Backpacking Cookware: Making It All Fit in Your Pack
Learn how to nest your pots, stove and other cooking gear to save as much space as possible.
What to Send in Thru-Hiking Care Packages
And other things to know when shipping packages to friends on the trail.
Backpacking Food Ideas: Get Your Ingredients at the Grocery Store
You can plan your entire backpacking menu with grocery store items. Here’s how.
Hubba Hubba vs. FreeLite: Which Backpacking Tent is Right for You?
All MSR tents are engineered and built to stringent standards of quality and performance. With decades of tent design under our belts, we can say with confidence that you can’t go wrong with any MSR tent, as long as you get the one that’s built for your needs. We offer numerous options within each category of tent, dialed in for specific users who demand certain things, and our backpacking tents are a great example of this variety. Whether you’re choosing your first backpacking tent or your tenth, the trick is knowing what you need in a tent. Answering a few simple questions can help narrow down the specs and features you should look for. If you’re here, you know you want a tent for backpacking, so let’s break down the…
Best Backpacking Snacks for Thru Hikers
Every step felt harder than the last, like I was hiking through a pool of thickening molasses. The Georgia mountains drained me, pulverizing my small frame until a friend told me I was probably “bonking” – or losing steam from inadequate nutrition. As soon as I stopped to cram a granola bar into my mouth, I felt alive again, like a newly-watered plant. My energy returned. And the looming climb no longer towered over me, laughing at my inadequacy. Instead, I felt confident in my ability to keep going – at least until I bonked again. One of the biggest challenges of my thru hike was learning how to properly fuel myself. Since long-distance backpackers have been known to burn as many as 6,000 calories per day, it seemed…
Your Pre-Season Backpacking Gear Checklist
You’re ready to hit the trail, but is your gear? Run through this list before packing up and heading out into the back of beyond!
How to Clean Your Backpacking Stove
We’ve all been there: the moment of horror when you realize your oatmeal (of course it’s oatmeal) is boiling over onto your stove. (We’ll blame it on not having finished that first cup of coffee yet.) And even though you snatched the pot away as quickly as you could, some of that nice, thick oaty sludge managed to splat right onto the burner head. Now what? Whether you have an ultralight canister stove, an uber-efficient system stove or a burly liquid-fuel stove, we’ve pulled together the do’s and don’ts of cleaning your cook setup, courtesy of our expert MSR repairs team. They’ve seen it all, and now they’re passing their knowledge to you. Read on to learn how to clean your backpacking stove. How to Clean Canister Stoves These popular…
Thru-Hiking Stoves: DIY or Buy?
The hole punch sank its teeth into the aluminum side of a cat food can, chewing a hole through the wall. My ventilation system was complete. I’d just created a “cat stove”–a do-it-yourself backpacking stove–while sitting in a dank motel room along the Appalachian Trail. With a little bit of denatured alcohol, I had a new way to cook my food, and it only weighed a few ounces. After hiking for several weeks with a wood-fueled stove, I made the discovery that some environments are incompatible with wood-burning stove systems, and that in a well-trafficked corridor like the Appalachian Trail, it isn’t always ethical to collect wood anyway. These findings prompted me to observe other backpacking stoves when hikers gathered at the shelter for dinner. Some hopeful thru-hikers lugged around…
5 Great Backcountry Meals to Make With Your WindBurner Stove
Heat-and-eat meals don’t have to be boring or bland.