Best resources to learnHiking & Backpacking

Be Expert with Map and Compass, 3rd Edition

Orienteering handbook covering map symbols, contour interpretation, taking and following bearings, declination, pacing, terrain association and relocating when lost, with graded practice exercises and a section on GPS. Readers learn to navigate cross-country confidently with map and compass.

Backpacker Long Trails: Mastering the Art of the Thru-Hike

Thomas covers the logistics that separate multi-month hikes from weekend trips: permits, resupply boxes and mail drops, mileage progression, town stops, budgeting, body maintenance and injury management. Won the 2017 National Outdoor Book Award in the instructional category.

Wilderness Navigation: Finding Your Way Using Map, Compass, Altimeter & GPS (4th Edition)

Mountaineers Books textbook on backcountry navigation covering topographic map reading, compass bearings and declination, altimeters, GPS receivers and phone apps, and routefinding on trails, through forest, in alpine terrain, and on snow. Readers can plan routes and find their position without marked trails.

The Ultimate Hiker's Gear Guide, Second Edition: Tools and Techniques to Hit the Trail

Skurka explains how to select clothing, footwear, packs, shelters, sleep systems and stoves by matching them to specific conditions and trip objectives, drawing on 30,000-plus trail miles. Also covers foot care, campsite selection, food and hiking efficiency. Despite the title it is a skills book: it teaches the reasoning behind gear choices, which survives product turnover.

Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills (10th Edition)

The Mountaineers' comprehensive mountaineering textbook, revised in 2024, covering clothing and equipment, camping, navigation, weather, rock climbing and belaying, snow and glacier travel, crevasse rescue, and first aid. Readers can plan and safely execute alpine trips beyond maintained trails.

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NOLS Wilderness Medicine (7th Edition)

The field text used in NOLS and Wilderness Medicine Institute courses, covering patient assessment, shock, soft-tissue and orthopaedic injury, and environmental emergencies. Teaches the judgement needed when evacuation is hours away, including when resuscitation is and is not indicated.

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r/Ultralight Wiki

Community-maintained reference on reducing pack weight: base-weight definitions, shakedown conventions, category-by-category gear discussion, budget kit options and LighterPack workflow. Represents accumulated argument among thousands of practitioners rather than one author's preferences. Community-consensus counterweight to the single-author books - it is where gear orthodoxy gets stress-tested and where budget alternatives surface.

Beginner Backpackers: Start Here

Skurka's one-stop primer organizes backpacking around objectives, conditions, gear, supplies, skills and fitness, arguing that equipment choices follow from trip planning rather than precede it. Links to downloadable gear-list templates, food-planning spreadsheets and his deeper technical articles. The rare beginner page that teaches a decision framework instead of a product list: conditions and objectives determine gear, not the reverse.

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The Pacific Crest Trail Hiker Survey

Annual survey of Pacific Crest Trail thru-hikers, roughly 700 to 800 respondents per year, reporting base weights, gear actually carried and how it was rated, resupply strategy, budgets, injuries and completion rates as aggregated data. Empirical answer to gear and logistics questions that elsewhere get answered by opinion: what hundreds of finishers actually carried, spent and quit over.

CalTopo Training: User Guide

CalTopo's own guide to building topographic mapsets: base layers, slope-angle and shaded-relief overlays, drawing routes with elevation profiles, measuring distance and gain, sharing maps, and preparing offline maps for trips without cell signal. Digital route planning is now half of trip preparation, and this is the primary documentation rather than a third-party walkthrough. Free to read; a CalTopo free account covers everything the recreation lessons teach.

Andrew Skurka - Backpacking Skills Library

Free long-form tutorials on trip planning, route research and conditions, clothing systems, footwear, water treatment, creek crossings and off-trail navigation, written from repeated field testing across tens of thousands of backcountry miles rather than manufacturer talking points. The rare practitioner site that explains method (how to research conditions, how to build a clothing system) rather than ranking products.