Gearing Up For YourTrail

This page provides a backpacking gear list for day hikes, overnight backpacking, and long-duration trekking -- in Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. The focus is on backpacking gear required for safe travel in moderate mountain environments (e.g., Cascades, Olympics, Sierras, Rockies, etc.).

Backpacking through Europe

The Cascade Mountains, Washington, US

These backpacking gear lists - for each season - are offered as a baseline for you to work with and will need some adjustment to meet your specific needs, for your part of the world and/or for those places to which you travel that have unique requirements.

Ultimately, each one of us must be responsible for determining our own gear needs in the backcountry.

The Ten Essentials are critical items which belong in your pack as insurance against the unexpected. Although you may not use all the backpacking ten essentials every day, they can be life savers in an emergency. Also, if you are careful, these essential gear items can be lightweight, as well.

As a supplement to the ten essentials, I have added four additional backpacking essential gear items which are pretty important to our health and welfare in the wilds, as well as suggest some small, lightweight, purchase options for many of the "essentials".

Think you'll never forget anything important, like your FOOD? By no means the definitive list -- simply a list that has worked well for us for most three season trips. Add or delete items based on personal preference, time of year, and length, purpose, destination of trip. What would you add or change?

The Washington Cascades are part of the Cascade Mountain Range which extends from British Columbia to California and is dominated by several snow-capped volcanoes, two national parks, dozens of wilderness areas and millions of acres of forest. Forgetting an essential item could result in unfortunate discomfort. The list below includes all necessary items.

The most important essential , however, is not on the list--"Common Sense". Having the right gear is one thing, knowing how and when to use it is quite another. Most often, it's not a person's equipment that saves them; good judgement and know-how!