Be the example.

As more hikers hit the trails every year, you have an opportunity to help others by showing them a better way. Exercise best practices in all aspects of your adventures and encourage better behavior by all. Share your knowledge and foster responsible backpackers who will preserve our wilderness.
Learning how to minimize the impact of a campsite, when and where to have a fire, and what to do with waste of all kinds is the responsibility of every patron of the backcountry. Understanding the purpose of regulations such as bear canisters or fishing limits is beneficial to our continued enjoyment of the wilderness. We work to educate all hikers and campers how to best interact with minimum impact.

better backpackers leave only footprints

Leave No Trace
Leave Only Footprints, Take Only Pictures.
It’s been said many ways, but the core principles remain the same. When entering the wilderness, we expect and enjoy an environment that allows us to feel an escape from the crowds of civilization. Litter, items left behind, fire pits, and even cairns can be a detriment to the untouched appeal of the backcountry.

Pack It In – Pack It Out.
Every item, including the smallest corner of a wrapper, when left behind can have a negative impact on the environment and the experience for the next hiker. Being aware of every piece of trash you create will make you very conscious of how much litter we actually leave behind.
“Every item” includes waste created when nature calls. Some go without mountain money, but for the rest of us, being prepared to carry out your used TP is the responsible way to backpack. Dig a proper cathole in which to do your business, then bury it properly. ALL other waste should be carried out with you. This is a difficult concept for most, as it sounds incredibly unpleasant. With a proper packing method, referred to as a wag bag for its location dangling off the back of your pack, used paper waste can be stored securely and away from the rest of your gear.
Proper fire practices for backpacking and hiking

Fire Prevention Practices
Know When And WHEN NOT To Have A Fire.
Know and obey all fire regulations. Sometimes fires are limited to certain elevations or locations (such as established fire rings). Check websites for current information and talk with local forest rangers or game wardens to get up to date restrictions. Be prepared to go without a camp fire. In certain locations or during drought seasons, fire may be an excessive risk and absolutely unacceptable.

Drown, Stir, & Feel.
The accepted practice for most campgrounds that have established fire rings, this involves dumping copious amounts of water on your fire, stirring it to douse all coals and embers, then feeling for heat. Repeat as necessary.

You Are Responsible.
Fires started by campers moving on without properly extinguishing their embers is a common source of wild fires. Irresponsible fire practices can cost lives and millions, yes, millions of dollars in resources to fight and contain.
Camping for backpacking and hiking
Camping With Class
Picking Your Pad
Selecting the right site for your “home for the night” is one of the hidden gems of hiking. Keep your camp site and kitchen 200 feet from water sources and trails.

Kitchen & Food
In many wilderness areas, such as bear country, a separate kitchen area is required a distance away from your camp site. This allows you to minimize the scent at the location where you’re sleeping.
Food thieves come in all shapes and sizes, from bears, to foxes, to marmots, to mice. Sometimes the smallest can be the most invasive, silently infiltrating your food storage all night while you sleep. Regulations vary depending on area including hanging food bags or required bear cans.

Best Bear Practices
You Are The Visitor – Show Some Respect
Knowing the habitat into which you travel, and which animals inhabit it, is a big benefit when understanding how to best deal with one of our larger, furrier cousins. They are smart, resourceful, and powerful creatures. Each and every bear you meet is unique, just like humans. Bears and humans can coexist relatively peacefully by following a few important practices, which include food storage, camp cleanliness, and our behavior in an encounter.

Identifying The Bear
There are two significant groups of bears in North America, brown bears and black bears, and knowing which species you are dealing with can affect how you handle an encounter. Though named as a color, both species can vary in the color of their coat from chocolate, to brown, to blonde and therefore cannot be positively identified by color.
BROWN BEARS (including the subspecies of Grizzly and Kodiak) tend to be much larger bears, weighing 300-600 pounds depending on region, and sometimes tipping the scales at over 1,000 pounds! They are best identified by their large shoulder hump, hopefully at a distance. Their faces tend to be flatter and “dish-shaped” and they have longer claws, which is evident in their tracks as well.
BLACK BEARS average at about 200 pounds, vary in color from black to brown to blonde, and have a noticeably different physique. With a large hind rump, their back and shoulders usually slope down to the head, which has a longer “dog-like” profile. Black bears exist in various environments throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Food Storage & Cooking
Different parks have different regulations for proper food storage when travelling in bear country. Some require a bear canister while others allow food hanging. Most areas populated by bears also have rules for keeping cars and campsites clean to minimize opportunities for opportunistic animals. Check with local rangers for approved practices and obey all posted regulations.
Cooking and campsite food storage vary depending on your location. Many established in-park campsites have bear boxes for communal food storage. In the back country, this luxury is non-existent and other practices are necessary. Camp kitchens ideally should be located 100 feet downwind of your sleep site and 100 feet from your food storage location in the heaviest bear country. However, this isn’t always necessary, or possible.

Fishing
A Difference of Perspective
Three distinct camps exist in the debate over best practices about fishing, ranging from “zero-tolerance” to “everything in moderation.” Most importantly, always have the required licenses and follow posted regulations when fishing. The strictest ethics would label fishing and stocking rivers and lakes is an obstruction to the natural process. However, the official position of our wilderness management agencies allows for stocking and fishing, with certain limitations. Look for local regulations for each area when fishing, including size and catch limits, equipment restrictions such as barbless hooks, and cleaning/disposal methods.
Disposing of waste for hiking, backpacking, and camping

Leave No Trash Behind
Keep It Clean
There is little that detracts as much from the serenity of a back country hike as coming across litter left behind by others. Not only is it distracting but also damaging. Most of our trash, made of plastics and processed materials, takes years or decades to biodegrade.  Just about anything you leave behind could be there for generations, and as more and more people hit the trail every year, we’re capable of accumulating enough trash to harm the environment and ruin the experience for future hikers. Clean up after yourself and clean up after others. Though it may be difficult to compromise your lightweight plan to pick up trash someone else left behind, be the better backpacker. You’ll be setting a good example and preserving the wilderness experience for others.

Pack It In – Pack It Out
Everything you bring in with you needs to go out with you. This includes everything from water bottles to micro-trash like wrapper corners from your protein bars. Even leaving behind leftover food can have an impact by food-conditioning animals or introducing invasive species.

The Wag Bag
Regulations are continuing to get more strict about human waste and hygiene products. The impact of improperly buried waste and toilet paper can be catastrophic as is sometimes seen on high-traffic trails. Even a great campsite can be ruined by turning over a rock to find someone’s poorly placed cathole. The standing recommendation is to do your business 100 feet from the trail, water sources, and established campsites. Catholes should be dug 6 inches deep for feces only, all paper products should be packed out and disposed of once you return to the front country.

Respect The Wilderness
Love It & Live It
Appreciation for the wild nature we all seek in our back country adventures and a little common sense can go a long way in being a better backpacker. We all have the opportunity to be stewards of the environment that we love so much. Learning, applying, and sharing best practices consistently will allow future generations to have a better experience and better examples to follow.
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source: betterbackpacker.com