How to Choose a Campsite When Hiking Overnight

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Kate with Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com. I am here to talk to you about hiking and backpacking. When choosing a campsite, when you come into an area the first thing you want to do is look up. You are generally trying to avoid trees that are dead that could possibly fall on you in the middle of the night. It’s not a fun way to wake up. When finding your campsite, you may have planned your routes in crude shelters. If you are going to be camping near a shelter, you should use those facilities. This helps with the impact on the environment and everything else. If you have already decided to camp off the trail, you should be ways off the trail and you should find a nice open area that is in a ditch so it’s not going to necessarily collect water. You should try and get it to be as flat as possible because you want to be comfortable when you sleep so you can get sleep and you want it to be in an open area where you can have a different cook spot that is further away from your tent and there’s water nearby. All these things should go into you figuring out what would be a good campsite for you that night. "