Plan ahead and prepare
Most impact happens before you leave the house. Printing a map, checking regulations, and packing meals in reusable containers prevents the improvised decisions that damage ground and water.
On a four-night trip, one established campsite beats three scattered ones. Fewer sites, less impact, and less food packaging if everything is repacked at home. That also means fewer wrappers in the pack and fewer crumbs in the tent.
Travel and camp on durable surfaces
Stay on the trail even when it is muddy. A 30-centimeter step around a puddle becomes a 3-meter-wide mud wall in a season. If the trail is wet, walk through it and clean your boots later.
Camp on rock, gravel, dry grass or an existing site at least 60 meters from water. In popular areas, use the site that is already there rather than building a new one. A new site takes years to recover.
- Stay on designated trails.
- Camp 60 meters or more from lakes and streams.
- Use existing sites in high-use areas.
- Spread out in pristine areas to avoid new trails forming.
Dispose of waste properly
Pack out everything you bring in, including food scraps, orange peels and tea bags. They do not break down as fast as people think, and animals learn to dig for them.
Human waste goes in a cathole 15 to 20 centimeters deep and at least 60 meters from water. In alpine or desert areas, pack it out in a wag bag. Toilet paper goes in the cathole or in a zip bag, never buried loose.
Leave what you find
Do not take rocks, flowers, antlers or artifacts. Do not build cairns or cut branches for shelter. A cairn that helps you might send the next person down the wrong drainage.
Photos are the only thing you should carry out. If everyone took one small stone from a summit, the summit would be bare in a decade. A cairn is fine where the route is genuinely unclear, but do not add one for decoration or for a photo.
Minimize campfire impacts
Use a stove for cooking and a fire only if the area allows it. Keep fires small, use dead and downed wood, and burn everything to ash. A fire ring full of half-burned logs is a mess for the next person.
Check the fire ban before you go, and never build a ring in a new spot. If there is an existing ring, use it. If there is not, skip the fire.
Respect wildlife
Observe animals from a distance and never feed them. Food-conditioned animals become aggressive and usually end up being killed. Where bears are present, store food in an approved canister, or hang it at least 3.7 meters off the ground and 1.8 meters out from the trunk.
Keep noise down near nesting and denning areas, and give animals an escape route. If an animal changes its behaviour because of you, you are too close.
Be considerate of other visitors
Yield on the trail, let faster hikers pass, and keep your voice down in camp. A quiet group sees more wildlife and bothers fewer people.
That is not a rule so much as a habit worth building — most trail conflict comes from noise and blocked paths, not from bad intentions.
