Don’t suffer on your next hiking trip, learn these hiking tips to make your life and journey a whole lot easier.
At the same time look like an absolute boss, showing off you incredibly cool new acquired skills.
Let’s get right into the hiking tips with no.1 which is definitely one of my favourite hiking activities. Enjoy 🙂
1. Learn fire making.
Practise makes perfect and what better place to do it then your own backyard. Grab some twigs, grab some fire starters some matches and have water handy just in case everything gets out of hand.
2. Spark, Oxygen, Fuel
When building a fire make sure that you take into consideration 3 components of a good fire. It needs ignition which is the match, it needs fuel, which is the wood and fire starters and it requires oxygen.
If you starve the fire of oxygen then it won’t light up. Make sure that there is adequate airflow in your fire build.
3. You won’t always have the perfect conditions
Once you figure out a fire technique that you have successfully mastered, try doing it again with soaked wood and then finally try recreating the experience as if it was raining.
A good way to do this is to use a hose and sprinkle water on yourself and the fire.
4. Learn to pitch a tent.
Do it incorrectly and the rain will come in, or the wind will tear the joints. Tents need to be pitched tight, and you must be able to set your tent up in a few minutes.
So it’s always a great idea to play around with it before you go out on your trip. Also most importantly, at this point, you will most likely have the manual on how to set it up and pull it down.
In most cases, you won’t carry said manual with you while backpacking
As an added bonus you can have a camping day in your backyard. Let’s face it, that is a fun thing in itself
5. Creative Pegs
Sometimes you might have to improvise setting up a tent as you might lose pegs, camp on hard ground or be surrounded by a lot of trees.
Use the environment to your advantage. For example, if the ground is to hard, find some heavier rocks you can place on top of the tent ropes.
If there are too many trees around, the tie your tent to the tree.
If the soil is to wet try putting the pegs in a 45-degree angle towards the tent and then lay rocks on top.
Improvisation is the name of the game when backpacking in the wilderness.
6. Find out how to remain warm.
Practice outdoor camping in the yard, to see how obstructing the wind, using a hat, and eating fatty foods before sleeping can keep you warmer.
7. Layer up like an Onion
Just like an onion what you want to try and do is layer up. By that, I mean putting on multiple layers of clothes. jumper on shirt on shirt on singlet, pants on pants, socks on socks.
By doing this you trap air between the layers and that ends up keeping you warm for longer periods of time.
8. Cotton is not your friend
Make sure to try and avoid cotton clothes as they do not retain heat very well and additionally keep moisture on your body which can cause hypothermia. If possible try getting woollen clothes.
Not only are woollen clothes nice to the touch but they also don’t retain smells, dry quickly and wick moisture away from your body (move moisture away from your body)
9. Don’t keep it in
Make sure to urinate before going to bed so that your body does not have to continually waste energy warming up your urine inside of your body.
Additionally who really likes to get out of bed in the middle of the night to take a pee
10. Keep yourself off the ground
If you tend to sleep cold make sure to keep yourself off the ground by using a mattress or leaves and layers of grass.
The ground literally steals your heat and energy and no matter how much you warm it, it will cool down quite rapidly which in turn will give you a terrible nights sleep and sore bones and muscles
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11. Warm Water to the rescue
If you are still cold warm up water and put it into a bottle then place it in the bottom of your sleeping bag. After a short while, you should feel nice and toasty in your sleeping bag.
12. Get the right Sleeping Bag
There are plenty of sleeping bags on the market, but did you know that some sleeping bags are made for men and others specifically for women.
It’s not a sales tactic but in most cases, women sleep colder due to the fact that their bodies are designed to keep warmth internally to protect the reproductive system.
13. Eat high energy snacks
Find the most densely nutritious snacks to eat before bed so that your body has something to work with while you sleep.
Luckily for you, I have done the research and created an article here for you 7 high energy foods to warm you up during winter
14. Stay Hydrated
You don’t usually associate dehydration with being cold but seeing as you are mostly made up of water, you require it to run all the processes in your body in an optimal state.
If your body isn’t running at an optimal state, it’s wasting energy which it could use to stay warm.
15. Learn to prepare over a fire.
It’s not as simple as it seems. Block the wind, cover the pan, keep the fire going and don’t burn yourself.
Well just like with everything keep practising and you will find the best way to cook.
16. PUT A LID ON IT
See what I did there with the title 🙂
If you have pots and pans make sure to have a lid for them so that you can cover food while cooking.
It’s also great if you are thinking of storing your food for a bit and as another added bonus you can use the lid as a plate with a comfortable handle in the centre.
17. Don’t burn your hands
Have a spondonicle on hand (a tool to grab your hot pots and pans) so that you don’t have to reach for the super hot pots with your hand.
Trust me, you will do it once and forever remember not to do it again. Keep Burn gel Handy.
18. Keep burn gel ready
Yeah, trust me, this is one of the nicest things to put on when you burn yourself.
In most cases you will burn yourself while cooking, throwing sticks into the fire or stepping on a coal in the dark. Keep the get handy just in case
Have you got any hiking tips of your own? Comment below to get them featured on this page.
19. Don’t pour fuel on the fire
I have seen it happen multiple times where someone is cooking at a fire and next moment someone pours methylated spirits on the fire.
Next moment there is a massive panic, eyebrows are burnt and a few holes appear in the clothes of the person who was cooking.
This is a likely scenario, but I have heard of people needing to be airlifted due to the fire exploding into a person’s eyes.
20. Cook your food on COALS
Cooking on the fire is probably only good for boiling water. Everything else, use coals.
When you have a hot fire, just push it to one side which in turn will uncover red-hot coals. Then shovel them over to a small pile away from the fire so it’s not to hot for you to work on your food.
Next, cook your food on the nicely laid out coals. As an added bonus you can throw in a few potatoes wrapped in aluminium foil into the coals under the pots and pans and have them cook at the same time.
21. Learn about edible plants
Understanding the best ways to identify cattails and three or four wild edible berries can make a journey more pleasurable, especially if you ever lose your food to a bear.
Just make sure you read the right guides to your area and in most instances stay away from mushrooms unless you really know what you are doing.
22. Learn how to walk
Surprisingly, something we don’t really think about can be improved in most cases. For example, walking for long distances you should keep your feet pointing forward at all times.
Might seem silly but a lot of people tend to end up having their feet pointing outwards from a straight-ahead position. This, in turn, uses more energy
To improve your walking ability, try walking over many different types of terrain. Such a rocky, sandy, on a slope etc. Try this with and without your backpack.
23. Learn the proper way to put on your backpack
If you have a backpack with a harness you need to really make sure that 80% of the weight is on your hips and only 20% or less on your shoulders.
By moving the weight of the bag onto your hips you will find it more comfortable but also it will prevent you from long-term injury if worn incorrectly.
A good way to know if your backpack is resting well on your hips is to have your hands slide in and out from under your shoulder straps with ease.
By packing your bag correctly, you will keep the centre of gravity in line with your body. In doing this making it so much more comfortable to carry.
25. Waterproof, Waterproof… Did I say Waterproof?
That is correct, either get yourself some rubbish bags or some heavy duty reusable waterproof bags and wrap your sleeping bag in it, your mattress in it, your clothes in it your you electronics.
You can never underestimate how much water will get into your bag and through your gear. Either way, would you prefer to learn it the hard way?
Or have a nice crisp warm and dry sleeping bag to get into at the end of a rainy night. I know what I would prefer.
26. Learn your animals
First of all not only is it a lot of fun to spot random animals and knowing what they are in the wild but it can also be advantageous to you to know which animals mean no harm and which ones can kill you.
Can you distinguish if a bear is “bluff charging” or stalking you? Playing dead will make you a bear’s dinner if it’s the latter. Hint: great deals of sound typically means he simply wishes to terrify you, however you need to check out this one.
Also, information on snakes and spiders can help in determining if you have a potentially hazardous situation or not
27. First Aid
Learn the basic first aid, keep a full first aid kit with you at all times and know how to use each individual component of the kit.
28. Learn how to cover up Snake and Spider Bites
This is crucial information if in the instance you get bitten you can buy yourself valuable time till first aid arrives. Check out this guide on what to do.
29. Read the Sky
An important skill to learn is cloud reading, can you tell when a storm is on its way? Can you tell if it’s going to be cold tonight?
The sky can actually provide you with plenty of information that will help you determine the next course of action for your trip and if you should keep your rain gear handy.
30. Learn to navigate
A GPS just won’t cut it out in the forest, it might not get signal, might run out of battery or just stop working altogether. What will happen then?
By learning a few basic skills, like how to use a compass and map you can really get yourself out of a predicament.
Additionally what I like to say is that a map and a compass is like a key to the outdoors world. With them, you can go anywhere safely and find your way back as well.
And finally, it can actually be a lot of fun, plotting a course to follow and hitting every checkpoint along the way. For more information check out 7 advanced navigation techniques
If you are interested in some more hacks and hiking tips check out
These are just a few of many hiking tips. Do you have any of your own that I didn’t mention? Comment them below and I’ll include them in this post
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30 Hiking Tips You Didn"t Even Know You Needed
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