What To Bring Backpacking

Backpacking Basic Checklist

When packing, lay out everything on this list plus whatever accessories you may need to pack before packing them in a way that gives good weight distribution in the pack.

1. Backpack.

Should have large, padded hip strap for any kind of long activity.

2. Sleeping gear.

Could include:

1. Tent
2. Sleeping Bag
3. Hammock
4. Tarp
5. Pillow (one of the ones that stuffs in a little bag, not a big one)
6. Sleeping Pad – inflatable (therma rest) or closed cell foam

3. Eating Gear.

Could include:

1. Stove
2. Mess kit
3. Spoon
4. Fork
5. Knife
6. Fuel for stove
7. Bear Bag
8. Bear Rope

4. Clothing. 

Varies quite a bit depending on area. This list is for a high mountain environment during the summer

1. Pants – If you can get your hands on some that aren’t heavy cotton, that’s a good thing, but jeans or BDU’s will work
2. Shirts – obviously
3. Underwear – obviously
4. Socks – I use a merino wool sock with a polypro liner underneath. This is the best way to go, as it wicks the sweat away from your feet and keeps ‘em really comfy. If your not on that long of a trip and don’t have any, regular cotton socks will work fine
5. Fleece – This is better than a cotton hoodie for the fact that its hydrophobic and packs better
6. Hiking boots – In most cases you’ll want over the ankle for support and protection
7. Shorts – Again, not cotton is best, but in this case even I use cotton shorts. I usually only bring one or two; if I need more than that, I wash them.
8. Rain Gear – Rain suit or poncho. I usually only bring one or the other, but if you want to stay dry and camp and cover your pack, and don’t have a shelter to put your pack under, then you’ll want both.
9. Sleep clothes – in areas where bears are a concern, you don’t want to go to sleep in the same clothes that you wore around all day and dripped food on and such, making them smellable.
10. Hiking Boots – probably over the ankle and with a thick sole
11. In camp shoes – sandals or flip flops so you can get out of your boots once you get into camp.

5. Hydration.

It’ll take some experience to figure out how much water you consume per mile on a hike, but always bring and drink more than you need to, especially when starting out. Some ways to carry it are:

1. Water bottle – Obviously
2. Hydration bladder – Many packs have a pocket for one. If yours doesn’t, then keep in mind when your mounting it that you want it low and close to your back, if you can get it there. In many cases, this isn’t possible, in which case you just have to live with it.

6. Food.

There are a few different ways to handle food in the backcountry

1. Freeze dried – REI and Sportsman’s warehouse both sell freeze-dried backpacking food. This stuff is really nice, its light, easy, but it has a couple drawbacks. First, it is expensive (like 6.95 a meal expensive) Second, in many cases; the meals are on the light side, for me anyway.
2. Do your own meals – There are things you can do; however, to make your own light meals that are very cheap and plenty of food. You want stuff that you take out there without the water in it, such as Ramen, rice, couscous, oatmeal, etc. Below is a menu that I made using only stuff I could get at a grocery store for a weekend trip

Dinner 1: Ramen and power bar
Breakfast 1: Couscous and blueberries
Lunch 1: actually I cheated here on this trip and went freeze dried
Dinner 2: Rice and spam
Breakfast 2: Pop tarts and instant oatmeal
                       
These are just a few ideas you can do when you’re doing your own light
weight food.

Ways To Sleep While Backpacking

There are a few ways that you can consider and try when you are working out your sleeping arrangement for backpacking. Here are a few options:

1. Tent.

A tent provides very good shelter against wind, rain, hail, snow, bugs, snakes, and small furry creatures. It is a bit heavier in general, but it provides very good, if not the best, protection. When you bring a tent, you also need some other gear. First, a sleeping bag. Going to an outdoor store and getting a purpose built bag is best. Backpacking bags are usually mummy bags, meaning they have a hood that goes over the top of your head and keeps your head warm, where you normally would lose most of your heat. Keep in mind where and when you will mostly be camping, and buy a bag that's rated for a suitable temperature. You probably need one that is colder than you think. I live in New Mexico, and I have a +15 degree REI bag. I can use this bag in the high mountains all summer and never be so ward that I can't sleep. Also, when your looking for a bag, look for one with compression straps, usually four of them. These allow you to crush your bag down even smaller once you have crammed it, and make the bag much easier to carry. Also, will probably need a pad. One made of closed cell foam is good, but one that is inflatable is much easier to pack and lighter. Therma- Rest is a good type of pad, and a good example of what I mean by inflatable. Were not talking about an air mattress here, were talking about something 3/4" to 1 1/2" thick, and shaped roughly like your body to save weight. A pad is optional to me, but many people think it is a necessity.

2. Quick pitch shelter.

This is a derivation of a tent in that it uses the pieces of one. A quick pitch shelter is essentially a tent, without the tent. What that means is that you use the fly, poles, and footprint of a backpacking tent to create a rainproof shelter. Literally, it is your rain fly pitched without the tent under it. This type of shelter has an advantage when it comes to weight, but wind, running water, and creepy crawlies can travel through the gap between the bottom of your rain fly and the ground, or your footprint.

3. Hammock Shelter.

This shelter is composed of a hammock (the kind without the big wood spreaders at both ends, as that is a lot of extra weight) with a tarp strung like a pitched roof over it. This shelter is very light, but can be uncomfortable to sleep in. Keep in mind that the tighter and more level you rig the hammock, the flatter and more comfortable you will be able to sleep. If you have a tight hammock and a large tarp, you can rig yourself so that you are completely surrounded by the tarp, which keeps the wind off very nicely. Another good thing about sleeping in a hammock is that you are off the ground, so running water, snakes, and other ground – borne baddies can’t get to you. However, that off the ground convenience comes at a price, cold air can get under you, and if you don't have a warm enough sleeping bag, you will pay the price (freeze to death).

4. All Weather Sleeping Bag.

Last, but not least, you can go out and buy yourself an all weather sleeping bag. Now, if you’re a beginner, don’t do this, but if your really into backpacking and want to try something new and very light, you might consider this. The most important thing is RESEARCH IT. You don’t want to get out there and use your bag and get wet in a rain storm and die. Anyway, an all weather sleeping bag is a sleeping bag that is wind and rain proof. These bags are intended to be used tentless, and under the stars. This kind of shelter keeps the wind, rain, bugs, snakes, etc. off of you, and is the ultimate minimalist shelter, but it requires a lot of research, planning, knowledge and confidence to be used safely and effectively.

5. Under The Stars.  

This final way to sleep is the most simple. I've only used it in an emergency situation, never planned on it, and I doubt I ever will. You simply sleep without a shelter. On the ground. Use common sense here, don’t do it if your gonna freeze. Actually, I did do once when I had planned it, and in that case I brought my sleeping bag and layed on a tarp in a clearing, hoping that if it rained, it would wake me up so I could cover myself with the tarp.

What To Bring Car Camping

A basic list of what to bring car camping

Carry Bag

Whenever I go car camping, I put all my personal gear in its own bag. For this I use a wet bag, one intended for river rafting. You can get one of these at Walmart and it works very well because they are built so that they can be fully submerged and the contents don’t get wet, so if its sitting in the back of a truck and it rains, all your stuff stays dry. Also, the rubberized material they’re made of is nearly impossible to tear. The only disadvantage to a wet bag is that it only opens at one end, so if you need something that’s at the bottom of the bag, you’ve got to take all of the stuff out. However, a little forethought when you’re packing can solve that problem. That’s the kind of bag I prefer, but you can also use a suitcase, a big duffle (like one big enough for hockey), or anything else that you think you can fit all your stuff in.

Personal Items - Things that you need

Clothes

Keep in mind that weight is no object, so if you think it might be cold, bring a big fluffy jacket, that way you might be over prepared, but you won’t be cold.

Sleeping bag

Once again, weight is no option, and neither is size, so if it doesn’t fit in your bag, throw it in a trash bag and put it in the back of your truck, or throw it in your car. A big, square sleeping bag will be the most comfortable and ideal for this. You can get one at Walmart or an outdoor store. Also, if you’ve got a big thick blanket you don’t mind getting dirty, those work great. Wool is best, as it doesn’t matter if it gets wet, and is very warm.

Cot or Pad

Your choice, some people say they can’t sleep on a cot, as it is thin and they roll onto the sides and wake up in the night. If you bring a pad, make it a thick foam one, I've even seen some people bring a mattress and sleep on that.

Toiletries

Soap, deodorant, toothpaste, all that stuff. Keep in mind that if you are going into and area where bears are a concern, you want to put all your smellables (food, toiletries, even clothes that you wore while you ate) in a bear proof container or in your car, and don’t apply anything smellable to the outside of your body after 5 p.m. Brushing your teeth is ok. Also, make sure if your in a bear area that you put all your garbage in a safe place, either pack it out or put it in a bear proof can (there will probably be one there)

Tent

If you can, use a tent that’s rated for more people than you will be having in it, so everyone has a little extra space. (Hint – if your new at this, you want the spots near the middle of the tent, if your touching the edge condensation can run down the side of the tent and get you wet!) If it’s a big tent or one that looks complicated in the picture on the box, take it to somewhere grassy with the people who will be sleeping in it with you and set it up once, so you can get an idea of how it goes. On many of the camp outs I go on, we get to our campsite after dark, so familiarity with the tent means the difference between lying in you warm sleeping bag and messing around setting up a tent outside. Also, tents have season ratings. If your going winter camping, bring a four season tent, not a 3 season. If your buying a tent, buy a 4 season, as they cost a little more but are all around better, especially because many 3 season tents have entirely mesh tops, so if your in a dusty area, dust can settle in on your stuff. Many large tents, however, are exclusively 3 seasons, and these you should watch out for. The very big ones like the ones with multiple rooms. Are hard to set up and do terribly in the wind. The best large tents are the old Coleman ones with the steel poles that go in a U with the open end facing down and the tent hanging under them I’ve seen this type of tent stand flawlessly when one of the multiple rood tents collapsed, braking 1-4 of its poles.

Firewood

If your going to an area where firewood harvesting is illegal or no wood is available, bring your own firewood. Hardwoods and fruitwoods make the best, hottest, most smokeless fire. Also if you’re going to need to harvest firewood or make kindling, bring a hatchet. And also bring fire making tools, either be prepared to do it with a lighter or bring a torch.

Water

Most improved camping areas have water available, but if you need to haul it for cooking and such be sure to bring a container to haul it in. Wal mart (seasonally) sells a collapsible plastic water jug that is large and works great.

Cooking

If you are planning to cook make sure you have a stove and enough fuel. Sportsman’s warehouse or another outdoor store sells propane-powered stoves that are free standing and work very well for car camping. They use a regular size propane tank, the same kind as a barbeque grill.

Food

The propane stoves are good enough that you can cook nearly anything you can cook in civilization. Pair them with some cast iron cookware and you have a great easy to clean cooking setup. Keep in mind you don’t want to use soap to clean cast iron as it removes the oil from it. Scrape it clean with a piece of aluminum foil and rinse it if need be. If your going to use cast iron for the first time take a rag and out some oil on it and rub the cast iron down with it. This will give the cast iron the oil it needs to work well and prevent sticking. Many times when I go car camping we have a cracker barrel. This is a meal late at night before bed that contains many sugary and starchy foods (lots of carbs). This allows all in attendance to have plenty of calories for their bodies to burn to stay warm through the night.

Tricks and Skills - Wilderness survival kit.

A wilderness survival kit is a good thing to keep in a car or in the bottom of a day hiking pack - just in case. The first thing to look for is a container to make it with. If you're planing on something that you're going to be able to throw in the bottom of a pack, then think light. If youve got an old pair of BDU Bottoms lying around, the large outside thigh pockets of them work very well as they are large, durable, and seal securely. There are many things you can put in a survival kit, so ill start with the one I just made, then I'll list some other things you could include in a more detailed kit:

1. Tube tent (a lightweight form of tent that is basically a tarp that goes over a line then under itself to form a ten with a floor

2. Fire paste - a high temperature, slow burning fire starter that comes in a tube.

3. Lighter - cheap disposable type.

4. Space blanket - A large blanket that is much like a large piece of tin foil and works by reflecting the heat your body, or anything else, emits.

5. Small fixed blade knife

6. Flashlight

7. Light gloves

8. 20' or so of paracord

9. BDU bottom pocket to hold it all

Other item ideas

1. Emergency food - Go high calorie, like powerbars, cliff bars, jelly beans, or anything else that is high in calories and lasts for a long time.

2. Jacket - Go fleece if possible, not cotton

3. Emergency saw - The kind with a thick, toothed, folding blade is much better than the kind that is a thin, abrasive line.

4. And anything else you can think of!

Tricks and Skills - Making fire

Making fire is quite a bit harder than most people think. Combustion is a fragile balance. Think of it as a triangle. There are three points of the triangle - Oxygen, Heat, and Fuel. Without any of these three things, combustion cannot occur. Now you might wonder, why doesn't wet wood burn? It's still fuel. Isn't it? (WARNING - LONG BORING EXPLANATION COMING)Yes, it is, but it actually isn't the fuel that burns, it's the gas that is emits when it gets hot. Water has a great latent heat, meaning it can absorb a great amount of heat energy before it changes state and leaves the fuel. Once the waters gone and done absorbing heat, the fuel can expand and release the gasses that combust when they mix properly with the air. (OK THATS THE END OF IT) So, all that means for you is that wet wood doesn't burn and that you need heat fuel and oxygen for fire. So, that in mind, are you ready to build an efficient fire? No. Theres one more really important thing you need to know. Its called the surface area to mass ratio. What that means is that, the greater surface area a less massive piece of fuel has, the less heat and exposure time it will require before it combusts. So that means that, skinny twigs and dead grasses burn better than logs. You probably already knew that, but no matter how well people know it, they never apply it the first times they attempt to make a fire. Now, building a fire has a few crucial steps:

1. Wood Gathering. You'll need to gather a lot of tinder and very small wood. For tinder, use dry grasses, dry pine needles, birch bark, or any other dry, fuzzy material. For kindling, use small sticks or lumber split very thin with a hatchet. And i mean sticks 1/4" and under in thickness. Next, collect slightly larger pieces of wood, about 1/2" in thickness. Then, 1" in thickness, then 1 and 1/2" to 2" sticks, then your largest stuff, 3" - 6"

2. First, make a big pile of most of your tinder. Don't pack it down at all so that there is air, and oxygen, inside of the pile. Then, light it near the bottom of the pile, as heat travels up, so it will light the tinder above it. After your tinder is burning well, add some of your kindling, your smallest sticks. Add them fairly quickly, so it wont go out, but dont add so many that you suffocate your flame - remember, it needs air! Once those light, continue adding bigger and bigger stuff, adding just enough to keep it going, but not so much as to suffocate it

3. Lighting methods:

A. Lighter - 2nd best

B. Matches - get windproof and/or waterproof if you want to be resilient to those elements

C. Flint and steel - quite a bit harder to use, but very, very light, waterproof, and lasts nearly forever.

D. Torch - MAPP gas or butane - the one better than a lighter, but heavy.

4. Accelerants: be careful in their usage, the more volatile ones, such as white gas, will make quite a poof. If its a thick one, like fire paste, put it under your fuel. I don't use accelerants and wouldn't advise you do unless you can't do without 'em - i.e. your fuel's wet.

Tricks and Skills - Pitching a tent.

Pitching a tent is one of those things that once you know how to do it, it's a breeze, but when you don't, it can take a lot of fun out of the trip. There a few different tyoes of tents and each are set up and work completely differently. In this explanation, I'll only talk about the most common kind, the kind with flexible fiberglass poles that hold the tent uo either by sleeves or by clips.

First, theres the kind of tent with a tent body, flexible poles (aluminum or fiberglass), and a tent fly. This tyoe is by far the most common, but also the most highly varied type. There are dozens of ways to build a tent using this system, some self supporting or not. If your new to your tent or to camping it's a good idea to set it up before your trip so thet once your out there, it'll go more quickly and easier for you. So take your tent, throw it in the car, and take a couple other people with you to a park or a grassy field or something like that. If its only a 3 or less man tent and you'e got a big living room or some grass in your yard, you can do it at home. Pull your tent out of it's box, and it will probably be in a bag inside of that. Pull it out of the bag, and dump all the contents out. Unfold it or unroll it, and youll see the tent body (the biggest fabric piece), the rainfly (the second biggest fabric piece), the pole bag (the larger of the two bags), and the steak bag (the smaller bag). Pick up your pole bag, or just your poles, and extend them all (when you line them up straight, they'll lock in place). Once you've gotten them all locked in (straight and stiff) then line them up so you can see which ones are shorter and which ones are longer. The longer ones will probably be going diagonally and holding up the tent. The shorter ones will probably be holding out the rainfly, either going perpendicular across the top of the tent, or along the sides of the tent, with the flex of the pole holding the fly out. They might be all the same length, and thats fine too. Lay out your tent so its fully spread out. Next, take your longest pole, and find where you think it goes. If theres a sleve near the center of the tent, and that matches where you think it might go, feed it through the sleeve. Not all tents will have a sleeve. Once it's fed through the sleeve, or just placed where you think it goes, then take the pin on one of the metal rings on the perimeter of the tent and insert it into the open end of the pole. If the end isn't open, you've got the wrong pole. Next, push on the pole so it bends upwards, now you've got to insert the pin for the other end of the pole, so your going to have to push pretty hard, but if you push too hard, you'll bend or break the pole, so be carefull. Also, you might need to slide the sleeve along the pole otherwise it'll get gard to keep bending the pole, and you might break the pole. Once you've got that pole in, proceed to the other body poles of the tent until it's fully standing. There are a couple ways to put the fly on, and which one you use depends mainly on the wind. METHOD 1: LOW WIND: This method only applies if you have a fly that you put its own poles in before it's on the tent, most lighweight tents don't have that. So, lay out your fly and put the pole in. flexing them so they fit and sticking the rubberized ends into the little pockets that hold them. After youve got it fully expanded, get two people and lift it uf and set it on top of your tent. Line up the corners with the corners of the tent. If the fly is longer in one direction than the other, refer to the tents directions or try it both ways and do the one that seems right. After it's lined up, take the hooks on the corners and stretch 'em out and hook them around the metal hooks at the corners and anywhere else theres a hook. Next, take your stakes out. Get a hammer, mallet, or large rock and pound the first stake through the metal loop that you put the pole in. On the other stakes, pull out the corner as far as you can and pound the stake in so that the top is closer to you than the bottom is, that way the tension holds the tent out and against the ground and it wont come up off the stakes. METHOD 2: Pitch the fly over the tent (with 2 people) and then feed the fly poles between the tent and fly and insert them into their pocket holders. Hook the hooks on the metal hooks as in method 1.

Information & knowledge provided by: http://generalcamping.costaricaintroductions.com