Tips: Backpacking Trip Planning when Getting Started

Making sure you have what you need, you are performing within your abilities, and you know where you are going!

When starting in backpacking there is a lot to think about, and especially when getting started, it requires a significant amount of planning, and sometimes this requires investment in new gear. The photo attached is my original (getting back to backpacking) kit, and I realized that 5 items have since received upgrades. Dialing in your kit is and probably will be a constant moving target.

So let's cover the 3 main aspects of planning for a trip: 1. Your abilities, 2. The route & conditions, and 3. What you will need.

Your Abilities

Your abilities at this very moment, simply are what they are! But knowing your abilities, through training, recording distances and pace, climbing, etc., helps you to understand what type of challenges you are ready for, or can prepare to get ready for. I follow other hikers that clock up distances and elevation gains that I never want to do! I have hiked with a medal winning triathlete who found a 7 mile hike at altitude really difficult. It really just depends on the individual, and walking/training is the only way that YOU can gauge what your ability is.

Some people look at my hiking and their jaw drops. I look at other hikers and my jaw drops, so it is really just relative. So for illustrative purposes let me explain where my abilities are, and in these instances, as with most of my hikes, I like to walk fast and avoid stopping: 5 Miles, 1,000 ft Gain: Off the couch, can do it any day.

7 Miles, 2,000 ft Gain: I'll draw a sweat, can do it any day.

10 Miles, 2,500 ft Gain: Reaching my comfort limits here. Relatively "easy" and totally

within my abilities, but probably a once a week type of hike.

13 Miles, 3,000 ft Gain: Reaching my limit here and will definitely need a recovery day!

Now, when I remember doing 3 mile, 300 gain hikes, options 2, 3 and 4 here seemed impossible, but as I built stamina, through walking, we push ourselves further and we begin to understand our abilities. So for me, this year I will walk about 1,000 miles, I will reach about 120,000 feet in gain (so an average of 120 feet per mile, or an average of 240 feet per mile climbed), so right off the bat when I look at a hike and the gain per mile, I have a perspective of how difficult that hike will be, simply knowing my comfort levels on distance and gain. Of course, these numbers are averages, so I have done flat miles, and miles with 1,000 ft gain, so really understanding the data behind your hikes better prepares you to be practical about your abilities. Finally, understanding your pace is important - this refers to how long it takes to walk a mile. For me, across those 1,000 miles mentioned above, I should finish out an annual average of about 18 minutes per mile. Of course, some flat miles are around 15 minutes, and some hard miles are around 30 minutes, so generally if I look at a 7 mile hike with 1,500 gain, I will ballpark my estimated time to complete at 20 minutes per mile, being a 2 hour, 20 minute hike in total without stops. Knowing this, really helps you to prepare for hikes and set expectations.

The Route and Conditions

Using a tool like AllTrails (or other alternatives such as Strava, GaiaGPS, etc.) will help you map out a route, show you the distance, show you the gains and descents, over the course of those miles, and especially important on multi-day backpacking trips, show you where there are water sources available. But as useful as this is, I always consider it "hypothetical". What do I mean by this? AllTrails does not factor in trail conditions (mud, snow, etc.), weather, elevation at which you are walking (it shows you this but does not factor how much harder it is to walk with reduced oxygen), reliability or quality of water sources, exposure, ad-hoc camp spots, wildlife, weight of your backpack, wildfire smoke, and a plethora of other factors that can affect a trip.

On this trip here, as an example, we ran into a significant amount of snow that both slowed us down and was exhausting to walk through.

These additional factors can have a huge impact on that "easy" 7 mild day you have planned, that may end up being far from easy. Especially in the high-country, at elevation, a 7 mile hike with a backpack is NOTHING like a 7 mile hike at sea-level. There is a reason the 9 High Sierra Camps are spaced 6-10 miles apart - because unlike my example above on pace at sea level, it is understood that for most people it will take most of a (mild paced) day to get from one to another.

As it pertains to these intangibles, I strongly recommend joining online forums or Facebook groups, and using the AllTrails reviews, to help orient you to some of these challenges and help you prepare for the conditions you will face.

What you will need

This is a very personalized choice, but let me run through some of the basics that 90% of people will need/want for a high country backpacking trip 90% of the time:

Big 4: