By Michael Lanza
Stashing a backpack in the woods is just what it sounds like. If you’re on a multi-day backpacking trip and want to take a side hike of any significant distance, like to a summit, and then return to the same spot to resume your backpacking route, it’s a waste of energy (not to mention entirely pointless) to carry your heavy pack with you. But there are ways to do it wrong, and ways to make sure your pack and everything inside it are still there and not torn apart or gone when you return. Here’s how to do it right.
The tips below are based on my experience of many thousands of trail miles and more than three decades of backpacking, dayhiking, climbing, trail running, and taking ultra-hikes and ultra-runs—including more than a quarter-century of doing this professionally and testing and reviewing gear as a past field editor for Backpacker magazine and running this blog.
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Todd Arndt hiking the Spray Park Trail in Mount Rainier National Park. Click photo to read about that trip.
Basically, you want to make sure no animals (including humans) will find it and take or damage the pack or anything inside. Most hikers aren’t dishonest, but some adults might mistakenly think a pack was inadvertently left behind and assume it’s fair game for whomever finds it, or that they should deliver it to whatever agency manages the land so that its owner might reclaim it later (which is not helpful to you for the remainder of your hike); and kids will more readily take something they find.
That’s more of a concern for me on popular hikes that attract a lot of inexperienced hikers. In more remote areas, where you’ll generally only see experienced backpackers who aren’t likely to make that assumption, I worry less about a pack being visible to people.
Wild animals are a concern virtually everywhere. Rodents, squirrels, and larger animals like raccoons and bears can be attracted by food odors and might chew through or tear up your pack to get food. Many animals, including bears, have a much stronger sense of smell than people, so they’ll find a pack that’s well hidden from sight. Other animals, like deer and mountain goats, will lick or chew on pack straps and hipbelts for the salt left behind when you perspire, and can cause damage.
Jeff Wilhelm backpacking the Bechler River Trail, Yellowstone National Park. Click photo to read about that trip.
Since you can’t lock up a backpack, you have to hide it in a way that avoids attracting an animal to it. Here’s how:
• If stashing it in an area with heavy human traffic, look around for a spot well off the trail and hidden from sight, in trees or bushes or behind a large rock, beyond where people are congregating or walking. If you’re in open terrain with little or no vegetation, you may have to walk farther off the trail to leave the pack hidden by a terrain feature out of sight of the trail.
Ramona Falls, on the Timberline Trail around Oregon’s Mount Hood. Click photo to read about that trip.
The steps I’ve suggested above may seem inconvenient or time-consuming. But it really only takes a few minutes to properly hide a backpack and food, and it prevents a much larger problem that can result from a person or, more likely, an animal discovering and taking or damaging your pack and food.
Whether you’re a beginner or seasoned backpacker, you’ll learn new tricks for making all of your trips go better in my “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips,” “A Practical Guide to Lightweight and Ultralight Backpacking,” and “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.” With a paid subscription to The Big Outside, you can read all of those three stories for free; if you don’t have a subscription, you can download the e-guide versions of “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips,” the lightweight and ultralight backpacking guide, and “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.”
See a menu of all stories about backcountry skills at The Big Outside.
Stashing a backpack in the woods is just what it sounds like. If you’re on a multi-day backpacking trip and want to take a side hike of any significant distance, like to a summit, and then return to the same spot to resume your backpacking route, it’s a waste of energy (not to mention entirely pointless) to carry your heavy pack with you. But there are ways to do it wrong, and ways to make sure your pack and everything inside it are still there and not torn apart or gone when you return. Here’s how to do it right.
The tips below are based on my experience of many thousands of trail miles and more than three decades of backpacking, dayhiking, climbing, trail running, and taking ultra-hikes and ultra-runs—including more than a quarter-century of doing this professionally and testing and reviewing gear as a past field editor for Backpacker magazine and running this blog.
Todd Arndt hiking the Spray Park Trail in Mount Rainier National Park. Click photo to read about that trip.
Basically, you want to make sure no animals (including humans) will find it and take or damage the pack or anything inside. Most hikers aren’t dishonest, but some adults might mistakenly think a pack was inadvertently left behind and assume it’s fair game for whomever finds it, or that they should deliver it to whatever agency manages the land so that its owner might reclaim it later (which is not helpful to you for the remainder of your hike); and kids will more readily take something they find.
That’s more of a concern for me on popular hikes that attract a lot of inexperienced hikers. In more remote areas, where you’ll generally only see experienced backpackers who aren’t likely to make that assumption, I worry less about a pack being visible to people.
Wild animals are a concern virtually everywhere. Rodents, squirrels, and larger animals like raccoons and bears can be attracted by food odors and might chew through or tear up your pack to get food. Many animals, including bears, have a much stronger sense of smell than people, so they’ll find a pack that’s well hidden from sight. Other animals, like deer and mountain goats, will lick or chew on pack straps and hipbelts for the salt left behind when you perspire, and can cause damage.
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Jeff Wilhelm backpacking the Bechler River Trail, Yellowstone National Park. Click photo to read about that trip.
Since you can’t lock up a backpack, you have to hide it in a way that avoids attracting an animal to it. Here’s how:
• If stashing it in an area with heavy human traffic, look around for a spot well off the trail and hidden from sight, in trees or bushes or behind a large rock, beyond where people are congregating or walking. If you’re in open terrain with little or no vegetation, you may have to walk farther off the trail to leave the pack hidden by a terrain feature out of sight of the trail.
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Ramona Falls, on the Timberline Trail around Oregon’s Mount Hood. Click photo to read about that trip.
The steps I’ve suggested above may seem inconvenient or time-consuming. But it really only takes a few minutes to properly hide a backpack and food, and it prevents a much larger problem that can result from a person or, more likely, an animal discovering and taking or damaging your pack and food.
Whether you’re a beginner or seasoned backpacker, you’ll learn new tricks for making all of your trips go better in my “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips,” “A Practical Guide to Lightweight and Ultralight Backpacking,” and “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.” With a paid subscription to The Big Outside, you can read all of those three stories for free; if you don’t have a subscription, you can download the e-guide versions of “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips,” the lightweight and ultralight backpacking guide, and “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.”
See a menu of all stories about backcountry skills at The Big Outside.
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