dystopia. My childhood quarters have been utterly ruined with tasteless buildings and soulless (and dangerous) ...
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How am I supposed to remember if I'm supposed to "play dead" or "make myself appear big" for various dangerous wild animals?
I've countless times heard things like this when they give tips for how to act when encountering a bear in the wild:
Play dead! Lie down and don't move an inch!
And (for all animals):
Don't run! It ...
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I am torn between axe or hatchet, what would you recommend?
I was reading this article on axe or hatchet for camping and I am thinking on bringing a hatchet in my next trip.
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Do U.S. Wilderness areas allow bridges?
A U.S. wilderness area prohibits road-building and other forms of development. Are bridges on hiking trail permitted, or are all river crossings in wilderness areas necessarily unbridged?
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Can Cormorants swallow and digest large prey like eels whole?
Can a cormorant really manage to digest a huge, living eel, bones and all?
Does the poor eel (it was quite a bright/pretty green color) stand any slim chance of escaping (that thrashing, biting, etc.)...
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Pulling vs. Carrying [duplicate]
I've done a lot of backpacking in my home state of Colorado. My pack and its contents is pretty light but not "ultralight", maybe 20 pounds including food.
I'm considering something like these for ...
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Camping alone in the wilderness in the USA
I want to go camping in the wilderness on my own, without anyone else around for miles. Is that even possible? I know a lot of national parks have designated areas, but surely they can't enforce that ...
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Is there clay soil in the Adirondacks suitable for earthen primitive building?
An example of the earthen material I have in mind, this video shows some daub prepared for a wattle-and-daub house at timestamp 7:45: https://youtu.be/wPWLlVVVDN0
Cob, cobb or clom (in Wales) is a ...
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What are uses of red spruce (picea rubens) by humans in a wilderness, primitive, or frontier setting?
What are uses for red spruce (picea rubens) by humans in wilderness settings (e.g. in primitive technologies, bushcraft, wilderness survival, low-tech rural livelihoods, frontier homesteading)? While ...
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What exactly would change if most of the Grand Canyon was designated as wilderness?
Related to this question, there are people advocating that most of the Grand Canyon National park be designated as Wilderness.
What exactly would change in the allowed activities (some say it would ...
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What are lawful wilderness activities in Canada?
I am in process of immigrating from Russia to Canada.
While I've fallen out of... Well, everything that includes movement... I have plans to resume wilderness trips after I finish immigration ...
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What group of people call themselves "Outdoor Influencers", and what do they do regarding natural areas of land?
I recently heard the term "Outdoor Influencers" relating to certain groups of people, including conservationists.
Apparently some people have negative feelings about their activities, because they ...
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Artificial reintroduction of wild animals: how frequently does it happen, and what is the purpose?
One of the most debated issues concerning wilderness, in Italy, is the reintroduction (or bizarrely large increase in the population) of animals almost extinguished till recently.
While in most ...
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Why is there no Wilderness Area within Grand Canyon National Park?
This 1998 Draft Wilderness Management Plan proposes to set aside large parts of Grand Canyon National Park as wilderness. However, despite large areas being declared "Wild" in the park backcountry ...
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What should I do if I face Elephant?
What should I do if an elephant is annoyed by my presence and if I can't outrun it?
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What to do if someone gets impaled in the stomach?
Background: This question is motivated by an accident that happened to my sister in a very rural area. She was on a fence and fell onto a t-post which basically impaled her, but which fell out by the ...
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What are the arguments for and against allowing bicycles in wilderness areas in the US?
Currently bicycles are prohibited in federal wilderness areas in the United States. However there is a bill in the House of Representatives that would remove the prohibition.
As one can imagine, this ...
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What to video during a solar eclipse?
I will be in the path of total darkness during the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017. I plan to be in alpine wilderness (Oregon Cascades), but will adjust my location as needed so that there are no ...
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How to temporarily mark a trail?
If one needed to hike out and then come back to a certain spot, how could one temporarily mark their trail so that it is easy to follow back to that exact spot when the route back is not obvious?
...
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How to protect a body in the wilderness?
I am hiking in the wilderness, a round trip to civilization and back is at least 24 hours.
I know where I am and I can return to the same spot.
If my hiking partner dies, how can/should I protect ...
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Under what wilderness conditions is becoming infested with lice a possibility and what precautions should one take to avoid it?
I may have reacted without thinking to the question about dealing with lice because I have never worried about getting lice on a wilderness trip.
Upon reflection, I find I am genuinely interested in ...
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How to process iron in the wilderness? [closed]
How do you smelt and forge iron sources from & in the wilderness? People must have started somewhere with this sort of thing!
I once saw a video from a primitive technology practitioner on ...
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Is it within Leave No Trace to spread someone's ashes in a wilderness area?
While in the Wind River Mountains, I found a bronze plaque that marked the spot where a person's ashes where scattered, and while that was done in the early 1930s, it made me wonder if it would still ...
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How can I tell if a plant is poisonous?
I know that there are exceptions to every rule. Like for example not all plants with leaves in groups of 3 are poisonous.
Also there is mimicry in some plants to deter animals from eating it even ...
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Why did the wolf-pack withdraw from attacking me?
While this has happened about 22 years ago, I never really stopped thinking about it and still regard it as unsolved mystery. While I asked plenty outdoormen, nobody had this experience. Having ...
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Camping and Monkeys
Monkeys are funny, as well as dangerous sometimes.
What precautions do I need to take when I am camping (under unavoidable circumstances) in a region where there are monkeys?
EDIT: Referring to ...
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Possible to transform (at least two) smartphones into walkie-talkie like devices?
Of course we agree on the fact, that cellphones aren't that good in the great outdoors cause they just don't work if you are too far from civilization. That's why we use devices like Walkie-Talkies ...
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What kind of leaf should I NOT use for tissue or toilet paper?
Yesterday I was out in the woods and had a runny nose. When I wanted to blow my nose I looked for maple leaves, because I knew what they were. Not sure if the list of bad choices is small enough for ...
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Optimal use of available GPS devices when stranded
There are quite a lot of questions concerning GPS device usage, however I couldn't find any specific information on more passive usage (as in waiting for rescue).
Say I have a watch and a phone which ...
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What are some good guides to the U.S. national forests, specifically those in California?
I was thinking of heading to some of the northern California national forests, but I wasn't sure which to pick. I've read all the relevant links in each fs.udsa.gov website, including attractions, ...
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What's the most remote place in the contiguous US?
The United States is a very developed place. Sometimes this can prove to be challenging when trying to find a place to get away from everything, especially east of the Mississippi where I reside. I am ...
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How to check if a fence or cable has electricity without having special tools?
You run across a wire cable, or wire fence in the wild, with which you would have to interact in some way. How to check if electricity runs through it without having special tools?
EDIT: As the ...
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What is considered a water source, and why is it recommended to camp so far from them?
I've read one one of the US national forest or wilderness websites that when camping in the wild, one should camp at a certain distance from a water source. Should I understand a water source to mean ...
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Is it ever safe to let a hypothermic person sleep?
My understanding is that with severely hypothermic patients you want to keep them awake if possible. I'd heard moving a hypothermic patient is risky, as you don't want to jostle them. Some wilderness ...
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How to find a secluded cabin to rent [closed]
How can I find a nice, secluded cabin to rent, somewhere in the U.S. wilderness? This almost seems like a word of mouth kind of endeavor, asking friends and friends of friends if they own or know of ...
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What areas in the south-western US are the wildest?
Where are the wildest places in the south-western US? By "wild" I mean places where evidence of people or their lasting effect on the land are minimal. Particularly, I am looking for places with ...
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Minimizing impact of small groups on wilderness areas
I have been given conflicting information for how to minimize the impact of traveling in small groups in wilderness areas.
For groups traveling off-trail in areas where it is appropriate I have heard ...
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How can I make a snow shoe in the wilderness from commonly available materials and simple tools?
As in the title really. In the hypothetical situation that I'm caught in the wilderness in winter and there's a heavy snow storm resulting in an unexpected level of snow, snow shoes could well come in ...
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Where in Europe is wilderness meeting the U.S. wilderness definition?
In this excellent answer, LBell quotes the U.S. definition of wilderness:
(1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially ...
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How can I locate wilderness maps for specific countries or regions?
The Norwegian directorate for nature management publishes a map of wilderness showing how far away a particular area is from heavy technical interventions, such as roads, electricity lines, hydro ...
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