How to Become a Better Backpacker
Backpacking requires a high degree of self-reliance and mental agility since nothing ever goes quite the way you expect it to on a backpacking trip! That said, there are a set of fundamental skills that you can learn and master that will help you cope with the unexpected and turn adversity into a rewarding adventure. These skills can be acquired and practiced in between your trips on day hikes or researched in your spare time. Whether you’re a thru-hiker candidate or you prefer backcountry trips where few have traveled before, self-reliance is your ticket to the beyond.
Here are the 10 skills that I think are essential to becoming a better backpacker. Feel free to suggest others if I’ve missed something you feel is important. I’ve selected some articles we’ve written about each in the past to get you started.
- Trip planning
- Gear and clothing selection
- Thermoregulation
- Campsite selection
- Nutrition and food selection
- Weather and environmental awareness
- On-trail and Off-trail navigation
- Survival skills and wilderness first aid
- Gear maintenance and repair
- Self-care/health maintenance
1. Trip Planning
Detailed trip planning is a key skill that backpackers should cultivate. Planning a trip requires a lot more than just deciding where to go and when. It usually requires researching seasonal weather conditions, planning a route, estimating travel times, addressing logistic issues such as transportation and resupply points, determining water availability, identifying hazardous plants or wildlife, learning new skills you will need, an assessment of your physical fitness relative to your goals, group management or solo hiking considerations, contingency planning, and risk management.
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2. Gear and Clothing Selection
Once you’ve planned the route and environmental requirements of your journey, you can select the clothing and equipment required. For example, what is the right shelter for your destination: a tent, tarp, or hammock? How much insect protection or insulation will you need at night? What clothing is required? If the gear you own doesn’t satisfy your trip requirements, you may have to buy more appropriate clothing and equipment, learn new skills, or change your route to lower your level of risk.
3. Thermoregulation
In order to plan the right clothing for a trip, you need to understand how your body reacts to the temperatures and weather you are likely to encounter, and how your metabolism, clothing selection, and activity level can be used to regulate your body temperature. Called thermoregulation, it takes practice to understand how to regulate your metabolism and dress to prevent hypothermia or heat-related illness. For example, the best way to stay warm is often to keep moving, layer up, eat fatty food, and stay well hydrated, or to pitch your shelter and crawl into a sleeping bag/quilt until you warm up again.
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4. Campsite Selection
Good campsite selection skills can identify campsites that are better protected from the wind, cold air pockets, groundwater, or tent condensation while minimizing your impact on plant life and animals. In many circumstances, the choice of the right shelter (tarp, tent, or hammock) can also make a big difference in the ease of finding a good campsite.
5. Nutrition and Food Preparation
The heaviest item in a backpacker’s pack is likely to be food. Eliminating excess packaging and knowing how to select foods high in calories and nutritional value can lower the weight of your food bag significantly. Then again, you need to keep your food “interesting” so you’re motivated to eat it.
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6. Weather and Environmental Awareness
It’s important to develop an awareness of changing weather conditions and take mitigating actions. Seeking shelter, forest cover, or changing your route can reduce exposure to high winds, hail, heavy rain, high water levels, or other environmental factors such as flash floods or forest fires. For example, changes in cloud formations or a shift in wind direction often indicate changes in the weather, for good or ill.
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7. On-Trail and Off-Trail Navigation
It’s one thing to follow a route or GPS track that someone else has defined, but it requires much more navigational skill to create your own trip plans and research the pros and cons of different routes, particularly if you venture off blazed and well-marked trails.
8. Survival Skills and Wilderness First Aid
Solid survival skills and wilderness first aid enable you to use natural features and resources to compensate for the lack of gear in survival situations. While these skills are taught for use in emergencies, they can also be used to increase your comfort when the weather or conditions exceed the capabilities of the ultralight gear you’ve decided to bring on your trip.
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9. Gear Maintenance and Repair
Backpacking gear can be quite fragile and must be treated with care to make it last. This can include field repairs such as fixing a broken zipper or sewing torn fabric, which can put gear or clothing out of action, unless you can patch it up on the spot.
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10. Self Care/Health Maintenance
When backpacking, you need to know how to take care of your person to stay healthy and safe. From water filtration or purification to bathing, stream crossings, insect protection, and avoiding hazardous wildlife, you have to have the knowledge to keep harm from crossing your path.
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