Me and my wife are planing to do a lot of hiking and camping in 2025. Starting off with just the trails around Austin, TX and expanding as we go.

Got the basics:

  • Hiking Boots
  • light day pack w/ bladder
  • simple first aid kit
  • downloaded maps

I used to go all the time when I lived near a trail head, but I would never go much further than 4 miles in before turning around. We won’t be that far from civilization most of the time, nothing too intense.

Thanks y’all!

Edit: thank for the advice y’all!!

Can’t believe I forgot hats, definitely picking up some. Will also pack my leatherman too.

And I agree hiking boots are probably a little overkill for most the trails we’ll be doing at first. But we want to get used to them and break them in for longer and rougher hikes we’re planning later this year.

  • Shortstack@reddthat.com
    1·
    15 days ago

    To be honest, the best thing as a beginner is to use what you have already, even if it’s not optimal. Not to save money or any idealistic reason, but because it lets you bridge that gap between thinking you need something and knowing you need something.

    At least that advice was helpful to me when I started because I’m the over planning type of person. Starting off on day hikes with my city laptop backpack and metal water bottle and my cheap headlamp for power outages and so on helped me to go through the motions and gave me a much clearer picture of the kind of gear I needed and would actually use.

    The things I turned out loving the most once I upgraded was a comfortable lightweight daypack(deuter speedlite 25), good trail runners that were comfortable right out of the box(brooks cascadias), and lightweight aluminum poles(fizen compacts)