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Leave No Trace

Also called LNT, the seven principles

What is Leave No Trace?

Leave No Trace is a set of seven principles for using the outdoors without degrading it, published by a nonprofit of the same name and adopted by most US land managers. It covers waste, camping, fire, wildlife and how you treat other people.

Leave No Trace at a glance

Principles
Seven
Published by
Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics
Waste setback
200 ft from water
Also
Law on much federal land

What are the seven principles?

Plan ahead and prepare. Travel and camp on durable surfaces. Dispose of waste properly. Leave what you find. Minimize campfire impacts. Respect wildlife. Be considerate of other visitors. They are deliberately short and deliberately general, because the specifics change with the terrain.

The order is not a ranking, but the first one carries more weight than it looks. Most damage in the backcountry is done by people who arrived without the thing that would have let them do it properly: no trowel, no bag for their rubbish, no way to store food, no idea that fires were banned that week.

Why do land managers care so much?

Because the impact is cumulative and the numbers are large. One person stepping off the trail to avoid a puddle does nothing measurable. A season of people doing it widens the tread by a meter and kills the vegetation holding the soil together, which is why walking straight through the mud is the low-impact choice even though it feels like the destructive one.

The same logic drives the rules that feel most arbitrary. Human waste in a bag rather than a hole, a mandatory canister rather than a hung bag, a fire ban in a place with plenty of dead wood: each is a response to a specific local failure that happened at scale.

Where the principles get specific

Waste is the one with real regional variation. A cat hole 6 to 8 inches deep and 200 feet from water is the general rule, but alpine zones, desert, canyon corridors and heavily used areas increasingly require you to pack it out, and several popular permits now issue you the bag. Check the specific unit rather than assuming.

Food storage is the other. Where a bear canister is required it is a regulation with a fine attached, not a suggestion, and the accepted list is set locally rather than nationally.

What this means when you're choosing

  • The specific land manager's rules, which override the general principle every time
  • Whether human waste must be packed out on the route you are doing
  • Whether fires are banned this week, which changes independently of the season
  • Which food storage containers are accepted, since the list is local

The common mistake

Treating it as a set of opinions

Several of the principles are also law on federal land. Food storage orders, fire restrictions, group size limits and camping setbacks carry citations. Leave No Trace is the ethic that explains the rule, but the rule is the rule.

Common questions

Is Leave No Trace a law?

The principles themselves are an ethic, but several are also enforceable regulations on federal land: food storage orders, fire bans, group size limits and camping setbacks all carry citations. The ethic explains the rule rather than replacing it.

Do I really have to walk through the mud?

Yes. Skirting a wet section is what widens a trail, and a widened trail drains worse, which makes the mud bigger. Boots dry and gaiters exist. The tread does not recover.

Can I bury toilet paper?

In most places you should pack it out even where burying waste itself is allowed, because paper takes far longer to break down and animals dig it up. A growing number of popular areas now require all human waste to be packed out.

Where this is defined

Where this comes up

Guides on Tom's Hiking where leave no trace changes which product is right for you.

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Cat hole

A cat hole is a small pit dug to bury human waste in the backcountry, the standard being 6 to 8 inches deep and at least 200 feet from water, trails and camp. In many popular areas it is no longer permitted and waste must be packed out.

Switchback

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Cairn

A cairn is a stack of rocks built to mark a route where paint blazes and a visible tread will not work, typically above treeline or across slabs. Official cairns are placed by land managers, and building your own is discouraged almost everywhere.

Blaze

A blaze is a painted mark or fixed tag on a tree, post or rock that confirms you are on a particular trail. The color identifies the route, and a doubled blaze is a standard warning that the trail is about to turn or something else has changed.

Scree

Scree is a slope of small loose rock, roughly gravel to fist sized, that shifts under your weight as you walk on it. It is exhausting to climb, fast and hard on the knees to descend, and it destroys footwear faster than any other common surface.

Talus

Talus is a slope of large loose blocks, from roughly dinner-plate to car sized, that you cross by stepping from one rock to the next. The hazard is not sliding but a block that rocks or shifts under your weight, which is how ankles and legs get trapped.

Yosemite Decimal System

The Yosemite Decimal System rates how technical terrain is on a scale from class 1 to class 5. Class 1 is walking, class 2 adds rough ground and occasional hand use, class 3 is scrambling where a fall could injure you, class 4 is exposed scrambling, and class 5 is roped climbing.

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