Frequently Asked Questions

There will probably come a time in your hiking career where you need or want to do a big day hike or a backpacking route that requires hiking longer daily distances than you’re used to. While training for bigger mileage in advance can help tremendously, there are often limits to …

I’m often asked about the best way to attach snowshoes to a backpack. There are basically two ways: You can attach them to the sides of your pack (top photo) or hang them off the back, either stuffed in a shovel pocket, as shown below or just attached using shock …

As a rule of thumb, you can figure on using 2 lbs of food per person per day on a 3 season backpacking trip. Depending on your body weight and exertion level, you may need more or less food, but that’s a pretty reliable estimation to begin with. When I …

Waterproof breathable rain jackets are not permanently waterproof. Instead they’re coated with a chemical formulation called DWR, which stands for Durable Water Repellant, that causes water to bead up on the jacket surface when it rains and roll off. The problem is that this DWR coating rubs off after a time, …

The size of snowshoe you need depends on your body weight, the weight of your gear, snow type, and whether you snowshoe on broken-out trails or travel cross-country, on fresh powder. But if you are about to buy a new pair of snowshoes, don’t take manufacturer’s size recommendations as gospel. …

This is a serious issue because I see a lot of people do this improperly, opening themselves to a potentially serious injury. To remedy that, I’m going to demonstrate how you should do this safely, in a way that prevents the axe pick from puncturing your hip if (when) you …

Wind and wind chill can be a real issue when you’re out hiking, and being able to accurately estimate wind speed without a weather forecast or an anemometer can save you from frostbite or worse. But people’s ability to do so is woefully bad and no doubt the source of many …

Rain happens. Your tent is soaking wet in the morning, but you have many miles to hike before your sleep. How do you pack it up so it doesn’t get wetter, making it unusable that same night? How do you pack it so it doesn’t get all of your other gear …

These are all great questions. First off, shelters that have a removable inner tent are a great way to ease into tarp camping. A lot of tarp campers use an inner tent like this during bug season or in wet climates too. You also inner tents used by people who …

I’ve always had problems with trekking poles that have an internal locking mechanism because I could never figure out how to fix them when they started to slip. It got so bad, that I gave up on them for many years and only used poles with external flicks locks like …

I had a reader contact me about knee pain after they camped in a hammock that was so severe that it forced them off the trail early to recuperate. This is a fairly common ailment when sleeping in a hammock and is caused by hyperextending your knees. Imagine that you’re lying …

Do you pack your sleeping bag or quilt in a waterproof stuff sack when you go backpacking? We polled Section Hiker readers and surprisingly, the vast majority don’t stuff their sleeping bags or ultralight quilts into a waterproof stuff sack. Instead, they line their packs with trash bags and mostly …