Backpacking Safety Guide (page 3)
Knowledge is just as important as a well-stocked kit. A basic first aid training course is never a bad idea. It is also wise to familiarize yourself with the dangerous plants and animals you may encounter while on the trail. Knowing how to identify poison oak from manzanita or a brown recluse spider from something more benign can help you avoid injury altogether. As they say, prevention is the best form of treatment. If you don’t know whether something is dangerous or not, stay away. This is especially true if you encounter things like spiders, snakes or scorpions. Actually, don’t approach any wild animals or attempt to feed them. Many of them are afraid of you, and even that squirrel might attack if it feels threatened. If you come across something cool like a family of deer wading across a stream, keep quiet and admire from a distance.
You also need a good knowledge of your own body, and what it can handle. If you have medical conditions that may impede you on the trail, bring what you need to treat the condition, and make modifications to your trip when necessary. If, for instance, you have bad back or knees, you may need to slow things down and reduce the number of miles you put in each day. I made one trip on the tail end of physical therapy treatment for a knee condition. One of the ways I was supposed to minimize aggravation of my knee was to use a specialized tape to hold my kneecap in place while exercising. For whatever idiotic reason, I neglected to bring the tape on this particular trip, and of course, by the end of the trip, my knee was acting up. I ended up using medical tape from the first aid kit, but as it was not as sticky as my specialized tape, and so to keep the kneecap in place I had to wrap it so tightly around my legs that the backs of my knees were bruised by the end of the day. At one point, I also stripped down to my underwear and sat in a very cold stream to try to get the inflammation down. Better preparation could have saved me a lot of pain and hassle. We all try to pretend we are Superman, thinking we are invincible and can handle everything, but most of the time we fail miserably. So if you need to have your fellow hikers carry a larger share of the weight, don’t be ashamed. Everyone has different capabilities.
Know ahead of time that you are going to be sore most of your trip. You are making your muscles work a lot harder then they are used to, and they are going to complain about it. This is normal, and can be minimized by frequent stretching. At the very least, try to stretch well in the morning before hitting the trail, and before retiring for the evening. Stopping to stretch throughout the day is not a bad idea either. If you get a major muscle strain, you may have to slow your pace or carry less weight. If it is bad enough, you may even have to consider heading back or shortening your trip.
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