Your First Backpacking Trip: What Actually Happens Out There

Every year we take people on multi-day trips who are carrying a loaded backpack for the very first time. Some love the idea of diving into backpacking as a skill, others simply love the idea of the access that backpacking can create (say, overnighting at Reflection Canyon, or hiking the Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim!). But no matter their motivation for the adventure: as first-time backpackers, they almost all arrive with the same private worry, and it is almost never about the miles.

The worry is about the bathroom, about being the slowest person in the group, or about not knowing how a pack is supposed to sit on a body, and having to admit that in front of strangers.

And, full disclosure: guides can sometimes forget just how much of this is invisible knowledge. Once we’ve done something a thousand times, we may stop noticing that nobody is born knowing how many pairs of socks to bring on a pack trip, or what happens when you need to pee at 2 a.m. inside a canyon.

This guide is our attempt to hand over all of this invisible knowledge at once, honestly and in plain language, before you ever meet your guides & team on the ground. Read it and you will step out of the van on day one knowing roughly what the next three, four or five days will feel like – that’s the whole goal.

What’s in this guide

1. Am I actually ready for this?
2. How do I train for my first backpacking trip?
3. What does Dreamland provide, and what do I bring?
4. What happens at the gear check?
5. How do you actually carry a backpack?
6. Do I need trekking poles, and how do I use them?
7. How many changes of clothing should I bring?
8. Washing socks and underwear on trail
9. How does going to the bathroom work?
10. Backpacking on your period
11. Where does drinking water come from?
12. What do you eat on a backpacking trip?
13. What does a day actually look like?
14. What is sleeping out there really like?
15. How do I stay clean without a shower?
16. Feet, blisters and chafing
17. The fears nobody says out loud
18. Which Dreamland trip is right for a first-timer?
19. The final pre-trip checklist
20. Frequently asked questions

Am I actually ready for this?

Here is the honest version, because we would rather have this conversation now than at a trailhead. Backpacking is not hiking with a heavier pack. It’s hiking with a heavier pack, then doing it again tomorrow on legs that are already tired, having slept on the ground, in whatever weather arrives. The limiting factor for most first-timers isn’t lungs or strength. It’s repeatability. So the test isn’t “can I hike ten miles.” It’s this:

If all three are a confident yes, you’re ready for one of our easier itineraries. If they’re a “probably, with training,” you have time and we’ll help you build toward it. If any of them is a clear no right now, tell us. We will work with you (within our booking and cancellation policies) to move you to a better-suited trip or a different date rather than push you into a hard week where the balance of suffering to enjoyment doesn’t quite check out the way either of us would want it.

A word about arriving prepared. Our groups are small, usually capped at no more than ten guests with two guides. Here’s the reality: a backpacking team moves at the pace of its least prepared member. When someone arrives with brand-new boots, no training and a pack they’ve never worn, the consequences land on everyone: shorter days, a missed side canyon, a guide walking beside one person instead of teaching the group. In serious terrain, our guides will turn a group around if conditions or a participant’s condition make continuing unwise, and that call is final. We say this not to intimidate you but because the people around you deserve your preparation, and you deserve theirs. None of that should scare you off. Plenty of our guests do their first-ever backpacking trip with us and finish grinning. They just do the work beforehand.

How do I train for my first backpacking trip?

Give yourself at least eight weeks. If you have less, start anyway, something is enormously better than nothing. The single most valuable thing you can do is walk with weight on your back. Not run, not cycle, not lift. Walk, loaded. Cardio machines build your engine but they don’t teach your shoulders, hips, feet and lower back what six hours under 35 lbs feels like.

A simple build-up

Wondering how to simulate a loaded pack? Fill your training pack with water jugs. A gallon weighs just over 8 lbs, so 2 gallons (plus the weight of your pack and snacks) will get you to ~20 lbs, 3 gallons give you a little over 25 lbs, and 4 gallons amount to as much as a full 35 lbs backpacking load. Bonus: They’re cheap, and if you get in over your head you can pour them out and walk home light. But also, note: carrying water jugs is by default uncomfortable. Your actual backpacking pack should carry more pleasantly than a pack cobbled together with gallon jugs. And if carrying gallon jugs is just too uncomfortable, you can get creative with other household items too: large bags of dog food, rice, road salt…. you get the idea.

Train downhill on purpose. First-timers universally underestimate descent. This is particularly true for Grand Canyon backpacking itineraries: going down is where quads get loaded, toes jam into boot ends and knees complain, and canyon country is full of it. If you can find stairs or a hill, walk down it under load until your legs are used to it.

Break in your boots. A minimum of 30 to 50 miles before the trip. Blisters on day one of a five-day trip are a surefire miserable way to spend a week. Wear the exact socks you’ll wear on trail, and if you’re headed somewhere with water crossings, read our take on shoes for water hiking before you buy your footwear. Our guides hike in LOWA boots and our handbooks recommend them by name, but any lightweight synthetic boot that drains and dries will do the job.

Sleep on the floor once. Seriously. Put your sleeping pad down on a hard floor and sleep a full night on it. You will learn whether you’re a side sleeper who needs a thicker pad, and you’ll learn it at home rather than in a canyon.

If you’re aiming at something big, our guides wrote a dedicated piece on training for a Grand Canyon backpack, which is among the most demanding things we run. If you are building fitness from a lower base, how to train for a hike to the Wave is a gentler place to start, and our expert hiker’s guide covers the desert-specific skills that carry over.

What does Dreamland provide, and what do I bring?

This trips people up more than anything else, so here it is plainly. On a Dreamland guided backpacking trip you don’t have to worry about outfitting an expedition. You are bringing a personal kit, and we bring the rest.

Rentals are limited and go first-come, first-served, so reserve them when you book rather than the week before. If you’d rather buy your own, our beginner’s gear guide walks through the big three purchases at both budget and ultralight price points, and our guides opened their own packs for Gear Corner: What’s In Your Pack.

After you book, you’ll get a detailed trip handbook and a gear list specific to your itinerary. Read it. It’s tailored to your particular backpacking adventure in ways this article can’t be.

What about my phone, and can I charge anything?

Bring your phone. Take photographs with it. There is no cell service in most of the places we go, which surprises people and then, usually, delights them. Put it in airplane mode to preserve battery (and close out of any apps running in the background!) and it will last for days. If you want insurance, a small power bank is worth its few ounces. There is no charging on trail, and no, there are no power outlets in our canyons.

Your guides carry a satellite messenger for emergencies. That is our link to the outside world, and it works everywhere we go.

What happens at the gear check?

The night before we walk, we meet as a team, usually over dinner in Kanab or Escalante. And either before or after dinner, or the next morning, we do something that startles a lot of first-timers: everybody empties their pack onto the floor.

All of it. Out. Into a pile.

This is not a test and you are not being graded. It is among the single most useful hours of the whole trip, and here’s what it accomplishes:

• We find what’s missing. Far better to discover you have no rain jacket while you’re still forty feet from a hotel room and a gear shop than to discover it in a storm.
• We remove what you don’t need. First-timers pack out of anxiety, which is completely natural and adds pounds. The extra shirts, the jeans, the second book, the full-size shampoo, a camp chair. A guide will help you go through every item, occasionally ask “what’s this for?”, and if the answer is “I don’t know, in case,” they’ll help you make the decision to leave it behind. You’ll be surprised how much weight most folks discover they can shed during gear check, and that’s a good thing: every pound you don’t carry is a pound of enjoyment back.
• We distribute team gear. Tents, stoves, fuel, team food and the kitchen get split across the group, which is where that roughly 5 lbs of shared load comes from. Spreading it is how a team moves well.
• We repack your bag properly, together. Not to be tidy, but to talk about packing techniques and best practices for making everything fit and balance properly. Where weight sits in a pack changes how it rides on your body, how comfortably (or not) it carries, and how stable you are on a ledge.

How a pack gets loaded

• Bottom: sleeping bag and sleep layer. Light, bulky, and you won’t need them until camp.
• Middle, tight against your spine: the heavy things. Food, water reservoir, your share of the tent and kitchen. Heavy weight close to your back and near shoulder-blade height keeps your center of gravity over your feet instead of pulling you backward.
• Top: puffy jacket, rain jacket, first-aid, anything you might want at short notice.
• Hip belt pockets and lid: snacks, lip balm, sunscreen, phone. The things you want without stopping.
• Outside: almost nothing, with one deliberate exception: the day’s washing. Trekking poles and drying socks are fine; everything else dangling snags on canyon walls and swings your balance around.

Do this once with a guide and you’ll understand your own pack for the rest of your life. We’ll introduce you to useful mnemonics like the ABCDEs of packing (which stands for accessible, balanced, compressed, ….), and guests tell us this is the part they still use on trips years later.

How do you actually carry a backpack?

Here’s the thing nobody tells first-timers: a loaded backpack should be carried on your hips, not your shoulders. Roughly 80% of the weight belongs on your pelvis, which is a big structure built to bear load. Your shoulders are mostly there to keep the pack from tipping away from you. If your shoulders are burning after an hour, the pack isn’t fitted appropriately. That’s a fixable problem, not a character flaw, and it’s why we teach this before you take a step.

Putting it on and dialing it in

1. Loosen everything before you put the pack on. All straps slack.
2. Get it on your back. Lift it onto a knee first, then swing one arm through and shrug it around. Don’t clean-and-jerk 40 lbs over your head; that’s how people tweak backs on day one. Better yet, ask someone to hold it while you slide in. Everyone does this for everyone out there.
3. Hip belt first. Find the top of your hip bones. The padded part of the belt should sit centred over them, not around your waist. Buckle and pull it snug, firm but not crushing. The weight should visibly settle (love handles are wanted!).
4. Shoulder straps second. Snug them until they contour to your shoulders, no gap, but they shouldn’t be lifting weight off your hips.
5. Load lifters third. Those small straps running from the top of the shoulder straps back to the pack body. Pull until they form roughly a 45-degree angle. They pull the load in toward you and stop it sagging backward.
6. Sternum strap last. Across the chest, about an inch below your collarbones. Light tension only. It keeps the shoulder straps from sliding outward. If it’s tight enough to affect your breathing, it’s too tight.

Shifting weight

Here’s an easy trick to keeping packs comfortable on the trail: Every hour or so, adjust a bit. Loosen the hip belt slightly and let the shoulders take more for a minute, then reverse. Rotating pressure between two areas is what keeps either from becoming a hot spot. Experienced backpackers do this constantly without thinking, and it’s the reason they look comfortable.

Standing up and sitting down. With 35 lbs on, sit down deliberately, using a rock or a bank to take the weight. To stand, roll forward over your feet rather than hauling yourself up with your back. These are small things, but they add up over the course of multiple days.

Do I need trekking poles, and how do I use them?

We provide trekking poles on our backpacking trips, and we highly encourage you to use them even if you’ve never touched a pair. In fact, on water hikes and Grand Canyon backpacks, poles are mandatory – and our guides would never head out on a personal trip without theirs. Poles are a bit like human 4-wheel-drive, and they do three real things. They take meaningful load off your knees on descents, which is where a heavy pack does its damage. They give you two extra points of contact on sand, slickrock and river crossings, which is worth a great deal in canyon country; on trips where wading is a part of the itinerary – for us that’d be the Paria Canyon and Coyote Gulch – poles are invaluable and make the difference between safe, steady progress and slowly white-knuckling it across uneven river bottoms for miles. And on flat ground, poles keep your hands from swelling, which is a strange minor misery of long days that doesn’t often get talked about.

Setting them up

• Length: standing on flat ground with the tip down, your elbow should sit at about 90 degrees. That’s your baseline.
• Going up for extended periods: shorten them by 5 to 10 cm so you’re not reaching up.
• Going down: lengthen them by 5 to 10 cm so you’re not stooping.
• The straps: this is the part everyone gets wrong. Come up through the loop from underneath, then bring your hand down over the strap and grip the handle. Now the strap carries the load through your wrist and you can hold the grip loosely. Gripping hard for six hours is what makes hands and forearms ache.
• Rhythm sorts itself out within twenty minutes. Opposite pole to opposite foot, roughly, and on steep ground plant both and step through. Your guide will walk you through all of this at the trailhead, adjust them to your height, and check your strap technique. Nobody expects you to arrive knowing it.

How many changes of clothing should I bring?

This is the question we get most, and the answer tends to shock people:

Every first-timer packs more than this, and every single one of them carries clothes they never touch. It’s the most reliable finding of the gear check. Clothing is where anxiety turns directly into pounds on your hips.

The whole clothing list

That’s it. That’s a five-day desert backpacking trip. Lay it out on your bed and it looks alarmingly small, which is exactly how you know it’s right.

The sleep layer, and why it isn’t only for sleeping

Your sleep layer is one lightweight base layer, top and bottom. Its job description has two halves.

First: it stays dry. When you reach camp you peel off clothes that are salty, dusty and damp with sweat, and you put on something dry. The change can be transformative, and it’s not just comfort. Damp clothes in a sleeping bag pull heat out of you all night, and being cold at 3 a.m. is a quick route to hating a trip. Second: it’s your warm layer. This is where people get needlessly precious. If a cold morning rolls in, or the wind picks up in a canyon, or you’re moving slowly on a chilly day, wear it. Pull the base layer bottoms on under your hiking pants, or the top on under your sun shirt. That’s what it’s there for. Carrying a layer you refuse to use because it’s “for sleeping” is how people end up cold with the solution in their pack. The rule isn’t “never wear it during the day.” The rule is keep it dry. Wear it for warmth, not for sweating in. If you’re working hard enough to soak it, strip it off and stuff it back in your pack, which is exactly what your guide will be doing.

Cotton

Leave it home. Cotton absorbs sweat, stops insulating the moment it’s wet, and takes forever to dry, which also means it defeats the whole rinse-and-rotate system below. In the desert it will chill you badly after sunset. Synthetic or merino wool for everything that touches your skin. One exception, if your guide mentions it for a hot-weather trip in the Grand Canyon: a cotton sun shirt worn deliberately damp can be a cooling tool in dry heat. Synthetic sunshirts perform much of the same function, so nine times out of ten… synthetic fabrics are the choice.

Yes, you will smell

Everyone does. Everyone knows everyone does. And by day three nobody notices, because there is no clean reference point to compare against. The idea of all this tends to bother first-timers a lot beforehand and approximately zero people by the second afternoon.

Washing socks and underwear on trail

This is something that makes a one-outfit system work easily: instead of bringing clean clothes for each day, you bring two of the things that matter and you keep cycling them.

The rotation

Socks and underwear can easily run on a two-pair loop: one pair is on your body, the other is clipped to the outside of your pack, drying in the sun while you walk. At camp you rinse the pair you wore, hang it, and put on the pair that dried today. Next morning, swap again.

Desert air does this work astonishingly fast. A rinsed pair of merino socks pinned to your pack at 8 a.m. is bone dry by lunch. Two pairs in rotation will see you through a five-day trip.

How to actually wash something

1. Carry water away from the source. Fill a bottle or a dry bag and walk at least 200 feet from the river, spring or pothole. Never wash in a spring or pothole. Big rivers like the Colorado and the Paria are the exception: there is enough volume that a soap-free rinse directly in the current is fine.
2. Skip the soap. Plain water gets out the salt, sand and sweat, which is 90% of the problem. Soap is not welcome near desert water, biodegradable or otherwise, and you don’t need it.
3. Agitate, don’t scrub. Work the fabric against itself for thirty seconds. That’s plenty.
4. Wring inside a bandana or pack towel. This is the trick worth remembering. Roll the wet sock inside the towel and twist the whole bundle. It pulls out far more water than wringing by hand, and it can cut drying time in half.
5. Clip it to your pack and walk. Sun and moving air finish the job. Your pack straps or possibly a small carabiner is all you need.

Turn everything inside out

Two reasons, and both are real. After washing: It dries and de-stinks faster. The damp, salty, bacteria-friendly side of a sock or a pair of underwear is the side that touched you. Turned inside out on your pack, that surface faces the sun and the wind instead of being sealed against itself. Desert UV is a powerful sterilizer, and a few hours of direct sun does more for the smell than a rinse alone. Without washing: It buys you an extra day. If you can’t wash, or something didn’t dry, turning underwear or a base layer inside out and re-wearing it without washing is a legitimate old-school move. It’s not glamorous, but it works, and long-distance hikers have done it forever.

Water hikes: don’t bother with dry socks

This one saves first-timers a lot of pointless fussing, and it applies directly to trips like Coyote Gulch and Paria Canyon, where you’re in and out of the river all day. On a wet route, there is no point putting on fresh dry socks in the morning. They’ll be soaked and full of silt within five minutes of leaving camp. All you’ve done is wet your clean pair and now you own two wet pairs instead of one. What experienced people do instead is simple: rinse yesterday’s socks out in the evening, wring them, hang them overnight, and put the same pair back on in the morning, damp or not. Your feet are going in the river anyway. The pair you’re not wearing stays as clean and dry as you can keep it, and gets saved for camp and sleeping, which is when dry socks actually change your life.

Feet that are wet all day do soften, so give them air at every stop, dry them properly at camp, and put on your dry sleep socks the moment you’re done walking. Your guide will be watching feet, and will tell you to take your shoes off more often than you expect. Listen to them.

How does going to the bathroom work?

Here’s the section you scrolled for. We’re going to be direct, because vagueness helps nobody. There are no outhouses on most of our backpacking itineraries, with the exception of the Grand Canyon routes, which have toilets at established campgrounds. Everywhere else, the desert is the bathroom, and there’s a right (and a wrong!) way to use it.

Peeing

Walk a short distance from camp and the trail, ideally 70 steps or so from water. Go on durable ground, rock or sand, not on vegetation. In the desert, urine can attract animals that will dig up a plant for the salt, so bare ground is better than a nice-looking shrub. Nobody watches you. Nobody wonders where you went. Groups develop an instant, tactful blindness about this within about two hours of the trailhead. If you’d rather use a pee cloth (a small piece of absorbent fabric that clips outside your pack, dries in the sun and is naturally sterilized by UV) or a pee funnel that lets you stand, both are common and neither is odd. But pee funnels take some practice and have failure modes… if you’re a woman who is thinking about privacy while peeing, we’re big fans of Gnara pants with their crotch zippers; they work beautifully. Toilet paper for peeing: pack it out in a small ziplock, or use a pee cloth and skip it.

Pooping: WAG bags

On many of our routes, all solid human waste has to come out with you. In the Paria Canyon, Coyote Gulch and Buckskin Gulch, WAG bags are mandatory. These are narrow, hard-walled corridors with concentrated use and a river running through them, and burial simply is not an option that keeps the water clean. We provide the bags. A WAG bag is a double-bag kit containing a gelling powder that solidifies liquid and neutralizes odor, plus toilet paper and a sanitizing wipe. You use it, seal it, and carry it in a designated outer pocket of your pack until the trailhead. First-timers dread this and then report it was fine. The gel works. The bag’s smell is minimal. You’ll use it once and stop thinking about it.

Pooping: cat holes

On some (though not many) of our itineraries it is permissible to bury solid waste in a cat hole. Here’s the method:

1. Walk about 200 feet (roughly 70 adult steps) from camp, from the trail, and above all from any water, wash or drainage.
2. Find a private spot with some soil. A big boulder or a bush makes a fine screen. Take your trowel, your toilet paper and your ziplock.
3. Dig 6 to 8 inches deep and about 4 to 6 inches across. Set the plug of soil aside.
4. Do your business into the hole. Squatting is easier if you brace your back against a rock, or hold onto a trekking pole planted in front of you. That pole trick is worth remembering.
5. Pack the toilet paper out in your ziplock. Do not bury it and never burn it. (This follows Leave No Trace Principle 3, which is the standard we hold ourselves and our guests to.) Desert soils are dry and biologically slow; paper does not break down, it resurfaces. A ziplock with a strip of duct tape on the outside so it isn’t see-through solves the squeamishness entirely.
6. Fill the hole in, replace the plug of soil, and put a rock on top.
7. Hand sanitizer. Every single time.

Going at night

You will need to, at least once. Everyone does, because you’ll be drinking more water than usual. Keep your headlamp inside your sleeping bag or in a tent pocket where your hand can find it in the dark, and put your camp shoes right by the tent door. Then just go. Don’t lie there for an hour talking yourself out of it, that’s how people end up with a bad night’s sleep. Step out, walk far enough for privacy, take care of it and come back. The stars alone are usually worth the trip.

What if I can’t go?

Extremely common, and it has a name among backpackers: the first-day shutdown. New routine, new food, dehydration, self-consciousness. It usually resolves by day two. Drink your water, eat normally, and don’t force it. If you’re on a longer trip and it hasn’t sorted itself by day three, mention it to your guide. They’ve had this conversation many times and will not find it strange.

Diarrhea, or feeling ill

Tell your guide immediately, without embarrassment. In the backcountry, dehydration is the actual risk and it escalates faster than people expect. Our guides carry a team first-aid kit and are trained Wilderness First Responders — you can meet the team here. Telling the guides early when you are experiencing symptoms gives them options that telling them late does not.

Backpacking on your period

It’s entirely manageable, and no reason to cancel or reschedule a trip.

• Everything gets packed out. Tampons, pads, applicators, wipes. Nothing buried, nothing burned. Bring a dedicated opaque ziplock, and doubling it with a little baking soda inside handles odor completely.
• Menstrual cups work well on trail and reduce waste to near zero, but only if you already use one comfortably. A backpacking trip is not the moment to trial one. Empty it into a cat hole, rinse with treated water, sanitize your hands.
• Bring more than you think you need. Altitude, exertion and travel routinely shift cycle timing. Several of our guides carry supplies regardless of their own timing, and so should you.
• Dark-colored underwear is a small, practical choice that makes the rinse-and-rotate system a lot less stressful.
• Wet wipes and hand sanitizer make a real difference. Wipes get packed out too.
• Tell your guide if you want to. You are under no obligation. But if it affects how you’re feeling or your pace, they’d rather know, and they’ll be entirely matter-of-fact about it.

Where does drinking water come from?

Every itinerary we run is built around known water: a river, springs, reliable potholes or a planned cache. Route planning around water is one of many reasons guided desert backpacking exists.

How it works day to day

Depending on the day you will carry up to 3 liters of capacity, usually a reservoir plus a bottle, or two to three bottles. The good news: you will rarely carry three full liters all day. You’ll fill up, walk to the next source, and fill again. Water weighs about 2.2 lbs per liter, which is why “carry only what you need to the next source” matters so much to pack weight. Your guide handles purification for the group. Depending on the source and the itinerary that means filtering, chemical treatment, or both. On some routes we cache or resupply water in advance. You do not need to bring a filter, though nobody minds if you like having your own. Silty water, which is normal in the Paria and the Colorado, gets settled first (let it sit so sediment drops out) and then treated. If you like the science, the CDC’s guidance on backcountry water disinfection explains why chemical treatment and boiling both work.

How much to drink

In desert heat, plan on half a liter to a full liter per hour while moving. That’s much more than most people drink at home, and the desert makes it worse by evaporating your sweat before you notice it. You can be losing significant fluid while feeling completely dry. Electrolytes matter as much as water. Drinking plain water all day while sweating heavily dilutes your sodium and produces headache, nausea and lethargy, which people then misread as needing more water. Bring electrolyte tablets or powder and use them daily. Guides drink them routinely. If you want the physiology, our post on desert heat and our heat safety tips go deeper. Check your urine. Pale straw is the target. Dark means drink more; completely clear all day means you may want more electrolytes and less plain water.

What do you eat on a backpacking trip?

We provide and carry all breakfasts, dinners and trail lunches, plus coffee and tea. Expect a mix of fresh cooking and the occasional backpacker’s freeze-dried meal. Freeze-dried gets a bad reputation from the 1990s; modern versions are decent, but they’re not the majority of what you’ll eat with us. Our guides take pride in trail dinners! You bring your own cup, bowl and spoon, and your own snacks. Those are the two things that are on you.

A day of eating

• Breakfast in camp: hot, usually quick. Coffee happens, always.
• Grazing all morning: this is the part beginners get wrong. Don’t wait for a lunch bell. Eat something small every 60 to 90 minutes while you walk. Steady input beats three big refuels. This is where your snacks come in.
• Trail lunch: often a longer stop in shade, sometimes a lighter spread eaten in pieces, depending on heat and the day’s plan. Lunch is not usually substantial, it’s just a group break and a bit of a taste & texture diversion from your own snacks. (Side note: many outfitters don’t provide trail lunches and just rely on personal snacks between breakfast and dinner – we do typically stop for a light group lunch, because we like the rhythm it creates).
• Afternoon & camp snack: just like in the morning, and then again the moment you drop your pack at camp. Get something in you before you do anything else, it’ll usually be another 2ish hours before dinner is ready!
• Dinner: the biggest meal, cooked as a team, usually at golden hour with everyone sitting on rocks in their sleep layers. It’s the best hour of the day.

How much to bring in personal snacks

Aim for roughly 800-1000 calories per day in your own snacks, on top of our meals. Bring more variety than volume, because trail appetite is unpredictable and taste fatigue is real. Something salty, something sweet, and something you look forward to. Chocolate melts. Bars turn to bricks in cold and to soup in heat. Nuts, jerky, dried mango, salted crackers, gummy candy and stroopwafels all travel well. Whatever you bring, its wrappers come home with you – every backpacker is responsible for collecting and transporting their own personal trash.

Dietary restrictions

We accommodate many of them with prior notice – where “prior notice” means at booking, not at the trailhead. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, allergies and religious requirements are all things we’ve handled. Tell us early and specifically. Trail food is planned and packed days before you arrive, and a group’s food is bought as a unit. If you have a severe allergy, please say so plainly and make sure your own medication is with you and that your guide knows where it lives in your pack.

Will I be hungry?

Backpackers burn a great deal, often 3,000 to 5,000 calories a day on a demanding itinerary. It’s normal to finish a trip having eaten enormously and still lost a little weight, and it’s normal to develop a truly memorable appetite by day three. Eat when food is in front of you.

What does a day actually look like?

Timings shift with season, route and heat, but the shape holds.

What is sleeping out there really like?

Honestly? Your first night is often not great, but your third night might end up being the best sleep you’ve had in months. Knowing that in advance takes most of the sting out of night one.

Tents

We provide lightweight backpacking tents, typically for solo occupancy (our single tents weigh in at 3.5lbs). If you’re travelling with a partner or friend you have the choice of doubling up in a two-person tent to save a bit of weight. Tent etiquette is simple and mostly about headlamps: point yours down, use the red setting at night, and give your tentmate the courtesy you’d want at 5 a.m.

Staying warm

Desert nights are colder than almost everyone anticipates, in every single season. The clear dry air that gives you those skies also lets the day’s heat radiate straight off after dark.

• Your pad matters as much as your bag. Cold comes up from the ground, and the insulation value of a pad (its R-value) is what stops it. A summer-weight bag on a good pad beats a winter bag on a thin one.
• Dry sleep layer, dry sleep socks. Discussed above, and this is where it pays off.
• Eat something before bed. Digestion generates heat. A handful of nuts or a carby snack at 8 p.m. helps at 2 a.m.
• Pee before you get in. Your body spends energy keeping a full bladder warm, and you’ll sleep better without it.
• Have a warm hat at the ready. Even if the day’s temperatures were in the 80s.
• Optional: Tomorrow’s clothes in the bag with you. Putting on warm clothes in the morning is a small luxury with an outsized effect on mood, and it’s the one reliable way to make damp hiking clothes bearable at 6 a.m.

The noises

The desert at night has a soundtrack: wind moving through a canyon, rockfall echoing from somewhere far away, mice, and coyotes, which sound much closer and much more numerous than they are. None of it is a threat. For light sleepers, ear plugs can be the most underrated 10 grams in backpacking, and plenty of experienced people use them.

How do I stay clean without a shower?

You don’t get properly clean, but you do get functionally clean which is enough to stay comfortable for ~a week. Nearly all of our backpacking trips include a hotel night before and after the hike, so you begin clean and you get a real shower the same day you walk out. (If you are deciding where to base yourself around those nights, we compared Kanab vs. Page.) In between:

• Wet wipes, a few per day. Face, underarms, feet, and what backpackers call the important bits. Pack them all out; it’s standard Leave No Trace practice, and wipes (just like toilet paper) don’t biodegrade regardless of packaging claims. Pro tip: Make sure you don’t bring a full pack of wet wipes for a short trip – count how many you think you’ll want, and repackage them into a ziploc bag!
• Hand sanitizer before every meal and after every bathroom trip, no exceptions. The most common way a backpacking trip goes wrong is a stomach bug passed hand to hand within a group, not anything dramatic.
• Rinse in the river if there’s a river, but no soap in or near water – not even the biodegradable kind. If you must use soap, carry water 200 feet away from the source and use it there.
• Wash your feet at camp if you can. It feels wonderful and it heads off problems.
• Travel sizes only. Small toothbrush, small toothpaste, small everything. Spit toothpaste in a wide spray away from camp and water. If you are traveling with a companion, share items like toothpaste and sunscreen to eliminate unnecessary weight. Pro tip: Every ounce matters: some of our guides go so far as to cut the handles of their toothbrushes!

Feet, blisters and chafing

The most common reasons a first-timer has a bad trip are not the big dramatic ones. They’re feet and friction.

Blisters

Blisters come from heat, moisture and rubbing, and above all from grit. Every prevention step targets one of those:

• Broken-in boots. 30 to 50 miles minimum before the trip.
• Proper socks, synthetic or merino, never cotton. Some people swear by thin liner socks underneath so the friction happens sock-on-sock.
• Sand out at every break. In canyon country this matters more than anything else on the list. A single grain of sand under a toe becomes a real problem across eight miles. Shoes off, socks off, swish, shake, back on.
• Deal with hot spots the moment you feel one. This is the whole game. That small warm patch is a blister announcing itself twenty minutes early. Stop, take the boot off, and tape it. Do not walk another mile hoping it resolves; it never resolves.
• Say something. Guides would infinitely rather stop for five minutes on day one than manage an open wound on day four. Nobody in the group will mind. Several of them are quietly grateful for the break.

Chafing

Thighs, hips under the belt, shoulders under the straps, and anywhere a seam sits. Anti-chafe balm or a small tin of ointment, applied before you start walking rather than after it hurts, prevents nearly all of it. Fitted synthetic underwear or shorts beat loose cotton, and a rinsed pair of shorts is a lot kinder than a salt-crusted one, which is another argument for the evening rinse.

Sun

Southern Utah sun at altitude is stronger than almost anywhere most people have hiked. Sunscreen re-applied at every break, a brimmed hat, sunglasses, and lip balm with SPF. A long-sleeve sun hoodie is cooler than bare arms in dry heat and means far less sunscreen, which is the main reason it’s the best single clothing purchase for a desert trip. Sunburn is not just uncomfortable, it impairs your body’s ability to shed heat, which matters on day two and beyond.

The fears nobody says out loud

“What if I’m the slowest one?”

By default, someone is the slowest one, and it might be you – but it matters far less than you think. Guided groups don’t move at the pace of the fastest person; they move at a pace the whole team can sustain, and setting that pace is a skill our guides are specifically good at. With a guide-to-guest ratio of 1:4 to 1:5 depending on the itinerary, one guide can walk with the front of the group and one with the back, and the back is not a punishment. It’s often the better conversation. The people who struggle most are usually not the slowest, but the ones burning unnecessary energy trying not to be slowest.

“What if I can’t finish?”

This is a fair question with an important answer. In wilderness terrain, there is typically no quick exit. That’s part of what makes it wild, and it’s exactly why the readiness section above matters and why we ask about your fitness at booking. And while there is a great deal of room between “fine” and “evacuation,” you should not participate in a group trip if you are truly questioning if you are able to complete the route. Emergency evacuation in canyon country almost always requires a helicopter, and helicopters are reserved for true medical emergencies. For everything else… “evacuation” means completing the route by reaching the relative safety of the truck parked at the trailhead – under your own power.

“Is it dangerous?”

The main hazards in canyon country aren’t the ones that movies suggest. Heat and dehydration come first. Falls on uneven ground come second. Flash floods matter enormously in slot canyons and are the reason your guide watches weather across a whole watershed, not just the sky above you, and will change or cancel a plan on that basis. Believe them when they do. Rattlesnakes exist and want nothing to do with you; watch where you put hands and feet. Scorpions exist and are a minor nuisance, so shake out your shoes. Bears are not a factor on our routes.

“Will I be the only beginner?”

Frequently not. Our easier itineraries specifically welcome motivated, fit first-time backpackers, and mixed-experience groups are the norm. Experienced backpackers in a group tend to be enthusiastically helpful; they were all beginners once, and most of them remember someone who helped them.

“I’m coming alone.”

Lots of people do, and it’s a great way to travel. Several days of walking and eating together produces friendships faster than most things in adult life. If you want more on this, we wrote about joining a Dreamland tour without a travel buddy.

Which Dreamland trip is right for a first-timer?

Not all of our backpacking trips suit a beginner, and we’d rather point you at the right one than sell you the wrong one.

Browse all Dreamland backpacking trips → Every one of these includes permits, tents, poles, meals, purification, trailhead transport, a Wilderness First Responder guide, satellite communication and hotel nights on either end. Several have a 3-person minimum and cap out around 10 guests with 2 guides. Permit requirements vary by land manager: the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness and Buckskin Gulch are administered by the BLM, Grand Staircase-Escalante covers Coyote Gulch and the Boulder Mail Trail, and the Grand Canyon routes fall under National Park Service backcountry permits. Several of these run through Recreation.gov and are competitive enough that we operate a pre-permit reservation process, explained on our permits page. Not sure? Call us at (801) 251-6036 or get in touch and describe your actual fitness honestly. We will tell you the truth, including when the truth is “not this year.”

The final pre-trip checklist

Frequently asked questions

How many changes of clothes do I need for a backpacking trip?

Far fewer than you think: one hiking outfit and one sleep layer, whether the trip is three days or five. You wear the same hiking shirt and pants every day. Add two pairs of hiking socks and two pairs of underwear, which you rinse and rotate rather than replacing daily, plus one dry pair of socks reserved for sleeping. Your sleep layer also serves as a warm layer during the day when temperatures call for it, so long as you keep it dry.

How do you wash clothes while backpacking?

Carry water at least 200 feet away from any river, spring or pothole and rinse without soap, which removes the salt and grit that cause most of the problem. Wring the item inside a bandana or pack towel to pull out far more water than wringing by hand, then clip it to the outside of your pack, turned inside out, and let sun and moving air dry it as you walk. In dry desert air, socks rinsed at breakfast are usually dry by lunch. Turning items inside out both speeds drying and lets UV work on the surface that touched your skin.

Should I bring fresh socks for every day of a backpacking trip?

No, and on wet routes it is actively pointless. On trips with river crossings, such as Coyote Gulch or Paria Canyon, fresh dry socks are soaked and full of silt within five minutes of leaving camp, so all you have done is wet a second clean pair. Rinse the previous day’s socks in the evening, hang them overnight and wear the same pair again. Keep one dry pair reserved for camp and sleeping. Grit rather than water is what causes blisters, so the habit that matters is rinsing silt out of socks and shoes at every long break.

How do you go to the bathroom while backpacking?

For urine, walk a short distance from camp, trail and water and go on durable ground. For solid waste, most of our routes require you to carry everything out in a WAG bag — a sealed double-bag kit with a gelling powder that solidifies liquid and neutralizes odor. WAG bags are mandatory in Paria Canyon, Coyote Gulch and Buckskin Gulch, and Dreamland provides them. On the smaller number of itineraries where burial is permitted, you dig a cat hole 6 to 8 inches deep at least 200 feet from camp, trail and any water. Either way your toilet paper is packed out in a sealed bag, and your guide teaches the technique on day one.

How heavy is a backpacking pack for a beginner?

On Dreamland trips, plan on roughly 35 lbs — more if you don’t heed our packing lists. That includes roughly 5 lbs of shared team gear (tent, stove, food, kitchen) distributed across the group at the gear check, on top of your personal kit. Final weight depends on your gear choices, trip length and how much water you have to carry between sources.

Where does drinking water come from on a backpacking trip?

From rivers, springs and potholes along the route, and occasionally from caches we place in advance. Every itinerary is planned around known water. Your guides purify water for the whole team by chemical treatment or by boiling. You carry 3 liters of capacity and refill as you go rather than carrying the whole day’s water at once.

What food do you eat when backpacking?

Dreamland provides and carries all breakfasts, dinners and trail lunches, plus coffee, tea and water. Expect a mix of fresh cooking and the occasional freeze-dried meal. You bring your own cup, bowl and spoon, plus roughly 800 to 1,000 calories a day of personal snacks. We accommodate many dietary restrictions with advance notice given at booking.

How do I carry a backpack correctly?

About 80% of the weight should rest on your hips, not your shoulders. Put the pack on with all straps loose, then tighten in this order: hip belt (centred over your hip bones), shoulder straps, load lifters (aiming for roughly 45 degrees), and finally the sternum strap with light tension. Every hour or so, shift a little weight between hips and shoulders to avoid a hot spot in either place.

Do I need experience to go on a guided backpacking trip?

Not on every trip. Boulder Mail Trail and Coyote Gulch both explicitly welcome motivated, fit first-time backpackers. What you do need is the fitness to carry 35 lbs over uneven ground for several consecutive days. Harder itineraries such as Paria Canyon, Buckskin Gulch and the Grand Canyon routes are for seasoned hikers or experienced backpackers only.

Can I rent backpacking gear instead of buying it?

Yes. Dreamland rents backpacks ($50 per trip), sleeping bags ($40 per trip), sleeping pads ($10 per trip) and hiking boots ($15 per day), and we provide tents and trekking poles as standard. Rentals are limited and allocated first-come, first-served, so reserve them when you book.

Are there showers or toilets on the trail?

No showers. There are no outhouses on most of our backpacking itineraries, the exception being the Grand Canyon routes, which have toilets at established campgrounds. Nearly all of our backpacking trips include a hotel night before and after the hike, so you start clean and shower the same day you finish. On trail, wet wipes and hand sanitizer do the work.

What if I can’t keep up with the group?

Guided groups set a pace the whole team can sustain, and with a guide-to-guest ratio of 1:4 to 1:5 depending on the itinerary, one guide can stay with the back of the group. If you’re struggling, guides can shorten a day, move weight out of your pack into others, or adjust the plan. Tell your guide early rather than late; early gives them far more options.

Should I tip my backpacking guide?

Tipping is customary and appreciated. A typical gratuity is $20 to $40 per person per day, so roughly $100 to $200 total for a five-day trip. Our guides wrote more about tipping from a guide’s perspective if you’d like the inside view.

Still nervous? Good. Nearly everyone is before their first one, including several of our guides, once. The nerves are what make the second morning, when you wake up in a canyon and realize you can do this, worth the whole price of admission. Our guests describe the experience better than we can — their reviews are here. Come find out. Browse our backpacking trips, or call us at (801) 251-6036 and let’s talk about which one fits you. More from our guides: Backpacking for Beginners: The Ultimate Gear Guide · A Beginner’s Guide to Backpacking · Training for a Grand Canyon Backpack · What to Bring · Frequently Asked Questions