FOP Leader Handbook

Your Campsite

A very important part of a FOP trip is setting up camp. Establishing an efficient, safe, and low-impact campsite is a habit that each FOP trip should develop from Day 1. Make sure that your campsite adheres to FOP policies and procedures, and get your FOPpers involved in the camp setup process.

• Tarps should be set up in an established tent-site or low-impact area if possible.
• Cooking site should be 50 feet from the tarps, fueling station, and any body of water.
• Fueling site should be 50 feet from the cook area and 50 feet from any body of water.
• Sump site should be at least 200 feet from any water source and at least 50 feet from your tarp.
• The bearbag tree should be set up at least 200 feet from camp.
• Consider the location of the water source based on the above criteria.

As your group nears your intended campsite, devote a few minutes to thinking and talking about what will happen when you arrive. Of the three major nightly projects (tarps, dinner, bear bag), which is most crucial and which can wait until later? Ideally, three subgroups can accomplish the three tasks simultaneously, but this efficiency may not be possible until late in your trip. Prioritize!

• If you had an early lunch, dinner might be most important.
• If darkness approaches, the bear bag situation might be most safely taken care of first.
• If the chance or reality of rain is upon you, you should put up at least one tarp as soon as possible.

Campsite Selection and Preservation

Most of FOP camping will be done in established campsites. Questions to consider when picking a campsite:

• Is the site protected from the elements: wind, precipitation, lightning?
• Is a suitable water source within a reasonable distance?
• Are there large dead trees or limbs that could fall?
• Is the campsite safe from falling rocks?

Other considerations:

• If established campsites are available, you should use them; creating a new site has a huge impact on the environment.
• Camping sites should be at least 200 feet from the trail and from any water source.
• It’s best to be out of sight from the trail.

Leave the area better than you found it. Avoid trenching, and don’t cut live branches or pull up plants to make a pleasant campsite. If you clear twigs or pine cones from the sleeping area, be sure to scatter them back over the campsite before you leave. Take the time to kick the dirt around to disguise your use. Make sure it looks as though no one camped there.

Do not carve on trees or shelters. FOP does not want to leave a legacy.

Fire

We discourage fires. They are dangerous to people (especially given how flammable synthetic clothing is) and to the environment. Fires should only be made if there is already an existing fire pit and plenty of dead wood on the ground. If you do make a fire, wood should be gathered at least 200 yards away from the campsite. No one should hold a stick which is lit on one end. Do not break off any branches to do it, and make sure all wood is burned to white ash, and then make sure it is completely out by pouring lots of water on it. Use common sense about proximity to sleeping site and about wind dangers. Also, pay attention to whether fires are banned in your area. One way to create the fire atmosphere without a real fire is to bring candles and sit around them instead. But be very careful with any flame (including the stove); watch out for dry leaves and wood as well as student clothing and equipment. You can also use a headlamp pointing into a water bottle.

Hygiene

It is important to keep as clean as possible on the trail. Hands especially must remain clean; the risk of infection is great. Everyone must wash hands after going to the bathroom and before preparing or eating meals.

General sanitation practices:

• Do not share water bottles or bowls and spoons. Sharing spreads germs and it is important that everyone stays healthy on FOP.
• No soap, even biodegradable, should be used in lakes or streams. Soap is discouraged for anything besides washing hands after using the trowel or before cooking. It is important to remember that you can still be relatively clean in the outdoors. Rinsing with a wet bandanna can really help someone to feel cleaner. If people feel the need to wash, make sure they lather on the shore, far from the water (and pay attention to drainage flow) and rinse the soap off with water carried in jugs or pots. This allows biodegradable soaps, which are all you should use, to break down and filter through the soil before reaching any body of water. FOP will provide Dr. Bronner’s; discourage FOPpers from bringing anything else. The night before the trip, explain why FOP does not use soap and shampoo, and then collect any bottles from your FOPpers.
• If washed, clothes shouldn’t be soaped, just rinsed; residual soap can cause skin irritation.

Going to the Bathroom

• Urinate 200 yards away from the water supply and off the trail.
• Catholes should be 200 yards away from water, 4 to 8 inches deep, and covered at that depth for decomposition purposes. Try to make trowel use in your group not a big deal, so people aren’t embarrassed to ask for it. You may want to teach people the “telephone game” to make people feel more comfortable and less inhibited (#1 is a “local call” and #2 is a “long-distance call;” the trowel is “operator assistance” and the TP is the “white pages.”) Other groups have had success in naming their trowel (“Doug” works well).
• If an outhouse is available, you should always use it because the areas we travel in are used by many hikers. Using the outhouse reduces the impact on the land and improves the sanitary conditions of the area. Many outhouses don’t allow urination (this slows down the composting process. Be aware of the rules of your outhouse and inform your FOPpers, too.)
• It is important that FOPpers are going to the bathroom regularly. There are medical concerns associated with not defecating regularly. Make sure they know this and feel comfortable with going in the woods; you don’t want them holding it for 5 days.
• We bring a limited amount of toilet paper because it needs to be carried out of the field. If used, it must be bagged and carried out (each person can cover a plastic bag with duct tape to make a used TP bag for themself). Leaves and pinecones are a lot less hassle in the long run. Make it an adventure, and keep the TP stashed for hygiene, diarrhea, and emergencies.

Period Kits

Dealing with your period in the woods may sound like a bummer, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are a few suggestions for making yourself as comfortable and prepared as possible. You should tell the FOPpers this information before your trip.

Even if you are not expecting to get your period during the trip, bring adequate supplies anyway. The change in diet, the strenuous exercise, and spending a lot of time with other women can all affect your cycle. This is even true if you are on the pill. You will not have extra supplies nor will you have access to a store, so come equipped!

We suggest the following system for dealing with feminine hygiene in the woods. Equipment:

• 1 small, dark colored, opaque bag or stuff sack
• 3 small ziplock bags
• 1 travel pack of baby wipes (for cleaning purposes)
• A generous supply of tampons (tampons are much easier to deal with than pads, but if you have to use pads, go ahead). Tampons without an applicator (like OB) are ideal because they produce the least waste & take up the least space in your pack.

Directions:

1. Take the tampons (or pads) out of the box and put them all into one ziplock bag. (Why carry around a useless cardboard box all week? The ziplock will also protect your supply from the rain.)
2. Put the travel pack of baby wipes inside a second ziplock bag. (Keep those vital cleaning supplies moist & protected from the elements.)
3. Keep the third ziplock bag empty to use as a mini-garbage for used supplies - all dirty baby wipes, used tampons, and tampon wrappers should go into the garbage ziplock. (Kind to the environment and to the group garbage!) If you are a pad user, you may need bigger and/or multiple ziplocks. If you are concerned about odor, you can put a used tea bag in the garbage ziplock after breakfast on the trail.
4. Put all three bags inside the opaque bag. Voila! You have a self-contained period kit! (Oh, so neat and discreet.) On the trail, you should keep this in an accessible part of your pack.

The Pee Rag

Many female FOPpers are surprised to learn that their male counterparts generally do not use toilet paper when they pee; many male FOPpers are surprised to learn that their female counterparts do. Since we will not be using toilet paper on the trail, some female FOPpers may prefer to bring an extra bandanna (or half a bandanna - just cut it with scissors) that they can use as a pee rag. If you are well hydrated (as you should be), the pee rag will not have much odor at all. Of course, “drip dry” is always an option.

Some Final Words

This can be a sensitive issue and should be discussed before you leave Cambridge. Even if they do not plan to get their periods, all FOPpers whose body can have a period should bring their own pads or tampons and some extra plastic bags - ideally in a system like the one described above. An evening run to CVS with your FOPpers can give any unprepared FOPper a chance to make these purchases. Be sure to explain to your FOPpers that tampons and sanitary pads must be bagged and carried out. The plastic bags should be bearbagged with the food every night. Tampons and pads cannot be left in outhouses or buried - they will attract bears and other animals.

Drinking Water

Drinking unpurified or inadequately purified water puts you at risk of infection by bacteria, viruses or parasitic cysts (such as giardia). Wilderness water supplies are widely infected with giardia because animals are widely infected themselves. You need to purify all water to ensure that no one gets sick. We also expect you to educate your group about the need for purified water so that no on begins their first year at Harvard running to the toilet every few minutes.

All water must be purified by boiling or by use of iodine or chlorine. FOP trips carry chlorine dropper bottles. It is your responsibility as a leader to help your FOPpers develop and maintain good water purification habits.

Purification pointers:

• Water used for cooking can be purified by maintaining a rolling boil for about 3 minutes. (Note: this is often debated. Other sources say all bacteria aren’t killed until 10 minutes.)
• Water needed for drinking should be purified with chlorine, since boiling consumes a lot of fuel needed for cooking. Add 3 drops to each liter of water, thread the cap (let some chlorinated water seep around the threads) so there is no unpurified water at the mouth of the water bottle, and leave for a half hour to let that chlorine work.
• Everyone should be filling and purifying water bottles at every opportunity.
• It’s a good idea to assign three FOPpers to water purification duty for the week, so that someone always knows when the bottles are okay to drink.
• If you are adding any flavoring to your water, like lemonade powder, do so only after the purifying time has elapsed.
• To keep water sources usable, follow US Forest Service Land Use Regulations.

Elastic Band System

On the trail, FOP uses the “rubber band system” to differentiate the three states of water: purified, unpurified, or “charging”. Before you start hiking, have each FOPper attach an elastic band to each one of their water bottles. When there is no chlorine in the water, leave the elastic band hanging around the cap strap. If it’s charging but not ready, the elastic goes around the cap or mouth of the water bottle. And when it’s done, pull the elastic down around the body of the bottle to signal that it’s good to go. Voila!

Tips

Morning

• Hang your watch on your ridgeline under the tarp, so you will be able to hear the alarm in the morning. Otherwise the sleeping bag and clothing muffle the sound. Or, put you watch in your hat for a similar effect.
• For a group who have a hard time getting going in the morning, get up before your FOPpers and take the bear bag down, so that right when they get up, their food is there and they can start packing immediately. Also, if you’re feeling really generous, you can get up super early and make breakfast before your group wakes up, so that they have motivation to get right out of bed.

Around Camp

• Bandanas help to mark off the rope attached to the tarp, both so that people don’t trip over it and so that the tarp doesn’t get messed up once you’ve set it up.
• Placing a bandana on each end of a tarpline next to the plastic will prevent rain water from riding the tarpline into the tarp.
• Put your Nalgene on the ground face down on top of your head lamp to create a lantern with perfect mood lighting for a group meeting. Or, put your headlamp onto the bottle with light facing into the bottom.

Nighttime

• Put your wet socks on your shoulders (or in your crotch) while you sleep and they’ll be dry in the morning.
• Bring earplugs help on trips with alarm noises and snoring.
• If snoring is a problem, sometimes by matching breaths with the snorer, you will be able to be less bothered. When they exhale, you exhale, fooling your body into thinking you are snoring.
• Worried about the waterproofness of your tarp? Just double the tarps up, one on top of the other, and get cozy. Or, cut extra garbage bags along the sides - leave the bottoms, so it’s one big rectangle of plastic - and lay the sheets of plastic over the ridgeline.)
• Do not put a plastic bag over a sleeping bag’s bottom for extra waterproofing, it will collect condensation that’s escaping from your sleeping bag, and you’ll wake up with soaking wet feet.
• Keep one pair of socks in your sleeping bag and never take them out: your “bed socks”. This way, no matter how wet, cold, or grungy your feet get during the day, you’ll always have clean, dry warmth awaiting you in your sleeping bag.
• You can put the bottom of your sleeping bag on your backpack to keep your feet off the ground.
• Brent’s Curtain Method (BCM): enter your sleeping bag warm wearing an extra shirt and pair of pants. Drop your pants to your ankles, but do not take off. Lift your shirt to your neck and roll-up sleeves, or just leave shirt around neck. When your body temp starts to drop through the night, pull the ‘curtains’ down: pull your tops and bottoms on, giving you the extra bit of warmth to sleep for another couple of hours.
• Another method of keeping warm is the Matissa Gasket (MG) which involves taking a fleece and clothes to wrap around your neck in your sleeping bag. Since heat in a sleeping bag often escapes through the hole in the top, the gasket plugs up the hole.
• Since staying on the sleeping pad is important if you want to stay warm, you can shape your sleeping to ‘hold’ your body on the pad by placing shoes under the sleeping pad sides to make the edges higher than the middle and stop the pad from sliding. Also, if you are sleeping on slanted ground, you can place shoes and boots at the bottom of your sleeping pad to keep it from sliding out from under the tarp.
• Clothing can act as padding to fill in spots, pad rocks, and try to make your bed more comfortable.
• If you are getting cold at night, make sure you go to bed warm. The sleeping bag only retains heat, so do calisthenics before getting in your sleeping bag or even push-ups or sit-ups once in your sleeping bag to warm up the bag.
• Because the ground sucks away your heat, the higher off the ground you are, the warmer you are, so do not be afraid to place layers of clothes on your sleeping pad to create an extra insulating layer.
• If your feet are cold during the day, you can create “vapor barrier socks.” Put on a pair of thin polypro socks, then a plastic bag over your foot, then a dry pair of thick socks. Your feet will get wet from your sweat, but the plastic will prevent evaporation, keeping heat from escaping your foot and keeping insulating layers dry (boots and wool socks).
• If your sleeping bag is too long for you, the empty air at the bottom will make you colder (since you stay warm in a sleeping bag because your body warms the air, and so all that extra air to warm makes your body colder). Try stuffing some extra clothing down at the bottom to keep your toes warm. Alternatively, pull your sleeping bag up so that the extra length is squished around your waist.

Dealing with bugs

• Put DEET on with the back of your hands.
• Use Pyrethum on your clothes before you leave, it will stay on your clothing for 2 weeks.
• Be extra careful to wash hands before doing food stuff…DEET is nasty, nasty stuff.

General Ideas

• Taking everyone’s watch can create a new experience of time awareness for your FOPpers, only eating when they’re are hungry, sleeping when they’re tired, etc. (Make sure that leaders keep watches.) Also, make sure this is a choice, not forced.
• You can put Andes Mints (mountainous, delicious) on everyone’s pillows the first night for a cutely hotel-ish treat to make the FOPpers feel welcomed and cared for (a Chris Angell special).
• Bring extra ziplock bags as all of your FOPpers will want them.
• Teabags can work to clean your face.