Best Camp Towels for Backpacking of 2026

This is the most towel in the group. Thirty by sixty inches is a real bath towel — enough to wrap around after a campground shower, wide enough to dry your back without gymnastics — and the set throws in a 12 by 24 inch washcloth for face and hands. Folded, it still fits a mesh bag and a mid-size pack, but you know it is in there.

We kept reaching for it on cold mornings, and that is the clearest thing we can say about it: it is the one that makes a shower hut feel less like a penance. The face has a soft, suede-like finish rather than the slightly tacky feel of thinner microfiber, the snap loop in the corner hangs it off a hook or a pack strap, and it takes a machine wash without going stiff.

The two size options are worth knowing about. The large is 24 by 48 inches, which is the footprint that fits a smaller pack and comes closest to our top pick. The XL described here is the one for basecamps, van trips, and anyone who has stood shivering under a towel the size of a hand cloth and vowed never again.

The case is what sells this one: a hard EVA shell with a carabiner on the corner, sized so the towel folds back into it rather than being wrestled into a mesh sack. After a week of repacking we were still getting it in on the first try, which is more than we can say for the stuff sacks in this group.

As a towel it is a near-twin of our top pick. Forty-seven by 23.6 inches, a 200 gsm microfiber, a smooth face we did not mind against sunburned shoulders, and enough absorbency that one pass does most of the work. It also resists holding odor, which matters when the towel shares a bag with socks and a stove.

The one condition is that a closed case wants a dry towel. Hang the towel from the carabiner while you break camp and fold it away last, rather than sealing it damp at the bottom of a pack. If you would rather compress a towel into whatever corner of the pack is free, a mesh bag serves better; if you want to know exactly where it is, this is the one.

Three towels, three jobs: a 50 by 30 inch bath towel for the body, a 30 by 15 for hair or a face, and a 15 by 15 that ends up as the sweat rag in a hip pocket. Split the set between two people and each of you gets a towel plus a hand cloth, which is how this one usually leaves the house.

The largest towel is the piece doing the real work, and at 50 by 30 inches it covers more body than our top pick while staying thin enough to fold back into its own bag after a shower. The smaller two are not afterthoughts either — the mid-size one wraps wet hair on a cold evening, and nothing else in this group does that job as neatly.

We paid close attention to the 15-inch square, since that is the piece that decides whether a set earns its weight: it is genuinely useful for a face, a pair of glasses, and a quick wash at a stream, and it is exactly the size we forget to pack when we go out alone. Buy the set for two people, or for one person who wants a dry cloth kept apart from a wet towel.

There is a kind of backpacking where the towel only has to get sweat off your face and water off your legs before your trousers go back on. That is the job this one is built for, and at 2.88 ounces it is the lightest towel here — light enough that carrying two costs less weight than one XL towel.

The pouch and carabiner are the practical half of that: clip it to a shoulder strap or a belt loop and it is there when you stop, rather than buried at the bottom of a pack. The 80/20 polyester-nylon blend takes a machine wash and comes out the same shape, and the hanging loop means it can dry on the outside of a pack while you walk.

We wondered whether a fabric this thin would just push water around instead of lifting it. It needs a pat rather than a scrub, but it lifts, and it comes back dry fast enough to use twice in a day — which is the whole point of a towel this small. Pair it with a bigger towel for shower days and let this one handle everything else.

Same coverage as the biggest towels here, split in two: a 60 by 30 inch bath towel and a 24 by 15 inch hand towel, both in the 85/15 polyester-polyamide blend that most of this group uses. It is a sensible way to buy a towel, because the part you want dry the next morning is the small part.

The big one wraps around an adult with room to spare, which is the thing a 24-inch-wide towel cannot do after a shower. The small one covers a face, a pair of hands, and a shave, and it dries in the time it takes to eat breakfast when you hang it off a pack strap.

Both pieces fold into the breathable mesh bag, which is a better call than a sealed pouch — a mesh sack lets a slightly damp towel keep losing water instead of marinating. The bag also hangs, so the whole kit can be clipped to the outside of a pack rather than taking up space inside it.

What tips it for us is the division of labor: after a shower you use the big towel, and the hand towel stays dry in the bag for a face wash at a spring the next day. One detail we appreciated is that both pieces are the same fabric, so the small towel is not a cheaper afterthought that dries at half the speed.

Three towels in one bag is a strange thing to buy for solo backpacking and an obvious one for a tent with more than one person in it: a 60 by 30 for the body, a 30 by 15 for hair, and a 15 by 15 for hands and faces, split however your group works. Two people can each end up with a towel and a cloth to their name.

The big towel is the one that matters, and at 60 by 30 inches it is as large as anything here, with enough width to wrap around and enough length to cover a back without help. It packs into the included bag with room to spare, and the snap loop hangs it from a branch or a tent line without sliding down in the night.

The face of the fabric is the smoothest of the thinner towels we handled — closer to satin than to terry — and it stays that way after washing, which is not something every cheap microfiber manages. Machine wash and low tumble dry per the care instructions, which is the answer you want on a trip with a laundromat at the end of it.

We noted that the two smaller towels are the ones that stay in the pack day to day: the hand towel for faces and dishes, the mid-size for hair and for wiping down a wet tent. The large towel only comes out at the end of the day, which is roughly how a family of three will use it too.

Two 60 by 30 inch towels is an unusual thing to sell, and it is exactly right for a couple who both want to wrap up after a shower rather than share one towel and a face cloth. Of the picks on this page, it is the only one that puts two full-size towels in a single pack.

The fabric is thin, smooth, and quick to give up its water — the suede-like face most of this group has, in a slightly lighter hand. It is soft enough for a face and a sunburn, sand shakes off it, and the hanging loop means it can dry outside a tent overnight rather than draped over your sleeping bag.

Where it sits in a pack: two of these folded flat take about the room of one thick bath towel, so it suits hostel and RV trips, basecamps, and family vacations where the accommodation has stopped supplying towels. If you are hiking solo, half of this is a towel you did not need.