The Only Beauty Products You’ll Need When Backpacking

You don't necessarily need makeup for backpacking, but it can help for photo ops! In order to balance my need to be camera ready with my desire to pack light, I have found the perfect 5 products. Here are the only 5 beauty products you'll need when backpacking.

I consider myself a low-maintenance kind of girl. I go to the gym without makeup on and feel fine rocking a bare face on late night trips to the store for ice cream. So you might think I wouldn’t even pack a makeup bag whenever I go camping or backpacking, but you would be wrong for one simple reason… photos. I’m a confident lady, but everyone wants to feel beautiful when you are taking photos, and camping, as outdoorsy as it is, is likely to be filled with many photo opportunities. So, in order to balance my need to be camera ready with my desire to pack light, I have found the perfect 5 products. Here are the only beauty products you’ll need when backpacking.

1. Mascara

If you have the money to pay for lash extensions every couple of weeks, good on you, and you might not need this item, but for me, it is a must. A little mascara can take you from zombie cavewoman to natural beauty in 5 seconds. My tip is to not get a water-proof mascara because, as tempting as it might sound, they are very difficult to remove and are more likely to clump up. And if you are on a multi-day trip, layer after layer of clumpy mascara could do more harm than good. Instead, go for a thinner mascara that can be built up and taken off easily.

2. Tinted Brow Gel

I don’t know what I did before brow gel was a thing, but I know it wasn’t good. I love having tamed brows, and I think they do wonders for highlighting the bone structure of your face. At home, I use a brow pencil and clear gel, but to reduce unnecessary items in my pack, I take an all-in-one tint brow gel. My favorite is Benefit’s Gimme Brow because it not only tints your brows as well as hold them in place, but it also has fibers which help those of us who weren’t blessed with thick brows. The bonus of this product is that it is tiny and pretty much weighs nothing, so why not take it?

3. Dry shampoo

Some people can go days without washing their hair and look amazing… I am not that girl. I am lucky to make it past 24 hours without my hair getting oily, flat, and downright depressed, so I take dry shampoo with me even on backpacking trips. I’ll be honest, I could just wear a hat every day, but I don’t want to. So, for my sanity, I make room for this item. My trick is to buy a sample size of the product so you save space. My absolute ride or die is Dry Bar’s Triple Sec… it really is worth every penny.

4. Tinted Moisturizer

If you haven’t noticed the pattern yet, you should. Everything that goes in my pack should serve multiple purposes, and my tinted moisturizer is no exception. I have been blessed with clear skin, so I never have to worry about skin coverage, but I do have dark under eye circles (you win some, you lose some). This means I need something to even it out a little, but a concealer only serves one purpose, while a tinted moisturizer offers both coverage and crucial moisture that my skin needs. Pro tip: Make sure your product has SPF in it so you have sun protection as well. This is one of the key beauty products you’ll need when backpacking because it doubles as a sunscreen.

5. Facial Wipes

I am a firm believer in never going to sleep with makeup on and that doesn’t change when I am backpacking. Leaving products on your face all night is like asking for your pores to clog and pimples to pop up, and the point of this is to feel confident, so that won’t do. Some people’s faces are perfectly happy with baby wipes, but mine is not. For me, it’s worth the couple extra dollars to have wipes I feel confident using on my face as well as my body. These are the only beauty products you’ll need when backpacking.