Backpacking Skills

How would you like to eliminate the weight of your backpacking stove and the fuel container (canister, liquid fuel bottle, or alcohol bottle) that you use to carry your cooking fuel on backpacking trips while still being able to boil water and …

Wilderness navigation requires planning routes across terrain that doesn’t have pre-defined trails or roads to follow. While following a route using a map and compass, GPS, map-to-terrain association or just dead reckoning is required, those tools and techniques don’t provide you with the …

A few years ago, I wrote a series of posts on how to lighten your backpack, that outlined the basic principles of lightweight ad ultralight backpacking: weighing your gear, cutting the weight of your big three, selecting gear that can serve multiple …

Here are 10 hiking and backpacking gear maintenance tasks to put on your to-do list this November. With the three-season hiking and backpacking season winding down, it’s worthwhile to maintain your hiking and camping gear before packing it away for next spring …

Outdoor Research Phosphor Down Mitts are warm down-insulated mittens for people who get very cold hands during winter hikes or when downhill skiing, snowboarding, or snowmobiling. They’re insulated with 600 fill power goose down and made with Goretex Infinium with Windstopper. While …

If you’re gearing up for winter hiking and backpacking, it’s worth asking yourself if you want a backpack that’s designed for winter use, or whether you can get by using the backpack you use the rest of the year. Personally, I prefer …

Showa 282 Temres Gloves (also called Smurf Gloves or Japanese Fishing Gloves) are low-cost, single-layer, waterproof/breathable gloves lined with synthetic insulation that make excellent winter hiking and snowshoeing gloves. Priced at $20-$26/pair (depending on size) on Amazon Prime, they’re not the most …

Insulated winter water bottle holders capable of holding 32 oz wide mouth bottles are in very short supply this year. The best-insulated carriers from Forty Below, Mountainsmith, and Outdoor Research are either sold out or back-ordered due to supply chain delays. Here’s …

The Backpacking Chef’s backpacking and camping cookbook called Recipes for Adventure is chock full of healthy, hearty, and homemade backpacking recipes. I know this first-hand because I’ve made many of them, like this Ratatouille. But while the meals and snack recipes in …

Layering is one of the most important skills that winter hikers must learn.  It’s the key to staying comfortable in cold weather and preventing perspiration from chilling you. Perspiration reduces your clothing’s ability to trap the warm air heated by your body heat. …

While the small spikes on Kahtoola Microspikes and Hillsound Trail Crampons can provide extra winter traction on icy trails, there are times where you want a more aggressive crampon for winter hiking and light scrambling. While you can use heavy-duty mountaineering or …

Hillsound Trail Crampon Ultras and Kahtoola Microspikes are the most popular winter traction aids for hiking on packed snow, ice, and mixed ice and rock. They’re like tire chains for your feet, with tiny metal spikes and chains that are attached to …

Sealskinz’s Waterproof Extreme Cold Weather Gauntlet Gloves have a high degree of dexterity and warmth. I use them when I need to use an ice axe above treeline in winter and need a warm glove that is flexible enough to wrap around …

Topographic maps are used by hikers and backpackers to plan routes, estimate travel times, find water, good campsites, and track their progress on hikes. They’re designed to depict the three dimensional shape of the world (mountains, valleys, plains, etc.) in two dimensions …