{"id":12019,"date":"2026-05-01T11:36:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T11:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=12019"},"modified":"2026-05-01T11:36:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T11:36:33","slug":"why-camping-with-friends-builds-stronger-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=12019","title":{"rendered":"Why Camping With Friends Builds Stronger Relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Published May 1, 2026 03:56AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When I lived on Colorado\u2019s Front Range, I could think of no better way to spend a summer weekend than to rally a group of friends for a camping trip in the mountains. In a state with sprawling public lands, we typically found dispersed sites off dirt roads, but I\u2019ve also camped in bustling KOA-style campgrounds in California and in grassy fields during bike races and festivals in the Northeast. Regardless of the setting, these trips followed a blueprint: we spent all day outdoors, stayed up late talking under the stars, and went home knowing, and liking, one another more. Camping together was a relationship accelerator; after just a few of these open-air weekends, a young friendship felt sturdier and more durable than its age.<\/p>\n

In 2024, a national report pushed back against the prevailing narrative of the American friendship crisis. It\u2019s not that we don\u2019t have enough friends, the American Friendship Project said<\/a>\u2014it\u2019s that we aren\u2019t as close as we\u2019d like to be to those friends. As busy adults, time is our biggest impediment, report coauthor Jeffrey Hall, professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, told me. \u201cWhere do you find the time to build that intimacy?\u201d Hall\u2019s other research suggests that it could take 40 to 60 hours to turn an acquaintance into a casual friend, and 200 hours to turn a casual friend into a best one. That\u2019s about 100 two-hour dinner dates to make a bestie.<\/p>\n

A camping trip with friends can accelerate bonds and closeness<\/span> (Photo: Doug Pensinger\/Getty Images))<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trips can be a way to rack up those hours quickly, and researchers say that taking a budding friendship into a new setting\u2014a context shift, as they call it\u2014can become a \u201cturning point\u201d in a relationship that changes the pace and direction of its trajectory. Even just the act of inviting a friend to do something special in a new place (and having them accept that invitation) can make people feel closer, says psychologist Jaimie Krems, director of the UCLA Center for Friendship Research.<\/a> In the instance of a camping trip, \u201cSimply making the plan to say, \u2018I\u2019m going to go off into the woods with these people, and that is how I\u2019m choosing to spend my time instead of anything else,\u2019 that\u2019s a real signal of commitment to the relationship,\u201d says Krems.<\/p>\n

Camping together could be an even more effective bonding catalyst than other types of travel. It\u2019s relatively inexpensive and, for those who own the gear and live within driving distance of a campground, can be easier to pull off more frequently with friends. Research has also long suggested that spending time with others outdoors can enhance group cohesion, or the sense of an \u201cus\u201d against the elements. Wilderness environments with fewer resources create opportunities to help and rely on one another, which can boost trust and goodwill. Sharing food, helping a friend set up their tent, or looking after one another\u2019s kids at the campsite are all the kinds of favors, or \u201clittle bids,\u201d says Krems, \u201cthat ratchet up a friendship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camping may also be particularly good at facilitating the kind of seclusion that builds intimacy. In his research, Hall cites a 1965 study in which pairs of strangers were confined to a room together for ten days; by the end, the men were communicating in ways that approximated best friendship. By contrast, pairs of strangers who worked together for similar amounts of time but didn\u2019t share living and sleeping quarters reported only casual levels of friendship. More recently, a 2022 analysis<\/a> of friendship and travel found that friends felt closer after trips where they shared tight quarters like a bedroom or tent. With nowhere to hide, study authors observed, travel companions experienced a wide range of emotions together, from laughter to tension to exhaustion.<\/p>\n

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A major outing like a river trip can block out distractions from the outside world<\/span> (Photo: Jim West\/UCG\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The outdoors, of course, aren\u2019t a physically confined space\u2014they\u2019re the opposite. But they can be thought of as a psychologically confined one. \u201cSharing a space with someone, you get to see the incidental ways they eat, sleep, and see the world,\u201d Hall wrote to me in a follow-up email. \u201cIt is quite a distinct view of your friend that you won\u2019t get over a planned coffee or a phone call.\u201d On a camping trip, friends can see one another first thing in the morning before teeth are brushed and coffee brewed, or in various states of discomfort ranging from cold to sleep deprivation. \u201cThis idea that you can be yourself and be accepted, that\u2019s almost a prerequisite for being close to someone,\u201d says Krems.<\/p>\n

Camping together also serves as a retreat from the built world and its distractions, particularly screens. This encourages participants to focus primarily on engaging with one another; a friend of mine who takes his family camping calls it \u201cputting them in nature jail\u201d for this reason. A 2015 study of campers at an Australian caravan park noted that in this outdoor setting, people abandoned what the researchers called \u201cclock time\u201d and reverted to what they called \u201ccyclical time,\u201d or what campers may intuitively grasp as the state of having no idea what time it is at all. Unlike other types of trips where travelers might stay tethered to clock time as they visit museums or make dinner reservations, at the park, campers were freed from the pressures to be productive and thus engaged in what study authors called a \u201ccommunal agenda of idleness.\u201d This kind of environment creates time and space for the full range of conversations and unstructured hanging out that\u2019s so conducive to friendship-building, Hall says.<\/p>\n

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Multi-generational camping trips bring family closer together<\/span> (Photo: Dan Kitwood\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A lot can happen when you\u2019re doing nothing outdoors. Experiences like camping trips become part of a shared history, or what Krems refers to as a \u201cshared reality,\u201d that make us feel closer to our friends. Hall fondly recalled a camping trip in Baja during which a friend began singing \u201ca ridiculous song\u201d to himself while cooking for the group. \u201cThat song became an anthem for the trip,\u201d he said. On another trip years ago, my friend and I celebrated what we called \u201cGMT New Years\u201d on December 30. We still refer to holidays celebrated early as GMT holidays.<\/p>\n

Of course, a relationship accelerator simply speeds a friendship in the direction it was always headed. Turning points can occasionally be negative. Once, an overnighter in the desert with a couple guys I\u2019d just met proved the adage that travel either makes or breaks a friendship. (Nothing dramatic, but it was a long and quiet car ride home.) It\u2019s a good idea to be familiar with people before you head into the woods with them, Hall agrees. \u201cI\u2019d guess that camping is more about strengthening or reestablishing bonds with existing friends rather than making a new friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The old cliche is true: there\u2019s nothing better than spending time around a campfire<\/span> (Photo: Tailyr Irvine for The Washington Post via Getty Images))<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But when it works out, camping together can engender that sense of kinship that so many of us are yearning for. Krems says there\u2019s a biological explanation. Sleeping next to another person cues a primal association with safety\u2014\u201cyou won\u2019t sleep unless you think this person won\u2019t kill you,\u201d she says\u2014which is reinforced when you wake up not-murdered the next day. And it may simply feel good to gather with other Homo sapiens<\/em> by the fire. \u201cOne theory for why humans became a group living animal in the first place is to avoid predation,\u201d she says. \u201cBeing with other people is a real benefit to physical safety.\u201d Would that feeling of safety make you feel closer to a person? \u201cAbsolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s satisfying to hear a researcher explain the mechanism behind a phenomenon you\u2019ve long intuited. One camping trip, some friends and I found ourselves in Colorado\u2019s high country during a fire ban. Even a summer night in the mountains is cold enough to require puffy jackets, but this was November, and the air was frigid. In lieu of flames, we turned on all of our electric lanterns and headlamps and piled them in the middle of the fire pit. Somehow this kept us comfortable enough to stay up late talking into the night. It makes no physical sense, but, we all agreed, we felt a genuine warmth emanating from our makeshift fire\u2019s glow.<\/p>\n\n

This article is from the Spring 2026 issue of Outside magazine. To receive the print magazine,\u00a0become an Outside+ member here.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Published May 1, 2026 03:56AM When I lived on Colorado\u2019s Front Range, I could think of no better way to spend a summer weekend than to rally a group of friends for a camping trip in the mountains. In a state with sprawling public lands, we typically found dispersed sites off dirt roads, but I\u2019ve<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wild-living"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}