Your packing list for Burning Man if you are free camping
A common pitfall for people who come year after year is wanting to provide more comfort until you eventually have to rent storage space for your Burning Man gear and a trailer to tow. We wanted to fit everything into our Subaru Ascent for our first Burn, which is still large compared to most vehicles.
It’s wild to think that if we move to a new city every year, we’ll fit all our belongings in our car. But on our drive up we realized that our car was completely stocked with only Burning Man gear.
First you need to decide which camping route you are going to take. You have two important camping options at BurningMan.
1. stay in an existing registered camp
They offer a few infrastructure and benefits (such as showers, electricity and new friends) in exchange for compensation and/or do volunteer work in the camp.
2. Free camping or open camping
The other option is to camp freely. In this case, you need to take everything with you to get through the week. If you go with friends, you can share resources, but you must always be prepared to be self-reliant.
If we were going alone we might have considered a camp, but since we went with friends we enjoyed the free camping experience. This allowed us to be further away from the parties which meant we could sleep better at night.
While an RV is an option, we wanted to simplify our first experience at Burning Man, so we camped in a tent.
See more: 21 car camping essentials – everything you need to pack
