Camping Hacks Every Backpacker Should Know

You can use a clear water bottle as a level to check your tent site !

When I know my water will freeze overnight, I pre-fill my cook pot so the water is where it needs to be in the AM for my coffee.

These are great tips. For me, I get up at the crack of dawn, pack up, get my food bag, and eat a coffee gel while I start hiking. Once the sun is bright and warm and I’m ready to de-layer, I stop for breakfast. Then I’m not shivering trying to heat water and I’m never very cold in the morning.

Biggest tip of all - no matter how much experience you have, never close yourself off to new ideas. You never know when someone has a great hack for packing, camping, cooking, eating, hiking, or even first aid. They may be a newbie even, but may have something great to contribute.

I always dig a good cat hole the night before. There’s nothing that sucks more than having to dig a cat hole in the morning. It’s always much harder when you’ve got to go.

I've been laying on my tent before setting it up since I was a kid. Once, while making sure my sleeping spot was as flat and level as possible, I saw the largest and brightest meteorite that I've ever seen. A huge ball of orange fire with a long, flaming tail, it surely impacted within two miles of my campsite near the Indian Heaven Wilderness in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, back around 2000. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever witnessed.

When I start hiking on a cold morning. I will put my backpack on and then put my jacket on backwards (back side on my chest and zipper toward the back). I then tuck it in behind my back. This way when I warm up….i don’t have to take my back pack off to take off the jacket. I can just take off the jacket and shove it in a side pocket or have a buddy shove it in the bag itself.

Dude that tent tip rolling it up with 1 stake is going to make my life a lot easier. Thanks Darwin!

I realized I need to do this after my last hike in the snow: Carry about 6-12 feet of paracord and small toggle somewhere I can access it without taking off my pack. Then if I need to stop for a snack, or a bathroom break, if there's a tree nearby I tie the cord around the tree, take my backpack off, and hang it off the toggle. This way I don't need to put the bag down on the snow just to reach into it to take out one thing.

Using a small PVC cap,to push stakes into the ground. I drilled a small hole in it and ran a string through it and clip it on a small carabiner

I like the "put the glasses on the zipper pull trick" . Very cool.

When it's cold, I keep a small absorbent foam towel (cut down kitchen cleaning pad) in the tent for wiping down the condensation on the inside. This is usually first thing in the morning, when I don't want to get rained on while packing up stuff inside my tent (it also speeds up drying), but also if I'm awake in the middle of the night for whatever reason and see the condensation is bad, I'll give the roof a quick wipe and wring it out outside the tent.

On windy days I take my spare carabiner and clip the up wind corner of my ground cloth to my backpack until I get my tent stacked.

One tip that I can give is to set up your quilt & sleeping pad at home (nice, comfortable environment). Once you have your quilt's straps where you want them, take a permanent marker and put a dot or line or line near the edge of the pad. That way, you know where to put them every time without guessing.

1) I wear earplugs to sleep. Otherwise Im too hyper-alert to the sounds around me. 2) I pack up the inside of my tent before I get out of it in the morning. It just makes that part go faster and feel like less of a chore. 3) When I take breaks in dry weather, even short ones, I take off my socks to let some of the sweat evaporate. It's reduced my blister rate.

As a hammock camper with a hip replacement and back issues, I take two inflatable pillows from Alps gear and put them under my knees in the hammock and I sleep so comfortably, if I don’t use them I can’t get comfortable and my sleep sucks.

As an ex Overland Expedition Leader on Trans Africa and other journeys, One little thing that helps if you cook over open fires is to smear a tiny amount of washing up liquid all around the outside of your cooking pot. This goes black as usual with soot from the fire but when it comes to clean, it just wipes away with a bit of water back to nearly shiny. This REALLY works and I have used this hundreds of times but am always surprised that it doesn't come up on any camp advice videos. Trust me, try it and you will always do it. It saves on scrubbing a pot or leaving it crusted in soot.

Some of these hacks are things I figured out after a few thousand miles of backpacking, like laying down on a potential tent spot, ziplocking my filter, etc but the most genius thing you mentioned never would've occurred to me HANGING GLASSES FROM THE ZIPPER PULL WHAT IS THIS MAGIC??!!

That stake idea is genius. I’ll be doing that … if I can remember.

I’ve learned so many things from you and now a couple new ones. Thanks so much!! I love the gossamer gear pad I use it for everything. My tip I use is I take my extra teeshirt and slip it on my pad and tuck my pillow inside it. I never had to hunt for my pillow again