How To Keep You And Your Clothes Clean During Your Backpacking Trip

by Ric Henderson

If you are a person that would prefer to avoid dirty situations and some foul smelling people, backpacking may not be the right choice for you. You are going to be out in the wild without access to showers, but in truth, there is no need to make even the bears turn their noses up at you. Some careful planning and a little innovativeness can help you stay fairly clean during your journey.

When you are going over your route, you will want to try and choose a trail that will get you by a water source each and every day. At worst, you want to try and get by one at least once every other day. The reason is that everyone will get the chance to refill their water bottles and then jump in the water to get washed off. It is not exactly a bubble bath at the W, but it will do for what you need.

This will also give you a chance to wash your clothes. The best move is to travel by the water source at the end of your hiking day. You want to do this for several reasons, least of which is to wash your clothing. If you schedule this area for the end of your day, you are able to wash clothing and allow it to dry over night. This will allow you to have fresh clothing every day or every other day during your backpacking trip.

Something that you will want to keep in mind though is that you are bathing and washing clothing in the wild. In order to make sure that you do not cause harm to the area, the soaps that you bring with you should be ecologically friendly. There is no need to pack laundry detergent either, simply use the same soap that you are bathing with to clean your clothing. You are not expecting things to get as clean as they would at home, you are just trying to get the odor and some of the dirt off of them to make them wearable again.

Doing this will allow you to feel a little better about yourself and making the close quarters a little easier to deal with. The other benefit, is that it gives everyone a little down time at the end of the day that they can actually enjoy. Not so much the doing laundry part, but the swimming and bathing part. If you are backpacking in the summer, a nice jump in the lake is a great to unwind after a long day on the trails.

Backpacking does not have to be a “dirty” trip. Make no mistake, people are not going to look like they supermodels on TV after 3 days in the woods, but there is no reason to smell worse than the animals that you are going to be around. As a matter of fact, even they jump in the creek to clean themselves off every now and then. There is no reason that you should not be doing the same thing. Just make sure you follow the code and don’t use things that will harm the environment or wildlife in the area.