Exoterika Outdoors

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A Beginner’s Field Guide

Getting Started in Backpacking

Everything you need to take your first trip into the backcountry — tested by a father and daughter who carry it themselves.

Browse the Gear List

Carry what you need. Leave the rest behind.

Your first backpacking kit doesn’t need to be expensive — it needs to be reliable. We’ve broken the essentials down by category so you can build your setup one piece at a time.

Tap any category to expand it and see our current picks. Start with shelter and sleep — that’s where comfort and safety begin.

The Essential Gear List

Build your kit, category by category

Shelter

A 1 person (1P) tent is going to be a very narrow experience. A 2P tent is really 1 person plus gear or 2 persons shoulder to shoulder. For ease-of-use get a free standing tent. This is a tent that comes with poles and doesn’t even need to have stakes driven into the ground (but you’ll want to do it doesn’t fly away). Second easiest is a semi freestanding. These come with a pole, but will require at least one or more corners staked out. The last option is nothing to be afraid of and is the trekking pole tent where you use trekking poles to hold up the tent under tension after you stake out the corners.

The Backpack

We found the best to start with is a bag with 45-58L capacity- aim for something comfortable and light. Not too many bells and whistles like numerous internal baffles. We try not to get over 55-58L as you will be tempted to fill it with stuff you don’t need.

Sleeping Bags / Quilts

This comes as either a traditional sleeping bag that wraps arround you or as a quilt that lays over you and usually has straps that hold it to the sleeping pad. Sleeping bags and Quilts come with tempurature ratings which are not as easy to understand:

  • Comfort Rating – You’ll sleep comfortably. This is the temperature where the average person can get a good night’s sleep without feeling cold. If you’re a cold sleeper, use the comfort rating as your guide.
  • Limit Rating – You’ll survive the night, but you probably won’t sleep well. This is the lowest temperature where the average warm sleeper can remain warm while curled up. Expect to feel chilly and uncomfortable.
  • Extreme Rating – This is for survival—not sleeping. At this temperature, the bag is intended only to reduce the risk of death from hypothermia for a short time. You should never choose a sleeping bag based on its extreme rating.
  • Example – A sleeping bag with a Comfort Rating of 30°F (-1°C), a Limit Rating of 20°F (-7°C), and an Extreme Rating of 10°F (-12°C) means:
    • At 30°F, most people should sleep comfortably.
    • At 20°F, you’ll likely be cold and won’t get much sleep.
    • At 10°F, the bag is only intended to help you survive an emergency—not provide a safe or comfortable night’s sleep.
Sleeping Pad

A sleeping pad provides cushioning and, more importantly, insulation from the cold ground. When choosing one, consider comfort, weight, packed size, and its R-value. For backpacking, we do not recommend self-inflating closed cell foam pads as they are bulky. Also try not to get something very thin that will bottom out when you sleep on it. Consider if you sleep on your back or side.

  • R-Value measures how well a sleeping pad insulates you from the cold ground. The higher the R-value, the warmer the pad. For most three-season backpacking, an R-value between 2 and 4 is sufficient, while winter camping typically requires an R-value of 5 or higher.
Pillow

 A light option that keeps your head up off the pad and hopefully doesn’t move around too much. You CAN just stuff your jacket or spare clothes into a stuff sack and call it a day

Cook Pot

Something to boil water in. Think of this as half of your cook system, so purchase this with your stove in mind. You can consider Aluminum vs Titanium for heat retention and boil time vs lightweight. Aluminum will make it easier to simmer, while titanium will be more prone to hotspots. You can also consider a pot with a heat exchanger to use less fuel at the cost of more weight and price.

Stove

This is the thing you use to heat the pot. Consider lightness, if you want to use a lighter vs having a piezo igniter on the stove, and efficiency.

Fuel

Depending on your stove, you will probably be using an Isobutane mix. IMPORTANT there is a difference between companies and blends. A cheaper butane canister will work great in warmer months but will fail in the colder months when you hit freezing. Isobutane mixtures help stretch that to well below freezing. Something like the Whisperlite can use white gas which will burn at almost any temp and is super cheap, but must be kept in a special canister. Isobutane 100g canisters nest nicely inside most camping pots with your stove and even a lighter. the 230g canisters will sometimes nest inside but without much room to spare.

You can get them much cheaper close to home at a sporting good store, these are just visual examples

Cup

You can drink out of your cooking pot, but it’s so much nicer to drink from a cup while you keep cooking or after your done.

Spork / Spoon

You want a long handle to reach into the deep dehydrated food bags without getting food all over your knuckles. Titanium helps it stay lightweight. A polish bowl makes it easier to clean.

Water Filter / Purification

This is for cleaning the water you find from a spring, steam, lake, or pond. A Filter will remove most if not all of the bacteria and suffices for most situations in the US and even overseas. They are lightweight and easy to use. Purifiers will remove bacteria and viruses and usually help remove bad tastes and some heavy metals. They tend to be heavier, more complex, more costly due to having to replace the filters more often. Based on the filter or purifier you choose, you will need to account for the water collection system/bag you use to get the dirty water and collect the clean water. We use one 2L bag for dirty water, another 2L bag for clean water, plus our water bottle, so we can easily carry 5L of water for long periods of no water access (which we can increase to 6 or 8 if we want to carry more bottles or bags). You can also use chemicals/tablets/ UV wands to purify your water.

NOTE– water weighs 2.2lbs per liter and this adds up fast. You can also contaminate your clean water with your dirty water if the dirty water drips from the outside of your dirty bag to the inside of your clean bag/bottle. Be careful.

  • Sawyer Squeeze Filter 28mm https://amzn.to/4fENC5L (the hard plastic bags it comes with are VERY hard to use. Can be backflushed in the field to keep it clean and working for an expected 100,000 gallons.)
  • Sawyer Squeeze Filter System https://amzn.to/4wdIIS9 (comes with a CNOC Vecto bag which makes water collection VERY easy)
  • Cnoc VectoX bags 28mm https://amzn.to/4wE5Xpk (the plus is slightly heavier than the non-plus, but the durability helps with avoiding leaks and punctures. 28mm works with the Sawyer Squeeze.)
  • Cnoc Vecto basic bag https://amzn.to/4wytmIS
  • Aquatabs https://amzn.to/4z3OMzs (lightest option but complex instructions, but a good fall back option for emergencies.)
  • Grayl Purifier https://amzn.to/3TBplVG (easy to use, each filter works for 65 gallons before needing replacement. Can only filter 24oz at a time.)
Water Bottle

This is what you’ll be drinking from. If you get the Grayl, you can drink straight from it, just make sure the outside is clean. Most backpackers rely on Smart Water from their grocer. It has a 28mm opening so you can even screw the Sawyer Squeeze right onto it. If you are worried about the durability and microplastics, or cleaning and reusing it, there are some new options on the market. We tend to choose a 1L bottle and swap out the cap with a sport bottle cap that had a flip lid.

Food Storage and Trash

This is something to keep the food in one place so you can tie it up on a tree and out of reach of critters. For Trash we use a ziplock zipper style bag that you can store your trash and wrappers and orange peels in and keep out of the place. We try to have one per trip.

  • Food Storage bag – Coming soon from Exoterika
Trekking Poles

Regardless of if you’re using a trekking pole tent, these are fantastic. They take 15-25% of the load off your legs and increase stability. Think of them as handrails when going up or down a hill. If you are using them, then a trekking pole tent makes even more sense since you will no longer need tent poles.

The Ten Essentials

These are the small items that turn an emergency into an inconvenience. They weigh almost nothing and belong in every pack, every trip — from a day hike to a week in the wilderness.