How to Plan Your Weekend Backpacking Trip with Ease

Use this free planning template to get yourself organized so you get out on your weekend backpacking trip faster and without forgetting anything.

Is this you?

It’s Monday morning and you get a great idea for a backpacking trip to take the coming weekend. You get energized all week just thinking about being out there. In moments between work tasks or before bed, you look up a few route details, maybe pull a forecast. Then suddenly, it’s Friday, but you haven’t packed or downloaded the route or purchased any hiking food. You scramble to get things organized and get out the door. At best, you don’t depart for your trip until 6pm – just in time to sit in rush hour traffic; at worst, you decide to delay your trip for another weekend (hopefully).

If so, this post is for you.

I’ve been back at home since finishing up guiding in the Sierra in early August, so I’ve had time to fit in a lot of 1-3 day adventures in the Colorado high country. This has mostly included 14ers, 13ers, and long mountain days traversing passes, ridgelines, and valleys to create fun loops and link ups. To stay organized and make my planning quick and easy for each of these adventures so that I’m more likely to get out the door, I refined a weekend trip planning template that I started using a few years ago.

This planning template helps me cover all my bases so that as soon as I get inspired for a trip, I can open up the planning template and get the ball rolling. It makes it easy for me to share this information with a trip partner or loved ones at home. It makes it far less likely that I’ll forget an important detail, which means I ultimately feel calmer and more confident heading into the mountains. This planner is intended for short trips, not a thru-hike.

You can download a copy of my weekend backpacking trip planning template here and try it out for your own trips.

Watch this video for a walk-through of how I use the weekend backpacking trip planner:

Related Backpacking Trip Planning Posts:

Plan Your Backpacking Trip Without the Common Mistakes

Backpacking Trip Resources mentioned in the video:

Backcountry Safety Course

Backcountry Navigation Course

Adventure Ready Course

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