7 Halloween Costumes Every Backpacker Already Has Lying Around

October is my favorite month, no doubt. The long, humid days of summer shorten into chilly autumn nights. Campfires smell better. I get to wear my favorite fleece. Every hike is lit up golden and red, reinventing familiar paths and making every viewpoint a visual spectacle. There’s pumpkin pie and pumpkin beer and pumpkins to carve and, at the end of the month, there’s my favorite day of all: Halloween!

I love Halloween as much as I love backpacking and being outdoors in the Fall. With all of the trips I go on this time of the year, I don’t have a lot of extra cash lying around and, to tell you truth, I’d rather spend the money I do have on gear and travel rather than a costume I may only use once. Solution: raid the gear closet for anything I can use for a Halloween costume!

1. Jack Torrence/Brawny Man

We’ll start simple with a flexible costume. Grab a flannel, a pair of jeans, and some big stomping boots and you’re half way there. Have fabulous hair and a mustache? Then all you need is a roll of paper towels (which will come useful when people start spilling cider on the dance floor) and, behold: Brawny Man! Have more of a crazy look in your eyes and an axe in the shed? Here’s Johnny! You’ve got Jack from the Shining ready to go.

2. Attacked by a (Teddy) Bear

Throw on your normal hiking get-up and don’t forget the pack. Grab a teddy bear and have him secured to your pack and looking as fearsome as possible (vampire teeth?) as he leans over your shoulder to take a chunk from your neck. Obviously, you can get as gruesome as you’d like with your wound situation. Explain to others that you forgot to hang your candy bag.

3. Really, Re ally Lost Hiker

Depending on your dedication, you can grow your beard out all year in anticipation of this costume. All you need are your most ragged clothes and a hermit-worthy beard. Get creative with this one. The goal is to look like you’ve been in the woods for way too long. If you can train a squirrel to eat from your (real or fake) beard, you win!

4. Arctic Explorer

Every few years, Halloween in Ohio turns out cold. Not chilly or nippy. Cold. Snow and ice and freezing temperatures cold. When this happens, all the naughty nurses and skimpy Tarzans flirt with frostbite on their exposed skin. But not you! You’ve got a big, puffy down jacket, sunglasses, snow boots and a beanie. Maybe you even have a rope and an ice axe laying around. Throw some water in your (optional) beard and put it in the freezer for added effect. If people are hip to horror movies, you can even tell them you’re Carpenter’s The Thing in human form.

5. Rambo

You know you have a knife so large as to be impractical for actual backpacking. You start looking at knives and suddenly you have a 7″ Ka-Bar in your hands and you feel its power. So you buy it and think that someday, when society finally collapses due to radioactive space zombies, you and your knife will be all you can trust. Until that day, however, at least you can dress as Rambo with a pair of army pants, a red headband, and your beloved, huge knife. Giant muscles are helpful, but optional.

6. Base Layer Ninja

You’ve got your base layer, whether Capilene or merino wool, and I bet it’s black, light weight and form fitting. Have a Buff? Then you probably already know how to make a ninja mask out of it. If you don’t, stop in RRT and I will personally show you. Slip on some black socks or a black pair of Vibram Fivefingers and you are ready to disappear into the shadows before the shogun’s guards ever know you were there.

7. Famous Hollywood “Thru-Hiker”

Hollywood has made a few movies over the past few years that bring backpacking, and thru-hiking in particular, into the spotlight. Forget all about your ultralight set up and grab your old, huge pack and stuff it full with goodies. Ladies, check out Wild for aesthetics and lace up your boots with bright, red laces to pose as Cheryl Strayed. The greener the pack, the better. Men, stuff your belly with a pillow, put on a floppy hat, and curse a lot for a perfect Katz from A Walk in the Woods.

Get creative! Ideas of your own? Share them in the comments. Get hiking and haunting and have a great October.

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