No, seriously, don’t change. I’ve been teaching a Backpacking Boot Camp with the Portland Women’s Outdoor Club, and one of my missions is to get the participants to bring fewer clothes. To me, leaving a few shirts and pants at home is an easy way to lose weight and bulk from your pack. So I tell them, don’t change your clothes often when you are in the woods, nobody will care.
Reader: You wear the same clothes for days in a row in town, so your advice doesn’t carry much weight here.
Addy: What can I say? The trail has influenced my personal hygiene, perhaps in a negative way. But, while people may notice my smell in town, nobody notices it in the woods.
On a recent trip, I had a participant bring her gear in beforehand so that I could sift through things with her. It was her first backpacking trip ever, and she brought way too much stuff (which we all do when we are starting.) We eliminated two cans of tomato soup, eight fruit and yogurt cups, and a couple of pairs of underwear. “Annie,” I said, “do you really need four pairs of underwear for a four day trip? You are wearing one pair already, so that leaves you changing them once every day and twice on one day.” I convinced her to leave a couple of pairs behind. Underwear may seem like a small thing, but as a backpacker once told me, “Nothing weighs nothing.”
How to bring fewer clothes:
Wear your underwear one day, and then flip it inside out the next day. This way you can bring half as many pairs of underwear as you were planning to. This argument worked on Annie. If you really get into it, you can wear your underwear one day, wash it out that night in a stream, and hang it out to dry on the back of your pack, while you wear your second pair that day. You’ll then be able to bring only two pairs on your trip.
Wear a skirt and go commando. I do, if that’s not too much information. It adds to the breeze effect. I also met a few men who hike in basketball shorts and no underwear because it keeps their manly bits drier.
Bring only three pairs of socks. Wear one the first day, rinse it out and let it dry on the back of your pack (like the underwear). The third pair of socks should be your sacred socks, which are never worn except when you’re sleeping.
Wear the same pants each day. Really. I wore the same pants everyday for a month with no ill effects. They did smell a little gnarly by the end, but that was my proof that I had been on the trail for a while.
Use gaiters. When you are hiking in pants, they will get dirty quickly in muddy areas or places where you need to do a little bushwhacking. Gaiters can be worn with shorts or a skirt and taken off at night and left outside your tent. This keeps the rest of your clothes cleaner.
Bring a maximum of two shirts. If you choose your gear well and go for lightweight, fast wicking clothing, your shirts will be able to dry during the night (unless there is a lot of humidity). If you are rinsing out your shirts in a stream or lake, there is really no point in bringing more than two. I wore the same shirt in town for more than a month, and, because it was the right material, it didn’t smell bad.
Those are my best suggestions, perhaps other people have more? I know that Ray Jardine uses an umbrella for rain gear and leaves the waterproof clothing at home, but I’ve never tested this system. At any rate, when I try to convince new backpackers that they don’t need to bring many clothes, there is always a marked resistance. However, after a little suffering on the trail, people begin to try to jettison gear in any way possible. In fact, at this point, I’d hike naked if it weren’t for all the chaffing and embarrassment.
*Changed her name.
