Each summer, our family and one other do a long weekend packrafting and fishing down the Green River. It’s quickly become our favorite annual trip, but planning the needs for four adults, four kids, two dogs, and two boats camping out for four days and three nights in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception is no small undertaking. When it’s time to pack up, we lay everything out, pull out our big bag of Gear Ties and CamJam Tie Down Straps, and then the raft-packing-Jenga begins. After a few years of dialing in this process, here are my tips for making packing, and your trip run as smoothly as possible.
There is something uniquely freeing about backpacking and the way it can make you feel completely disconnected from your everyday life, yet entirely grounded in nature. Literally shouldering the weight of everything you need to survive and stepping away from your life’s comforts is humbling.
Here are our 10 tips for getting into the backcountry for the weekend.
Nite Ize is such an innovative company making an amazingly wide and diverse set of products, most of which go totally and completely unnoticed as they are utility tools that discreetly make my life and adventures far more comfortable and organized! Below is a list of 5 of the most mission critical tools that my team and I always have on hand, and some uses that may been seen as unorthodox!
Someone once told me that 90% of camping is solving problems. While we all have aspirations of our summer camping trip going off without a single hitch, we know that there is bound to be a matter or two (or ten) that require some creative problem solving. Here are 10 solutions to common camping problems I have discovered over the years.
If you’re familiar with the world of hunting, you might recognize our friend (and Field Team member) Willi Schmidt from his show Pure Hunting on The Sportsman Channel. Willi has been bow hunting for nearly 30 years, and enjoys sharing his expertise with the world. When Willi isn’t hunting or filming his series, he loves to play golf, work out in his home gym, spend time with his family and dogs, and explore the great outdoors around where he resides in Bozeman, Montana. We asked Willi to share his go-to gear he uses for hunting, as well as his favorite products for other areas of his active lifestyle.
As professional adventure racers and race directors my husband Jason and I love big endurance training trips. But as new parents of Max (4) and Revel (1.5) it has been a fascination to look for ways to incorporate more adventure, play and training into our family life. One of our most favorite ways to check all of these boxes is to go on family bike-packing trips. When we had just one kid, it was much easier to go on backpacking trips (one person carried the kid, the other the camping gear), but once we added little brother Revel to the mix, we quickly turned to looking for other alternatives that allowed for us to manage even more gear and weight.
We just got back from our fourth bike packing trip through Central Oregon and it was amazing. We took 4 days (3 nights) to do 120 miles, most of it on dirt roads with lots of play stops along the way. Every night we ended at a different lake or river to ensure easy water access and lots of water, dirt and sand play (a kid’s dream). On average, we rode hard for about 2-3 hours before our first stop and tried to do a second push in the early to late afternoon after the kids had worn themselves out. A few days into the trip, we hit a small town, which proved to be a fun stop for the kids and enabled us to carry less weight in food and water knowing that we could refill during the trip.
Looking for something to cook at your summer camping trip other than hot dogs? We got you. We asked our team members for their favorite, tried-and-true camp recipes that will help you break the monotony. Here are 7 fresh ideas:
Imagine a quaint, red rock western town that used to be one of the most isolated spots in the lower 48. What comes to mind? You may be thinking Moab or Sedona, but the town I am talking about is further off the beaten path than either of those: it is a small pioneer town in Southern Utah by the name of Kanab.
Kanab is located smack between Zion, Bryce, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It is a fantastic jumping off point for many of the Colorado Plateau’s incredible national parks; it is also home to me personally, and to the guides of Dreamland Safari Tours – a hardy bunch of most excellent backcountry desert guides with decades of experience in delighting guests by creating access to hard-to-reach locations like the Wave, White Pocket, and more.
As a seasoned camping couple plus pupper, I can tell you one thing for sure: There’s so much I wish I knew the first time around. The dreamy Instagram pics of campers out in the backcountry with their four-legged friends only told one side of the story. I’m here to tell the other side—the nitty-gritty details about what you need to know, pack, and prepare to keep your canine camper happy.
Over the past year, the great outdoors has become a haven for people looking to escape the confines of the pandemic. Public spaces and lands are thriving as a result, with more people venturing to local trails, waterways, and campgrounds. For many, outdoor adventures are a new thing and a weekend trip to a local campground can be quite an intimidating experience. The good news is that there is plenty of space for everyone on public lands, and with a little research and preparation, a weekend camping trip to your local campground will not feel so daunting.
As a seasoned outdoorsman, I too find trips to new places to be filled with uncertainty, often presenting more questions than answers. During my research of campgrounds, I’ve noticed that information for the first-time camper is often limited to what is referred to as “the 10 essentials”. What is missing are those practical insights that answer important questions like, “Where am I going to poo? Is there a place to shower? And more importantly, will there be coffee?”
Fear not my city slicker friends–I have put together a more practical list of camping tips for the non-outdoorsy. We’ll start with the basics, and by the end of this post you will have some great resources to help prepare you for your next, or first, camping trip.
