Halloween is an excellent holiday to celebrate flashy costumes, sweet treats, and sneaky tricks on your tent mates. Here are some ways you can make sure you won’t miss out on any Halloween fun while you’re in the backcountry.
Pack costumes and face paint
A prop, such as an umbrella, is a nice touch. Photo by Adam Swisher.
Awesome costumes can also be very lightweight: leggings, wigs, and sequins are excellent choices, and face paint is a small and easy accessory to add some pizzaz to your costume.
Camp somewhere with a creepy name
Yep, there are definitely ghosts here. Photo by Patrick Tobin.
It’s easy to get in the Halloween mood when you’re camped at Deadman’s Gulch...
Tell scary stories
Take this classic camping tradition to the next level by having folks close their eyes as you talk, adding sound effects like rubbing dry leaves together, clacking rocks or sticks, and letting the wind do the rest.
Create a Halloween feast
Creepify your mac and cheese by adding food coloring (this is better as a surprise), and finish it off with pumpkin cake mix spiced up with candy corn.
Go tent trick-or-treating (best for large groups)
Trick or treat! Photo by Tracy Baynes.
If you don’t have enough candy to share, try handing out IOUs for doing camp chores, or prizes to the best-dressed trick-or-treater.
Hide candy in your friends’ gear
And become everyone’s favorite group member.
Hide fake spiders in your friends’ gear
It's like the candy option, but with the opposite result.
Happy Halloween!
Special thanks to the folks at NOLS who contributed to this post.
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