Take the time to seek out natural camp sites:   Significant distances (at least 200 feet) from established campsites. Generally speaking, established campsites areconvenient and strategically placed next to trails and watersources, but there are numerous undesirable, unhealthful attributes about these sites that make the backcountry experience seemmore like a campout in your neighbor's back yard, next to hisouthouse, garbage can, and grey-water sump.

Undesirable attributes, such as:

1.   dirty, dusty, humus-void, ash-blackened ground--which embeds itself in your tent, gear, and clothing (if you have a nexus-lined, single-wall tent, be especially concerned--nexus sucks up the ash/dirt and it won't come out--I know !)

2.   bits of food & garbage left behind by others

3.   ants, flies, mosquitoes, rodents, bears seem to hang-around" these sites--they're not stupid, they know the value of a good, consistent food source

4.   surrounding grounds soaked with human urine and decaying feces--folks generally don't go far from the campsite, the feces does not decay rapidly in higher altitudes and over time, it accumulates--especially in more popular areas. It's typical to find toilet paper hanging in the bushes or laying on the ground. Be careful where you walk and sit. Be careful when picking up large rocks--you might find a smelly surprise under it.

5.   garbage, food, and soap residue in the water. Don't be surprised, many people know the proper thing to do but are lazy and don't want to take the extra time to do it. They wash their dirty pots and pans--with soap-- in the lakes and streams that they camp right next to. The results are a questionable and esthetically unpleasing water source.

Camp Picking Strategies:

1.   Camp 200 feet or more, away from water sources--draw your water for cooking, drinking, and bathing and carry it to your cooking & camping areas.

2.   Honor designated low-use or no-use areas. Especially, ones where revegetation efforts are underway. Don't Camp There !

3.   Camp on well-drained sandy or rocky sites, or on vegetation that is heavily-laden with soft humus. Never camp on fragile alpine meadow-vegetation (which takes many years to recover).

4.   Do not establish camp on high ridges that are exposed to wild weather--cold, high winds and lightening. Camp at lower elevations that
are protected by surrounding rocks, trees, and brush. Avoid camping in basins because cold, damp air collects and you'll probably awake, well, cold and damp.

5.   Do not sleep laterally on a slope or you will awaken--assuming you even get to sleep--with sore muscles where you've been attempting (consciously and unconsciously) to compensate for the downhill pull of gravity.

6.   Seek out slightly sloped areas to ensure that you don't awaken in the middle of a puddle of water when that late-evening rain shower occurs.Whether you sleep with your head or your feet on the upside of the slope is up to you. I feel more comfortable with my head on the upside, others feel more comfortable, relaxed and better the next day by putting feet on the upside. Decide for yourself.

7.   When smoothing out your bedsite, be gentle. Don't carry out excavation beyond what you can fully repair, afterward. My suggestion is to, first, pick out the obvious larger sticks, stones, and pinecones, then, lightly, run your hand over the area brushing aside other obstacles that might poke you (or your mattress). Do not, under any circumstance, uproot vegetation. Consider what the ground looks like where a deer or goat has bedded for the night. Your bedsite should not look worse than that, when you're finished using that space.

8.   Avoid digging holes, trenches, and, otherwise rearranging fragile terrain (it took me a while to unlearn some of the old, undesirable habits that I learned long ago in the Boy Scouts and Military Training--e.g., trenches around tents).
 
 

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