How to Account for Rain on an Overnight Hike

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Kate with Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com. I will be talking to you about hiking and backpacking. When you are multi day backpacking, if it does start to rain and continues to rain, it could be a big issue. Especially with cooking, packing gear stuff in the morning and walking through it all day, it can be a big deal. At night if it is raining, you might want to consider bringing a tarp just to set up in the air for you to cook, be dry, have all your stuff there and it not is a problem. You are going to want to make sure it is not a drainage point where there are rivers running through your cooking area. When you go to sleep at night, you also want to have your backpack easily accessible but also water proof. If you don’t have something to keep the whole thing water proofed, it might be best to put it down so your back, the back of your backpack will be dry where you have here rain fly over it. Otherwise, everything could possibly get wet. You set your tent up so it is not in a spot that is going to be collecting water and pooling. You should also consider in the morning that your rain fly is going to be wet and you need to pack your gear and it could be pouring rain out. So I like to have my backpack close by so I can pretty much pack everything that I have except for the tent into my backpack. When you do take the tent down, you are going to want to have it somewhere in your backpack that can get wet, that is going to stay wet for the rest of your trip and you don’t have to worry about it. People like to put it on the outside; that’s fine. I put the actual tent instead of the rain fly in my backpack. The rain fly will go on the outside of my backpack. You just need to continue to have in mind those things will be wet and you want certain things to stay dry. So having stuff sacks that are water proof will work best and having shelters for you to be able to cook in, sleep in to keep yourself content is always a plus. "