About Backpacking touring
Tourabout’s Backpacking Category usually combines hiking and camping in a single trip. This category requires the Backpacker to hike into the backcountry to spend one or more nights there, while carrying their supplies and equipment to satisfy sleeping and eating needs. The supplies must include food, water, and shelter, or the means to obtain them, but very little else. A Backpacking trip must include at least one overnight stay in the wilderness; otherwise it is a day hike. Many Backpacking trips last just a weekend (one or two nights), but long-distance expeditions may last weeks or months, and are sometimes aided by porters or planned food and supply drops.
The Backpacking category is a style of travel that takes you to camps that are more spartan than ordinary camps and many hike-in camps are no more than level patches of ground without scrub or underbrush. If they are in areas that experience regular traffic from Backpackers then the camp might have a fire ring and a small wooden bulletin board with a map and some information signs. In very remote areas these established camps do not exist at all and travellers must choose appropriate camps themselves. In some places, backpackers have access to lodging that is more substantial than a tent - for example, in the more remote parts of Great Britain; bothies exist to provide simple (free) accommodation for Backpackers. Another example is the High Sierra Camps in Yosemite National Park where mountain huts provide similar accommodation. Other trails – such as the Appalachian Trail, has somewhat more established shelters that offer a place for weary hikers to spend the night without needing to set up a tent.
Tourabout has a range of Backpacking holidays in our catalogue that requires most Backpackers to purposely avoid impacting on the land through which they travel. Travelling Backpackers follow the ‘Leave No Trace’ movement which offers a set of guidelines for Backpacking - "Leave nothing but footprints. Take nothing but photos. Kill nothing but time."