Camping · 8 min
Choosing and setting a campsite
Why this matters
197.6(c)(3) names 'campsite consideration' as an exam subject, and it is the decision that determines whether the night is comfortable, legal and safe. A guided party arrives tired and it is your call, made when everyone least wants to keep walking.
By the end of this lesson you will be able to
- Apply the legal constraints on where a party may camp
- Judge a site for safety, comfort and drainage
- Lay out a camp for a group
Legal first
Before anything else, the site must be lawful. From Unit 2:
- 150 feet from any road, trail, spring, stream, pond or other body of water, unless it is a designated site marked with a "Camp Here" disc
- Below 4,000 feet in the Adirondacks, below 3,500 in the Catskills, outside the winter windows
- In the Eastern High Peaks Zone, nothing between 3,500 and 4,000 feet except at a designated primitive tent site
- Under ten people, or a Ranger's permit. Under four nights at one location, or a Ranger's permit
- On private land, permission. On easement land, whatever the easement allows
Then safety
| Look up | Standing dead trees, hung-up limbs, dead branches overhead. "Widowmakers" kill campers in their sleep. This is the check people skip |
|---|---|
| Look down | Drainage. Would this be a puddle in three hours of rain? Never pitch in a depression or a dry channel |
| Look around | Rockfall, unstable banks, avalanche-prone slopes in winter, and how far the water could rise overnight |
| Water | Above flood level, and well back from a river that could rise in an upstream storm you cannot see |
Then comfort
- Flat and level, with the head end slightly higher if it is not
- Out of the wind, but not in the valley bottom cold sink. A little air movement keeps bugs down
- Morning sun to dry the tents, especially in the shoulder seasons
- Water access within a reasonable carry, which is not the same as camping on the shore
- Away from the trail, and out of sight of it where you can manage it. Other people's solitude counts
Laying out a group camp
Think in zones, and set them before the first tent goes up.
- Sleeping zone: tents on durable ground, spread only as far as supervision allows
- Kitchen zone: well away from the sleeping zone, on rock or bare ground, downwind, and at least 150 feet from water
- Food storage: canisters away from both, or a hang if canisters are not required and you have the trees
- Latrine direction: point people at an area 150 feet out and downhill from camp and water, and hand them the trowel and bags
- Water point: one place to collect from, upstream of everything else
Arrive early enough to do all of this in daylight. The single biggest improvement most guides can make to their overnight trips is stopping ninety minutes earlier. A camp built in the light is warmer, drier, cleaner and calmer than the same camp built in the dark.
Lean-tos
Forest Preserve lean-tos are first come, first served, free, and they cannot be reserved or monopolised. The convention, and it is a strong one, is that occupants share up to capacity with other parties who arrive. A guide arriving with eight clients and claiming a lean-to is behaving badly and being seen to. Plan on tents, and treat a lean-to as a bonus.
From the field
You reach the pond at 16:00 and the obvious flat spot is twenty feet from the water with a beautiful view. It is not a designated site. You walk on, find ground 150 feet back in the trees, and take the party there. The view costs a fine and the site is the reason the shoreline is worn bare.
This lesson is part of the NYS Licensed Guide Exam course. Open it in the course to answer the retrieval checks that go with it, track what you have read, and quiz the whole unit. Lessons, quizzes and the glossary are free.