How To Choose The Right Camping Gear

What camping gear do you need for a camping trip? That's the first question any tenderfoot camper asks when thinking about a weekend's camping trip.

Selecting Camping Gear
There's so much camping gear on the market nowadays, it's hard to know what to choose. And even if you ask me, I'd need to ask you a couple of things first. You see, what's the best camping gear for you depends on what style of camping you are going to do. There's the camping equipment needed for a single overnight sleep on a hike, there's the gear for a few days backpacking between resupply points, and there's the gear you might take for a week or two in a campground where you aren't going to move until it's time to go home.

Travel Tent
If you're hiking and you have to bring your own shelter, then your camping gear will include a small hike tent or dome tent (with a built-in insect net) works fine for most people. The really lightweight camping enthusiasts make do with a fly sheet (tarpaulin shelter) and a waterproof ground cloth (groundsheet) underneath. Some use a waterproof bivy bag, and place their sleeping bag inside that.

Backpack or Kit bag
If you're going to be carrying your home on your back, then you need an efficient way of porting your load so you can walk for hours without discomfort. Any camping equipment supplier will have a range of backpacks or rucksacks which will keep your camping gear safe and waterproofed from any rain. There are backpacks with external frames and internal frames. Both have their followers. The cheapest packs have no frame, which means your back is going to sweat a lot, and any hard objects inside the bag will conspire to dig into you after a while. But if you only need a bag to contain all your camping kit, like in the back of the car, then just about any large soft bag will do fine.

Bivy Bag or Hammock
An emergency bivy can be created out of plastic garbage bags but you'll get awfully wet inside from condensation (you sweat, even when it's cold); A good quality bivy bag will allow warm moisture vapor to escape through the cloth, but will stop droplets of water (like rain) from soaking in and making you wet. (Look for Gore Tex or similar material, which isn't cheap.) And if trees are available a camping hammock can be really comfortable too.

Sleeping Bags
You'll need a decent quality sleeping bag. The cheap ones are okay in warm weather in a camper or caravan, but not in a tent, and not if you've toting the thing for miles. Pay for a sleeping bag and it'll last you for tens of years! Skimp on your sleeping-bag and you'll regret it the first time you're too cold to get back to sleep, and it's three more hours until the dawn.

Sleeping Pad or Air Mattress
And if you're sleeping on the ground, you'll need some kind of sleeping pad underneath your body. Lightweight campers trim the foam pads down to save weight, but you need extra padding at least for the area below your hips, trunk and shoulders. A foam sleep pad or air bed is necessary. An air bed provides comfort. A foam pas less padding but keeps in more warmth. Without one of these, the cold ground will suck heat away from your body during the night.

Camp Cooking
How you cook food at camp, or if you cook at all, depends on your personal style. If you're at a standing camp (in a campground) for a week and part of a group, you may wish to play Camp Cook and prepare some fancy food for everyone. In this case, you need large pots to feed everyone in your party, with some to spare because everyone seems to eat much more in the great outdoors. If you're hiking, then keep things simple with a small single burner multi fuel or alcohol stove, and a small nesting cook kit.

The food you eat depends on the weight you have to carry and the energy you're going to burn up. You can buy dehydrated foods in your camping store, but they are pricy. You may even be able to get military rations, like MREs, but the novelty wears off pretty fast. The best value for money meals you can create will include rice or pasta, which needs to be cooked properly, plus a little protein (meat, fish, eggs, cheese or beans). Vegetables and even salads should be eaten whenever possible; but they're hard to prepare on the move. And canned food is heavy.