Single best piece of advice ever given? What’s yours?

I have hundreds of these tips, most of them very useful if you remember them!

Best Advice:
1. Go to bed warm, a sleeping bag is like a thermos, put in something hot and it stays hot, put in something cold and it stays cold.

2. Mark your pee bottle!

3. WHoever said, "Wear your wet clothes to bed to dry them" forgot to say that if you have a down bag, this doesn't work, in fact you may die.

4. Never CUT towards yourself.

5. Cottons Kills, Hydrate or die, you'll go blind if you play with yourself

6. Sharing is caring

If you keep stopping you never get to the point where you can keep walking. Slow down, don't stop. Endurance is easy to build.

There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore looking like an idiot. (don't remember where I heard it, but it's true!)

It's not worth killing yourself over. Don't focus so much on the goal that you lose the enjoyment in the journey.

some of the best advice posted! That whole sleeping in wet clothes thing to dry them out—they freeze, where did that come from?

"you'll go blind if you play with yourself"

Really? No way… :)

Sleeping with wet clothes actually does work, even in a down bag. But the condensed "message" is simplistic and doesn't really depict how it's done.

You can't really sleep in lots of soaking wet clothes and expect a comfortable experience.

But things do dry. Drying socks ain't so hard, you can even just lay them next to you. Drying a damp/sweaty pair of long johns may be done by wearing them to bed.

I've even had success drying damp rain shells by wearing them to bed.

“you’ll go blind if you play with yourself”
“Really? No way… :)”

Just till you need glasses (Third post down)

"you'll go blind if you play with yourself"

Really? No way… :)"

i dint bwliece thst crzp euthwr (darn keys, can't quite make them out….)

Actually, (Sorry Mike C!) I read it in "Allen and Mike's Really Cool Backcountry Ski Book" which was a text for my winter camping class.

And I quote" I also sleep in most of my insulating layers. Heck, once I even slept with my boots on. This way you don't have to take all that time getting dressed and undressed. Plus it's easier to get out of bed if you are already dressed in warm clothes." Next to it is an awesome drawing (by Mike C!) of a guy sleeping with all of his clothes, yes even boots!

I re-read it and nowhere does it say anything about down sleeping bags getting wet, maybe that was implied and I was too dumb to know, but on my first extended winter trip, I found out the hard way. Luckily I had a synthetic bag in my car that was only about a mile or 2 away, so I went and exchanged bags when my down bag was just "nylon on nylon", all the down had clumped to the sides.

However, I do wear some wet clothes if they are not too wet in my synthetic winter bag. I have found I am not careful enough and the snow is too wet in California for down winter bags.

I have found that if you have frozen boots in the morning, you can pee on them to un-freeze them. (yes I have done this) Plus most of us have to pee in the morning anyways!

"I have found that if you have frozen boots in the morning, you can pee on them to un-freeze them. (yes I have done this) Plus most of us have to pee in the morning anyways!"

Who ties your laces?

I tie my laces, of course. But have you ever tried to tie frozen laces? Its like trying to tie sticks together.

"Just till you need glasses (Third post down)"

Dang… should have listened to Sister Mary Allen when she told us not to! Guess Douglas didn't listen either…

My uncle told me when I was a kid "You only need three things when you go in the woods, a pocket knife, a hatchet, and a bic lighter. If you can't get by with that, you don't have any place being there at all."
He had a good point. If you arent willing to carry all 60 lbs of the gear you need for ever contingency, you have no business being there at all if you cannot take care of yourself when things go south.
I used to work S&R and we never had any sympathy for folks who got themselves into trouble because they didn't carry enough gear on their backs or on their heads. We generally sent the families an invoice for our trouble.
Knowledge can carry you a long way.

Argue for your limitations and they will be yours.

Never visit a place with Mosquito in its name – from personal experience.

It is better to carry an extra 5 pounds than to stay home reading forums and trying to figure out how to shed that extra 5 pounds.

Carry more gear and you will like camping more.

Carry less gear and you will enjoy hiking more.

Party On ! 2010

Newton

one muse once noted that "if you can sleep under a tarp on the ground you can sleep under a tarp above the ground"

best advice ive ever gotten, or given.

Hike more!

Agreed not too much of my life know ledge came via one liner, but here are some things Ive added into my being:

The best way to never worry about getting into shape is to never get out of shape.”
Zabo Koszewski

"Power is not a bad thing to have in excess"

M.T.

"only great pain, as the teacher of great suspicion, the ultimate liberator of the spirit…it is only great pain, that slow protracted pain which takes its time and in which we are as it were burned with green wood, that compels us philosophers to descend into our ultimate depths and to put from us all trust, allthat is good hearted , palliated, gentle, average, wherein perhaps our humanity previously reposed.I doubt whether such pain "improves" us-but I do know it deepens us…"

F. Nietzsche

"There is timing in everything."

"The Viod is good , and contains no evil."

Musashi

To think only of winning is sickness.
To think only of using the Martial arts is sickness.
To think only of demonstrating the results of one's trainging is sickness, as is thinking only of making an attack or waiting for one.
To think in a fixated way only of expelling such sickness is also sickness.
Whatever remains absolutely in the mind should be considered sickness.

Munenori

Not sure if its been said yet:

"Less is More"

Te-Wa,

Amen brother! Under a tarp and above the ground.

The only place that I was ever comfortable on a CCF pad was in my hammock. Get off the ground and inbetween the trees!

Party On ! 2010

Newton

In Army Basic Training, the head drill sergeant told us that if we forgot everything else, that we had to remember two things:
1. Remember to "dress right dress," which means to keep an orderly formation.
2. Keep all of your s*** in one bag.

Decades later, I still remember.
–B.G.–