Mountaineering, mountain climbing, or alpinism is a set of outdoor activities that involves ascending mountains. Mountaineering-related activities include traditional outdoor climbing, skiing, and traversing via ferratas that have become sports in their own right. Indoor climbing, sport climbing, and bouldering are also considered variants of mountaineering by some, but are part of a wide group of mountain sports.
Camping is a form of outdoor recreation or outdoor education involving overnight stays with a basic temporary shelter such as a tent. Camping can also include a recreational vehicle, sheltered cabins, a permanent tent, a shelter such as a bivy or tarp, or no shelter at all. Typically, participants leave developed areas to spend time outdoors, in pursuit of activities providing them enjoyment or in a form of educational experience. Spending the night away from home distinguishes camping from day-tripping, picnicking, and other outdoor activities.
A tent is a shelter consisting of sheets of fabric or other material draped over or attached to a frame of poles or a supporting rope. While smaller tents may be free-standing or attached to the ground, large tents are usually anchored using guy ropes tied to stakes or tent pegs. First used as portable homes by nomads, tents are now more often used for recreational camping and as temporary shelters.
A tipi or tepee is a conical lodge tent that is distinguished from other conical tents by the smoke flaps at the top of the structure, and historically made of animal hides or pelts or, in more recent generations, of canvas stretched on a framework of wooden poles. The loanword came into English usage from the Dakota and Lakota languages.
A hammock, from Spanish hamaca, borrowed from Taíno and Arawak hamaka, is a sling made of fabric, rope, or netting, suspended between two or more points, used for swinging, sleeping, or resting. It normally consists of one or more cloth panels, or a woven network of twine or thin rope stretched with ropes between two firm anchor points such as trees or posts. Hammocks were developed by native inhabitants of the Americas for sleeping, as well as the English. Later, they were used aboard ships by sailors to enable comfort and maximize available space, by explorers or soldiers travelling in wooded regions and eventually by parents in the early 1920s for containing babies just learning to crawl. Today they are popular around the world for relaxation; they are also used as a lightweight bed on camping trips. The hammock is often seen as a symbol of summer, leisure, relaxation and simple, easy living.
Tree climbing is a recreational or functional activity consisting of ascending and moving around in the crowns of trees.
Webbing is a strong fabric woven as a flat strip or tube of varying width and fibres, often used in place of rope. It is a versatile component used in climbing, slacklining, furniture manufacturing, automobile safety, auto racing, towing, parachuting, military apparel, load securing, and many other fields.
A tree house, tree fort or treeshed, is a platform or building constructed around, next to or among the trunk or branches of one or more mature trees while above ground level. Tree houses can be used for recreation, work space, habitation, a hangout space and observation. People occasionally connect ladders or staircases to get up to the platforms.
Backpacking is the outdoor recreation of carrying gear on one's back while hiking for more than a day. It is often an extended journey and may involve camping outdoors. In North America, tenting is common, where simple shelters and mountain huts, widely found in Europe, are rare. In New Zealand, hiking is called tramping, and tents are used alongside a nationwide network of huts. Hill walking is equivalent in Britain, though backpackers make use of a variety of accommodation, in addition to camping. Backpackers use simple huts in South Africa. Trekking and bushwalking are other words used to describe such multi-day trips.
The Chilkoot Trail is a 33-mile (53 km) trail through the Coast Mountains that leads from Dyea, Alaska, in the United States, to Bennett, British Columbia, in Canada. It was a major access route from the coast to Yukon goldfields in the late 1890s. The trail became obsolete in 1899 when a railway was built from Dyea's neighbor port Skagway along the parallel White Pass trail.
Durrington or High Salvington Windmill is a Grade II listed post mill in High Salvington, Sussex that has been restored and is in full working order. The mill stands 320 feet (98 m) above sea level and is able to take advantage of incoming sea winds.
A blast shelter is a place where people can go to protect themselves from blasts and explosions, like those from bombs, or in hazardous worksites, such as on oil and gas refineries or petrochemical facilities. It differs from a fallout shelter, in that its main purpose is to protect from shock waves and overpressure instead of from radioactive precipitation, as a fallout shelter does. It is also possible for a shelter to protect from both blasts and fallout.
A bivouac shelter or bivvy is any of a variety of improvised camp site or shelter that is usually of a temporary nature, used especially by soldiers or people engaged in backpacking, bikepacking, scouting or mountain climbing. It may often refer to sleeping in the open with a bivouac sack, but it may also refer to a shelter constructed of natural materials like a structure of branches to form a frame, which is then covered with leaves, ferns and similar material for waterproofing and duff for insulation. Modern bivouacs often involve the use of one- or two-person tents but may also be without tents or full cover. In modern mountaineering the nature of the bivouac shelter will depend on the level of preparedness, in particular whether existing camping and outdoor gear may be incorporated into the shelter.
A portaledge is a deployable hanging tent system designed for rock climbers who need to spend multiple days and nights on a climbing route suspended from a sheer rock face while big wall climbing. A fully assembled portaledge is a fabric-covered platform surrounded by a metal frame that hangs from a single anchor point via carabiners and has adjustable suspension straps. A separate cover—called a stormfly—covers the entire system to give protection in the event of bad weather. The first portaledges were created for climbing in Yosemite.
Refugee shelters are structures ranging from the most temporary tent accommodation through transitional shelter to building temporary pics and settlements and include the most basic kind of ad hoc structure. They are created in the aftermath of a conflict or natural disaster as a temporary residence for victims who have lost or abandoned their homes. Refugees and IDPs are people fleeing their homes or countries of origin due to natural disasters, war and political or religious persecution in search of refuge and resettlement. Living in these shelters refugees may force marriage crowded, noisy, dirty, disease filled grounds where thousands of families are cramped together and surviving day by day.
Ultralight backpacking is a style of lightweight backpacking that emphasizes carrying the lightest and least amount of gear. While no technical standards exist, some hikers consider "ultralight" to mean an initial base weight of less than 4.5 kg (9.9 lb). Base weight is the weight of a fully loaded backpack at the start of a trip, excluding worn weight and consumables such as food, water, and fuel. Base weight can be lowered by reducing the weight of individual items of gear, or by choosing not to carry that gear. Ultralight backpacking is most popular among thru-hikers.
Hammock camping is a form of camping in which a camper sleeps in a suspended hammock rather than a conventional tent on the ground. Due to the absence of poles and the reduced amount of material used, hammocks can be lighter than a tent, though this is not always the case. Most hammocks will also require less space in a pack than a similar occupancy tent. In foul weather, a tarp is suspended above the hammock to keep the rain off of the camper. Mosquito netting, sometimes integrated into the camping hammock itself, is also used as climatic conditions warrant. Camping hammocks are used by campers who are looking for lighter weight, protection from ground-dwelling insects, or other ground complications such as sloped ground, rocky terrain and flooded terrain.
Hiking equipment is the equipment taken on outdoor walking trips. The duration, distance, planned activities, and environment impacts equipment selection. For example, a short day hike across flat farmland versus trekking in the Himalayas would call for different types of equipment.
A loue is an ultra-light Finnish open tent-like shelter. It is used to give reasonable protection from wind and rain during a variety of outdoor activities, including camping, canoeing, hiking and hunting. Loues are popular with Scout groups and minimalist campers. Suitable as one or two person shelters, they are compact, light and can be set up and taken down in a basic way fairly quickly. The workman-like sets shown in photographs indicate that more effort can be made to stiffen the sides and the stakes and lines used can complicate a taut setup. The open front permits fire viewing, ventilation and looking out over a scenic view. A loue consists of a roughly conical section of fabric with the semi-circular bottom edge grounded by stakes and the tip raised with a single pole. Suitable standing tree trunks may be used to suspend the tent if an open campfire is not to be used. This style of ''tarp tent" can best be raised using a scissors-pole assembly. A pole suspension system allows for positioning an open fire in front of the shelter without the risk of damaging tree trunks or roots. The panels of a true Finnish loue are designed to provide a semi-circular short wall around the shelter and a triangular piece at the tip can be let down to provide a little more shelter in front. With suitable siting and careful staking and tensioning, the side walls can be set close to the ground, providing protection from drafts and lifting from winds.
A whoopie sling is an easily adjustable rope sling designed for tree pruning or tree removal. The whoopie sling works by wrapping the sling around the trunk of a tree or a heavy load bearing limb and pulling the end of the rope within the sling through a spliced choker. By adjusting the size of the eye in the rope through the choker the user is able to adjust the length of the sling constricting around the tree without needing knots.
