Camping Gear for Scouts and Families: What to Buy Cheap and Where to Spend

If you are buying camping gear for a scout or for your family, the first thing to know is that you do not need to spend a lot. Outdoor gear has become a luxury signaling device. The trap is not that Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) sells you more gear than you need. It is that some products are as much luxury signaling devices as they are high-tech equipment, and often you need neither the signaling nor the technology.

We are the 16th Wilderness Ramblers, an Outdoor Service Guides (OSG) group based in Jersey City. We get this question from new families often, so here is our plain answer. The right amount to spend depends entirely on how you camp. For car camping, buy cheap. For backpacking, weight matters, but even there you can get light gear without overspending. The one real exception is boots. If you are new to the group, you can join the Wilderness Ramblers here.

The whole guide in one table

	Car camping	Backpacking
How you arrive	Drive in, unload at your spot	Carry everything on your back
What matters	Space, comfort, durability, price	Weight first, then price
Tent	Large and simple, size up	Sized to the people, light
Where to buy	No-name brands on Amazon	A weight-first system such as Near Zero
Where to spend	Almost nowhere	Boots

A note on trust before we start. We have no affiliation with REI, Near Zero, Amazon, or any brand named here, and none of our links pay us. These are the answers we give families at meetings.

Car camping: buy cheap

Car camping means you drive to your site and unload your gear at or near the spot where you sleep. You carry nothing on your back for any distance. Weight does not matter. Packed size does not matter. Comfort and durability are the only things that matter.

For car camping, buy from no-name manufacturers on Amazon. Anything with more than a thousand strong reviews will probably serve you well, for a fraction of the price of a premium brand. A simple four or five person tent runs roughly $60 to $120 and gives two car campers room to stand, change, and keep their bags inside. The extra weight costs you nothing because you are not carrying it.

Do not buy a high-tech backpacking tent for car camping. This is a common and expensive mistake, and it is worse with kids. Car camping is when you want extra room, both to store gear inside the tent and to move around. A backpacking tent gives you the opposite. It will be tight, the headroom will be low, and the lightweight parts that make it good on the trail are the parts that break first under normal family use. Buy a large, simple, inexpensive tent instead.

Backpacking gear: where weight matters

Backpacking is the opposite case. You carry everything you own on your back. Here the engineering matters, and it matters along one dimension above all others: weight. Reducing weight is the single largest improvement you can make to how a backpacking trip feels, because every ounce is an ounce your body moves over every step.

This gives you a simple test. If you are paying a premium for backpacking gear that is not designed around being light, you are making a mistake. I made this mistake. I bought a small Solo Stove. The engineering is excellent and it is a pleasure to use. It is also too heavy to want on my back, so it stays home.

The places where weight matters are your boots, your backpack, your tent, your sleeping bag, your sleeping pad, and your layers. Boots are the one place where you have to spend more. For the rest, you can buy light gear at a reasonable price.

Boots: the one place you pay for quality

Weight on your feet costs more than weight on your back. A 1969 study by Soule and Goldman at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine found that a load carried on the foot costs roughly five to six times the energy of the same load carried on the torso. The mountaineering rule of thumb, often traced to the 1953 Everest era, puts it simply: a pound on your feet feels like about five pounds on your back. In practical terms, a boot that is one pound lighter feels like dropping several pounds from your pack, on every step.

Boots are the exception to the rest of this guide. Here you get what you pay for, in weight and in comfort, so buy the best you can afford, roughly $130 to $230 for an adult. Shop at REI, or any retailer that lists item weight, so you can compare boots on the number that matters and buy the lightest one in your budget. On REI's site the left-hand filters let you narrow results by weight directly, in bands such as 1.50 to 2.99 pounds, so you can put the lightest boots in your size at the top of the page. For an adult this is an easy purchase to justify. A good boot can last more than a decade if you backpack only occasionally, and it improves your day hikes too.

Breaking in your boots matters as much as choosing them. A boot that is not broken in is a liability, because it will give you blisters and put you in pain for the length of the trip. REI's satisfaction guarantee helps. Co-op members can return most items within a year, and that window is meant for confirming a boot fits and works. Wear the boots indoors first. Once you are confident they are right, wear them outdoors and keep breaking them in until they are ready for a trip. The guarantee is for testing fit, not for using gear and returning it, so commit once you know.

Backpack, tent, sleeping bag, and pad

After boots, the largest sources of weight are your backpack, tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad. Treat all of them as weight purchases.

For these, I like Near Zero. This is not a case of spending more. Near Zero is affordable, which is why I recommend it. You get much of what a high-end REI piece gives you, for far less. The gear is light, and the pieces are designed to work as a system, so the tent, bag, pad, and pack fit together and the whole kit is easy to pack and carry.

Sleeping bag: buy for summer, not for winter

The most common sleeping bag mistake is buying for a temperature far colder than you will ever sleep in. A bag rated for deep cold is heavier, bulkier, and more expensive than most people need. For most trips a summer-weight bag is enough. When you expect a colder night, add a liner. A liner adds warmth, costs about $20 to $40, and weighs almost nothing. This keeps both your spending and your pack weight down.

Sleeping pad: buy for the pack, not the campsite

The pad is where another typical error happens. People buy a pad that is comfortable for car camping, then find it is huge and will not fit into or onto a backpack. A pad sized for the living-room test fails the trail test. Near Zero makes a pad that packs down small, which solves this directly. Buy for how it packs, not just for how it feels in the store.

Tent: smaller than you think

For backpacking you want the opposite of the car-camping tent: exactly the right size, and light. Your backpack stays outside the tent, under the vestibule or rainfly, so you are not storing it inside. That means two people need a two-person tent, even though it puts you side by side without much extra room. A little tightness inside is nothing next to the discomfort of a pack that is heavier than it needs to be. If two or three of you share a tent, split its parts fairly across your packs so no one carries all of it.

Layers: the rules that matter

Your clothing system has three rules.

• Wear nothing cotton. Cotton holds water, dries slowly, and pulls heat from your body when wet. Pay for a non-cotton base layer shirt, non-cotton long underwear, and non-cotton underwear.
• Carry a packable second layer. You want insulation that compresses small. Many people use a puffer. It does not have to be down, as synthetic works. REI's house-brand puffer is a cost-effective way to get this without paying for a premium label.
• Wear backpacking wool socks, not the thick wool socks you wear in winter. Buy socks rated for backpacking, which are thinner and more comfortable on the trail. Good socks cost about $20, and you need only two pairs for a trip. Bad socks can mean debilitating pain. This is a place where the name brand is worth it.

Outfitting a scout or a family

Wilderness Ramblers families do not need to buy a tent, sleeping bag, or sleeping pad. The group owns these and provides them for trips. That removes the three items where families most often overspend or buy the wrong thing, such as a pad sized for the living room that will not fit on a pack.

For the gear you do buy, start with the car-camping list, because that is where most scouts begin. Buy cheap, size up, and skip the technical tent. Save the boot and backpacking purchases for when a scout is doing trips that call for them, and divide shared items across the group so no one carries a full load. Wilderness Ramblers families get our full packing list when they join. For how the program works, see our frequently asked questions.

Summary

Spend where weight matters. Save everywhere else.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need expensive camping gear?

No. For car camping, inexpensive gear from no-name brands with strong reviews works well. Spending more only pays off for a short list of backpacking items, and even there much of it can be light and affordable.

What is the most important piece of backpacking gear to invest in?

Boots. Weight on your feet costs several times more energy than weight on your back, so a lighter boot improves every step. Buy the lightest boot you can afford and break it in before any trip.

Can I buy camping gear on Amazon?

Yes, for car camping. Sort by review count and choose products with more than a thousand strong reviews. For backpacking, focus on weight, and consider a system such as Near Zero so the pieces fit together.

What gear do scouts and families need to start?

Begin with car-camping basics: a roomy, simple tent, sleeping bags, and pads bought for comfort and price. Add boots and backpacking-specific gear later, as a scout takes on trips that require carrying a pack.

How should kids dress for camping?

In non-cotton layers. Cotton stays wet and pulls heat from the body, so use a non-cotton base layer, a packable puffer for warmth, and backpacking wool socks. Avoid cotton shirts, jeans, and socks.

If you want a deep dive on gear, read Rick Curtis's The Backpacker's Field Manual. Curtis directs the Outdoor Action Program at Princeton University, and his book is the closest thing the field has to a standard reference. To camp and hike with us, join the 16th Wilderness Ramblers.