To camp out successfully, buying the right equipment is important, but it’s even more important to know the skills to make proper use of your equipment. Many camping and backpacking manuals spend most of their pages reviewing equipment selections, but little space discussing the skills you need to camp. Here are nine essential skills you need for campout success.

1. Know How to Dress

When you’re camping, how you dress has a vital impact on your comfort as well as your health. How you dress will depend on the climate of your camping location. However, some general principles apply no matter where you’re camping.

To travel light, you should pack one complete change of clothing, covering everything from your head to your toes. Your entire change of clothes should fit into an 8-inch by 12-inch nylon stuff sack. This is the limit to what you should carry whether you plan to camp for a weekend or several weeks.

Be sure to take along a hat for protection from cold, sun, and rain.

Wear wool clothes. Don’t wear cotton, except when you’re camping during the hottest time of the year. Don’t wear jeans, which dry slowly when they get wet, leaving you vulnerable to hypothermia.

Wear light colors to repel insects. Mosquitoes and other insects prefer dark colors.

For protection from the wind, include a breathable nylon jacket in your pack.

Be sure to include rain gear. Your best choice is a two-piece rain suit rather than a poncho or a knee-length shirt.

If you’re in a cooler climate, take long underwear. Wool or polyester are your best choices for material.

Wear your socks in two layers. Wear an inner layer made of lightweight wool or polypropylene and an outer layer made of heavy wool. Avoid blisters by turning the inner layer so that the seams face away from your foot. You should change the inner layer every day and change the outer layer every two to three days.

Wear light, flexible boots about 9 inches high. Heavy boots are unnecessarily cumbersome, unless you have special needs for mountain climbing or snow travel.

2. Know How to Pack

Knowing how to pack is another essential skill. In addition to the rest of camping gear, your backpack is your home away from home, so select and pack it carefully.

Your backpack will depend on what you’ll be doing. If you’ll be backpacking on a good trail, your best choice is an aluminum-frame outfit. If you’ll be rock climbing or canoeing, you’ll need a specialized backpack.

Waterproofing your pack is crucial. Never assume your pack is waterproof just because the manufacturer claims so. Line your pack with a large plastic bag. Inside this, place a light fabric abrasion liner. External pack pockets should also be waterproofed with Ziploc bags or your pack’s rain coat. For your sleeping bag, store this in its nylon sack first, then put the sack inside a sturdy plastic bag, secure the bag with a shock-cord, and place the bag into an oversize nylon sack. In camp, you can use a large plastic garbage bag to cover your whole pack.

Pack your bag as light as possible. Only carry what you really need. When you come back from your camping trip, pay attention to what you actually used, what you used seldom, and what you didn’t use at all, and don’t take anything you didn’t actually use on your next trip (except essentials like first aid kits).

If you’ll be doing general hiking, you’ll want the weight of your pack as close to your back and as high up as possible. To achieve this, place your sleeping bag and foam pad on the bottom, followed by clothing and other miscellaneous items, reserving the top shelf for your food, tent, and cooking gear. If you’ll be rock climbing, you’ll need a lower load.

To pack your tent, in order to address the fact that tent poles are too long to fit into your backpack, it’s best to pack your tent and poles separately, rather than setting the tent bag under the closing flap of the packsack as many hikers do. First, stuff the tent in an oversize nylon bag without the poles or stakes. Pack the poles and stakes in a separate nylon bag closed by a drawstring. Then pack the tent between the waterproof plastic pack liner and the tightly rolled fabric abrasion liner. Place the pole and stake bag just under the pack flap, and run the pack flap’s closing straps through loops of nylon cord sewn to the ends of the pole bag, or else tie these cords directly to the pack frame. Cinch the pack flap down snugly.

3. Know How to Use Your First Aid Kit

Make sure you know how to use your first aid kit. You should take a basic first aid course before doing any wilderness camping. You should know how to assist with minor cuts and burns, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, shock, and other common conditions like hypothermia. Do not try to set a broken bone yourself unless you’re qualified.

4. Know How to Avoid Emergencies

In addition to knowing how to use your first aid kit, you should know how to avoid other common emergencies.

Adventure Medical Kits AMK Ultralight

Know how to avoid hypothermia, recognize its symptoms, and treat it. Dress properly, with wool, and long underwear and rain gear when appropriate, and avoiding blue jeans, which don’t dry quickly. Watch for signs such as uncontrolled shivering and slurred speech. Treat victims by getting them out of the cold, giving them dry clothes and warm fluids, and keeping them awake and warmed by fire or bodily contact.

Know how to identify poisonous plants such as poison ivy and poison oak.

Know how to avoid animals like insects, bears, and snakes.

For bears, keep your food in plastic or metal ice chests or thick-walled PVC plastic pipe, double-bag foodstuffs in plastic, set food packs on low ground well away from campsites and trails, separate food packs by 50 feet or more, cook at least 50 yards downwind of your site, don’t store your food in your car, and don’t hang your food in a tree (contrary to what is sometimes advised).

If a black bear approaches, you may be able to scare it off by spreading your arms and making loud noises, but if you have to back away, back off slowly while talking authoritatively instead of running. It may run towards you to get a better look at you, which is not necessarily an attack. Woofing and clacking sounds are a warning that the bear is angry and about to attack. If a black bear attacks, climb a tree or fight back rather than playing dead.

If a grizzly approaches, talk in a non-threatening tone without making eye contact while backing away slowly. If it gets closer than 50 feet, drop to the ground face down with your nose in the dirt and your hands clasped tightly behind your head. The most serious grizzly injuries are to the face, so keep your face down.

UDAP’s Premuim Bear Spray with Hip Holster

5. Know How to Navigate

Unless you’re camping in your backyard, you need to know how to navigate. Know how to read a map, use a compass, use a GPS unit, and use your cell phone’s navigational capabilities.

6. Know How to Choose a Campsite Location

Where you pitch your camp can affect not only your comfort, but also your safety. Make sure you know how to choose a good location for your campsite.

Proximity to firewood and water are primary considerations. It’s easier to fetch water than firewood, so being closer to firewood makes logistical sense.

If the site will be set up for some time, select ground sloping to the south, so that the open end of the tent can be positioned to receive the sun’s rays.

When pitching a site close to water, to avoid insects, seek high land near the shore or a point extending out into the water where there is a stronger air current. Never position a camp in dense trees or hollows where water collects after rain, which breeds mosquitoes, and is also a hazard for falling limbs.

For protection from lightning, when camping near a tall tree, stay at least a dozen feet away from the base of the tree, but not farther away from it than a line defined by a 45 degree slant from its peak.

7. Know How to Build a Fire in Wet Weather

Knowing how to build a fire in wet weather is one of the most essential camping skills. Here are some tips:

1. To collect your tinder:
• Start with the tools you’ll need to create your tinder: a folding saw, a small hand axe, and a sharp knife.
• For your materials, birch bark is often used for tinder, but in wet weather it can be tough to use, so other alternatives are recommended.
• Your best bet is to seek out dead, pencil-thin branches near the base of evergreen trees. If the branches are wet but still snap audibly, they’re dry enough to burn. A handful of this will do for tinder.
• If this is unavailable, locate a log with a dry center made of birch, pine, cedar, or another softwood, and saw off a section that’s not touching the ground. Touch the cut end to your cheek or lips. If the sapwood is damp but the heartwood is dry, you can use it. Saw the sunlit section of log into 12-inch lengths and split and shiver it with your hand axe. To make this easier and safer, split it from the end grain, holding the end upright with a stick of wood rather than your hand. Slice long, thin slivers of wood from the heartwood splittings to create your tinder.
2. Set two 1-inch diameter sticks parallel to each, about six inches apart. Place a few pencil-thin kindling pieces over them at right angles, spaced about an inch apart. Keep the area small, not spaced out.
3. Place long, thin shavings or small, dry twigs of tinder on top of the kindling. Leave adequate room between the sticks for oxygen.
4. Then to support the heavier kindling, add two sticks about 1/2 inch diameter over the ends of the 1-inch thick sticks, at right angles to the fire base. Pile heavier kindling atop the shavings until they’re about 1 inch high.
5. Weight your stack of shavings in place by crossing them with several pencil-thin sticks and following this with a few larger pieces of wood.
6. Light your fire.

8. Know How to Tie Basic Knots

At one time, the square knot and tautline hitch were essential knots to know. Today, these are the most important knots to know how to tie:

• Double half-hitch (two half-hitches)
• Sheet bend
• Bowline
• Power cinch
• And for untying, the quick-release loop

9. Know How to Pitch a Tent and Tarp

You should know how to pitch a tent and rig a tarp for protection from storms. Here are a few tips:

• Place a plastic ground cloth inside your tent, not under the tent floor where it will trap water.
• Attach your guy lines to loops of shock-cord or bands cut from inner tubes.
• During strong winds, add additional guy lines.
• When needed, reinforce weak seams and add additional stake loops.
• Pitch a 10-foot by 12-foot nylon tarp between trees or suspended from guy lines so you have somewhere dry outside your tent to move around during a storm.

10. Know How to Purify Water

Your best bet is to carry drinking water along, but you should know how to purify water in case of an emergency. If you purify water by boiling it, you should boil it at least five minutes before drinking it. Another option is to use water purification tablets, an ultraviolet light purifier, or a purifier/filter unit.

Worthy Camp Guides

Boy Scouts of America ScoutSource
Girl Scouts of the United States of America Resources
US Army Survival Manual
Survival Outdoor Skills

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