"You are nothing to the mountain, nothing to the ocean. You can sometimes make one mistake, sometimes  two. Then you die. In earlier times the possibility of death was a given -- now we have this cell-phone culture where you always expect to be saved. Suddenly people are shocked when somebody dies."

May, 2009 Author's Note:

I originally wrote this article in 1999. It could use updating, but the information in it and its links is still valid.

The outdoors can be a dangerous place.  On Friday, August 13, 1999, while I was up in Glacier National Park, three people were mauled by grizzly bears, and a fourth fell to his death while trying to take a picture on the popular "Going to the Sun" road in the park.  In the course of a single week in Glacier, I was twice within 200 feet of grizzly bears, one of which I did not see until I was past it.

And that isn't what kills most people in the outdoors.  Hypothermia does.  While hiking on the Highline Trail in Glacier, which runs to nearly 8,000 feet in elevation and several miles from a road, I was struck by the number of people hiking in cotton shorts, T-shirts, and carrying a water bottle about the size of a baby bottle.  And that's all.

It isn't enough.  I chatted with one couple so equipped (they did have jackets, but not waterproof ones), intelligent young people from Houston on pretty much their first walk in the wilderness, and proposed to them the following scenario:

"OK - one of you falls, and breaks an ankle.  The other has to walk out for help.  A sudden rainstorm comes up, and the temperature drops 30 degrees in the rain, which happens all the time - three times in one recent day, otherwise sunny, that I was camped at Glacier.  The one who can't walk will be dead of hypothermia before the other one gets back with Park Rangers."

It happens, and it shouldn't.

One should not, in my opinion, get more than a mile in the mountains from a vehicle or a shelter without carrying sufficient food and equipment to survive an unexpected overnight stay in the wild.

Clothing should be synthetic, or wool - but synthetic is better, insulates better when wet, and you won't smell like a wet sheep if it rains.

Here's what I typically carry on a day hike, and here's a sample list for a trip involving overnight stays.  Read authors like Colin Fletcher, The Complete Walker III.  Fletcher's Book, and Harvey Manning's Backpacking One Step at a Time, haven't been revised since the mid-1980's, but both are worthwhile introductions.  And for why to walk, read anything else by Fletcher.

For more recent advice about gear, see The NOLS Wilderness Guide, by Mark Harvey.  And if you didn't read the sidebar in my article on the Berg Lake Trail, read Cotton Kills Above the Timberline.

When I first wrote this page in 1999, ultralight backpacking was in its infancy. Ray Jardine's book Beyond Packpacking is very good on this subject, though I recommend that you avoid Ray's advice about nutrition.

A more recent book on that subject is: The Boomer's Guide to Lightweight Backpacking: New Gear for Old People, which is not just for old people.

If you've mastered the basics, you might wish to read a recent addition to my library, Advanced Backpacking by Karen Berger (ISBN 0-393-31769-2, W.W. Norton, New York).  Karen has done the "Big Three" trails - the Appalachian, the Pacific Crest, and the Continental Divide, the latter of which isn't even finished yet, and requires significant routefinding skills, so she knows what she's talking about.  (The phrase "knows what she's talking about" means that her conclusions about good gear and how to behave differ little from my own.)

Please, if you don't know what you're doing, find out.  Evacuating dead and injured people depresses the Rangers - help keep them happy.  Thanks.