All Of The Above Blog

Why Backpacking Tents Are Important For Your Outdoor Adventures

We might have brought a backpacking tent along. Instead, being young guys we relished in challenging ourselves and flirting with danger. We cavalierly enjoyed our mountaintop vista even as the sun threatened to dip, and by the time we had turned home we could scarcely go another thousand yards before we realized that we could not see very well.

Real hikers would have just immediately pitched or otherwise assembled a backpacking tent but obviously we didn’t have one since we are novices and in no way imagined we’d need one. This was supposed to have been a casual day-hike, after all. And yet, here we were at the end of the day and barely started on our descent. What we did not count on was how incredibly fast darkness could grow in a forest.

Though light was still in the sky, it wasn’t getting to us because of the thick canopy of leaves. Even throughout high noon the ground would be mostly shaded, never mind now, right before nightfall. And in one of the most awesome experiences ever, I saw my own hand fade away right in front of me, literally in seconds, melting away into the enveloping darkness like some movie fade-out.

Except that it was happening all to me; We were still nearly two thousand feet up from the trail head; and we did not even have a backpacking tent!

Luckily, friends below summoned local volunteer park rangers and we were eventually rescued. But not before spending six or seven hours shivering in the cold and dark! Though it had been a humid summer day, it felt more like late fall in rural New York at night. When I started to finally shiver and shiver I thought it was going to be the end of me! So never,never,never – ever – go hiking without a tent or sleeping bag.