OutingClub:Backpacking Trip Planning
Information on leading a backpacking trip.
The first thing to do is decide on a destination. There is an enoumous amount of information on locations for trips in the books the club owns. If you are doing a loop trail, you will only need one vehicle, but if you are doing a one way trip you will need two vehicles to run a shuttle.
For a beginniner backpacking trip, you should plan your trip to have a 7 mile daily average. This tends to be a long enough trip that people aren't sitting around at the end of the day, but will not completely overwhelm most reasonably active people.
Once you have a list of potential people who will go on the trip, you will need to worry about gear. You should consult the list of individual and group gear that one generally needs to run a backpacking trip. Be sure that each person has all the personal gear they need (much of which they can get from the gear closet). It is often helpful to have people divide into groups of 3 to sleep in the outing club three person tents. These "tent groups" can often also get together to get a stove / pot, and to share food.
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