7 Tips for Leave-No-Trace Camping
Leave no trace — this is the outdoors-person’s number-one ethos. But what does it mean? Here are seven tips to ensure you pass unnoticed in the backwoods.
1. Never clear brush for your campsite. If you look hard enough, a suitable location will present itself.
2. Never flag campsite locations with surveyor’s tape, string, carved-markings or any other physical mark. Use a map, or mark waypoints with your GPS.
3. Fire pits: either use an existing fire pit, or dig out a layer of soil — complete with plants — and set it aside. When you’re finished at this site, clear out the fire pit and replace the soil.
4. To clear out the pit, as above, ensure all wood and paper is completely burned, then scatter the (cool) ashes.
5. Clean up garbage, cord and rope — even if you’re not the one who put it there.
6. Disguise your tent site by finding a makeshift rake (stick) and raking over the area — refreshing the grass, replacing leaves and sticks and hiding any trace you were ever there.
7. Load up your garbage and pack it out — even compostable stuff. No one wants to show up at a tent site and find a bunch of apple cores and banana peels lying around.
