steward / sprout
Leave No Trace for Backpacking
Turn broad care principles into choices about routes, camps, waste, fire, and wildlife
Leave No Trace asks travelers to cause less harm through route, camp, waste, and wildlife choices.
Local law and land guidance come first.
Plan away preventable harm
Check permits, group limits, closures, fire orders, food storage, camp rules, toilets, waste rules, water access, pets, fishing rules, and fragile seasons. A route choice can prevent more damage than careful behavior after arrival.
Travel in a group small enough for the place and rule. Repack food to reduce scraps without leaving loose food outside required wildlife storage.
Leave No Trace sets seven principles: plan ahead, travel and camp on durable surfaces, dispose of waste, leave what you find, reduce fire harm, respect wildlife, and consider other visitors.1
Put feet and camp on durable ground
Stay on the trail when shortcuts would cut soil or plants. In camp, use a designated or established durable site where one exists. Keep the footprint small. Rock, gravel, sand, dry grass where allowed, and deep snow often resist use better than wet meadow or fragile plants, but the land manager’s rules decide.
Do not build furniture, trenches, wind walls, or new fire rings. Move a few feet to solve the problem. Use backpacking campsite selection to place safety before comfort without expanding the site.
Keep waste out of water and mouths
Use a toilet when supplied. Otherwise follow the land’s current human-waste rule; soil, snow, desert, river corridors, and high-use areas do not share one disposal method.
Pack out toilet paper and hygiene products when the rule calls for it. Wash hands with clean water and soap away from water sources. The CDC advises outdoor handwashing at least 200 feet from water.2
Carry food scraps, grease, tea bags, and strained wash-water solids out. Never assume “biodegradable” means harmless in a lake or campsite.
Leave fire, wildlife, and other people room
Skip a fire when it is banned, unsafe, scarce in fuel, or likely to scar the site. Where fire is legal, use the smallest lawful option and put it fully out.
Observe wildlife from a distance. Never feed it. Store scented items through backpacking bear safety and food storage. Move rather than blocking an animal’s path.
Keep voices, music, lights, drones, dogs, and large camps within the rules and the place’s social limits. Yield where the trail calls for it. Do not force another group to absorb your idea of fun.
Practice drills
Before the trip, have each person find one local rule and explain the choice it changes. At camp, trace every footstep between shelter, water, kitchen, and storage; move those paths onto durable ground.
Before leaving:
- scan the whole site from its edge;
- pick up small foil, food, and cord;
- restore loose natural material only when local guidance allows;
- check the fire site cold by touch if fire was legal;
- photograph the site for an honest after-trip review.
Common failures
People treat the seven principles as fixed distances and ignore local rules. They spread tents around an untouched area to “avoid impact,” wash in water, burn trash, leave food dust, or move rocks and wood to make camp look arranged.
Change the plan when the only legal choice would damage closed, wet, crowded, or fragile ground. A permit grants access, not a right to make the site work.
Go Deeper
- Leave No Trace: The 7 Principles — The main framework and topic pages.
- Leave No Trace Training — Skills courses and instructor paths.
- The land manager’s current minimum-impact page — Rules for the soil, water, wildlife, and use level at hand.
Sources
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Leave No Trace, “The 7 Principles”, accessed July 20, 2026. ↩
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Preventing Norovirus When Camping, Hiking, or Outdoors”, updated May 8, 2024. ↩