Basepaths Find A Good Base Camp To Drop Your Backpacking Gear And Enjoy Lightweight Day Hikes Into The Wilderness

Taking it easy in the wilderness can be every bit as rewarding as taking it hard. For backpackers, taking it easy means base-camping.

Most backpackers follow a place-to-place itinerary, where success depends on getting so many miles down the trail before dark. Base-campers spend all their nights in a single campsite, a day’s hike or less from the trailhead.

The base-camp formula is to pack in just far enough to get the feel of roadlessness, then settle in and do your adventuring a day at a time. Make day hikes, climb, fish or swim. Or, you can lie back and watch nature go by.

Base-camping turns wilderness into an idyll, not an ordeal. It can make back-country experiences safer, happier and vastly more rewarding. This is especially true for neophyte backpackers and those going back to the woods after long absences, for whom long-haul backpacking can be agonizing or even dangerous.

Whatever you choose to do around your base camp, you’ll be able to do more of it, because you won’t be hauling a portable household on your back every day. Neither will you spend time breaking and making camp, which can consume two hours or more a day.

Beyond all the practical advantages are base-camping’s spiritual and aesthetic rewards. This is a chance to make an unhurried acquaintance with your own piece of the wilderness.

Doing away with time constraints and scheduling is an adventure in itself. Planless days, organized around one’s own hour-to-hour whims, are as rare, and rewarding, as the wilderness itself.

Since you’re staking the whole trip on one site choice, it pays to plan carefully.

Picture where you’d like to be: alpine lake, streamside glade in deep woods, desert overlook with a 100-mile view or whatever appeals to you.

Then you can zero in on areas that have your base camp. This is the time to start hitting guidebooks.

It’s harder to research base camps than it is to find out about multi-day backpacking routes. Standard guidebooks are full of 40-mile loops and 60-mile traverses, but say little or nothing about the best places to hang out.

When you’ve selected a general area, get on the phone. Call national and state parks and forests.

Don’t stop with the information desk. Ask for a ranger who knows the lay of the land. Ask the expert for the site that best shows off the beauties of the area, where there’s a lot to do and not many other people.

Be prepared for enthusiasm, as well as information, from the other end of the line. Rangers have been known to get downright gushy when asked for base-camp ideas. It seems that they, too, are weary of the A-to-B-to-C backpacking rat race.

Once a specific suggestion has been made, find out all you can about it. Be honest about your own physical condition and experience, and ask if you’re up to the hike to the base camp. Ask, too, about special hazards and cautions.

Ideally, the target site will be no more than a four-to five-hour walk from the trailhead, and off the most heavily traveled back-country corridors.

The best sites are close to water. A lake or a stream makes the wilderness prettier and eliminates the need to carry water long distances.

The wilderness pros will understand exactly what you’re up to, but friends and family may not.

The idea of going to the heck-and-gone, maybe thousands of miles from home, just to pitch a tent in one place and then nose around, could well strike others as aberrant.

“What are you going to do there for a whole week?” they might ask.

Don’t expect them to understand - unless, of course, they’ve base-camped themselves. The idea that the best travel consists of constant motion, even in the wilderness, is deeply ingrained.

So, too, is the notion that righteous suffering is - and ought to be - a central part of the outdoor experience.

Go ahead and do penance, if you feel the need. But if the hair shirt doesn’t fit, go easy and base-camp.

GREAT BASE CAMPS Following are top choices for backpackers looking for a base camp where they can hang out and stage day trips in the Inland Northwest.

Pyramid Lake/Idaho Selkirks A one-hour hike from Trout Creek Road west of Bonners Ferry leads to campsites by this mountain lake, with days worth of exploration on trails to Trout, Big Fisher, Ball Lakes, plus high points such as Parker Peak. Info: (208) 267-5561.

Fawn Lake/Mallard-Larkins Area A four-hour hike from the trailhead between Idaho’s St. Joe and Little North Fork of the Clearwater rivers features minimal elevation gain and a launch pad for fishing expeditions, huckleberry picking and a visit to a restored lookout on Mallard Peak. Info: (208) 245-4517.

Mirror Lake/Eagle Cap Wilderness A five-hour hike from up the East Fork of the Lostine River in Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains is rewarded with stunning alpine scenery, options for hikes to nearby lakes and a base for scrambles up Eagle Cap Peak. Info: (541) 426-4978. Rich Landers

Outdoors editor Rich Landers contributed to this story.