How to Suffer Outside: A Beginner’s Guide to Hiking and Backpacking

Product Description

Refreshingly approachable guide for aspiring backpackers and casual hikers of all stripes
Colorful and humorous illustrations throughout
Relatable, rising female voice in outdoor literature
Part critique of modern hiking culture and part how-to guide,
How to Suffer Outside is for anyone who wants to hit the trail without breaking the bank. Diana Helmuth offers real advice, opinionated but accessible and based on in-the-field experiences. She wins readers’ hearts and trust through a blend of self-deprecating humor and good-natured heckling of both seasoned backpackers and urbanites who romanticize being outdoorsy, plus a helpful dose of the actual advice a novice needs to get started.

Featuring illustrations by artist Latasha Dunston, each chapter focuses on a critical topic: gear, food, hygiene, clothing, and more, along with useful checklists and resources. Humorous, philosophical, and practical,
How to Suffer Outside teaches casual walkers, hikers, and campers of all stripes how to venture outdoors with confidence.

Review

An ideal DIY instructional guide and manual for aspiring hikers and novice backpackers, “How to Suffer Outside: A Beginner’s Guide to Hiking and Backpacking” is especially ‘user friendly’ in tone, commentary, content, organization and presentation. ―
Midwest Book Review

Whether you are a bonafide couch potato who has been ignoring the outdoor requirements of your own state, or you’re an honorary Pacific Northwesterner ready to act the part, How to Suffer Outside: A Beginner’s Guide to Hiking and Backpacking will help you fill in all those getting-back-to-nature goals. — Corie K-B. ―
Powell’s Book Buying Team

What makes this backpacking guidebook unique is its approachable, realistic and conversational tone…. “How to Suffer Outside” is fun and fascinating, whether you’re looking to go backpacking this weekend, later this year or not at all. — Andrea Marks-Joseph ―
Real Change

Her perspective is a breath of fresh air on the whole fresh-air-and-nature thing…. Were I a bookseller, I would press this book on customers regardless of their interest in backpacking. I would recommend it for the voice and storytelling. — Susannah Felts ―
BookPage (starred review)

Fun illustrations by Latasha Dunston, useful backpacking know-how, and supply lists educates readers and hopefully inspires neophytes to throw caution to the wind and get outside on their first big backcountry adventure. — Wendy Altschuler ―
Forbes

About the Author

Diana Helmuth has hiked extensively throughout the western US, Europe, and Chile. She studied cultural anthropology at University of California–Berkeley and the American University in Cairo. When she’s not on the trail or writing, she builds things in startup land and produces the occasional podcast. Helmuth lives in Oakland.

An illustrator and painter,
Latasha Dunston earned her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts. Her clients include Otterbox, Range magazine, Craghoppers, SNEWs, and the Denver Art Museum. Dunston is based in Denver.