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Hiking guide: Camping alone is scary, stressful and can be dangerous. We should do it more.

By Ely Portillo

Updated October 13, 2019 3:27 PM

This is part of our Hiking Guide series rolling out this spring and summer.

The coyotes sounded like they were right outside my tent.

Their weird chattering filled the night air, mixed with plaintive howls that rebounded off the surrounding hills. Inside my coffin-like, one-person tent, I huddled inside my sleeping bag, trying to remind myself that coyotes don’t usually attack full-grown adults.

I thought I’d never get to sleep. But after a second day in a row of hard hiking, I nodded off and awoke to perfect silence and total solitude, with the stars blazing above the Blue Ridge mountains in the moonless night.

I had found a bit of the magic of hiking and camping alone, the moments that remind you why the wilderness is worth going to in the first place. I’m no Daniel Boone, fearlessly hacking through uncharted wilderness and blazing new trails, but I’ve gotten to the point where I’m comfortable spending a night or two by myself in the backcountry. And I think more people should get away, solo, more often.

Now, I’m not saying you have to become a hermit, or plunge into situations and hikes that exceed your skill level and put you in danger. But if you’ve been backpacking a few times with friends, you have or can borrow basic gear (tent, backpack, sleeping bag, water filter, camp stove, compass, map, bear canister) and you’re comfortable using it, you should give solo camping a try.

A fire built by the author (without matches hes proud to say)

Start small. That’s what I did for my first solo overnight, a one-night trip to Mt. Sassafras on the Foothills Trail in South Carolina. With almost no intersecting trails to navigate and an abundance of water and campsites, I was pretty confident I wouldn’t get lost. It didn’t hurt that there was cell phone service over most of the area either.

From there, I’ve backpacked other, more challenging sections of the Foothills Trail solo, as well as parts of Uwharrie National Forest, the Mt. Rogers/Grayson Highlands section of the Appalachian Trail and the Art Loeb Trail/Shining Rock Wilderness. Each trip offers me plenty of time to talk to myself and a new perspective on these beautiful places.

Not convinced yet? Well, there’s research on how solo wilderness experiences can help us de-stress and build leadership skills (see the studies here). If that’s not enough to convince you, here are some more reasons to grab your pack and hit the woods alone:

It’s not as scary as it sounds.

Yes, being alone in a tent in the middle of the night can make every cracking twig and whisper of wind sound like Bigfoot menacing you outside your tent door. This spring, camping on Cold Mountain alone, I heard what I was sure was a bear scratching, snuffling and shuffling past my tent. I gathered my nerves, threw open the flap and burst outside to try to scare him away. The chipmunk I caught nosing around in the grass outside was probably terrified.

As long as you take proper precautions to store your food, follow any advisories posted by park rangers and pay attention to the basics (check the forecast, watch out for storms, etc.), the most dangerous part of your hike will probably be the drive to the trailhead.

And a quick note on solitude: You’re likely to encounter people on any reasonably popular trail in North Carolina, and if you go on a lovely weekend, you’ll probably find something a lot closer to a crowd than pure solitude. On the Art Loeb Trail, for example, I don’t think I went more than two hours without crossing paths with other hikers over a whole three-day trip. This isn’t like the vast expanses you can find out west – I once did a five-night, six-day trip with three friends in the Pasayten Wilderness of Washington state and we didn’t see a single other person the entire time.

That being said, of course you can still get lost in the vast national forests here if you’re not smart. But if you stick to somewhat popular trails, you probably won’t be totally alone for too long on most of your solo trips.

You’ll build up skills you didn’t know you could.

Hiking and camping with friends is great, but you can easily rely on your more experienced companions to do things like read maps, build fires, pitch tents and find water. If you go solo, you’ll have to do those things out of necessity – and you’ll learn how, fast.

Need to know where you’re going? Better pull out the map and figure it out. Thirsty? Keep your eyes peeled for signs of water and figure out how to collect and filter it. Want a fire? It’s up to you to collect the kindling and wood, build your fire and get it to light.

There’s no real substitute for actually doing these things by yourself, in the woods, alone, with no one else to talk to or help you out, no matter how many fires you practice building in the comfort of your fireplace or grill.

You’ll go hiking a lot more.

Don’t get me wrong: I like hiking with friends. In fact, most of the time, I prefer it. But unless you’re lucky enough to have people who live near you and don’t have families, jobs and other obligations to work around, planning is tricky. You might spend weeks planning for the one date when everyone’s schedules magically align, only to have the skies decide that it’s a great time to let loose with days of thunderstorms. If you’re able to go by yourself – say, when a free weekend opens up, but all of your friends are busy – you’ll get to hit the trail a lot more often, just as a matter of logistics.

You’ll get to sound like a badass.

“You sleep in the woods…by yourself?”

Yup, it’s satisfying to tell people that. In a society where most of us are inside almost all the time, it’s easy to impress people by telling them you spent your weekend hiking 30 miles and camping by yourself. And yes, you made your own fire, without matches (it’s really not that hard).

The author realizing he is slightly lost in the Shining Rock Wilderness.

As an added bonus, you’ll get to post plenty of pictures to social media when you get back to civilization, humble-brag captions you’ve earned. “Saw some bear tracks this weekend. Camped alone. NBD.”

So, if for nothing else, do it for the ‘Gram.

Photos: Ely Portillo

This story was originally published June 7, 2018 at 9:21 PM with the headline "Hiking guide: Camping alone is scary, stressful and can be dangerous. We should do it more.."

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