How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips

By Michael Lanza

Wilderness backpacking opens new worlds to us. While dayhiking can bring you to many beautiful places in nature, walking for days through the backcountry, carrying all you need on your back, inspires a liberating sense of self-sufficiency and solitude as you escape the crowds to explore places most people never see. This article lays out in 12 detailed steps all you need to know to plan a wilderness backpacking trip that’s safe and enjoyable for everyone on it.

More than three decades (and counting) and thousands of miles of backpacking all over the United States and around the world have convinced me that most of the success of any backpacking trip depends on how you plan and prepare for it. Whether you’re a beginner or seasoned backpacker, you’ll learn new tricks for planning a backpacking trip of any length from this article, which draws from my experience as Northwest Editor of Backpacker magazine for 10 years and even longer running this blog.


Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Join The Big Outside to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Click here for my e-books to classic backpacking trips. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip.


Backpackers in Klapatchie Park on the Wonderland Trail, Mount Rainier National Park.
Jeff Wilhelm and Todd Arndt backpacking through Klapatchie Park on the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier. Click photo to read about the Wonderland Trail.

Having made just about all the backpacking mistakes you can make when I was a newbie years ago and read about countless accidents, I will tell you this: “Epics” and accidents often result from bad planning or a simple lack of awareness of potential problems and hazards. Most are entirely avoidable.

I’d love to read what you think of my tips or any tricks of your own that help you plan your trips. Please share them in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.

Click on any photo to learn more about that trip.

A backpacker in the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River in Yosemite in Yosemite National Park.
Todd Arndt backpacking the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne in Yosemite. Click photo to see my e-guides to Yosemite and other classic parks.

1. Pick the Place

Where do you want to go backpacking? That’s the first question to consider, and the answer often draws inspiration from a specific destination. Like many novice backpackers, one of my first trips was in Yosemite (and my most popular e-guide is “The Best First Backpacking Trip in Yosemite”).

But new backpackers commonly commit the error of choosing a destination for their fixed vacation dates without considering the many factors that determine not only the ideal time of year for that trip, but also when you cannot take it. For example, many mountain ranges are inaccessible (without advanced skills and technical gear) for most of the year because of deep snow—trails may not become passable for hiking until June or July. Many also consistently receive a lot of rain and have thick clouds of mosquitoes at certain times of year, either of which can put a real damper on the experience.

Flip that flawed thinking around: Choose dates appropriate for your desired trip, or if your dates are not flexible, choose a trip appropriate for your dates. Do some research on the most special aspects of a destination and what times of year are best to see them, such as wildflowers, waterfalls, foliage color, or simply better weather.

See my story “How to Decide Where to Go Backpacking.”

Find ideas for your backpacking adventures in my All Trips List.

Backpackers on the South Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon.
Backpackers on the South Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon. Click photo for a menu of stories about backpacking in the Grand Canyon.

2. Plan Ahead

I can’t remember the last backpacking or hiking trip I took without planning weeks or months in advance. Some destinations—particularly close to home, if they don’t require a permit reservation—may not require much advance planning. But the more complicated your life, the less likely you can pull off a last-minute getaway that entails multiple logistics and people.

Plan and make all needed pre-trip arrangements, from reserving any required backcountry permit to arranging any needed transportation and lodging.

A backpacker on the John Muir Trail below Forester Pass in Sequoia National Park.
A backpacker on the John Muir Trail in Sequoia National Park.

Find planning resources (like my expert e-guides and Custom Trip Planning) with detailed information about your trip, including:

• When and how to apply for a backcountry permit if one is required—which is months in advance of your trip dates for popular parks like Grand Teton, Yosemite, Mount Rainier, Glacier, and Grand Canyon. See my “10 Tips for Getting a Hard-to-Get National Park Backcountry Permit.”
• Topographical trail maps and a good description of your route, including section distances, difficulty, and details about any sections that require special skills or a comfort level with scrambling, exposure, water crossings, or other challenges and potential environmental hazards.
• Current trail and road conditions and seasonal or temporary closures due to unmaintained roads, wildfire, washouts, or other causes (often available at a park’s website).
• Travel logistics.
• Important regulations such as backcountry camping and party-size restrictions.
• Seasonal recommendations or restrictions.
• Seasonal climate and weather information.
• Water sources: If they are limited, know where they are and how much water you have to leave each source carrying—including whether you’ll need extra water if your next campsite lacks water.
• Wildlife concerns (more below).

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A backpacker on the Piegan Pass Trail in Glacier National Park.
Todd Arndt backpacking the Piegan Pass Trail in Glacier National Park. Click on photo to learn about my Custom Trip Planning.

3. Choose a Route That’s Right for Everyone

Whether a family, your favorite person, or a group of friends, the group’s pace and some choices will inevitably be dictated by the slowest and least-comfortable person—who may be a child or an adult. If your trip plan isn’t designed with that person in mind, you will likely have problems.

I typically plan trips following one of these two strategies, and they usually—by intentional design for the benefit of everyone—result in very different experiences:

  1. If the trip involves a specific, challenging adventure—climbing a mountain or backpacking a challenging route, for instance—choose partners who have the physical stamina, skills, and comfort level for everything you will encounter.
  2. If the trip’s goal is a fun adventure for a specific group of people—your family or any mix of people with a range of experience, stamina, and abilities—choose a destination and plan an itinerary that’s going to be enjoyable for everyone, including the slowest, least-experienced members of the group.

Click here now to plan your next great backpacking adventure using my expert e-books.

Teenage boys backpacking to the Baron Lakes in Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains.
My son, Nate, and two buddies, all age 15, backpacking to the Baron Lakes in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains. Click photo for a menu of stories about the Sawtooths.

Choose a destination and daily hiking distances that everyone can handle—keeping in mind that the cumulative elevation gain and loss affects the difficulty at least as much as the distance. (See my expert tips in my story “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.”) Consider how trail quality and conditions—whether it’s extremely rocky or muddy or steep—or places with difficult scrambling or significant exposure will affect everyone in the group, weighing both their emotional comfort and their safety.

Whether it’s family or friends, to avoid the pitfalls that can arise related to tip no. 3, get everyone’s buy-in by involving them in the planning.

Plan a trip that’s appropriate for everyone in your group and you’ll all enjoy it more.

See my Custom Trip Planning page to tap into my experience planning your next trip.

Backpackers in the narrows of Paria Canyon.
Backpackers in the narrows of Paria Canyon.

4. Craft a Sensible Itinerary

Create an itinerary that’s appropriate for the time you have—trying to cram too much into too short a timeframe can force you to overextend yourself and compromise everyone’s enjoyment.

Avoid these mistakes:

• Squeezing your travel time so tightly that your entire trip could be ruined by a delayed flight or bad traffic. When traveling to remote locations, taking multiple flights (especially in winter, when delays due to bad weather are not uncommon), plan for delays.
• An itinerary that entails hiking more miles each day than is right for your group.
• Travel plans that deprive everyone of adequate sleep. When traveling across several time zones, expect to need sleep when you arrive at your destination.

Trips and travel don’t always go well. But few travel-related incidents feel more disappointing than the clearly avoidable ones that ruin a trip.

5. Talk to Someone Who’s Done It

Even after decades of hiking, backpacking, climbing, skiing, and paddling, I always try to tap into the knowledge base of someone who’s either done the specific trip I’m planning or something similar or in the same park or general area.

Every time I do that, I learn something unexpected.

That person could be someone you know, or any number of people with experience on the hike you’re planning: a backcountry ranger, a member of a hiking club, or an employee at a local outdoor-gear shop or another business near the destination. Ask questions and you’ll often get useful answers.

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A backpacker at a campsite in Titcomb Basin, Wind River Range, Wyoming.
Mark Fenton at a campsite in Titcomb Basin, Wind River Range, Wyoming.

6. Have Gear That Works

Many of us get by with more-affordable gear when we’re starting out. But it still should meet a minimum threshold of functionality: It must perform well enough not only to survive more than one trip—otherwise, you’ve wasted your money—but to ensure against an unpleasant or even dangerous experience. An uncomfortable backpack can morph into a despised object. Inadequate or poorly fitting boots or a sleeping bag lacking sufficient warmth might make your trip a misery. A tent that fails poses real risks. You get the idea.

Are you taking a first trip with new gear—or your first-ever backpacking trip? Don’t head out for several days without giving new gear a test drive:

• Walk around in new boots, even on short, local hikes or around town, to make sure they’re not going to cause blisters, that they feel good—adequately supportive, not too hot—and to help break them in if needed. See my “8 Pro Tips for Preventing Blisters When Hiking.”
• Pitch a new tent in your yard to familiarize yourself with it, just in case strong wind or steady rain greet you the first time you pitch it in the backcountry.
• Assemble all of your gear and food for the trip at home and load your pack the day before you depart, to get a sense of how best to organize everything in your pack and how it’s going to feel on your back once loaded. See my “Video: How to Pack a Backpack” and “An Essentials-Only Backpacking Gear Checklist.”

Time for a better backpack? See “The 10 Best Backpacking Packs
and the best ultralight backpacks.

A backpacker at Park Creek Pass, North Cascades National Park.
Todd Arndt at Park Creek Pass, North Cascades National Park. Click photo to read about this trip.

Tip: Loading your pack pre-trip helps you see whether you’re overpacking. See “A Practical Guide to Lightweight and Ultralight Backpacking.”

See my expert gear-buying tips in these stories:

The 12 Best Down Jackets
5 Expert Tips For Buying the Right Backpacking Pack
5 Expert Tips For Buying a Backpacking Tent
How to Choose the Best Ultralight Backpacking Tent for You
5 Expert Tips For Buying a Rain Jacket For Hiking
Expert Tips For Buying the Right Hiking Boots
Pro Tips For Buying Sleeping Bags

And don’t miss my “10 Tips For Spending Less on Hiking and Backpacking Gear.”

Get the right tent for you. See “The 10 Best Backpacking Tents
and “5 Expert Tips For Buying a Backpacking Tent.”

A backpacker below Virginia Falls in Glacier National Park.
Mark Fenton below Virginia Falls in Glacier National Park. Click photo for my e-guide to backpacking the Continental Divide Trail through Glacier.

7. Bring Clothing Layers for the Expected Weather

If the best weather forecast for the area where you’re backpacking provides conditions for the valleys, know that it will likely be at least 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit cooler in the mountains where you’re hiking. On average, the air temperature drops three to four degrees Fahrenheit for every thousand feet of elevation gain (or about 10 degrees Celsius for every 1,000 meters). The sun gets more intense at higher elevations, too, which means it feels warmer when the sun is out, but also cools off quickly when the sun sets or disappears behind clouds.

See my reviews of:

The Best Rain Jackets for Hiking and Backpacking
The 12 Best Down Jackets
The Best Base Layers, Shorts, and Socks For Hiking and Running

Read all of this story and ALL stories at The Big Outside,
plus get a FREE e-book! Join now!

Backpackers hiking over Clouds Rest in Yosemite National Park.
Backpackers hiking over Clouds Rest in Yosemite National Park. Click photo for my e-guide “The Best First Backpacking Trip in Yosemite.”

8. Don’t Overpack Food

This may seem counterintuitive, but the fact is that for the vast majority of backpacking trips, whether for a weekend or a week or more, we plan a specific number of days and finish when expected. These trips don’t generally turn into survival epics. A pound or two of extra food or snacks is prudent; you don’t need to carry several pounds more food than you intend to eat.

Over more than three decades of backpacking, I’ve underestimated how much food I needed only a few times. Like probably most backpackers, at least when we’re relative novices, I have far more often carried an unneeded surplus of food the entire length of a hike.

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6 thoughts on “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips”

  1. Great article, my brother-in-law and I are just starting to plan a 7-day hike on the AT. We are trying to get every reference from those of you experts that we can. I’ve never hiked before, he is a retired SEAL, so I feel comfortable going with him. That said, we still have a lot of research to do on equipment. We are leaning towards the Lunar Solo tent, and the Osprey AG 65 backpack. Thank you for the article.

    Reply
  2. Extra food is never a problem. It’s worth carrying just in case somebody else needs it, if not yourself. Being ready to help is as important as being ready to survive yourself if things go the wrong way.

    Reply
    • Thanks for the comment, Mike. If you reduce this tip to very general terms, I’d agree with your point. And when I’ve backpacked with my young kids or a relative beginner, yes, I carried more food than I would eat. However, as I wrote in the above story: “You don’t need to carry several pounds more food than you intend to eat.” That’s good advice for many backpackers who are typically carrying only their own food.

      Reply
  3. Michael,

    You have consolidated several books worth of material into one informative article. Might I suggest you make it a baker’s dozen. One of my learnings to make an adventure successful and enjoyable is personal preparation.

    I acknowledge that being retired gives me somewhat more time and flexibility to get physically and psychologically ready for the next great adventure.

    My mantra is to train harder than I expect the adventure to be. As you noted do the research on the type of trail conditions, elevation, the trail challenges (e.g., river crossings, snow, mud, etc. Then, if possible, find similar conditions and work your buns off. Some of the things I do:

    1. Carry more weight than I expect to carry on the trip – build up to this to allow your body to adapt;
    2. Wear heavier foot wear than I plan to use on the adventure;
    3. Hike further and harder than you expect.

    The simple message is practice harder than you will play. The reward is the trip will be easier, all things being equal, and your enjoyment will be so much more.

    Other thoughts.

    Shake down all of your equipment thoroughly. For example, practice setting up your tent in the dark, in the rain, in the wind or all three! Practice with your gear in real-life situations. Know how your stove cooks, your water treatment works, update your repair kit to make sure it is suitable for what you are taking with you, dump out your first-aid kit and reassemble, test and retest your mattress, use and check your tent in addition to setting it up make sure the zippers are clean, seams sealed, etc.

    Make sure your emergency communication device is up to date and you have the relevant information stored.

    In planning a trip , especially with a group, each person has a responsibility to be prepared to the best of their ability. On this front my mantra is we only succeed if everyone succeeds. Show up with your A game.

    Michael, this is a topic that can go on for ever.

    Reply