Three Pro-Tips for Staying Hydrated on the Trails

Water. Probably one of the poorest planned and most important aspects of the 10 essentials when we go out for a day hike.

Don't get me wrong, I know almost all of us grab a water bottle (or two?) before we head out, but do we really think about our hydration much more than this:

"I've got some water; I'll drink it when I'm thirsty. I hope it lasts."

A recent Twitter conversation with friend Limax7 prompted me to share three simple pro-tips to make sure you are well hydrated on your hikes, regardless of where they are or what season it is.

Tip #1 - Pre-Hydrate

Uh, what does that even mean? It's as simple as it sounds. Drink some water BEFORE the hike. 

Top advice from professional trainers, athletes, and first aid folks is consistent on this point. Plan on your morning before your hike to drink about 1 litre (1 quart, or 34 fluid ounces) of water in small amounts. We'll talk about the drawbacks to "chugging" water in tip #2. 

This is super important as you'll be losing fluids through the day and this way you are off to a solid start on staying well hydrated.

Tip #2 - Bring the Right Amount for Your Day

Exactly how much water you will need for any hike will of course be affected by certain variables - heat, duration of the hike, incline of the hike, your personal health, etc. 

Most medical professionals agree that people should drink 2 litres (~1/2 gallon, 2 quarts, or 67 fluid ounces) of water per day. So use that as a baseline, minimal amount to bring on a day hike.

I get it though - water is HEAVY! Consider "caching" water along your route to have it available on your way back and not have to carry it the full distance. Have a .5 or 1 litre water bottle tucked behind a tree or under some rocks (sealed tightly, and with no flavouring so as not to attract animals to it) then drop a waypoint on your GPSr or phone.

Split your daily water carry between members of your team, and consider using lighter containers for the water such as collapsible water bottles, or maybe even a hydration pack. The small amounts of weight & space it saves can end up making a big difference.

On a hot day, or a longer hike, add another 1-2 litres to your daily carry of water. You can cache a litre at the "half way back" point of your hike (of course, not if you are hiking a loop!). 

Ultimately, you need to be the best judge of how much water to carry but you will rarely regret carrying too much.

Lastly, don't "chug" your water. It's tempting and we've all done it. But you are far better off to "sip" your water at regular intervals, perhaps every 10 minutes as a guide. On a hot day day or at high elevations your water intake should equal approximately 1 litre per hour. 

So doing the math, if you are going on a 4 hour hike on a hot day, you should pre-hydrate, and then carry approximately 4 litres of water! I know - that's a lot of weight!

Tip #3 - Have a Back-Up Plan

Plan B, right? So what happens if you didn't bring enough water? We won't get into the details of heat stroke, heat exhaustion, dehydration, muscle cramps... you likely know all this. But be aware, running out of water is serious business. 

So what's your Plan B? Essentially what I'm getting at is how will you get water while you are out on the trail?

Try and figure out if there are natural or man-made water sources along your planned route. Hiking trail review sites or geocaching logs are good sources of intel - don't rely on the fact that your topo maps show a creek or pond!

In the event there is no water source on your hike, then make certain you bring MORE than enough with you. 

Myself and many of my hiking friends always carry a LifeStraw with us. It's a great "Plan B" because it filters the Cryptosporidium and Giardia from natural water sources. The beauty of these types of filters is they are reusable, inexpensive, effective, and light to carry.

If you are planning a longer hike, consider a pump or bottle-press type filter such as Katadyn products. These are a bit bulkier and heavier, but can process larger amounts of water that you can bottle/store for later use.

Get Home Safe!

So that's my quick three pro-tips you can use to make sure you avoid any issues with hydration on your geocaching or other hikes. 

One last note - don't get tricked by Winter or cool Spring/Fall weather! Your body needs the same base amount of water regardless of the temperature and climate, so don't fall into the trap of "it's cold out so I only need 500ml for a day of hiking." 

So that all said, go outside and "cache safely, and cache often!"



LANMonkey's Geocaching Adventures are written by Jay Kennedy, outdoor adventurer and photo-journalist. All content is affiliated with the Wander Network. Experience his adventures on Twitter and Instagram by following @LANMonkeyGC, and subscribing to LANMonkey on YouTube. He is also a regular co-host of the Caching in the Northwest geocaching podcast. 

Geolocation Gaming Bonanza Day

A bonanza day for LANMonkey and geolocation games for certain! Today Piggy the Geohound (A.K.A. Jasper) took me to Delta Watershed Park to find a couple of Geocaching.com geocaches we hadn't found there yet.

After a quick 400+ metres through the interconnecting trails, we managed the finds for both those caches, and were off to a great start to our caching day.


Next up was to switch listing sites as OpenCaching.US has one of only three listed caches in the Lower Mainland in this very same park. So after WetCoaster's virtual we went, which we could be FTF on. After a minor struggle with coordinates our knowledge of the park and common sense took over and we headed straight for where GZ simply must be!


Arriving at ground zero we filled up with nice, fresh cold water and then searched a bit to find the information. At this point I learned a couple of interesting things about OpenCaching.

•  First, I thought that C:Geo on my Blackberry would allow me to use OpenCaching.US as an alternate listing site but it's not an option - only OpenCaching.DE and OpenCaching.PL; I tried to connect to .DE on the chance that it's all the same data with simply different URLs, but I couldn't authenticate my OpenCaching.US account so I'm assuming that's a no. I'd be curious to hear from OpenCaching.US user or moderators if I'm off on the wrong tangent here?

• Second, when completing a virtual on the OpenCaching listing service, you use the "keyword or phrase" that the C/O has you looking for at ground zero as the "password" you need to submit the log. So really, no need to submit an email to the C/O before logging your find. Fascinating. In fact, much more like the newer Geocaching Adventures Lab Caches from Geocaching.com as opposed to how the grandfathered virtual caches at GC.com work.

 With our first OpenCaching.US find ever under our belt, and a FTF on it to boot, we decided to check and see if there were any Munzees in the park - yup, two and neither far from where we were. "Well Piggy, let's get ourselves some Munzees."
We honestly don't play Munzee much so it was a great opportunity to get a couple of those found. So while we tracked down the Munzee locations, we took the opportunity to use Sighter and place four new sights in the park for the others in the Lower Mainland who've started playing that fun game.

Soon enough we had located those sneaky QR codes and had the first captures on those Munzees - Wow, FTFs in two different geolocation games on one day... sweet!

Time to head back to the car and head home. But wait! Just as we got to the car the phone buzzed a Geocaching.com alert for a newly published traditional cache in Crescent Beach. Well... it's not *that* far and Piggy and I do have the day off... why not? So in we hopped, loaded the coords in the GPSr and off to Crescent Beach.

When we arrived, we started searching and only moments later hear familiar voices on the other side of the hedge - it was Adroit Seeker and Rain Willowsnap, local cachers I'd crossed paths with earlier this morning. LOL. The three of us searched for a bit when Adroit Seeker came up with the find for a shared FTF. Nice!

After a brief but pleasant chat at ground zero, we all headed off, and Piggy and I headed home to go fire up that BBQ and cook some steak.

"3 FTFs in three different games, and four new sights uploaded. Piggy, do you feel like you earned some steak tonight?"

Backroads Mapbook Geotour Adventure

The silence has been deafening! But the LANMonkeys are back on the Interwebs after another brief hiatus. The good news is that we have been busy caching & filming so there's a bunch of great adventures coming, starting with our recent trip to the Interior of BC.

One of the goals of this trip was to collect the three Backroad Mapbook geotour caches for the Thompson Okanagan region, and the bonus cache north of Shuswap.

This was tied in with a MVGeocacher trip to Penticton BC where a group of us got together to walk a section of the Kettle Valley Railway trail in Naramata, and find the caches that make up the "Wine Glass" geoart. But more about that trip in a near-future blog entry. For this posting, we'll talk about our adventure in finding those BRMB caches.


The first one we found was west of Hedley, BC, on Old Hedley Road. As we pulled up to the logical place to park and hike to ground zero, we saw another car there and thought "perhaps other cachers?" Our thoughts were confirmed as we headed up the trail and met the nonchalant acting Maya Bee and Red Alert, just coming back from making that find themselves. We stopped for a brief chat, and knew we'd be seeing them the next day on the Wine Glass hike.

That was our Good Friday, and a really good Friday it was. The weather was beautiful, and we truly enjoyed the magnificence of God's creation along Hwy 3, as we made our way through Manning Park (with active snow at Allison Pass), stopped to cache in Princeton, stopped for more caching in and around Hedley then made our way (with several more caching stops) to Penticton for the evening.

Saturday, after a morning meet & greet event in Penticton, then the "Wine Glass" hike in Naramata, we headed off up the west side of Lake Okanagan stopping for only a couple of caches on our way to
the next cache in the series - BRMB - Thompson Okanagan  BC - On the Water (GC4KJQK) at the Everly Recreation Site.

On our way to that cache we passed a herd of Big Horn Sheep on the road - very cool!

After that steep little hike & find, we were off again to try and get to BRMB TOBC - 20th Anniversary Bonus Cache (GC4KKAA) on the north side of Shuswap Lake, past the little town of Celista, BC.

That's where we had one of the bigger adventures of the trip!

When we finally got to the trail head, we knew it wasn't long until dusk. So we armed ourselves with headlamps & flashlights, and off we went along the trail. Well, very quickly the trail disappeared on us. There's an exceptional amount of blowdown on the trail, and while our Northwest Trails actually did have the Onyx Falls Trail on it, it was a challenge to find that trail. So we kept trying to stay as close as we safely could to the trail as noted on the GPSr, and kept finding/losing the trail.

At one point, we ended up working our way through snow up to our hips (on April 20th), but pressed on regardless, with our daylight fading on us. By the time we got ourselves through the bush and to the last 100m, we faced a steep decent down what seemed about a 10m embankment. The top part was muddy and a bit slippery, but the last couple of metres was a sheet of ice! Surprise!

Safely at the bottom, we found that it was completely dark at this point. Using the cache hint, our geosenses, and the GPSr (which was wandering  bit in the deep tree cover along the creekside) Mrs. LANMonkey eventually made the find. At this point, we took a breather and recorded a bit of content for our vlog. Of course, we still had to get back to the truck, and it was completely dark now.

We made our way up the embankment, and bushwacked our way to where Northwest trails said there should be a trail. And what do you know, we found the trail. On our way back, we did lose it a couple of times, but actually found better luck following the trail out than in - I know, typical cachers!

Once back to the truck, we strapped in and headed our way back to Kamloops to spend the night before searching for the last of the BRMB caches for this trip, at Duffy Lake.

As we cleared Celista, the RCMP had a roadblock, and we had a nice chat with a constable who had been based in Walnut Grove (Langley, BC) not long ago. She had no problem with our story that we weren't drinking but actually heading out after finding a geocache. We looked pretty tired and "bushed." Literally!

The next morning, we headed nice and early west out of Kamloops, and followed the Duffy Lake FSR to Duffy Lake, hitting snow on the road for the last kilometre. Once at Duffy Lake, finding the final cache in the trio of Thompson Okanagan BRMB caches was pretty easy - at least compared to the previous day! That cache was well stocked with swag still!  We considered continuing west on the FSR but found it quickly impassable for anything except a quad or narrow 4x4, so back the way we came.

Well folks, thanks for sticking with me through that story. We sure hope you enjoy the video of the adventure, and trust me, there's lots more to come from that same Easter weekend adventure!

Cache safely, and cache often.
The LANMonkeys.

PRED Trail, Mojave Desert, & other news...

Welcome to another Geocaching Tuesday!  We missed you guys, but we've been pretty busy around LMGA HQ lately.

On the geocaching front, we've uploaded our latest episode, which features a bike-caching adventure where Mrs. LANMonkey & Manta Rayz joined me to complete the PRED series of 40 geocaches along the Pitt River north of Pitt Meadows BC. Check it out, and enjoy the scenery - let me know what you think about bike caching - is it your style?




For a complete change of scenery, we recently returned from a geocaching adventure in the Mojave desert with our caching buddies Catapult Jeff & Iron Maiden. We cached the "Heart of the Mojave Desert" series as well as the back-half of "Route 66" and a number of other caches preceding and ante-ceding those trails. Truly an amazing and fun time with great friends - watch for the next few episodes of LMGA where I'll feature different aspects of that trip.

While we were caching with them, Catapult Jeff & Iron Maiden made their 10,000th cache find - that's CRAZY! I'll be featuring that event in an episode coming very soon so watch for that too!

Right after we got back it was off to the "Caching in Space" event held in Burnaby, BC. A well hosted and fun event that the weather actually cooperated for. Our sincere thanks to our hosts for the evening, KNL Caching, goaliegirl38, and jeepgurl1970. You guys did an awesome job!

Last bit of caching news, is that this Thursday I'll be joining the Caching in the NorthWest podcast as a guest. I'm very excited and honoured to be joining The Bad Cop and WitzEnd for an episode of their podcast. Thanks gents, I'll try not to embarrass you!

So that's all our quick updates for now, but in the meantime we're working hard at LMGA HQ producing tons of new content from our recent travels, events, and fun so watch for it each and every Geocaching Tuesday, and maybe even a few surprise episodes in-between.

Until next time, "cache safely, and cache often!"
The LANMonkeys.

Manning Park FTF Adventure

Thanks for your patience between blog posts - we had a major technology melt-down about a month ago and lost all our upcoming content. :(  In the meantime, we've been having some amazing geocaching adventures and recording new content that we'll start sharing again now.
First up is our recent overnight to E.C. Manning Provincial Park where the LANMonkey's and Manta Rayz decided to try a 21km return hike in an attempt to get a First to Find (FTF) on a cache (Oh Brother) at the summit of First Brother mountain.


 Manta Rayz, Piggy, and the LANMonkeys headed along the trails with LOTS of water and bug spray - both mandatory for this hike. Up at just over 2,000m we enjoyed the views from N49 09.166 W120 46.034 and then continued along to where Fat Dog Creek/Fat Dog Trail connect. We hadn't really heard of Fat Dog Trail before in our years of hiking the area, but it's apparently a cross-country ski trail, without a trailhead marker at the junction, but it was marked on our GPSr maps. There is also an alpine pond nearby at N49 09.413 W120 46.381 that likely has a name but we just call it "Fat Dog Alpine Pond."

So we made it to the trail junction for First Brother, and Manta Rayz was not impressed by the last kilometer ahead of us. At this point we were at about 2,100m and had at least another 100m vertical to go. Up we slowly pushed amidst some nasty horseflies and deer/blackflies, along the ridge with an amazing view down to a small lake, and then some tricky rock scrambles in the last bit; we had to push Piggy up one or two spots and assist him down, as these bits weren't really dog-friendly territory. Piggy is accustomed to some climbing though.

Soon we were upon the summit post, but not yet at the cache location - "another 30m to go" Mrs. LANMonkey announced. Out came the video camera to capture the moment of truth for YouTube, as Manta Rayz searched about at ground zero and made the find. We held our breath as the log book was removed from the cache...

Congrats to teammelbert - find #1000

Driving into work today & listening to the PodCacher podcast episode 415, I tuned in a bit more closely when I heard Sandy mention the name of a geocaching team I recognised as being from our neck of the woods.

In their regular section congratulating geocachers on milestones either emailed or phoned in to the PodCacher crew, the first mentioned was find #1,000 for teammelbert. The description of the find was highlighted by the fact that mel & bert (and baby melbert!) chose GC429MW "Memorial to "jrhere"" as their milestone cache. Classy move teammelbert, and congrats not only on 1,000 great memories for you all, but mention of local geocaching goodness around the world on the podcast.

PS: love the photos and the choice of going above & beyond the traditional paper sign!


Cache safely, and cache often!
Team LANMonkey

It's Not About the Numbers - Except When it is...

We try not to make a big deal about the numbers when it comes to geocaching, except for when we hit fun milestones.

Last night Mrs. LANMonkey & I were out in the rain trying to keep alive a streak of consecutive finds so that we can claim a "challenge cache" we have our eyes on.  So we made a quick find of one not too far from home, called "Swing On By!" (GC3G2TE) by JMFB.

Cute container, great little suburban location, QEF (Quick Easy Find), and that find made over-all number 850 for us, and number 300 for 2013. We thought is was cool the way those numbers aligned.

Anyhow, if you haven't found this one already (it had been dormant for a while last fall) come on and check it out - and while you're there, have a swing nearby.

As always, cache safely & cache often!
Team LANMonkey

Lynden, WA & First Event

Happy Geocaching Tuesday!

In the latest instalment of LANMonkey's Geocaching Adventures we visit Lynden Washington with Manta Rayz. We explored Berthusen Park where we found a number of caches and really enjoyed the amazing beauty of that park. Then we travelled through rural Lynden picking up a few caches here and there, and then grabbed a couple of the urban ones. It was on a Sunday afternoon after church, and we could not believe how QUIET Lynden was on a Sunday in March - lots of parking for those park & grabs!

We'd really encourage anyone in the Vancouver area who hasn't visited there yet to make sure you get accross the border (with your passports!) and have fun. The border guards all seemed familiar with Geocaching and gave us no grief at all; easy trip, fun trip!

This past weekend, Mrs. LANMonkey, Manta Rayz, Piggy & I attended our first event - "In Memory of Scooby." The event was held in Fleetwood Park in Surrey and was a lot of fun. As this was our first event, we met lots of you geocaching folks, and had a great time. As it was billed as a "dog friendly" event, that made it just that much more fun!  It was a well planned and executed event, and it was great to put some faces to a number of cachers who we've heard of one way or another before.

So, as always, cache safely & cache often!
Team LANMonkey