Clean Camping 101

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone." Thoreau, Walden, 1854.

So now you've honed your map-and-compass skills and broken in your new hiking boots on several day-hikes. You're ready for your first overnight trip. Can you just load up your pack and sally forth into the wild green yonder? Not quite.

As you can see, minimizing your impact on the wilderness can mean different things in different places. One principle, however, is a constant: abide by whatever regulations land managers have applied to the wilderness. For the most part, these regulations have been developed by backcountry rangers who spend a lot more time in the backcountry – and see its problems more often – than you and I. If some regulation seems onerous or unnecessary, write a letter to the backcountry office or park superintendent after you get home. Don't flout the regulations in the backcountry. I know, I know, I sound like your mother demanding that you eat your vegetables. Experience will soon teach you, however, that nearly all the regulations, as obnoxious as they may at first appear, actually enhance your enjoyment of the wilderness by helping keep it clean, untrammeled and relatively uncrowded. One final note: regulations do change, so check with the rangers at the park or wilderness area you plan to visit before planning your trip.
Selecting a Campsite

Camping in a designated site is like pulling into slot 76 at the KOA: no thought required. If camping is not restricted to designated sites, then choosing a site requires a great deal more effort. Consider the land before shrugging off your pack with a weary groan and pitching your tent on the first patch of semi-level ground that's not a mine field of ant hills and horse manure. Most popular backpacking areas are pockmarked with sites that have already seen intensive use. If a previously used site in an environmentally sound location is available, use it again to confine your impact to as small an area as possible. However, meadows and areas that are wetlands in the spring, even if they are almost dry in late summer, are always off-limits even if someone has camped there before. Catalog pictures and magazine ads that show tents in lush, meaning wet, meadows are trumpeting a lie and encouraging abusive practices that should never be tolerated. Let those sites recover. The same goes for stream and lake banks. Try to camp at least 200 feet from water, even if the regulations permit you to camp closer. By maintaining your distance you'll spare the vegetation along the bank and be sure that animals can come for a drink without intimidation. Desert bighorn, in particular, will shy away from waterholes if you camp nearby. Avoid camping in the beauty spots, the scenic overlooks and spots with climactic vistas across the lake or up the valley that will certainly draw other visitors. Relish the view from these spots for as long as you want, but don't camp there.

The alpine tundra above timberline is another highly fragile area. Plants there must endure severe cold, an extremely short growing season, powerful winter storms and the desiccating effect of near-constant wind. Give those plants a chance. Wind and weather also besiege the highest timberline trees, the hardy survivors in the last outpost of the forest empire. Admire their tenacity, but don't stress it further by camping among them. Camping near timberline or above also puts you in danger from lightning storms, which are frequent in most mountainous areas from late spring to early fall.

In high desert areas, avoid camping or even walking on the dark, knobby crusts of cryptogamic soil that carpet some regions. This crust, a symbiotic association of fungi, moss and cyanobacteria, is literally the glue that holds the soil together, helping prevent erosion when rare but powerful thunderstorms pound the desert. The crust is extremely fragile and takes 50 to 100 years to fully regenerate if it's crushed beneath a careless foot. According to some biologists, microbial crusts similar to cryptogamic soil may well have been the first colonizers of land when life emerged from the sea as much as 3 billion years ago. Those microbes, in turn, may have accelerated the weathering of rock into soil, a process which removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That may have reduced the strength of the greenhouse effect and lowered the Earth's temperature by as much as 54 degrees, making the land much more hospitable to the development of more complex forms of life – such as, eventually, you and me. So don't even think of walking on the cryptogam, much less camping on it.

The best sites in forested regions are usually deep in the woods, well away from lakes and streams and out of sight of trails and other campers. Look for areas where pine needle duff or deciduous leaves – not grass – carpet the forest floor and where your tent will not crush any low-growing plants. Beware of standing dead trees or large dead limbs that could topple or break off in a storm and flatten your tent. In some areas, the vegetation in dry meadows and grassy areas is resistant enough to tolerate one night (and one night only) of low-impact use. Such sites are highly visible to both wildlife and other campers, so they are best avoided in most situations.

The best site in the desert is often a level slickrock bench. Sand in your clothes, your hair, your food and your camera is the bane of desert camping. Camping on slickrock gives you a place to lay down your gear, and yourself, where sand will not immediately infiltrate everything. Lacking a convenient slickrock campsite, grit your teeth (you'll soon be grinding them regardless) and look for regions that don't support vegetation – which means sites graced with sand or gravel. Camping in a sandy wash is tempting because such sites have very little impact, in part because there's no vegetation to harm, and in part because the infrequent rainstorm big enough to cause water to flow in the wash will remove any sign of your camp. Of course, if you happen to be there when the flood descends, it might wash you away too. Even if it's clear overhead, a thunderstorm upstream can create a dangerous flash flood that wipes out your camp. Resist temptation. Don't camp in the bottom of a wash.

The best sites are found, not made. Save your engineering for winter when there's four feet of snow on the ground. Don't level sites or "improve" them by digging trenches around your tent to drain away rainwater. Trenches promote erosion, which eventually creates gullies. Refrain from building windbreaks or benches from stones or logs. The archaic practice of cutting pine bough beds that some turn-of-the-century woodcraft manuals recommended should be relegated to the history books. Try to remember that you're spending a night, not founding a settlement. The longer your stay, the more your campsite will begin to look like the beginnings of a city. If you've camped in a pristine spot, move on after one night.

If you're camped in a previously used site with an established path to water, use the path. If no such path exists, avoid making one. That's easier to do if you can avoid making multiple trips to your water source by bringing an extra water bottle or two, or perhaps a large collapsible water jug if you're traveling in a large group, then filling all your water containers in one trip to the stream or lake. Multiple trips over the same route soon create a visible herd path that encourages more people to walk the same route. If multiple trips are necessary, choose a different route each time to spread the impact out so thinly that no one will notice. Wherever your site, consider bringing a pair of lightweight sneakers or sandals to wear around camp to help reduce your impact on the vegetation. Think of it as evening out the odds in the confrontation between your massive waffle-stompers and the fragile vegetation. (Okay, in cactus country, the odds are pretty even to begin with.) The goal should be to leave your camp so undisturbed that a visitor the next day would think no one had ever camped there. You do yourself a favor as well as the next visitor by leaving an immaculate camp. Backcountry rangers monitor the damage to the backcountry. If the land suffers, so do you, because quotas shrink.

Large groups must take extra care in their selection and use of sites because the potential for damage from such concentrated use is high. Many parks limit group size, so inquire in advance. In the Great Gulf Wilderness in New Hampshire's White Mountains, for example, the group limit is 10. In Yosemite, it's 15. In Mt. Rainier National Park, it's five unless you reserve a group site.

At times, you'll face a dilemma in whether to use a slightly worn site or not. If you think there's a chance it will recover, based on your estimate of the amount of damage that's already occurred and the probability of other parties using it in the near future, then it's probably best to leave it alone and camp in a pristine site. If it's already over the edge, and looks like vegetation won't be able to regrow in the compacted soil, then it's probably best to confine your impact to that one site.

The real gurus of low-impact camping use a sleeping setup that rivals, in its concern for Earthly life, the Jain practice of sweeping the ground ahead of them as they walk for fear of crushing an insect. Their solution? Sleeping in a hammock slung between two trees. Surely no lower-impact way of spending a night in the woods could be devised. A simple plastic or nylon tarp draped over a cord tied between those same trees and staked out at the four corners serves to deflect rain and provide a dry, sheltered nook for cooking in inclement weather. Alas, that tarp cannot serve to deflect mosquitoes, black flies, deer flies, no-see-ums and other assorted nasties whose collective assault on sanity is the prime reason I rarely go camping without a tent. Although winter in the mountains is too harsh for hammock camping and deserts often lack suitable trees, in the right time and place a hammock and tarp might well be a lightweight way to practice the low-impact art.

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