About KnowOutdoor
KnowOutdoor is a practical outdoor authority for people planning real trips: hiking, trekking, backpacking, and camping, plus the skills, safety, gear, and planning that hold a trip together.
What KnowOutdoor is, and who it serves
KnowOutdoor is an editorial guide to the outdoors on foot. We cover hiking, trekking, backpacking, and camping.
We also cover what those trips lean on: gear, skills, safety, planning, and the places you go. We write for people who want to walk into wild country and come home in good shape.
Our reader is not an armchair enthusiast. You are planning a first overnight, stepping up to a multi-day route, or filling one gap before a trip.
You want an answer you can act on this week, not a wall of vague encouragement. So we give you the decision, the reason behind it, and the trade-off you accept.
- New hikers who want a clear first route and a packing list that fits it.
- Weekend campers moving toward backcountry and self-supported nights.
- Experienced walkers checking one detail: a water source, a permit rule, a river crossing.
Six areas hold the whole site together. Each one links to a hub where the guides live, and each hub connects back to the others so a single trip pulls from all of them.
Activities
The core of what we do. Start at hiking, trekking, backpacking, or camping to learn the shape of each discipline and how they build on each other.
Gear
What to carry, what to leave, and how to tell a real difference from a marketing claim. Our gear guides test kit against tasks, not spec sheets.
Skills
The techniques that keep you moving: navigation, pacing, foot care, camp craft, weather reading. Build them at skills before you need them in the field.
Safety
How to read hazards, prepare for them, and respond when a trip turns. Our safety pages state risk plainly and tell you what to do about it.
Planning
Permits, seasons, water, resupply, and the day-by-day math of a route. Work through planning to turn an idea into a trip you can actually run.
Places
Where to go and what to expect there. Browse destinations and specific trails for terrain, access, and conditions.
How we are different
Most outdoor content treats these six areas as separate shelves. We treat one trip as one system.
A guide to a river crossing names the skill you need, the gear that helps, the hazard that catches people who rush, and the trails where the crossing actually appears. You do not have to assemble those four things yourself from four disconnected articles.
We do the connecting, and we show our reasoning so you can adapt it to your own trip.
We are safety-aware without selling fear. We tell you when a route can hurt you, then we tell you the specific steps that lower the odds.
We do not pad a page with dread to seem serious. We do not pretend a hard route is easy to seem friendly.
We are also honest about facts that change. Trail conditions, water levels, permit rules, and road access all shift by season and by year.
So we date those facts and point you to the authority that owns them. A confident wrong answer about a closed bridge is worse than no answer at all.
Trust comes from method, not tone. We publish how we work so you can judge it yourself.
Our standards, in brief
Every guide follows a stated process, and we keep that process public. Read our methodology for how we research, test, and update a page.
Our editorial policy covers how we handle sources, corrections, and any commercial relationships.
Safety content gets a second gate. Marcus Lee, our backcountry editor, writes and edits the core activity and skills guides.
Dana Whitfield, a wilderness first responder, reviews the safety-critical material before it goes live. You can read about both on our experts page.
- Backcountry editor
- Marcus Lee
- Wilderness safety reviewer
- Dana Whitfield, wilderness first responder
- How we work
- Methodology and editorial policy
- Contact
- [email protected]
How to use the site
The fastest path runs from a broad activity down to a specific trip. Start with the discipline, learn the skills and gear it needs, then plan a real route.
Here is the order we suggest for a first-time reader.
- Pick your activity. Open the hub that matches your plan: hiking for day walks, backpacking for self-supported nights, camping for a base you return to. The hub explains the discipline and links to its guides.
- Read the guides it points to. Each hub links out to skills and safety pages for that activity. Learn the techniques and the hazards before you shop for anything.
- Match your gear to the task. Use gear to choose kit for the trip you are actually planning, not the trip you imagine. We tell you what each item is for and when you can skip it.
- Plan the trip. Move to planning for permits, seasons, water, and daily distances, then check the specific trails and destinations for current access and terrain.
You do not have to follow that order every time. A returning reader often lands on one trail page to check a single fact, and that is a good use of the site too.
Get in touch
We rely on readers who have been out recently. If you find a washed-out bridge, a dried-up spring, or a permit rule that has changed, tell us.
We will check it and update the page. Send corrections to [email protected], or use the form on our contact page.
Tell us the trail, the date you were there, and what you saw. Specific reports help the next walker more than general praise ever could.
Last reviewed: 2026-07-03