Finding Great Backpacking Campsites | How to Find Great Campsites

hello rev here and uh welcome back you've been hiking all day and you come to the end of the day and all you want is a hug and a hamburger and if you can't find that then uh probably the best thing is find a good camping spot so today I want to talk to you about finding a great Camp spot for the night no matter what kind of camping that you are going to do whether a through hike or section hike or Loop or whatever if if you're planning on staying overnight you're going to have to find a great campsite so today I want to give you some tips some ideas some thoughts about finding a great campsite when you get to the end of your day the first thing I want to give you is if it's required then stay in designated backpacking campsites sometimes you may have to get a permit or and pay a fee in order to stay at these designated campsites uh and that's why you need to go on the internet and research a little bit about the hike that you're going to be hiking but if you're required to stay at a particular place and uh required uh campsites then make sure that you do that the last thing you want to do is get kicked out of a campsite uh by a park ranger now if disperse camping is allowed then make sure that you stay at least uh 100 ft preferably 200 ft from any water source or Trail on the PCT it's required that you stay uh within 100 ft of a water source or a trail but it'd be preferably that you stay at least 200 ft the next thing is to make sure that you camp on durable surfaces check out the ground make sure that the ground is porous so that in case does rain uh at night the water will uh seep into the Earth rather than just pool on top of it and get your tent wet and all of your equipment wet next start hiking early in the morning and then uh Camp early now what do I mean by that uh when I was hiking the PCT I would get up at 4:00 in the morning and uh get on get all my things packed up and everything and get on the trail by 5:00 and so that way I would see the sunrise and get on the trail and uh then about 6 o' in the afternoon what I would do is uh find the closest Camp spot and then Camp there usually at 6:00 uh there's not too many campers that have stopped for the night uh especially uh when there's a lot of sunlight left uh for the day when you get to a campsite remember to minimize your impact on that campsite the last thing you want to do is bring a hacksaw or a chainsaw or an Axe and start whacking down trees or Limbs and stuff like that uh there's an important principle that hikers need to know and that is leave no Trace when you leave that campsite you you ought to leave it like nobody has ever been there minimize your impact on that campsite if you were to follow me and go to a campsite that I stayed at uh the night before uh you could look at that campsite and have no idea that anybody stayed there now this next one is important well all of them are important but this next one consider uh far out used to be gut hooks but consider far out suggested campsites uh when you get to a particular campsite look on far out and they will have suggested campsites and when you get there uh check them out sometimes they won't work for you other times uh you may have to go a little bit further sometimes gut hooks or far out uh won't even have a particular campsite that's just a pretty Christine campsite and so check out the campsites on uh far out and uh when you get there if they work stay there if they don't then move on next number when you are finding a great camp site make sure that you look for a wooded area a wooded area will knock the wind down uh and will cause uh your tent not to get blown away or you get blown away in the middle of night also a wooded area will provide what's called a thermal covering naturally during the night the Earth will lose uh Heat and the heat will rise and uh if you are in a wooded area the branches and the leaves uh will cause that uh heat to stay within that particular place and so when you're trying to find a good campsite make sure that you look for a wooded area next and uh this is pretty obvious but look for a flat spot if you can't find a perfectly flat spot to pitch your tent then make sure that your head uh is higher than your feet you don't want you don't want the blood rushing from your feet to your head uh a lot of people get headaches that way so make sure that you try and look for as flat a spot as you can next avoid C camping in exposed open areas it may be the most beautiful uh background that you've ever seen in all your life and you like to Camp there but if it's open and exposed in a Wide Open Meadow uh then you're going to have all kinds of problems with wind and uh uh if if rain comes along you'd have problems there again I go back to uh the point about looking for a forested area or some typee of wind break that will break that wind uh coming across the meadow or across that exposed place next thing avoid camping by water when I was camping one time on the PCT I camp by this Lake a little bit too close and I woke up in the morning and I thought it was raining inside the tent what was it condensation that's exactly what happens if you camp close to a water source uh a lot of humidity and a lot of the uh condensation will get on the tent and get inside the tent as well as on the outside another reason why you shouldn't Camp by water is a lot of bugs and mosquitos a hatch around water and uh it'll be very very buggy during that area in that area and so get your water then go off a little ways from the water source and um then camp out there next avoid lowline areas if you can get up a little bit higher than that uh depression in the land uh you may be on a Mountaintop and you look down and say oh that's a beautiful place to camp and you go down to it and you find yourself in a low-lying area now what happens is at night dense cold air Falls and of course hot air rises uh but it'll be a lot colder in that low-lying area than it would be if you found a campsite that was a little bit higher next avoid hardpacked ground make sure that the ground in case it rains will shed the uh water or uh it will at least soak it into the ground but if it's hard packed it's going to pull and again it's going to get your uh tent wet and all of your equipment wet as well I was only 30 miles from the Canadian border on my PCT hike and we were staying at heart's pass and I knew better but I I pitched my tent in this depression area and it was raining and I knew better and uh I I went away for a little while I came back to the tent and everything in my tent was floating uh it was just wet everywhere and just about caused me to end my hike uh 30 miles from the Canadian border so make sure that when you pick out a campsite uh make sure that the ground is porous make sure it's not hardpacked a lot of times these uh popular campsites uh a lot of people stay in them so it packs the soil down I try to avoid those if you can next and and again this is pretty obvious uh but avoid hazardous areas when you set up your tent or you set up your campsite I know a lot of times I'm so ready to uh get my tent all set up and eat and go to bed and so I can get up early in the morning that I don't look around first and see if there's any uh dead trees that are around or what we call Widow makers and so make sure that you look around and check and see uh if there's any dead trees around or anything a dead limb that might fall and uh fall on your tent uh that could really run your height and then lastly before you set up your tent and put down your ground cloth or whatever uh make sure that you clean out all the debris all the Rocks sticks um Cactus whatever that would cause a problem during the night with your tent uh make sure that you clean all that out and have a smooth smooth CL campsite now hopefully the next time that you go out on a hike no matter what it is a through hike section hike or whatever next time you go on a hike please be sure to remember these things that I've given you hopefully they have been a help to you and uh if you have any comments or questions please be sure and leave that in the description section below uh give me a thumbs up on this video and if you'd like to learn a little bit more about what I've learned what I uh have learned over the past 20 25 30 years that I've been backpacking uh then please be sure and check out the video right there on the screen and so until then I will see you down the

Channel: The Hiking Rev

Views: 13,896

Keywords: AT, Appalachian Trail, CDT, PCT, PCT 2022, PCT Thruhike, Team Zpacks, Thruhike, backpacking, backpacking tips, camping, dispersed camping, enlightened equipment, get outdoors, hiking, hiking gear, long distance hiking, older hikers, pacific crest trail, the hiking rev, thruhiking, ultralight backpacking

Id: mSBTPUB8F60

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 26 2022