Where to Pitch a Tent: How to Read a Campsite

01Two Different Questions

In Canadian national parks camping is permitted in designated campgrounds only, and most provincial systems work the same way. The layout has already settled the things backcountry guides spend pages on: how far you are from water, from the trail and from your neighbours. Rules about camping a set number of paces from a lake are backcountry rules. They don't transfer to a gravel pad with a fire box.

What is left for you to decide is placement inside the site: which corner holds the tent, which way the door faces, and where the kitchen and chairs go. It's a smaller decision than it sounds, and it separates a site that works from one that irritates you for three days.

Where you do have latitude, in the backcountry or at a dispersed site, use an existing pitch whenever you can see one. Compacted ground is a sign the area has already absorbed a few visits, so adding yours does the least harm. Everything below applies to both cases. Only the size of the search area changes.

02Reading the Ground

The usual mistake is choosing the flattest visible patch. Flat is not the same as good. A dip is flat, and a dip is where the water goes. You want ground that is level underfoot and a touch higher than what surrounds it.

Lie down on the spot, properly, with your eyes closed. You'll feel which way your body wants to slide, and that tells you the fall line better than any glance can. Then sweep the footprint with your boot for stones, cones and root knuckles, since those turn into pressure points through the pad and eventually a punctured floor. Prefer bare soil, gravel or needle duff to moss and low plants, which take seasons to recover.

Pace out the floor plus the reach of the guylines before the poles come out. Tent size quietly decides how many spots on a site you can use. A compact shelter like the FLYTOP Lightweight Double-Layer Camping Tent fits into a corner between roots that a bigger tent can't. A large family dome needs a large area of level ground plus room past the walls for guylines, and on a treed site that is often available in only one place. Our camping tent buying guide covers the rest of that choice. A big air-beam cabin needs the same kind of clear, flat patch, and our guide to inflatable camping tents explains what it adds to the ground you need. For a small day shelter beside the water, our fishing and picnic shelter guide covers where it fits.

03Looking Up

Once the ground checks out, raise your eyes. The hazards that actually hurt people are mostly above head height or past the edge of the site, and you can't see them while you stare at the grass.

A dead limb over your footprint is the one worth walking away from. Moving the tent three metres costs nothing, and no level ground makes up for sleeping under one in a wind. A cluster of fallen trees nearby is information too: it often means soft or shallow-rooted ground where more will come down. Stay off exposed high points and away from lone trees when the weather is unsettled.

Water deserves a second thought. A stream that looks calm in the afternoon can rise overnight after rain upstream, and the flat ground beside it is flat because water has been there before. Camp above the high-water debris line, not on it. In fall, tall grass and leaf litter are also where adult ticks wait, so a pitch on bare or short ground is the safer one, and our guide to ticks in fall covers what Canadian health guidance recommends.

04Door, Wind and the Rest of the Site

You still have four directions to face. Put the narrow end into the prevailing wind, since it is the smallest and strongest profile, and keep the door on the sheltered side so draughts don't blow through the porch. Aim the door at your kitchen and not at the walking lane. If you can, face it east, so morning sun reaches the fly first and dries the overnight condensation. Override all of that if it would put the door on the downhill side.

The tent competes with three other things for the same ground: the fire, the kitchen and the route between them. Place the tent first, since it has the strictest ground needs. Put the kitchen on the most level ground left and downwind of the tent, so cooking smells drift away from where you sleep. Then chairs and the fire. The walking lane goes last, and it should never pass between the fire and the tent door.

Keeping food away from the tent is a placement decision as well as a storage one. Parks Canada notes that wildlife is drawn to things that merely smell like food, including garbage, dishes, pots, coolers and toiletries. Plan a spot for all of it that isn't your porch, and confirm the storage rules for your destination in the Parks Canada visitor guidelines.

05Arriving Late

All of this gets harder after dark, and arriving late is normal. A headlamp lights a narrow cone and flattens the ground, so it is nearly useless for reading slope. A lantern set on the ground at the far edge of the pitch throws long shadows across the surface and shows contour and stones that a headlamp hides. Set that light first, walk the site once, and only then start unpacking. Our lighting and portable power range is worth sorting out before any trip where you expect to arrive at dusk. If you are doing this alone for the first time, our guide to camping alone for the first time covers setting up without a second pair of hands.

Sometimes the assigned site just isn't good. Slope beats standing water every time, so take the slope and sleep with your head uphill. A shorter, narrower patch beats a lower one. If the ground is uneven but dry, a thicker pad absorbs more than you'd expect. If it is level but wet, nothing you carry will save the night. Cold air pools in hollows as well as water, so in the shoulder season a pitch a metre higher can be noticeably warmer at four in the morning, though the insulation under you matters more than the spot, as our guide on how to stay warm while camping explains.

06Frequently Asked Questions