Lighter Fare

Backcountry Gear 101

Backcountry camping is the type of camping experience intended to take you the furthest away from the creature comforts of home. Often involving hiking and canoeing into the remote wilderness, a successful backcountry trek requires gear that has to be, above all else, durable, lightweight, and compact, as there’s often no motorized vehicle to help transport it. “It’s all about weight,” says Jon Wynn, the owner of Gear Up for Outdoors.

Tents

Nowadays, tents come in many different sizes and configurations, but Wynn says that for backcountry camping, the shelter you use should be lightweight and compact. “You want to go ultra-light,” he says. “There’s lots of ultra-light single-person tents and twoperson ultra-light, using ultra-light fabric, so you can cut the weight down almost to a pound, two pounds on a regular-sized tent.” This means the tents will, by and large, be smaller and more compact than some of the larger, more luxurious models one may find at a campsite you drive up to, he adds. Quality and durability are also necessities. “You want to buy a good quality tent,” he says, adding that it’s important to make sure it’s “fully waterproof.”

Cooking

Chances are if you’re doing a backcountry trek, you won’t be able to pack anything too bulky for food preparation—that not only includes the food itself, but also the cooking apparatus. Ostrom suggests buying dehydrated foods (or make your own if you own a dehydrator) and reconstituting them when needed. There are also places in town that will vacuum-seal things like meat, he adds. For the actual cooking, a single-burner stove (which, effectively, is an element attached directly to the fuel canister) can be used. “Some of them are super lightweight and you can boil a litre of water within a minute there and have […] your coffee and your freeze-dried food, and your shore lunch all at the same time,” Wynn says.

Packs

Having a proper pack to store and carry all of your gear (shelter, food, water, clothing, fuel, etc.) is crucial, and one thing people need to be aware of is how well that pack fits the person carrying it, says Bill Ostrom of Ostrom Outdoors. Ostrom is also the designer of a line of customizable, heavy-duty canoe/ portage packs, which are back on the market. People may use fabric packs or barrel harnesses on backcountry treks, Ostrom says. The barrel harness is, essentially, just that: a plastic lidded barrel (usually 30 or 60 litres) that is harnessed to the camper’s back. Ostrom says a sealing ring makes them waterproof and the barrels are animal resistant (not entirely bear-proof, however). Wiping them down to remove food and human smells is a daily part of Ostrom’s backcountry routine, he says.