Allow me to set the scene…perhaps this is familiar to you…
You’re on a multi-day adventure with friends and family. You arrive at your campsite after a long day of travel. It’s raining so you begin by setting up a tarp. This takes a couple of attempts. As it turns out, your friend Jeff (or Janice or whoever in your life has an inverse relationship between confidence and competence) ties a Pandora’s box of a knot on one of the trees, insisting he remembers exactly how to tie a bowline from when he attended summer camp 30 years ago. Your eyebrows raise a little more when Jeff announces that he doesn’t require the “extra poles” that were packed with his tent. You give your friends the help they need to get their tents set up. There will be complaints in the morning about uneven ground, roots, rocks, and if it rains particularly hard, you might try your hand at digging drainage canals around the tents.
“You arrive at your campsite after a long day of travel.”
Afterward, in the kitchen, you carefully assemble your white gas stove and unpack your kitchen items onto the wet ground. Perhaps you can MacGyver a driftwood table to prep your meal on, but more than likely, you end up squatting around a chopping block and your knees and back protest throughout the experience. Cooking the meal takes careful diligence knowing that the stove only has one temperature setting: “Burn your food.” You squat or stand around an unlit fire. There is no dry firewood available at this site.
“Cooking the meal takes careful diligence…”
By the time the dishes are done, it’s now late in the evening and the past three hours have been spent on nothing but covering the basics: shelter and food.
This has been my experience with backcountry camping since my boyhood days with Scouts Canada in the 1990’s. In the past seven years of working as a professional guide and outdoor educator, it has been much of the same. This all changed in 2019 when I began working with NIK and was first introduced to their magnificent basecamps. When we arrive at our basecamps, I fire up a propane BBQ and put out hot drinks and appetizers for the guests in no time. The tarps are already set up. The palatial six-person tents (occupancy of two) are set up on raised wooden platforms.
I can prepare the meals comfortably standing at our kitchen counter. We enjoy our meals sitting around picnic benches. After dinner, we move to the campfire where we have seasoned, split wood waiting to fulfill its promise of warmth, light, and a scent that will permeate our clothing for days to come.
“We enjoy our meals sitting around picnic benches. After dinner, we move to the campfire where we have seasoned, split wood waiting to fulfill its promise of warmth, light, and a scent that will permeate our clothing for days to come. “
To be clear: my admiration for the basecamps is not simply because they make my life easier (though they do), it allows me to add value to other areas of the trip. It frees my time for storytelling around the fire, for foraging for wild edibles, for leading a short hike, for preparing another round of hot drinks, for exploring the intertidal zone, for contributing my talents in ways that enrich the experience of my guests. Basecamp trips are NOT glamping. You still need to carry your own gear, paddle your own kayak, and spend your own sweat. Your time with Jeff will be much sweeter when he’s tasked with uncorking the next bottle of wine and not demonstrating a taut-line-hitch.
Blog written by Marc Gosselin, kayak guide with North Island Kayak.
