My pack trips are pretty much limited to hunting season (just not enough time these days) so my criteria are more specific:
- Proximity to glassing perch, I like to make coffee just before daylight and walk less than 100 yards to my glassing perch, drink my coffee and watch animals move.
- Cover, I don't want the game to see my camp and I like to be as protected from the elements as possible.
- Water, I sacrifice this for glassing so I cache a lot of water before season. Last year we were over 900 vertical feet above the stream.
This is closest to my criteria, except that seldom are we very far from water. We've had a few dry camps a quarter mile of bad ground from water but that's usually not a problem.
As to the exact spot, I like it burrowed in brush or timber and cocooned from the elements. With each of the criteria, we probably all flex our standards at times based on the situation, weather, etc.
I like to camp in a saddle or place where I can climb opposite slopes for optimum glassing with the rising sun at my back at dawn and the other slope for optimum glassing light in the evening. We tend to always be on the lookout for good vantage points to glass (and spots to camp/bivvy near them) and tuck them away in memory even if we don't stop to use them right then.
Several times I've bivvied at an ideal spot from which to glass and even to shoot, sometimes from within the sleeping bag. I.e. Sleeping in a small brush clump on the rim of an alpine basin isn't likely to disturb game (depending on its location and wind) and you make no disturbance getting into place before daylight. Sometimes 30 feet down the off side of that basin rim is the place to sleep.
