Hey ya'll, I am new to this whole scene and I am very interested in it. I have been in the military for 6 years and I enjoy camping and rucking. Im sure that backpacking and hiking cant be much different.

I am looking for people who would like to go backpacking with me and maybe show the ropes etc. I do not care who it would be but I would prefer people closer to my age range. Thanks

Aaron.

It would be helpful to state your age range then and where you are located. As for tips, see this recent thread for starters.

If you actually like rucking, then you will love backpacking.

Well, I figured people would have enough common sense as to look into who I was before saying they are interested... You know for safety purposes. Which means they would look at my profile, but since that is too much work for some people I will post it here for them.

I am 23. Location doesn't matter because I am military and I am constantly moving and traveling the world. The more contacts I have in different areas the better because when I am in that region of the world I can link up with them. Its an amazing concept really.

Do not be so hard on us! Most of us do not put our age on our profiles so it did not occur to us to look at the profile for your age. Not only do most of us go minimalist with our backpack gear, we go minimalist with our profiles! Hmm, wonder if there is a correlation here? Welcome to the forum, we DO need younger folks here.

I'm military too... and it does matter, because it is hard to link up with you if we don't know where you are.

If you are in the DC area in the fall, I might be up.

You're jumping to all kinds of conclusions.

Before you go backpacking, you need to know what the conditions are like where you're going - because the gear needed can be widely different, depending. If you say summer in the Sierra Nevada, it's a different set of clothing and different sleeping pad and bag than if you say summer in Florida, the Appalachians, Canada....

That is what is meant by where you are going. Just saying you want to go backpacking doesn't help us help you at all.

Military rucking IS very different than the backpacking we all do. I've gone backpacking with folks who brought their military gear - it's a lot heavier, very durable, bombproof, and is quickly replaced by civilian gear that functions better in our environment (in my case, California, Sierra Nevada, which is cold at night but very dry in general).

I've had people from all over hike with me via my meetup groups. If you travel that much, joining meetup and then joining groups in the areas you are traveling to next will help you prepare for backpacking in that region.

I second the meetup groups. I found a crew near me and went on a great 3 day hike a couple weeks ago.