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Best Gifts for Hikers, Backpackers, Outdoorsy People (2026)
Buying gifts for the outdoor enthusiast is damn near impossible. Your hiking/camping/cycling outdoorsy friends are often serious gearheads, meticulously poring over reviews, guides, and the perennial wisdom of ounce-counting Reddit users to find the exact right thing.
Don’t stress trying to pick that exact right thing yourself. The chance of you figuring it out and getting it for them as a gift is exactly zero. That doesn’t mean you should punt and buy an REI gift card—although they might like that, especially with REI’s various sales throughout the year. But gift cards are lame. Instead, get them something they totally didn’t expect: one of these fun, useful, sometimes whimsical things that are almost guaranteed to not only delight them but actually get used outdoors.
And what about you? While you’re here, don’t you need to replace your sleeping pad? Don’t forget to check out the rest of our buying guides, including our Best Sleeping Bags guide, our Best Barefoot Shoes guide, and our Best Merino Wool guide.
Updated November 2026: I’ve added some nice pants, a fire-starting kit, a Nalgene pressurizer kit, and some cast iron pans for cooking over an open flame. But I’m sticking with the socks as our top pick. If you get nothing else, just get the socks. Trust me.
Yes, you read that right. Socks. SOCKS! You should gift socks. Outdoorsy people can never have too many socks. We’re hard on socks, which almost guarantees this gift will see some use. What your outdoorsperson especially needs is merino wool socks. Merino wool is a super fiber. It will change their lives. Did you know you can wear merino wool for several days in a row without smelling like you just spent two weeks at a Phish reunion? Just kidding, Phish fans. But it’s true. Merino wool will change your friend or loved one’s backpacking life. It’s comfortable, has virtually no odor no matter how long you wear it, and helps your body thermoregulate, staying warmer when it’s cold, cooler when it’s warm.
Darn Tough socks in particular are comfortable, stand up to considerable abuse, and have some of the highest merino wool content of anything we’ve tested. They also come in a nearly endless array of fun colors and designs. If you want something warmer, I love these Minus 33 Expedition Weight merino socks ($24).
Opinel’s classic folding knife practically begs to be taken on a hike with some good hard chorizo, soft Spanish cheese, and a nice baguette. It’s the first step to hiking, European style. Or at least how I imagine Europeans hike (always with delicious cheese, cured meats, and cheap wine—please don’t ruin my vision, European readers). I got my Opinel as a gift from a friend, and I love it. And I am an outdoor person, so I am living proof that this is a good gift.
Opinel makes dozens of variations of this knife to choose from when gifting. Grab them a kit with a bento box, or a nature-loving friend might like the version with handles designed by different artists. The one version I don’t recommend is the carbon steel. The material is great, but in this case, when you’re throwing it in your backpack and possibly forgetting about it for long periods, carbon steel will rust. Stick with stainless steel when gifting this.
I would put the Bic lighter in the top 10 best technologies of all time. For most of human history, being able to flick your thumb and produce a flame would have been considered utterly miraculous. If you (or whoever you’re gifting) want to fully understand just how miraculous a Bic is (or matches, for that matter), spend some time with this flint-and-striker fire-starting kit. Townsends makes historical gear (serving the reenactment community, among others), and this kit approximates how you would have made fire around the time of the Revolutionary War up through, well, the invention of matches. Let me tell you, dear reader, it isn’t easy. That said, it was a fun skill to develop, and I especially recommend it if you have kids (with supervision,