
Diana Helmuth

How to Suffer Outside:
A Beginner's Guide to Hiking and Backpacking
There's a right way to go backpacking, and then there's the "that's probably good enough way." This is about the latter.
Featuring the art of Latasha Dunston.
Winner of the 2022 National Outdoor Book Award
for Outdoor Adventure Guides


What Critics Are Saying
"One of the top new adventure books to read right now"
Forbes
"Her perspective is a breath of fresh air on the whole fresh-air-and-nature thing...Were I a bookseller, I would press this book on customers regardless of their interest in backpacking. I would recommend it for the voice and storytelling: Here, stay inside if you want. Turn off Netflix, and read this."
Susannah Felts
"Helmuth proposes a different reality...With empathetic, good-natured humor, her book critiques modern hiking culture while outlining everything beginners need to know."
Angela Lutz
“It’s the humor that knocked me on my ass…it’s a book about what happens when you confront yourself with something that you feel like you want to do but maybe you don’t feel like you have the expertise to do.”
Da7e Gonzales
"An ideal DIY instructional guide and manual for aspiring hikers and novice backpackers, How to Suffer Outside: A Beginner's Guide to Hiking and Backpacking is especially 'user friendly' in tone, commentary, content, organization and presentation."
Midwest Book Review
"Diana has a way of making even the most mundane subjects funny"
Shelby Stanger
"Funny, relatable and great for any outdoors person on your list, from the casual walker to the experienced backpacker."
Bay Area News Group
"There were very real issues I wondered if she would explore: the financial barrier to entry, the whiteness of it all, the privilege of taking extended time off from work, the safety aspects of being a woman outdoors alone, the fact that people die out there! Helmuth addressed them all and even raised some I hadn’t considered.
Andrea Marks Joseph
Featured Freelance Work

Named one of CurbedSF's Best Stories of 2019. and Editor's Pick at Longreads.