Pack for cold nights
What to bring
A night camping in high pine forest in November, then a few days in the city. Warm afternoons, genuinely cold nights, and the nearest shop to the land is a drive rather than a walk. There is no water, no power, no showers, no bar and no kitchen out there: everything you eat and drink you carry in — and everything you bring in, you carry out again, your rubbish included. This list is for the days on the land; the Phoenix days need nothing more than you would take to a friend's house. If you have never camped before, work the whole list rather than skimming it. What catches people out is almost never the exciting gear — it is a pillow, a bin bag, a lighter and a way to boil water. It is not padding; it is what people wish they had brought.
Bring — 77 things
Shelter
Whatever you sleep in, it needs to handle a cold, still night and a possible frost. If the tent is new, pitch it once in a garden or a park first — the first time should not be in the dark, in the cold, with the sun going down.
A summer mesh tent will be miserable. Bring the fly even if the forecast is clear.
Pine needles hold moisture and will wick straight through a thin floor.
The ground is dirt over rock. Plastic stakes bend.
The afternoon wind gets up. Tape and a length of cord will fix a pole, a pad, a cooler lid and a boot, and weigh nothing in the car.
Sleeping warm
This is the one people get wrong. Do not bring a summer bag.
Overnight lows drop hard once the sun is off the ridge, and Saturday's programme runs to 6am, so you will be out in the coldest part of the night whether you planned to or not.
The ground takes more heat than the air does. A pad matters more than the bag.
The jumper-in-a-stuff-sack trick works. An actual pillow works better, and you are not carrying it any further than the car.
The music runs to 6am and the sun is up long before you have finished with it. An eye mask is what buys you the morning.
Genuinely transformative. Fill it before you turn in.
Water and food
Dry camping: you arrive with every drop and every meal, and the packaging goes home with you. Shop for it before you drive up, not on the way.
There is NO water on the land. No taps, no refill station, nothing to buy. Dry camping means you arrive with every drop you will drink, cook with and wash in. A gallon per person per day is the floor, not the target.
Easier to ration and to pour than a crate of small bottles, and it refills your day bottle without a walk back to the car. Fill it at home.
To carry water from your camp through a long day. We sell no single-use bottles.
There is NO BAR here and nothing to drink for sale — this is not a licensed event and nobody is pouring. Whatever you want over a twenty-hour Saturday, you bring. Cans or plastic only: glass is not allowed anywhere on site, and it is an all-ages festival, so drink at your own camp.
There is no kitchen and no catering here and nothing to buy, so every meal from arrival to pack-out comes in with you. Plan it meal by meal and bring one spare — cold, dark and hungry is a bad combination. If you would rather eat together, a communal meal is welcome and it needs someone to organise it: put your hand up at /volunteer.
You will not want to cook at 2am, and a long night on an empty stomach at altitude is how good weekends go sideways.
Including any medication that has to stay cool. Do not assume ice is available.
This is a forest. Food left open in camp is an invitation, and a bag that gets opened overnight is somebody's morning spent picking wrappers out of the pine needles. Close it away, or leave it in the car.
Altitude plus dry air plus a long weekend. Cheaper than a headache.
Cooking and eating
There is no kitchen, no catering and nothing to buy, so this is the whole operation. Keep it simple — one hot thing a day is plenty — and pick kit you will wash up rather than throw away.
Light it once at home. Work out how long a canister actually lasts you, then bring a spare. Cold weather drains them faster than the box says.
The single most forgotten item on any camping trip. Bring two.
One set per person, reusable, and named if you are camping as a group. Nothing disposable: every paper plate is rubbish you carry home, and the wind takes the light ones before you get the chance.
Wrapped or sheathed in the box with the rest of the cooking kit. This is not what the weapons rule below is about.
Wash up in the bowl, never straight onto the ground.
Washing-up water, tooth-brushing water, the dregs of the kettle. None of it goes on the ground here. It goes in a container with a lid and it leaves with you — which is much easier if you brought the container.
Sun and altitude
Thin air burns you faster than you expect, even in November.
The air is very dry and the sun is doing more than it looks like it is. Keep it in a pocket, not in the tent.
Clothing
Layers, not one big coat. The swing between afternoon and 2am is enormous.
We recommend the Patagonia Nano Puff or anything like it: the kind that packs into itself takes no room in the car and lives in your day bag until the sun goes down, which is exactly when you want it.
You will be standing still, outdoors, in the middle of the night. Hands and ears go first, and no amount of jacket makes up for it.
It probably will not rain. If it does, you will be very glad.
The folded plastic kind. It weighs nothing, lives in a pocket, and doubles as something dry to sit on. Bring it even though you brought the shell.
Roots, rocks and a slope — boots or trail runners, not the weekend for sandals. Whatever you pick, wear it before you get here. A new boot on Saturday morning is a blister by Saturday night, and you are on your feet for a very long day. Lock laces make getting in and out of them at camp a lot less annoying.
Wool or synthetic, not cotton, which stays wet and cold. Tall ones keep the dust off your legs, which matters more than it sounds like it does when you get into a sleeping bag at 3am. We recommend Darn Tough, which are guaranteed for life — buy them at REI and a hole gets you a new pair, whenever it happens. Their over-the-calf ones are the ones to get.
For the 3am walk to the restrooms, when lacing boots in the dark is the thing that stops you going.
Sealed in a bag. Everything else will smell of woodsmoke by Sunday.
Light and power
There is no site lighting and no power anywhere on the land. Between your camp and the music it is properly dark — not city dark.
Hands-free matters. There is no site lighting between camp and the stages.
Torches get dropped, lent out and left switched on in a tent. A second one is a small thing to carry and the difference between an inconvenience and a night you spend sitting still.
So you can find it — everything looks identical in the dark. A lantern over the table does more for a camp than a phone screen ever will.
A USB light strip or wire along your bag does three jobs at once: nobody treads on the bag you put down, your group can follow you through the dark, and people can see you coming. Get the USB kind and run it off your power bank — AA batteries die at the worst moment and become rubbish you carry home. About six feet is enough to go round a whole pack — we recommend wire lights, a tube rope light that glows on every side, or a programmable LED panel if you want to go further.
There is no phone charging onsite, for the whole stay. One bank lives at camp for your phone, the other runs your lights, because lights will empty a small bank in a night. Charge both at home, and put your phone in airplane mode when you arrive: hunting for one bar of signal is what flattens a battery out here. We recommend the Nitecore 10k as the smallest one worth carrying, the Nitecore 20k if it is also running your lights, or an off-brand 30k if you would rather have the capacity than the weight saving.
You cannot ring anybody out here. A cheap pair of handhelds is how the people who have done this before stay in touch, and they need no signal and no subscription.
Assume no data. A screenshot loads when a webpage will not, and a printout loads when the phone is dead.
Washing and the restrooms
There are restrooms by the gate. There are no showers and no water supply to run one from, so everything else here you bring — and anything you use up goes home in a bag rather than into the ground.
Bring a roll for camp and keep some in your day bag. Biodegradable is the kind to buy, used paper goes in the restroom, and "behind a tree" is not a plan — not here, not anywhere on this site.
We recommend Combat Wipes. With no shower they are the difference between a rough morning and a fine one, and they are as good on a dusty pair of legs as they are on anything else. They do not break down, though, so they never go down a toilet — used ones go in a bag and come home with you.
No running water means this is how you wash your hands before you eat.
No one wants a smelly friend. You are sharing a small site, a small crowd and, at some point on Saturday night, somebody's personal space.
Spit into the grey water container, not onto the ground.
Doubles as toilet paper when you are nowhere near your camp.
Between these and the wipes, you will feel human enough.
There is nowhere here to dispose of them and nowhere to buy them. Bring more than you need, and a bag to take it all home in.
Wipes, cotton pads, plasters, anything that has been used. It is not glamorous and it is the single easiest way to leave nothing behind.
Safety and health
There is no medical cover on the land and little or no phone signal. What is in your own bag is what is available.
Blister plasters, painkillers, antihistamine, tweezers.
Bring an extra day's worth. The nearest pharmacy is a drive, not a walk.
Bring your own; there is no first-aid station handing them out. Buy the filtered kind rather than foam: foam muffles the music, so you take it out, and then it is not protecting anything. Put them in when you arrive rather than when you reach the music, and leave them in — Saturday runs twenty-two hours, and hearing does not grow back. We recommend Eargasm, and this pair is just as good. If your insurance will cover moulded ones from an audiologist, they beat anything on this list — they take weeks, so start now.
Different job. The filtered pair lets the music through, which is exactly what you do not want at 4am in a tent while the disco carries on. Foam is fine here: we recommend Mack's, or anything with the highest decibel reduction you can find.
A long weekend outdoors is not the weekend to skip them, and there is nowhere here to buy any.
Take the wallet you would take out, not the one with everything in it. There is nothing to buy on the land, but the Phoenix days are at venues.
With no signal you cannot ring anybody. Agree a meeting point at your camp before you split up, and it stops being a problem.
Comfort and camp
Your camp and the music are not next to each other, and you will not want to walk back. Water, layers, headtorch, earplugs, snacks, a bag for your own rubbish — all of it lives on your back for a very long day, so pick something you can wear comfortably rather than carry.
There is very little seating. You will want your own.
Cooking on the ground gets old within one meal, and a table keeps your stove, your kit and your food out of the dirt.
Bring wood. The communal fire runs on what people carry in, and there is nowhere out here to buy a bundle at 9pm. Keep it for the supervised fire rather than starting your own.
These are welcome at your own camp — no embers, no sparks, and you can turn one off, which is the whole reason they are allowed where a wood fire is not.
Bring what you need for a pit, a stove and a heater. Large tanks are fine. Travel and store them upright and secured, keep them clear of tent fabric, and turn everything off when you sleep or leave camp.
Making it fun
None of this is necessary and all of it is why people remember a weekend. Nothing here is for sale on the land, so it comes with you or it does not happen.
Poi, hoops, wands, glasses that turn a light rig into something else. Flow arts are half the fun of a night like this — we recommend GloFX to start — and their diffraction glasses do something to a light show that is hard to describe and easy to try. The fire versions are the one hard no: read the fire rules below and you will see why.
Somewhere to sit, somewhere to dance barefoot, and a clear edge to your own patch so nobody walks through it.
Stickers, patches, trinkets, silly little things. Gifting is a real part of this and it costs almost nothing: a bag of trinkets ordered early costs a few dollars. Skip glitter and anything that sheds, and skip anything that is going to end up on the ground; see below.
Bring more than you need. You will end up handing most of it out.
No dress code and nobody is judging. The only rules the ground imposes are warm and closed-toe, and both are further up this list.
Leave no trace
Everything that comes in goes out. Sunday morning is a pack-out and a site sweep, not a clean-up after the people who left early, so plan for your rubbish before you plan for anything else — it is the one part of camping nobody enjoys improvising.
There is NO trash collection. This is a leave-no-trace event: everything you bring in leaves with you, including grey water, food scraps and cigarette ends. Bring bags for rubbish and separate ones for recycling.
Loose sacks blow over, split and get opened overnight. A lidded tote at your camp is the difference between a tidy pitch and a scatter of wrappers in the trees that somebody else ends up chasing.
Cigarette ends are the most common thing left on the ground anywhere and they do not rot. In a pine forest they are also a fire risk: out means out and into the tin, never stubbed into the needles.
Boxes, blister packs, six-pack rings, the cardboard your new stove came in. None of it needs the trip, and what you never bring is what you never have to carry out.
Tent pegs, guy lines, bottle caps, zip ties, tape, tent bags. Walk the square you slept on with your eyes down, then walk it again the other way. Whatever you find, somebody would otherwise have found on their knees.
Everything Will camps withIf you are starting from nothing, this is the full kit list one of us actually packs, with links to the lot. Far more than a weekend needs — take what looks useful and ignore the rest.
Leave at home
Each of these has a reason next to it. If a rule here looks arbitrary, the reason is the argument — read it before you ask us about it.
Glass, of any kindCommonly misunderstood
A broken bottle in pine needles cannot be found or swept up, and people walk this site barefoot between tents. Decant into cans or plastic before you arrive.
Glitter, confetti and anything that shedsCommonly misunderstood
Loose glitter, sequins, feather boas and confetti cannot be picked up out of pine needles — not by us on Sunday morning, not by anybody, ever. If you want sparkle, wear the kind that stays attached to you.
Gear you are planning to abandonCommonly misunderstood
A tent left standing on Sunday is not a donation, it is somebody else's morning. If you would not put it back in the car, do not bring it — and if it breaks while you are here, it still leaves with you.
Fireworks, flares and sky lanternsCommonly misunderstood
This is a ponderosa forest. Fire restrictions here are seasonal and strict, and a single spark is a genuinely catastrophic outcome.
Your own WOOD fireCommonly misunderstood
Wood fire is centralised: one supervised pit, subject to the fire restrictions in force that week — bring firewood for it. A propane fire pit at your own camp is fine and encouraged, because it makes no embers and you can turn it off. A wood fire you built yourself will be put out.
Amplified sound at your camp after midnight
A speaker at camp competes with the programme and wakes the people who paid for Quiet Camp. The silent disco starts at midnight for exactly this reason — the music carries on without doing that.
Weapons of any kindCommonly misunderstood
Including anything carried legally elsewhere. All ages, alcohol, and a forest at night: no.
Pets
Wildlife, other dogs, and a lot of children at ankle height. Service animals are welcome — tell us in advance.
Illegal drugs
Not permitted. If you or a friend are in trouble, find any crew member — we would far rather help you than have you hide it, and nobody is reporting you.
Anything you would be upset to lose
Dust, cold and campfires are hard on nice things, and there is no secure storage onsite.
On the land
Three things about the site itself that change what you pack. None of them are a surprise if you know them in advance, and all three catch people out who do not.
- The ground
- Pine forest on dirt and pine needles, with exposed roots and a gentle slope across the whole site. Nothing is paved. Firm enough for a rigid-frame wheelchair on the main paths; hard going for narrow casters.
- The altitude
- High enough that the air is thinner than you are used to, the sun burns faster, and the nights get properly cold even after a warm afternoon. Drink more water than you think you need and go easy on the first day.
- Signal
- One bar on a good day, and nothing at all in the lower camping meadow. Assume no data. Screenshot the confirmation email, screenshot the schedule, and tell people at home you will be out of contact.
Access
This is a forest camp, and we would rather tell you exactly what that means than promise it is fine. If something here is a problem for you, ask in the Discord before you buy and we will tell you straight whether we can make it work.
- ADA parking
- Marked, level spaces beside the accessible camping area, closest to the gate and to where the music happens.
- Accessible camping
- A level, firm-surface area next to ADA parking, near the restrooms. Message us in the Discord once you have your ticket, so we hold a spot rather than improvising one.
- Accessible restrooms
- At the main restroom block by the gate.
- Viewing
- Ground is level directly in front of where the music happens, with a firm path between them. No raised platform — the crowd here is small enough that sightlines are not the problem.
- Assistance and service animals
- Service animals welcome. Tell us in advance so we can place you with shade and a clear path.
- Getting help onsite
- There is no first-aid station. Signal is unreliable, so find a crew member and ask rather than trying to call — and bring your own first-aid kit.
Looking after each other
There is no first-aid station
There is no first-aid station and no medical cover on the land. Everyone brings their own kit — that is why it is on this list as essential — and if you need help, find a crew member and ask. We will do what we can, and anything beyond the contents of somebody's kit means a drive to a hospital that is a long way off. So tell us early rather than late, look after the people you came with, and pack the sleeping bag this list asks for rather than the one you own. If you take medication we should know about, message us privately in the Discord before you drive up.