Packing for Adventure — 18 Essential Items to Bring on Every Trip

Get­ting lost, being sur­prised by a storm, encoun­ter­ing with wild ani­mals, hav­ing an acci­dent…

Being out in nature means that any­thing can hap­pen at any time. It may sound over­ly dra­mat­ic but prop­er equip­ment and prepa­ra­tion may actu­al­ly make the dif­fer­ence between life and death out there.

That’s why the most impor­tant thing on any trip off the beat­en track is to know what you are get­ting into. Read up on the area and be aware of the cur­rent weath­er sit­u­a­tion before depart­ing. Ask locals or author­i­ties if it’s safe to trav­el this region and let them know when you expect to be back.

Fur­ther­more, it’s always advan­ta­geous to edu­cate your­self on sur­vival in the wild. You should know how to ren­der first aid, build a makeshift shel­ter and ori­en­tate your­self by com­pass, posi­tion of the sun and the stars. Check if there are sur­vival camps or work­shops going on near you. These are a great way to gain all this knowl­edge and get some hands-on expe­ri­ence. (They are great fun, too.)

Once you are out there you are on your own. All you have is your wits and your equip­ment. Your wits only get you so far so invest in equip­ment for a lit­tle sup­port.

Here are eigh­teen essen­tial items that you should def­i­nite­ly pack, regard­less of region, sea­son or cli­mate:

1. Zip Ties

These come in handy if you ever need to fas­ten or secure some­thing per­ma­nent­ly (or you acci­den­tal­ly took some hostages). Any­thing you would nor­mal­ly tie up can be done with zip ties: Lost the pull tab of your zip­per? Must impro­vise a zip­per lock? Tore your shoe laces? There are rough­ly half a mil­lion uses for them so always car­ry a hand full of dif­fer­ent­ly sized zip ties.

2. Velcro Zip Ties

The less per­ma­nent ver­sion of zip ties. You can fas­ten and loosen it as often as you want so they are great for secur­ing things you need every once in a while. (Or if you do need to release those hostages.)

Obvi­ous­ly, these aren’t as stur­dy as zip ties, but work very well for seal­ing food pack­ages and bags.

3. Duct Tape

The absolute must-have on any trip this is the mir­a­cle cure for every prob­lem. Some­thing is bro­ken? Duct tape will fix it.

Seal holes in your tent or back­pack in an instant, use them as makeshift ban­dages or arm slings, sub­sti­tute paper, water­proof any cloth­ing, use it to build a shel­ter, con­struct an emer­gency stretch­er, assem­ble a fish­ing net or mark a trail. Blimey, you can even make rope out of duct tape.

And if that’s not enough yet, you can get duct tape in a hun­dred dif­fer­ent vari­eties: glow in the dark duct tape, heavy duty duct tape, remov­able duct tape, trans­par­ent duct tape, dou­ble-sided duct tape, out­door duct tape… What­ev­er your inner adven­tur­er desires. Go on, chal­lenge Mac­Gyver.

4. Storage clips

A handy alter­na­tive to Vel­cro zip ties, these small plas­tic clips ban­ish spilled bags from your life. If you don’t, unlike me, eat a fam­i­ly bag of chips in one ses­sion, you can secure­ly close food pack­ag­ing to keep them chips crisp.

5. Zip lock bags

These bags are yet anoth­er great alter­na­tive to stor­age clips : keep loose things from fly­ing about, pack your lunch out of reach for insects and oth­er small hun­gry folks, pre­vent phones from suf­fer­ing in heavy rain – the list goes on.

6. Empty bottle

Obvi­ous­ly great to fill up with water from rivers or creeks. In win­ter you can even fill them with snow and let it melt, if you can’t find water near­by. While not in use you can store small items in the bot­tle to save valu­able space in your back­pack. You may want to get a col­lapsi­ble water bot­tle if you have lit­tle space in your lug­gage.

7. Trash bags

So sim­ple and yet so ver­sa­tile. Besides the obvi­ous use as trash bag they are good for car­ry­ing laun­dry and are a great sur­ro­gate for can­vas. You can build a makeshift shel­ter with them, use them as a sleep­ing bag or make rain­proof cov­ers for you back­pack or your­self. Get the huge, heavy-duty bags as these are the most durable.

8. Swiss pocket knife / Leatherman

Mul­ti func­tion­al knives aren’t among the all-time favorite out­door uten­sils for noth­ing. Includ­ing tools like knife blades, a screw­driv­er, a can open­er, a wood saw, scis­sors, tweez­ers, a tooth­pick, a ball­point pen and many more, they are the ulti­mate all-rounder.

9. Big sheath knife

For every­thing your pock­et knife can’t cut, you need a big sheath knife. Use it to pre­pare your food, cut away branch­es, gut fish or even for self-defense. Make sure you inform your­self about the country’s law on arms before bring­ing big knives. Lots of coun­tries pro­hib­it car­ry­ing spe­cif­ic kinds of knifes or those with a cer­tain blade length.

10. Flashlights

A must-have so you needn’t sit in the dark. Make sure you have enough bat­ter­ies for your flash­light and keep them stored some­where safe and dry. Dif­fer­ent kinds of flash­lights are use­ful for dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions:

• Hand­held flash­lights are the most com­mon but obvi­ous­ly require you to hold them in your hand. If you need to work with your hands, it’s bet­ter to get a
• Head­lamp. You strap them around your head and are good to go. You can also strap them on a bot­tle of water to light up an entire room or tent.
• Mag­net­ic flash­lights are handy when you are trav­el­ing by car. Attach a piece of mag­net­ic sheet to the inside of your car’s hatch and stick a flash­light to it to cre­ate an over­head light.

11. Swedish fire lighters / storm lighter

It’s real­ly darn hard to make a fire with a wood­en stick so try to avoid it by bring­ing a storm lighter or Swedish fire lighter kit. Storm lighters are prefer­able because they pro­duce a flame whilst Swedish fire lighters only make sparks and need some prac­tice to use them prop­er­ly. How­ev­er, the lat­ter won’t ever run out of gas and works in every wind and weath­er so it’s handy to have one at hand. If you car­ry some wool, dried tree fun­gus or paper with you as well, these can help you get the kin­dling start­ed.

12. Carpenter pencil & paper

In case you ever need to remem­ber thoughts, num­bers, con­tact infor­ma­tion, direc­tions or coor­di­nates you should have some­thing to write on with­in reach. I rec­om­mend using a car­pen­ter pen­cil as these are extreme­ly durable and can be sharp­ened with a knife. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can use:

13. Edding / Sharpie

Per­ma­nent mark­ers write on pret­ty much any sur­face and are, well, per­ma­nent. That means they can with­hold rain, dirt and time. If you don’t have any paper, you can even write on plas­tic bags or duct tape with these mark­ers.

14. Energy-rich snacks

A true life-saver! Your emer­gency ration should con­sist of high-calo­rie snacks such as can­dy bars, ener­gy bars, bis­cuits, dried meat or nuts. Pack enough to sur­vive on them for at least a few days. Always take some on hikes as well. They keep you going.

15. Microfiber clothes

These fluffy pieces of fab­ric are a mul­ti func­tion­al clean­ing tool. You can use them to wipe up liq­uids, remove dirt from pret­ty much any­thing or even dry your­self off after a plunge into the riv­er. Just give them a quick wash and they are as good as new.

16. Toilet paper

You will be thank­ful to have packed this when you are in the mid­dle of nowhere and have some seri­ous busi­ness to attend to.

17. Paracord bracelet

These incon­spic­u­ous bracelets are not only a fash­ion state­ment but might just save your life in emer­gen­cies. You can unrav­el the bracelet to pro­duce a cord of one to five meters that can be used for any­thing from hang­ing laun­dry or fix­ing shoe laces to build­ing rafts, traps, bows and fish­ing lines. It’s also fair­ly easy to make these your­self and you aren’t lim­it­ed to bracelets. Just think dog col­lars, neck­laces and belts…

18. First aid kit

Prob­a­bly the most impor­tant thing to car­ry with you. Depend­ing on where and how long you trav­el, your first aid kit should include at least:

• Ban­dages
• anti­sep­tic wipes
• gauze pads
• med­ical adhe­sive tape
• Tweez­ers
• Tick remover
• Scis­sors
• Dis­in­fec­tant
• pain killers
• anti-diar­rhea tablets
• hydro cor­ti­sone cream
• Sun­screen
• Emer­gency Ther­mal Blan­ket
• bug spray and
• a first aid ref­er­ence card.

Con­sult a phar­ma­cist or buy a pre­made kit at an approved out­door store.

Whilst you can find many items on this list in any well-stocked hard­ware store you can just as eas­i­ly order them on Ama­zon. Here are some of my per­son­al rec­om­men­da­tions:

Buy­ing a prod­uct through one of these links will help me keep on trav­el­ing as I will receive a small com­mis­sion at no extra cost for you. I only ever rec­om­mend prod­ucts that I per­son­al­ly own or would buy.

These are my 18 must-bring tools for every adven­ture or out­door trip. While I have for­tu­nate­ly nev­er been in a real­ly bad sit­u­a­tion it eas­es me to know that I am pre­pared for the worst. And even if I may not need all these things for sur­vival they are still immense­ly use­ful for every­day sit­u­a­tions. It might sound like a lot of stuff but most of the items are quite small and fit into even the small­est of back­packs. So bet­ter leave some shirts at home and bring these essen­tials with you instead.

Of course, this list is just a selec­tion of the most impor­tant items. There are many more for the seri­ous sur­vival­ist, just browse through any big­ger out­door shop.

What is your most val­ued item on out­door trips? Is there any­thing you would add to the list? Share it in the com­ments below!