What are the 10 essentials and should I worry about them? I get confused. Big numbers are hard. Do I really need 10 things? What are they? Are there really 10?
- Skippy McReady, Mrs Wilson's 4th grade
Dear Skippy:
The secret of being a real backpacker is to make do with what you have, so don't worry. Whole fleets of rescue helicopters are sitting idle most days, and there are literally thousands of volunteer mountain rescue crews just itching to keep their skills up to date. But what do they have to do? Sit around and wait for a call that never comes.
In my experience there are only three essentials anyway:
Cigarettes.
Beer.
Cookies.
Cookies contain all the essential nutrients needed by the human body, except for water and alcohol, which is why beer is a good idea. Smoking cigarettes keeps you alert and gives your hands something to do while you wait to be rescued. I'd say don't waste your time in class but get out there and start acting like a man.
- Dr Backpack
Dear Dr Backpack:
I'm not old enough to buy cigarettes or beer. What should I do? Beer tastes icky. Where can I get some money? I don't have any money and is this right? Cigarettes make people stinky. I don't want any cigarettes. I don't want to be stinky.
- Skippy McReady, Mrs Wilson's 4th grade
Dear Skippy:
Extra food and water are important too, as well as extra clothes.
You can always trade food, water, and clothes for beer and cigarettes.
Try looking for some guys living near the tracks, or under a bridge. They always have plenty of beer, and cigarettes too. They are usually short of food and clean clothes, so it will be easy to "trade up".
If it's a cold day, one of the guys might even loan you his sleeping bag. Don't get too close though.
- Dr Backpack
Dear Dr Backpack:
What about a compass? Shouldn't I have a compass? My cub scout leader told me I should always have a compass. His name is Mr Smith. I don't like bridges. My mom said not to go under bridges. Those guys are scary. Why should I go there? I'm scared.
- Skippy McReady, Mrs Wilson's 4th grade
Dear Skippy:
That's all very nice, but what good is a compass if you don't know where you are?
First you get a compass, and then you need a map to go with it, and then you have to learn how to read a map and everything. Before long you're all tuckered out.
Makes a fella dizzy.
I always rely on what we call "Dead Reckoning". You reckon you'll either get where you're going or end up dead.
Keep it simple, Skippy.
I'd say carry a knife instead. Or a gun. Like Al Capone said, "You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone." Al Capone never carried a compass in his life, but he knew how to use a gun, and he was famous.
- Dr Backpack
Dr Backpack:
Whoa, hold on just a minute, Buster. Who are you and why are you feeding my son this crock of crap? He's in the fourth grade, for God's sake. Who the hell are you to tell my son to take up smoking and drinking at the age of nine, let alone digging around under bridges consorting with homeless men? And carry a gun? CARRY A GUN? What the hell are you up to? WHAT. THE. HELL?
- Alana McReady, Skippy's Very Angry Mother
Dear Ms. McReady:
Well, you know what the internet is like. I spend a lot of time on the internet these days, now that I no longer have to show up at work.
Luckily spring came along just in time, and then summer. I was able to shed my sweatsuit and move into my underwear. Now I no longer need to get dressed at all, let alone bother with shaving or bathing.
This makes life much easier. Saves money too.
These days I spend a lot of time downloading things from the internet. Mostly photos, but a lot of video too. Video is cool because I don't have to use my imagination as much. It's amazing what you can find online.
Right now I have just about enough money to cover rent, with a little left over for food and the essentials. I guess you already know what those are.
Could you find the time to send me a picture of your son? It helps me to imagine I'm dealing with a real person.
Heck, while you're at it, send me a picture of yourself instead. Preferably in pajamas, unbuttoned if you can. I'd like to add it to my collection. I especially like photos of mommies in bunny pajamas. Do you have some?
I hope so.
- Dr Backpack
Dr Backpack:
What kind of pervert are you? Where do you live? I demand to know your name and address so I can send the police to round you up. IMMEDIATELY. You deserve to be thrown in jail with the key broken off in the lock. And left to rot. FOREVER.
- Alana McReady, She-Devil
Dear Ms McReady:
Oh, I hardly think that would be enjoyable. I get claustrophobic. I even have trouble opening closet doors and looking inside much less being confined in one.
I guess that's partly why my apartment looks the way it does. I'd clean the place but I'm afraid to even reach inside a closet to grab the vacuum. No telling what might try to grab me back. Sort of a personal issue, I guess.
So I'm still not taking any chances with those closets.
There was an awful smell coming out of one of them, starting around last November. I'm not really sure what it was. One of the neighborhood kids who got lost, or a family of dead rats. Maybe neither. Could have been an old pot roast. I guess I should have put it in the refrigerator but sometimes I get confused about which is which.
Probably neither. Children or rats, I mean. I think I would know for sure by now, though it could still be the pot roast.
Anyway, the smell stopped after about six months, or I've gotten used to it, or something, and things are pretty well back to normal. So when are you and Skippy coming by for a visit?
Don't forget about the bunny pajamas. I think you might look good in them. In fact your name sounds familiar. Really familiar. I believe we've met. If I'm right about that, you have nothing to apologize for.
- Dr Backpack
Dr Backpack:
Creep.
- Alana McReady, Who lives to see you at the end of a rope.
Dear Ms McReady:
Sorry. I forgot to mention everything.
When Skippy goes out into the woods he should be sure to also take these along:
First aid kit
Fire starter
Matches
They can be handy for camping or even for someone who has a breakdown on the road.
So when are you coming over? I can't wait to see you in person again.
Or should I drop by your house? I can bring my own pajamas. I don't have any bunny PJs but do have a camel suit. Kind of like pajamas but it takes two people. If you want to be up front, I can teach you how to make the humps wiggle.
I'm sure you'd catch on pretty fast.
I may still have your address around here somewhere.
- Dr Backpack
Dr Backpack:
My address? Don't you dare come near my house or I'll drop you. Skippy doesn't have a gun but I do, and I know how to use it, you depraved lunatic. I mean it. DO NOT COME NEAR MY HOUSE! EVER! UNDERSTAND?
- Alana McReady
Dear Ms McReady:
The other two items are:
Sunglasses and sunscreen
Headlamp/flashlight
Granted, if you're camping in the back yard you probably don't need even a flashlight. Just leave the yard light on.
But when you do it leave it on, it shines straight into my bedroom window, so I'd prefer if you could use a flashlight. A headlamp if you want, but it isn't really necessary.
Likewise, if you and Skippy are just out for an overnight in the back yard, the sunglasses and sunscreen aren't that important, but keep them in mind for longer trips.
Next time you're out sunning and need any help with that naughty old tube of sunscreen, just give a whistle. I can hop the fence and be right there before you know it.
I didn't put all the pieces together at first, but we're closer than I thought. Next door neighbors, in fact. How about that?
Every now and then I can even catch a glimpse of you coming out of the shower, through your bathroom window, though I think you do look better out in that warm, warm sun, all slippery with lotion. Nice sunglasses by the way. They go well with your bikini.
See you again soon. I hope.
- Dr Backpack
Dr Backpack:
OK, you twisted deviant. I have you now.
I remember you. I know exactly who you are. Exactly.
Skippy is dialing the police right this second. Expect to see them in about two minutes. You can't get away, fool.
This is the end of your degenerate life. The very end.
PREPARE TO MEET YOUR DOOM!
- Alana The Terminator McReady
Dear Ms McReady:
Wow! I'm really attracted to strong women. Did you know that? Well you do now.
I even feel a little faint.
It's going to be hard to get you out of my head, but unfortunately I've just remembered an important business meeting I have. Out of town. Can't say for sure how long this might take, but I'll try to look you up if I'm ever back in these parts.
For now, whenever Skippy goes out hiking or backpacking with his cub scout friends, make sure he's well equipped. The 10 Essentials really are essential. Here's the whole list:
Map
Compass
Sunglasses and sunscreen
Extra clothing
Headlamp/flashlight
First-aid supplies
Firestarter
Matches
Knife
Extra food
Those are the "Classic Ten Essentials", dating from the original list in the 1930s. The "Updated Ten Essential Systems" is a newer version, freshened a bit, but basically the same idea:
Navigation (map and compass)
Sun protection (sunglasses and sunscreen)
Insulation (extra clothing)
Illumination (headlamp/flashlight)
First-aid supplies
Fire (waterproof matches/lighter/candles)
Repair kit and tools
Nutrition (extra food)
Hydration (extra water)
Emergency shelter
Well, I've really got to run now. Be well.
Your friend and former neighbor,
- Dr Backpack
The 10 essentials: It pays to keep a set handy...you never know when you might need to grab them and run.
This message brought to you as a public service.
Comments
– Annoying itch –
I have this distracting itching problem going around the waist band of my underpants, kind of more intense on the right and in back, but definitely all the way around.
Before reading any of the material here, I never noticed anything like this.
Do you have other readers with this kind of problem, or is it maybe a second puberty kicking in? I'll be 68 at the end of the month, and I'd really like it if my sex drive revved up while there's still time — you know, before I completely blow past the silver fox stage and end up in the ditch. If that happens I can't expect to attract any women at all, although this rash can't really help much, come to think of it.
Do you have a sister who might be interested in going out drinking with me? That would be OK, although if you have a daughter, she might have the juice to provide a better jumpstart for someone my age.
I'd like to see if this really is my budding redevelopment or if it's only an allergic reaction to your writing style.
The back of a pack is the part that goes against your back (your pack likes to go backward). The front of a pack is the part that faces away from you as you walk and toward you as you dig around inside the pack trying to find your lunch. The left and right sides change places depending on whether you look at the pack from the front or the back. (Duh!)
Someone out there somewhere, maybe on a high mountain in still, clear air with the early morning sun gleaming brightly from the dawn horizon has this all figured out, but most of us can't remember if we determine right and left from our point of view or from the pack's point of view, so forget about that. Let's deal with something comprehensible, like the top and bottom. The top of the pack is the part that is up near your shoulders while you hike, and the bottom is the the other end, the part that hits the bear poop first when you set the pack down.
How about that?
So simple once it's explained.
Generic pack, back view.
Generic pack, side view.
Generic pack, top view.
Pack parts, back.
Pack parts, front.
Pack parts, side.
Pack parts, top.
OK then. The possibilities for loading a pack are from the top, the bottom, the front, the back, one or both of the sides, or from many places.
It's getting worse again isn't it? Well hang on a second.
The fun thing is, if you make your own packs, you can do whatever the hell you want, no matter how goofy it might be for someone else. After all, what's wrong with a pack that you can open from both the top and the bottom? Or only the bottom? Nothing at all, if that's the way you like it. No, you won't find one of these hanging from a hook down at Sally-N-Bob's Pack Emporium, or in an L.L. Bean Bean catalog, but who cares? Why should some big company out there in Broken Pavement, N.J. make decisions about what you can have? On the other hand, L.L. Bean did once have some nice bunny-shaped small packs in pink. (They also had bear and raccoon packs, but all of them, each and every single one, were too tiny for adults. Dang. Dang. Oh, dang.)
OK then, let's move on, so very, very sadly.
– Take it from the top. –
Top loader, simple, side view.
Top loader, lidded, side view.
Yes, folks, most backpacks load from the same old boring place, the top. You stand the pack up (if you can — unless it's frameless) and shove things into it from the top. You do this either until the pack is full or until you run out of shovable things. If the pack gets full before you're done then you're taking too much or the pack is too small. If you run out of things before the pack is full, then you are trying too hard or the pack is too big. Be more like Buddha or his teacher Goldilocks and find the Middle Way. But without being as annoying as the kid.
The top-loader is the oldest and most basic kind of pack. If you've ever been to to the grocery store and got one of those big old-fashioned paper bags then you know the principle — put stuff in at the top. It's really that simple. So easy. In keeping with this principle, top-loaders are more likely to be one big bag, with no divisions or secret compartments or decoder rings. Most of us can grasp the idea without very much training at all, and then we get on with it pretty well nearly forever.
The beauty of the top-loader is that the last thing you put in is the first thing you get to take out again. When you open that pack what you see is what you still remember having put in there. Maybe your gloves, or your lunch. So nice to see them again, you think. What wonderful times we've had together. Or will have, if what you see on top is your lunch and you want to eat it.
Next you find other things farther down. Things you remember but not so well. Things that bring back memories of sleepy-eyed morning packing, of pleasant overnight dreams, or of yesterday. Ah, yes, bygone times. And continuing to dig you find yet more.
You find odds and ends that you barely recognize, and that you begin to wonder about.
Then perhaps near the bottom of the pack you finally excavate objects strange and arcane, maybe from another world, or from an extinct ancient civilization that got its thrills lurking in alternate dimensions and leaving behind inscrutable and disorienting doodads for you to find at odd times. You are baffled by artifacts whose uses you can only guess at. Widgets that may in fact even be frightening, or which appear vaguely evil, that have strange dials and gauges on them, or which vibrate and buzz faintly when handled, and grow disconcertingly warm or cold in the hand, or are simply soft, damp, and fuzzy with mold. And you have no idea what they are or where they came from. Especially the moldy ones.
But not to fear. They are all yours. You just forgot about them for a while. Because unloading a top-loading backpack is like an archeological dig. It's layer after layer of discovery, right down to the bottom. It can be fun to do, unless your rain jacket is down there in that dark hole and the sky is falling all around you in golf-ball-sized gobs that splat loudly and bounce off the ground, and everything you brought is spread out around you, in the mud, and you are swearing a lot, which is pretty common in these circumstances.
At times like these you wonder why you didn't buy a panel-loader.
– Roll down that wall, babe. –
The idea of a panel-loader is the same as the union suit.
Panel loader, front view (top panel partly open, showing some equipment inside).
Panel loader, side view (top panel partly open).
Example one: Think of a shoe box standing up on one of its small ends. Kind of that shape. Now make it as big as a backpack. Then rotate it in your mind so that the side that is normally the top (where the lid goes) is facing you. Now imagine a big zipper going up the left side of that, across the top, and down the right side, like the zipper on a suitcase. The flap that falls down when you undo the zipper is the panel.
Example two: The union suit (or Idaho Space Suit) is that one-piece long underwear thing with the flap in the back. The flap is called the access hatch, drop seat, or fireman's flap, depending on where you're from and what you like to think about. All three names describe the same great idea though.
Apparently the union suit started out as a revolutionary type of women's underwear known as the Liberty Suit (at least among Louisa May Alcott's friends). It was an alternative to nasty tight bony things with hooks and laces and hinges and so on that left marks on the skin and scars on the soul. Manly men never wore corsets much in polite society, or seldom admitted to it, but eventually they were overcome by the fascinating kinky possibilities of the union suit and officially declared it to be Tough Guy Wear™ and OK for all-terrain use.1
Anyhow, by then women had lost interest in the union suit and had moved on to thongs, sports bras, and sweat pants, and had left the scratchy gray misshapen thing to men, who still treasure it dearly. And, perhaps due to an innate, possibly pathological fascination some have for secret access hatches, we later gained the panel-loading pack.
OK there.
Generally panel-loaders have one big compartment inside, and they are front-loaders, which means that they load from the side away from your back. (Remember?) While the top-loader stands upright with its maw open like a young bird in a nest at feeding time, a panel-loader is usually going to be lying on its back and yawning. (Panel-loaders are much more laid back, in case you haven't guessed yet.)
To fill a panel-loader, first you talk to it gently (to get it into a relaxed mood), then you rub its belly in a slow and non-threatening sort of way (to relax it even more). Then when you're sure it's safe and the pack is fully ready for your next move, you slowly begin the unzipping part and lay open the flap. If you move too fast, or accidentally get tickly, the pack may scratch you or bite, so be careful, especially with a new pack that is not used to being handled.
Slow and steady now...
Lay in your goods and arrange them carefully in layers, the softest stuff first, in where it will be near your back, being sure to fill all the corners, getting things nice and cozy and tight toward the bottom of the pack. Finally, when you are done, simply zip the sucker back up and head for the hills. Don't pay any attention to the mud, dust, dead leaves, and bugs all over the shoulder straps and the back of the pack. That's supposed to be there, and you won't see it anyway, while you hike — all that stuff got there when you laid the pack down to begin loading it. Too bad.
So then, at the end of the day you can stop a bit early and clean up. It isn't a big deal. Mud comes off, especially after drying all day. What might be a big deal is finding that sometime during the last eight hours of hiking, your big long zipper broke and some mighty interesting and useful things fell out of the pack through the open panel. Of course you didn't see any of this because it happened way out back in your giant blind spot, but you'll probably live through the experience. If you are lucky.
Unless one of the things you lost was your mouse repellent and a ravenous horde of them swarms you at midnight, when your little eyes are closed in sleep and you are wrapped up nice and tight in that slim sleek mummy bag and can't even wave your arms around in futile gestures of mock threat. Yeah, well.
– Peek-a-boo loaders. –
Let's invent this as our secret term for packs that have several access hatches. Some packs are like that.
Hybrid panel-&-top loader with lid (top panel partly open).
Hybrid and and top loader (lidless), side view (top panel partly open).
Normally these are called compartmented packs, and they usually have an upper level and a lower level, both accessed through the front, or from the top for the upper part, and through a front panel for the lower compartment. Other than that they are like other panel-loaders.
The bottom compartment is advertised as the place to put your sleeping bag and the upper one is for the rest of your things. Of course these packs have frames, and the frame makes this sort of pack workable by keeping it upright and taut. When your pack has a frame it's easier to arrange your goods in a definite sort of way, keeping the lighter and bulkier things down low, and perching the weightier things up high, near your shoulders, where it's easier to keep them balanced over your hips. Especially if you don't have quite enough to fill the pack to the brim.
A lot of compartmented packs have two or more zippers so you get multiple chances at experiencing zipper failure, but pack makers are not dummies. They add extra straps, which can fill in for exploded zippers. Kinda. So you get more weight and more complexity absolutely free with each pack.
– Side show freaks. –
Then there are the other options.
You won't see a back-loading pack, at least not without hallucinating. On commercial (heavy) packs from major manufacturers, the back is where all the padding goes, and some of the levers, dials, thumb screws, and pressure release valves. And maybe the fuse box. There's no room for anything else there, and it all would get pretty lumpy against your back anyway, so forget about that option.
But there are a couple of serviceable oddballs.
One the author (Yay, me!) worked on for his own use is what you might call a slit-loader — like a panel-loader without a panel. The pack has a top and bottom, a back, and two sides, but no real front. It just has two pieces of fabric there, and they come at each other from the left and right sides like a theater curtain, but they also overlap a little.
The pack works by compression. You load it by stuffing your gear in through the slit, which is like the fly on your tighty-whities, except that it allows free access all the way up and down the pack's front. After loading the pack, you cinch it tight with compression straps.
When cinched down hard by five or six horizontal straps, the fabric flaps on the front side overlap even more, as they are pulled together, close up completely, and stay closed. The pack becomes rigid as a stump, and your things stay inside, locked solidly in place, and the whole pack becomes a giant, firm, frameless but well-shaped bundle with shoulder straps. One that doesn't wobble or flop, and which stays pleasantly stiff while remaining comfortable.
Squeezo, front view, empty.
Squeezo, front view, full, un-cinched.
Squeezo, front view, full, closed, cinched tight.
A compression mechanism like this works for ultralight packs when the hiker has nothing as rigid as even a foam sleeping pad to stand in as a frame. If instead of camping on the ground with a tent or tarp while using a normal sleeping pad, you sleep in a hammock which has only a soft, floppy under-quilt, then you carry nothing at all rigid enough to fake it as a frame, but compression can do the job instead.
The other type of oddball pack we can call a hugger. This is similar to a slit-loader with two slits, but is actually made commercially by a small company, Moonbow Gear. The pack is the Gearskin. You can call this a side-loader or a panel-loader or a top-loader. It is all of these. The pack is only one continuous long and narrow sheet of fabric, with shoulder straps and a hip belt attached to one half of one side of the fabric sheet. There are compression straps along the edges.
Gearskin laid out flat. Left to right: Inside, outside, inside loaded before closing.
Empty Gearskin laid out flat, outside down.
Empty Gearskin laid out flat, inside down, showing the outside.
Gearskin with equipment inside, but still lying flat, before closing and compressing.
Gearskin loaded, folded, closed, and compressed, front view. (Some equipment bulges out around the edges.)
Gearskin loaded, folded, closed, and compressed, side view. (Some equipment bulges out around the edges.)
To load it, lay the pack (i.e., the sheet of fabric) flat with the shoulder straps and hip belt underneath, on the ground, pile your gear on the half-side opposite to the shoulder straps, and when done fold the other half of the fabric up and over everything to end up with something like a stuffed taco shell.
Then fasten and tighten the compression straps which run along the edges. These straps pull the pack's front and back sides together and make it all tight. The pack compresses into a flat, wide wad that lies tight against your back. Its empty weight is one to one and a half pounds (450 to 680 g) more or less, depending on the size you get and the type of fabric used to make it, and its volume is variable.
Either of these last two designs is like the panel-loader in wanting to wallow on the ground during loading. Since the Gearskin is a flat piece of fabric it is especially maddening to load on a slope (where you can sleep if hammock camping), when you put some things in (actually on) the open pack, and then they slide off and roll away downhill as soon as you reach for the next thing, but the pack is simple in design, and is a terrific choice if you have at least three arms to work with.
The slit-loader (or Squeezo Pack as I call mine) keeps its bag identity even when lying flat, since it doesn't open all the way, and is easier to load on odd terrain, but doesn't have the Gearskin's advertised volume flexibility of 2500 to 6500 cubic inches (41 to 107 L). My pack design runs from about 2500 up to 3000 cubic inches (41 to 49 L), and is trending a bit smaller, though it makes up for lack of internal volume with huge (and extremely convenient) side pockets. Loading the Squeezo is something more like blowing up a balloon than loading any ordinary pack — fussy in its own way too, and definitely not for everyone.
– Getting back to normal. –
What kind of loading option you choose is up to you. There is no accounting for taste. You can be like the woman from Normal, Illinois who said "Yes!" to a man from Oblong, Illinois despite the inevitable headline — Oblong Man Marries Normal Woman.
You and your pack may be like that, or vice versa, and no one else should think it's any of their business. They will, but you can always poke at them with your trekking poles, or tease them until they start hissing and hyperventilating, or whatever you want. The real point is knowing the options, which are basically to shove stuff into your pack from the top or from the front. Or from some other angle if you like to hang out on the lunatic fringe. If so, then every widely-accepted, uncritically-held idea (Because we've always done it that way — just because!) is only another chance for you to prove that you are smarter than you look, or at least stranger than anyone had suspected.
Packboard with load lashed onto it, side view.
Dig it. It's your field to play in.
– Wait! Let's hallucinate first. –
Remember that no no back-loader statement from a few paragraphs back? Well, it ain't completely true, and no hallucinating is needed either, unless it pleases you.
There is one pack that loads from the back (the side next to your own back). The Jensen.
Jensen, front view.
Jensen, back view, partly open, showing equipment inside.
Jensen, back view, closed.
If it was ever valid to say more unique, that phrase would stick to the Jensen Pack the way a hungry octopus sticks to a crab. The Jensen is more superlatively uniquer than anything else.
The Jensen is a soft pack design that preceded soft packs, and a frameless design that preceded frameless packs. It was clever and light and supple in an era before anyone thought that packs could be that way, or thought they wanted one like that. If you have a really good memory, recall that the Jensen got mentioned back in the history section. It's made by Rivendell Mountain Works.
The Jensen has two compartments. The bottom one is like a fanny pack that wraps around the hips and sits on top of them like a hip belt. Carry a small load and you can get it all in there.
The upper compartment has a zipper closure on the back side, and has a sewn-in vertical divider. This divider creates what amounts to two parallel vertical tubes comprising the pack's upper compartment. Stuffing these tubes carefully, and hard, produces a rigid pack whose upper compartment stiffens itself and is supported from below by resting on the bottom compartment that hugs the top of the hiker's pelvis.
Got it?
All this has the effect of putting the pack's weight on the wearer's hips, naturally, while providing rigidity in a complementarily natural way.
First the lower compartment gets stuffed to the limit, with a sleeping bag and whatever else can be poked into it, and then the two vertical tubes in the pack's upper compartment get loaded. These tubes end (on the inside, of course) just short of the pack's top, so there is some expansion space there where more big fluffy and lightweight things can go. This top area gets pulled up and forward by the shoulder straps when the pack is donned, which helps to keep the load balanced front-to-back.
To load those two upper tube-compartments you lay the pack down on its front (the part that goes away from your body). So if the ground is muddy or dusty, you never get that mud or dust on the back of your shirt because it never gets close to you. Then you zip the back open, and as you fill this upper part of the pack, you slowly work the beefy zippers shut again, compressing the load. When you are done the pack maintains its shape by means of this compression.
No, I've never seen one either, but the name is so cool. Rivendell Mountain Works. Mmmm.
– Footsie Notes –
1: Union suit: http://bit.ly/1zL4dYI and http://bit.ly/1yx7qhf
Scientists, long puzzled by why people go backpacking, have recently given up trying to understand the phenomenon.
The problem is, as you know if you've ever tried to explain your obsession with dirt, pain, flies, and sleeping in the woods, insoluble.
The answer is that there is no answer.
And nobody cares anyway, which means it's really, really hard to get grant money. Without money, you ain't got no salary, and without a salary you're no longer a scientist, just another homeless person.
What to do?
Two choices.
Since you're homeless already, buy a pack and hike the Appalachian Trail.
Invent stuff, especially things that will torture backpackers. They kinda deserve it for ruining your career, dontcha think?
That's what Woo Kyung Cho, and his or her buddies are up to.
First step: Understand the porcupine principle.
Intro to subject: The basic fact about porcupines is universally known. Porcupines are critters covered in needles. You may never have seen one in person but you already understand what to do should you meet a porcupine — back off.
You know this even if you're exceptionally stupid. Even if you're a moronic college sophomore on spring break, and have just drunk 18 beers.
Nobody is dumb enough to mess with Mr P.
Except scientists. And most of them have grad students to do all the dangerous work anyway.
It seems that porcupines (as a group) are more intelligent than almost all of us, even those of us who hang out in wise crowds and Tweetle a lot, and do the FriendBook thing.
Individual porcupines, maybe not, but evolution has a great multiplier effect when working across a whole prickly species.
Woo Kyung the Cho-Master has discovered that the tips of a porcupine's quills are pretty clever even if the rodent underneath isn't, so much.
The barbs help a quill to penetrate flesh.
More easily than a hypodermic needle.
Using only half the force.
And then those barbs make it nearly impossible to remove said quills, which are typically delivered by the dozen — go ask a dog with a snoot full.
OK, that was Poking Science 101.
Where does backpacking come in?
Well, if you have a Ph.D., have lost all your grants, and are in danger of involuntarily becoming a homeless backpacker yourself, you might truly want to get even, so you invent a thing or two. Like the Sans-A-Strap pack.
Remember Sans-A-Belt pants? No? Too young?
Sans-A-Belt (or Sansabelt) pants were a lot like the wash-and-wear drip-dry suit, which surfaced at about the same time (another modern convenience).
Forgot your belt? No problemo. Worry not with Sans-A-Belt. As long as you remembered the pants, you were covered, because they managed to hold themselves up somehow, and didn't require you to do any thinking at all at the belt level.
Same deal with the Sans-A-Strap pack.
No more adjusting, fiddling, chafing, buckles, hitches, pull tabs, levelers, shoulder straps, hip belts or any of that. Simply have someone hold the pack for you (or hang it from a tree), and then back into it.
Hundreds of tiny, precision crafted, barbed needles effortlessly sink into your hide and lock the pack in place. Without straps! Practically pain free! (Note: medical bills due to infection are not covered by the purchase price.)
Need to take the pack off? Like to go to work or something?
Again, no worries.
Since you're a backpacker you have no job to go to, and you can wait the one to three weeks it takes until your body rejects the pack as foreign matter and sloughs it off automagically.
Then, while healing and regaining your strength, you can make camp and spend quality time recovering.
So simple, yet so ingenious.
So ingenious that you ask yourself, "Why didn't I think of that?"
Hang out. Hang freely. Hang often. That sums up the backpack's creed. Packs don't really talk to me so I'm guessing a little here, but it sounds good. Suspension is what it's all about. Suspension, suspending, being suspended and all. It's a hanging thing.
You want your pack to hang and hang well. You want it to be suspended but not like a ball on a string or some droopy useless stuff sack hanging from a random piece of strap. Not swinging and swaying around unreasonably. The pack is something you need, and something you want to have along but while you carry it, it should stay away from your field of view. No flapping around. No banging and bumping into you. No bruises or heartache. Leave those at home, eh?
Strictly speaking, a pack doesn't need suspension, you do. If you want to go along when your pack heads out for time in the back country then you must stay connected to it. So it can't get away. And you want to be in some kind of comfort too. That's what it's all about.
Suspension is what allows you to take the pack with you. The suspension system suspends the pack from your body, which in a way becomes part of the pack. If the body is water's way of going uphill then the body is also a pack's way of going on vacation.
You could stuff all your things into a paper bag and walk around with it in your arms. That would work in dry weather, for a while. Use a duffel bag parked on your shoulder? Sure. Lay everything out on a big tarp and then drag the tarp around by one corner? OK. Kind of tricky during stream crossings and so on, but who are we to judge? In fact a lot of this has been tried, time and again, over and over, and people keep coming back to the idea of a pack hung solidly but comfortably on the good old hoomin body.
If you study that body closely (yours, or preferably one better looking than yours, which can be a fun hobby all by itself), you will notice some things. Lumpy parts, for instance, in relatively odd places. The lumpy parts of some people are lumpier than others, and lumpier in places that are more or less odd, varying from person to person. Men have some pretty lumpy (and tender) things, but they are tucked into an obscure corner that isn't good for much else, and is too narrow for a backpack.
Women, now. They have different lumpies. Bigger ones generally, covering a larger area. Men also have a little bit of this, but not enough to worry about. Male lumps of that kind are vestigial and kind of gross if you think about it. So don't.
It so happens though that the human torso is kind of big, and kind of flat, except for that problem area with some lumps on the front side.
Keep that in mind for a minute.
Now another problem with humans is that they have only the two hind legs. Humans are not stable and horizontal and reasonable and supported by the four stout uprights that most legitimate animals have. No. Humans have this need to stick up above the landscape like posts and balance on only those two legs. This must have taken quite a while to get right, as you can see if you try to assume an upright position without first gaining full consciousness, as must have happened to our ancestors. So uprightness is an acquired skill.
Humans are goofy. We simply have to deal with that. But then there are some other things going on.
If we want to stay up on our hind legs and get a grip on something we have to grab it while it's in front of us. Our arms don't work off to the side so well, or out back at all, and if we grab a double armful of something big and heavy in front then we have to lean backward to carry it, and that is awkward as all get out. We aren't made to lean back like that. Leaning forward is easier, but not with your arms full.
Hmmm.
Then the eyes. Hey, only two eyes again, and both up front. Grab that 90 liter pack in your arms, get a good solid grip on it, hold it up high, lean way back and try to walk. Uh-uh. No go, babe. You can't see diddly. Got the dang thing in front of your face, mooshing up against your nose, blocking your entire line of sight. Not good at all.
Not to mention that it's rubbing your lumpy parts raw.
So then. What else?
Guess where that takes us — yep. Out back. This is a miracle. Either someone actually planned way ahead, or an unknown drone in the design department really goofed, or it's a great example of random adaptability in action. Find a mirror and look at your back, or check out someone else's and assume that you are kind of the same. No. Higher, you pervert. Between the waist and the tops of the shoulders.
Whoa, there. What do you see?
A broad expanse of mostly flat, unused real estate. Kind of bony, sort of, muscular in a way, sort of. Mostly in between the two extremes though. Not especially pretty or anything, and so it's not much fun to look at but it is strong, and out of the way. Stick a big bag there and try to carry it around. Whoa again. Hey, not bad! Makes you lean forward, the way you sort of do normally. Keeps your arms free for grabbing at interesting things or picking your nose and so on. Put something on your back and whatever it is you put there is out of sight for those of us with just the two eyes on the front side of the head.
Could work. Just might work. Let's try...
Yep.
It does.
And it has worked for a long time. We keep getting back to the same old idea. Put the pack on the back, guys.
Now the question is how.
– Hang me outside. –
There is really only one main way to put a pack on one's back and that is with straps that come out of the top of the pack, go over the shoulders, and then loop back under the arms to attach to the bottom of the pack. Add some kind of extra strap around the waist or hips, and you have everything covered. The pack is now connected to the body and suspended.
But there is a little more to it.
If the pack is only a sloppy, loose bag like a stuff sack, then gravity will make a mess of it. A simple bag will slide down toward the ground and make an annoying nest in the small of your back. Right over your butt. Maybe even on top of your butt, where it will bounce and rub like crazy as you walk. So packs had to be modified a bit to give them some strength and shape, and to keep them up high where they belong.
No butt bumping allowed.
The mods needed to achieve this desired state of perfect perch are at the core of the three suspension systems that we have to pick from. They all revolve around frame type, which you've already heard about, unless you're reading this from back to front. If so, then don't be surprised when you come to that part.
The purpose of a frame is to define the pack's shape and to spread its weight so that the pack can be carried more comfortably and more efficiently.
The frame types are:
External
Internal
Frameless
Option number three (frameless) sounds like a contradiction.
How can a frame be a frame if it's not there? Isn't a frameless pack simply a nasty shapeless bag with shoulder straps? No, it doesn't have to be. In order to build suspense and use it to keep you awake we'll leave the explanation of how a frameless pack can have a frame until last, and start at the easy end, with external-frame packs.
External-frame packs are the oldest type of framed pack, dating back ever so far. Remember Frozen Fritz? Besides him, people have been using pack frames of one kind or another all over the world since the beginning, or as close to it as you'd want to get without a good bright light, a pointed stick, and a few friends to cover you.
When we use the word external, it means that the frame is outside the pack. Or put another way, the frame is external to the pack bag. The thing we call the pack actually is a bag of some kind, and it attaches to the frame, and then hangs from the frame. This is pretty good in some ways.
For one, although the frame and the pack bag are made for each other, they are made separately. The frame can be made as a good frame, and the pack bag can be made as a good pack bag, and either one can be cleaned or repaired or replaced separately. You can even have a sturdy and indestructible frame and then design and make a completely different pack bag than the original, or copy the original pack bag design but make it over with updated fabrics. And so on.
Along with all this stuff, external frames are rigid, so they are great at maintaining their shape and they provide sturdy attachment points for hanging the pack bag, and for attaching shoulder straps and a hip belt. The strength and rigidity of the external frame allow for carrying heavy loads. If you find that amusing.
Balance on even ground is good too.
Keep the load up high in the pack, lean forward slightly, and let the pack rest against your back, where the weight of the load is transferred to your skeleton. This process allows the weight of the pack to easily align with your own center of gravity. External-frame packs also keep the pack bag (and therefore the load) away from your back (by a small amount). When done right, this configuration allows a bit of ventilation in between the pack and you, and the protruding frame also offers lots and lots of places to lash gear, in case you want to bring along your TV set, or your cat (which will, obviously, require its litter box, the old familiar food bowl, and a generous selection of snacks and toys).
– Stiffen my innards. –
Internal-frame packs are like all this but different.
Dealing with an internal-frame pack is something like having clothing with a hidden agenda. A pack like this has its own bones, its own personality. It has a shape that seems cuddly and soft at first but the pack won't really comply with every one of your desires. Some things, yes. But not everything.
So what's the deal then?
An internal-frame pack is built around a fixed idea, and that idea is the frame, but the frame is inside somewhere. The frame is part of the pack.
The frame might be metal, like an alloy of aluminum, or it could be plastic, or a combination of materials. Sometimes the plastic frame elements are fairly wide, stretching across the width of the pack, near to your back. This arrangement is called a framesheet. Some internal frames are customizable — bend the frame pieces (the stays) until you are happy with them, and then go for it. The stays in a pack are similar to the pieces of whalebone in a 19th-century corset. Long and narrow, flexible, but not so kinky as a full corset. These stays are usually aluminum.
Whatever the details, the purpose of the frame is to keep the pack stretched out vertically, so the top of the pack is up by your shoulders and the bottom of the pack is down by your hips. You want the two ends to stay apart and not to wad up in the middle. This configuration helps to keep most of the pack's weight on your hips and only a little of it on your shoulders.
If you run your arms through the shoulder straps of an external-frame pack and tighten the hip belt you have sort of attached your body to the pack the way you would chain yourself to a tree. It may be an intimate relationship, but not necessarily a loving one.
Internal-frame packs are a little more intimate and a lot more like lovers.
Internal-frame packs ride closer to the body. Putting on one of these packs is like putting on a coat, or a prosthetic hump if you like that image better. Putting on one of these packs is closer to inhabiting it, more like getting into a tree costume than chaining yourself to an actual tree. Yes, the intimate aspect extends to ventilation too. There is nothing, ventilationally speaking. The pack wraps around you warmly, in a great, goofy hug, from behind. The two of you breathe in unison, and sweat together. Often profusely. And the sweat lingers and pools. Right between the two of you.
Descendants of climbing packs, internal-frame packs are better for off-trail use because they carry loads lower down and also closer to the body. A lower center of gravity is more stable on rough, uneven ground, but less efficient on smooth and level trails. These packs also tend to be sleeker and a little less voluminous than external-frame packs, and rely more on compression and careful packing to help contain the load and provide that last bit of rigidity.
– Make mine imaginary. –
So now, eh? Like now we come to the center of the problem. How do you make a pack without a frame and still consider that no-frame to be a frame type?
This is your koan, Mouse Butt.
Though.
Since we get to make things up as we go along it shouldn't be too hard to imagine. The hard part of fantasy is being consistent. Make things sound vaguely plausible. Instill confusion with persistent hand waving, keep it up, and you can get people to the point that they will swallow anything and go home satisfied with that glazed look still in their eyes, little flecks of drool still damp on their shirt fronts.
It can be done. The term for it is suspension of disbelief.
Let's do it now for frameless packs. They require it.
The no-suspension suspension is...the Suspension of Disbelief. (Capitalized to make it seem even spookier, 'K?)
Frameless packs are special. They are like close friends. Really close friends.
Ever have a friend you could talk to about anything? Someone who was closer to you, in a way, than your parents, your sisters or brothers, your spouse? Your cat? Well, maybe not. That is stretching it, but on the other hand your cat doesn't understand anything that comes out of your mouth unless you have a sardine by the tail and are trying to be cute at feeding time.
So back to the story. Frameless packs are different. Frameless packs are special. Frameless packs do not have frames. But frameless packs still have to act like they do have frames, so how do we make this work?
Ahhhhh, tricks.
We become tricksy.
You probably have a frameless pack and use it to carry a sandwich, a bottle of water, and a windbreaker when you go hiking down by the river. Nothing fancy. Short trips. It works. You never bother to think about it. You call it a day pack.
Here is why it works. Two reasons.
First reason. One syllable, six letters — weight.
You carry very little weight in that day pack.
Second reason. Four syllables, eight letters — rigidity.
The day pack has some rigidity built in. The pack is a little stiff but not very stiff. Just enough. Just enough to handle the tiny bit of weight you put in it. Usually that bit of stiffness comes from the padding in the back, where the pack lies against your body.
But.
Sometimes you stuff that sucker full, and head out for the whole day and maybe hike 15 miles. How does that work? The same way, by a different route.
On those days when you need six sandwiches and two big water bottles and a camera with three lenses, and a heavy rain jacket and rain pants, and a warm cap and insulated gloves, and the extra odds and ends to fill out your 10 essentials for safety plus some jerky treats dog snacks for your friends, you have a fairly big wad of stuff.
A little while back we used the word wad in a negative way. Usually it is negative, when you are talking about packs, or things in your mouth, but not always. This is a positive wad, this one is.
– The power of wad. –
Take a small, light, frameless pack and stuff it so full that it begins to gag and right away the pack is stretched to the limit. It throws its own version of a hissy fit — it gets rigid. You have to be careful to fold and load things in the right way. Soft things near your back, folded flat. Then hard things farther out. Heavy things placed where they will carry best. Necessaries where you can get at them in a flash.
So you stuff this little pack to the gills, and maybe it even gets heavy enough that it bugs your shoulders by the end of the day, but it still carries pretty well despite that.
What you have done is turned the whole pack into a frame.
Ahhhhh. Now so clear!
That's right. Amazing but true. (So true!) You have turned a frameless, mostly shapeless bag into a tight, clean carrying machine. You have witnessed the miracle of the framed frameless. Or the frameless framed. Or whatever. Try not to get dizzy. Let it sink in.
This is what ultralight packs are about.
When you have a small light load you can fudge and trick a pack into thinking that it has a frame. Your body may not even notice.
No, wait — it will.
Your body WILL notice.
It will notice that you are carrying almost no weight. That won't be true, but your body will think it is because apart from limited areas of your brain (if they are switched on at all) your body really isn't all that bright. If you are carrying only 10 percent to 15 percent of your body weight then your body won't really notice.
It can't do percentages, especially the smaller ones.
Small frameless packs work really well for off-trail excursions where the ground is rugged and random, or in places where you have to squeeze between trees and shrubs to make progress. On the other hand you won't suffer on a groomed trail, as long as your frameless pack is well made, is packed right, and you are not carrying much weight.
The most common way of framing a frameless pack is to press-gang your sleeping pad into service. There are two ways to do this.
– Om mani. Pad me. And hum a happy tune. –
Way the first: Fold that sleeping pad and keep it against your back, either inside the pack or in a custom pocket outside the pack but still against your back. Some packs are made with a special pocket just for this. Standard sleeping pads, inflatable or not, are 20 by 48 inches (51 by 122 cm) and fold neatly down to 12 by 20 inches (30 by 51 cm). If you have an inflatable pad you can also control how stiff it is by how much air you leave in it. Way, way cool. Comfy too. Put the folded pad in the pack first, then finish by filling the pack with gear.
Way the second: Roll the sleeping pad into a hollow cylinder and lower this into the empty pack, then stuff your gear inside the sleeping pad. Stuff the absolute snot out of it and you have a stiff pack.
Either way works but once you get up over 20 pounds (9 kg) or so, you begin skirting the discomfort zone even if you habitually wear pants and not a hiking skirt.
For weights from 25 to 30 pounds (11 to 14 kg) you can do yourself major kindness by taking frequent breaks. Usually if you have a relatively heavy ultralight pack it's because you are starting a trip and have lots of food (which you will eat up as you travel, if you have any sense at all), or because you are carrying a lot of water (like on a short hop from the nearest stream back to your camp site).
If you are on a long trip and have to eat food to get the pack weight down, you find out how slowly time really passes when you are in pain, and how little you need to eat, relative to the pain. If you are carrying a load of water a few feet, then stop whining already, it's over before it starts.
– BDSM. –
Bag Discipline through Strap Manipulation is another way to do it.
This is used with another kind of frameless pack, one that achieves rigidity through compression and careful loading. This kind of pack has to be designed for compression, and has a relatively narrow range of useful volumes. Too much stuff and you can't get everything in. Too little stuff and you have a limp, saggy, bent bag.
Don't want that babe, so pay attention.
In the right volume and weight range though, you have a lot of control and can fine tune the pack by where you put your gear and how tight you cinch things down.
Lots of frameless packs have no hip belt. Most have at least a waist-level webbing strap for stabilizing the load, and this can take a bit of the weight too. Some packs have removable hip belts. What's best for you is what's best for you. Any sort of hip belt or waist belt can take a lot of weight off the shoulders, and even a 15 pound (7 kg) load can be severely annoying or painful near the end of a long day.
Frameless backpacks are usually light and small. They collapse down to almost nothing when empty, and are simple enough so that you can make your own. That's the pro side. On the con side, you have to keep down the weight and volume of what you carry and have to educate yourself about how to use the pack. Unlike the more bulletproof framed packs, ultralight frameless packs are made of lighter, more delicate materials and rely on intelligent stuffing and cinching to be both comfortable and efficient.
– Rules of the load. –
The type of suspension affects how the load is carried. The stiffer your pack's frame the more precisely you can position the load, up to a point. But if the frame is big and heavy and also absolutely rigid it will stand away from your body quite a bit, and ultimately will limit your options. Generally on smooth, even trails a load carried high and forward is best. Lean your body forward a tad bit and the center of mass of the pack falls in a line through your hips, which is good, because that's how to stay balanced. This is easiest with an external-frame pack.
Get a couple feet off the trail though, and this arrangement gets wobbly. On rough ground or threading your way around rocks or through brush, a high load will zag when you zig. Call this the pathless polka. It's the tidy trail tango versus the boulder dodging bossa nova. It gets tedious. You really cannot do a rucksack rumba with a Kelty Tioga. In comfort.
And any external-frame pack like that will hang you up in brush.
Internal-frame packs do better off trail. With one of these, you carry the load lower down, which isn't so good in a theoretical sense, but in practice it is not so tippy and wobbly. These packs wrap around the body better, and hang on tighter. They don't have so many projecting parts to snag on the landscape. They can get hot though. Your back will sweat and make your shirt stink. (Tip: Learn how to rinse out your clothes whenever you get a chance.)
Frameless packs are even more flexible, within their weight limits.
But load a frameless pack too much and you will hurt the pack, or maybe even destroy it, though you have to work hard to do it. You will hit the limit of your pain tolerance first. Stay within the pack's limits and you can go anywhere as long as you plan ahead and have the experience to handle it.
With an ultralight frameless pack you can lay the load down low, like ballast, in the small of your back, or stand it up vertically, along your spine. Either way works. One of these packs is not as good for heavy loads as an external-frame pack but you aren't going to carry a heavy load. Not far, you won't.
No matter what style of pack or type of suspension you use, well-made shoulder straps help a lot, as well as at least a waist belt for stability. The heavier the pack, the more suspension matters, and the more important the hip belt becomes.
– Clips and straps and buckles. Oh my! –
There are basically two kinds of hip belts. One is a plain webbing strap, and the other is shaped and padded and might be scary just to look at.
OK, you already know about the webbing. You can buy webbing straps for lashing extra stuff onto your pack. Take the same material and put a big buckle on it, then attach one end to each side of your pack, down at the bottom. Bingo. Waist strap, stabilizer strap, whatever you want to call it, with the buckle over your belly button.
This thing helps a lot but is hard to put much weight on, for any length of time. The strap can be an inch wide or more, but making it wider does not help a bunch. Like training wheels on a bike, it's sort of helpful in the alley but out of place during the Tour de France. Not a professional grade solution.
If you need more support than a simple webbing strap offers then you need a hip belt. In other words you need a real hip belt. At the bottom end this is a simple sleeve of fabric with some padding inside, and a buckle so you can get a snug fit. Slightly fancier hip belts slip into a harness on the back of the pack and are removable. OK, fine. Mostly that's about it for lightweight packs. A padded strap.
Go to an outdoor shop and take a gander at some of the fancy hip belts. You will need an advanced degree to even begin understanding how they might be made, or from what. Plastic, fiberglass, carbon fiber, aluminum, titanium, gruffy dust — all kinds of stuff goes into them. Several layers of different density padding. All that. These hip belts can support huge amounts of weight, all of which goes right into your hips and runs down your leg bones and into your feet, which then hurt like crazy. There are probably industrial designers who do nothing but worry about getting the last drop of performance from hip belt design.
Since every person has a different body, walks a different way, and carries different amounts of weight at different times over different terrain, this is a hard design problem. Which is a good reason to carry less weight. Less weight means you can get by with something simpler. And your feet don't hurt as much. And you can forget about words like performance. Or about phrases like carry immense loads in comfort. Love that one.
On a light pack a hip belt mostly stabilizes the load. On a slightly heavier pack, combined with some kind of frame or frame substitute, the hip belt takes all or most of the load, but it still doesn't have to do a whole lot.
A hip belt is at the bottom of the pack and pushes up on the pack. Shoulder straps are at the top of the pack, and the pack hangs from them. You know all about shoulder straps. For a really light pack they are the end of the story. Just slip into them and all is right with the world, as long as your pack is light. They just work.
Up to a point.
You only want a certain amount of weight on your shoulders. The more weight you have in your pack the more of it you want flowing into the hip belt. Shoulder straps are good up to five or six pounds (about three pounds or around 1.5 kg per shoulder) for a long day. More than that and your shoulders get really cranky. They begin to ache and whine and won't stop. Put 50 pounds (23 kg) into a pack and you will want at least 45 of those pounds on your hips, and even then you will wonder why you ever brought along all that crap.
Shoulder straps are good for keeping the pack close to your body and keeping it stable, even more than a hip belt. But they are not so good at supporting a lot of weight. They are good for only a little weight.
Shoulder straps can be plain webbing, but this gets old really fast because these straps run over the collar bones, which complain a lot about the situation. Padded straps are the best way to go for every kind of pack. Padding conforms to all your personal nubbins and evenly spreads the weight. Evenly spread weight translates to a happy body with no angry nubbins.
Straps can be straight, and you'll see these on a lot of home-made packs and some simple, very light and low-cost manufactured packs. These shoulder straps are straight but padded. Since the route of the shoulder strap is curved from the middle of your back up over your shoulders and down your chest and sides, straight straps are not the greatest design decision, but they work.
– Work it, babe. –
One way to make them work is to attach straight shoulder straps to the pack not way back between your shoulder blades but at the top of the pack, at shoulder level, which means that there is not so much shoulder strap back there. Straight straps made this way skip the whole back area and ignore the around-the-neck area, and end up leaving out only a curve or two. This is good enough for very light packs.
Another way straight shoulder straps work is because of weight, as in the lack of it. A very light pack doesn't put much pressure on shoulder straps, so they don't dig into your ribs with so much determination. The pack maker can skimp and you, the pack wearer, hardly notice. It still feels OK, mostly.
If you carry more than 10 pounds or so (4.5 kg) you want curved shoulder straps.
Curved shoulder straps are sort of S-shaped, and they wrap around your body better. Remember one of those skiing cartoons where the ski tracks go around a tree? Not both to one side, but one ski track on one side and the other track on the other side. Curved like that. Curved shoulder straps detour around the neck and then down the breast and then curve the other way and run along the side of the rib cage. Curves make straps comfy. Comfy is good.
Curved shoulder straps look simple but if you make your own pack you'll see it's more than a no-brainer. (Even straight straps are a little tricky to make at home.) You need to get the curve right, and the space between the two straps, and the length, and the amount of padding. But curved straps do fit the body better.
Heavy, large packs from the big makers have shoulder straps made of fancy materials with lots of adjustments. These serve the same purpose as all other shoulder straps but when you are carrying a whole bunch more weight everything has to be exactly right, so these straps are almost infinitely tunable.
No more than five to 10 percent of the pack's weight should come through the shoulder straps but you still have the balance issue. With a 50 to 60 pound pack (23 to 27 kg), balance is really critical, and even without a lot of weight ending up on your shoulders you still need to be strapped in tighter, so straps have to be more precise.
In other words, fit is important. This is where industrial designers earn their pay with dual density foam and all kinds of dials and levers to operate. You might need a license, issued only after rigorous study and a driving test, but you will swear less once you get moving.
No matter which way you go though, the basic ideas in suspension are to hang the pack from your body (if you carry a light pack) or strap your body underneath one (if you have a heavy pack).
Wedint mean no harm, said Bert Stench. "We was just wipin our hands off after supper and that there rock was all we had."
He was referring to the recent kerfuffel in the scientific community over whether evidence of Neanderthals had been found in North America.
The site? A small cave near Colorado's famous Weepen Hovel National Monument, which is well-known for harboring evidence of peoples from the Paleo-Archaic period. This far-distant time reaches back as far as 12,000 years.
Until recently this was considered pretty darn early for North America.
But that suddenly changed one day, or seemed to, when anthropologists from Colorado State University entered this unnamed and previously-unknown cave during a routine survey of the area.
"We found hand prints similar to but cruder than those from Spain, where they date to over 45,000 years ago," said CSU's Dr Thaddeus Specter.
"My first thought? No way! And then, on closer inspection I thought... Way! My hair literally stood on end, and I'm almost bald, so that says something right there."
"Stone Age artists were painting red disks, handprints, clublike symbols and geometric patterns on European cave walls long, long ago. But in North America evidence of human presence generally goes back only a few thousand years, and there's nothing like this at all. Nothing. We were stunned. This resembled Neanderthal work, but is decidedly more primitive."
Mr Stench and his buddy Merton Thredbare, both backpackers, were not intending a hoax. According to them, they were simply doing what backpackers do.
The cave looked like a good place to stop for the night. A few stray twigs gave them fuel for a cooking fire. But there was no water to spare, and so they had no way to wash up after their meal. Hence the greasy, sooty handprints after they wiped their hands on the cave walls.
But how could scientists have made such a mistake?
"We used a new uranium-thorium dating technique," said Dr Specter. "It gave us a date of 78,400 years, B.C.E. Obviously that was wrong. Either our technique was off or their food was stale. Right now we suspect the latter."
The backpackers admit that the food they got at an Army-Navy surplus store in 1992 did taste a little funny, "but when your out backpakin you allays end up hungry so you dont mind none a that," Mr Thredbare volunteered. "I tasted worse, plenty worse. It staid down, an thats OK," he added.
"I guess we shoulda stuck to wipin off on bushes," said Mr Stench, "but we dint have none, so it was the cave wall or go to bed dirty."
"Yeah, right," Mr Thredbare confirmed.
As for the scientists, they have retracted their earlier claims about the antiquity of the "cave art" but are attempting to get DNA samples from the two backpackers.
"I'm no medical expert," Dr Specter continued, "but although the handprints these two left are clearly modern, we now suspect that the backpackers themselves may be, in fact, a previously unknown remnant of a pre-human species, and we want to get a closer look at them. We have promised to treat them with respect and release them back into their native habitat once we run a few simple tests."
Packs are what you make of them. Or packs do what you want. Or packs deal with what you put in them.
With us, we are what we eat. Packs can't eat on their own so they need us to shove stuff into them and then go banging off across the landscape somewhere, driven by our internal demons. The packs go along because they like being told what to do and where and when and how, and anytime a pack has a full belly it's really pretty happy and doesn't complain. Most packs are good that way. Packs are nice. Packs are not whiners. Your pack will stand by you even if you are a dick.
That's the main difference between humans and packs. Humans are spooky. We have those demons, and they are always inside of us, milling around. If you don't believe that then pay attention the next time you wake up in the middle of the night, flailing your arms and legs around and screaming. OK, you may not be screaming out loud but there is such a thing as a quiet scream. If your eyes pop open and you are covered with sweat, your breath is coming in short sharp gasps and you are at least a little unsure where you are and what's going to happen next, then consider yourself to be screaming.
And you have a good reason to be screaming. Because there is something inside you that is trying to get out. Like a hand inside a glove it fills your arms and legs and trunk, and then wiggles up to consume all the space in your head as well. Until you are so stuffed full that you might explode at any second, and if you were only stitched together you probably would, but no. You are made of whole, smooth meat and have no seams.
Meat is tough. Meat is elastic. Meat will stretch and then snap back again. Meat does not pop its seams because it doesn't have any, but it can explode if stretched too far. This might happen to you. You there in bed. First you have a fine shower and brush your teeth. Then you crawl into your nice clean jammies and slide between those fresh crisp cool white sheets, ready for a night of calm blissful unconsciousness, and the unconsciousness does come to you, and beckons. And you drift away on it.
But during the night, when your eyes are closed and your brain is switched off, other things awaken and begin to creep around, looking for a way home. Because these things don't belong here with you. You are only a temporary host. Or, more precisely, your body is. And at night when all is very, very dark and very, very still, and no one can see you and you are unconscious, these things try to find a way out. Your body is the holding cell that they want to break out of, and they keep trying.
A lot can happen before you finally awaken. You can even be hurt. Or if someone else is there with you, someone you love, even, you might hurt them. Or your body might, because it's not you but that demon in there, groping sightlessly for the exit, trying to find an unlocked door, desperate to claw its way over the wall and go raging off into the night. That is what makes your arms and legs jerk and whip and bang around.
But you don't come apart, because you are seamless. You stretch and swell and writhe in the dark, and the exertion makes you sweat and pant. It gets worse and worse but the demon never manages to break free, and lucky for you, because it is actually a lot bigger than you are and would have to obliterate you in order to achieve its own freedom.
So it struggles and fights with you, within you. The contest may go on for a few minutes, or it may continue for hours. You may disturb the whole family, and the neighbors too, with your unholy shrieking. There is no limit to what might happen. It is blindfolded prize fighting. One-legged kick boxing. Hands-tied-behind-the-back crocodile wrestling. Suffocating underwater in a box of snakes.
And then. Suddenly. Your eyes open.
You are staring into the dark. But not just staring. Your eyes are zipping around in your head. You see nothing but fear everywhere. And you can't even see that because of the dark. You are not you. Life is alien. You are alien. The place is strange. Nothing makes sense. You have no bearings. You don't know where you are or why you might be there. Your compass has been ripped off the deck and thrown overboard and now you know that something evil and wet from the deep cold black unfathomable sea is there with you. Inside you. You have become a strange heaving beast in your own bed.
And then.
Your mind begins to come back to you. A bit. It begins to come awake. Slowly. A bit of it. Dimly, tentatively, by degrees.
And the beast thing, whatever it is, is still there, inside you, and still impossibly larger and more powerful than you but it pauses. It becomes not quite so sure of itself. And as your own mind comes more awake the thing begins to shrink back toward the inner darkness. A millimeter. Another. And another. And then more. Like a tide that turns, and no one knows why it does or exactly when, it turns, and shrinks then, and slowly, unwillingly shrinks more, and again more, ever farther from the light of your own mind's consciousness. And deeper down inside you it goes until you begin finally to feel in control again, and to wonder what happened.
A nightmare, you think, as you begin to calm down, a nightmare. You have to think that way because you couldn't live with the other version, the real story, the truth. You have to be in charge to be alive. The only alternative is to be found some morning, a soft bag of limp overstretched skin with nothing left inside. And you don't want that. And you don't want to find someone like that either.
So you recover, and eventually, eventually, after a long time, fall asleep again, and pleasantly dream your way on through to the morning.
Packs aren't like that.
Packs have no demons or secret lives and do not dream. Packs are bags to wrap things in. Packs are bags that like to be stuffed to full and beyond and strapped on a person's back to go out tramping for hours or days or weeks. And they go happily, with no cares at all. A full pack is a fulfilled pack, and that is the thing that is nicest about a pack.
Cram it full, swing it aboard, and tramp off into the sparkling morning dew. There is nothing better for the soul than to feel a happy pack on your back and to go whistling through the sunshine, and no better way to use a pack than for what it was intended, creaking full of your things, its seams squeaking with the strain.
And there is a kind of pack for every purpose.
– Will that be standard, classic backpacking, sir? –
When people think of backpacks they think of something like the Kelty Tioga or one of its newer but less iconic internally-framed counterparts. Try this on for size: Kelty Tioga External Frame Backpack, 5000 cubic inches, weight: 5lb 13oz. That's for size small. Material: 210D nylon double ripstop, 500D nylon Kodra, 420D nylon oxford.
Pretty much indestructible. Pretty much unchanged for half a century.
This pack is a big fabric box hung on a frame of aluminum tubing. It has three zippered side pockets and another big one on the front. Industrial strength shoulder straps and a croaking huge hip belt assure you that they will ease the pain. The pack is big enough to carry everything needed by a family of four for a full week in the back country. It is bulletproof. It is heavy enough all by itself to keep your feet firmly on the ground, possibly even a bit below the surface.
You can still today see lots of people on the trails with something like this pack. Sometimes the pack is larger than the body beneath it. And you often see a towel hanging from a corner of the pack's frame. The towel is for wiping away sweat, which is what you tend get a lot of while carrying one of these packs. This kind of pack is to backpacking what a 1952 Buick is to driving. Chrome, and lots of it. Bumpers gnarly enough to knock buildings off their foundations, requiring a cast iron V8 roaring at full throttle just to get out of the garage, second only in size to a steamship.
No pack with an internal frame is as recognizable as this baby is. With its outside skeleton of aircraft-grade aluminum rocking along you are like an armored battle bot ready to demolish anything dumb enough to pick a fight. Simple hiking trails have no chance. None.
That is, if you are strong enough to pick up one of these, and wear it stuffed full of things. But if you are that tough then maybe you don't even need a pack. Maybe you are big and strong enough to grab anything you fancy and make it yours. Take meat from bears. Crush trees for toothpicks. Crunch rocks for amusement. No problem.
– Wet me, pants-wise. –
For decades this sort of giant, indestructible pack has been the signature of backpacking. It is a thing so big and impressive that mortals wet their pants trying to imagine staggering around underneath one for a week. Now that's classic.
More modern, more trendy internal frame packs can be even bigger, heavier, and more expensive. (Hey the Tioga when last seen in stores was less than $200.) And lots of those internal frame packs are bigger, heavier, and more expensive while looking smaller and less intimidating. But internal frame packs are harder to identify. No tail fins, for one thing. In fact they all pretty much look alike. Take a gander in the general direction of one and you see fabric.
Uh.
Sort of a long humpy shape with shoulder straps and a hip belt. In various colors. Like every other brand.
Eh.
No character. No rivets, no welds, no clevis pins. Not like the Tioga at all.
But the purpose is the same for both kinds of pack.
That is, to be a house with shoulder straps. To support an Expedition, with a capital E. (Heck, why not all caps and some gratuitous exclamation points: EXPEDITION!!!!) The pack has to be big enough to hold a cotton tent that will sleep at least two (preferably four), a kapok-filled sleeping bag, and one or more cases of canned pork and beans. Plus a coffee pot, frying pan, dutch oven, four pound white gas stove and a quart or two of fuel. Not to mention clothes for every occasion.
Hiking clothes, sleeping clothes, hot weather clothes, cool weather clothes, windy weather clothes, wool clothes, cotton clothes. Oilcloth rain slicker. Gloves, mittens, hats, bandannas, spare socks, wool underwear. Maybe an extra pair of oiled leather hobnail boots.
Backpacking with one of these packs is the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest in siege mode.
– Mode du siège. –
Siege mode climbing sounds like what it is.
To do it you assemble massive piles of equipment and supplies and expendable servants at the foot of a mountain and slowly haul everything up the mountain, piece by aching piece, supplying each higher camp from the lower ones, and continuing that process until you finally reach the top or run out of bodies.
This is like driving from Los Angeles to New York with a supply caravan. First you need at least one fuel tanker and one semi full of provisions. Take those as far as they will go, refueling from the tanker along the way. When the fuel in the tanker runs out you abandon it. Same with the provision truck. But by then you are close to New York, so you roll the pickup truck out of the semi, top it up from the dregs left in the tanker, throw in a few sandwiches and a change of clothes, and head for the finish line, leaving a trail of abandoned vehicles and packing crates all across the country.
Brute force and an unlimited budget make siege mode possible. It is expensive and time consuming. And complex. It hurts. But if anything goes wrong you can plunk yourself down and wait a few weeks while you think things over. Because you have lots of stuff. You can afford to be slow. Come to think of it that's the only option. The transmission of this expedition has only one gear — Low.
This is what all of backpacking used to be. Wretched excess and little motion.
Before someone actually invented backpacking, people were more sensible. They didn't realize that they were supposed to be in pain, or that a sport should cost. Before it was called backpacking, people took a small bag and shoved food and maybe a few matches and a knife into it, and just went.
Backpacking as a sport, now that was invented at a time when people did what they were told. Thought what they were told to think. Experts were popular. Filmstrips in schools explained everything in 15-minutes lessons. People were handed shiny new gadgets like the Kelty frame pack, got some instructions on how to use the gadgets from the partly trained flight crew, and went at it. They remained stuck for life, always trying to make it work, and never succeeding, but never questioning either.
Because backpacking got started this way, and is still advertised this way, the public has always accepted it without thought. Backpacking was simply something that hurt. Period. People swallowed that. Our collective memory has only this one image in it. That image has stayed, propped up by the backpacking industry which is always glad to provide big expensive things to strap to your back, and many smaller equally expensive things to put inside the big expensive one. And promises of cures, all of which come at extra expense, each in its own box, which in turn adds more weight.
So now this is the standard model. Say backpacking and the average citizen thinks of a pair of spindly legs staggering around under an enormous weight.
So this is us.
– Backpacking among the light beams. –
Light backpacks were originally not for backpacking but for day hikes. Somewhere along the line evolution and intelligent design cut a deal to create a new kind of backpacking experience. Someone started using smaller packs for more than short hikes. They tried short overnight trips, then longer ones. It worked. They didn't die, or get smitten by a big hand coming down from the sky. This type of experience caught on. A new kind of backpacking was born, a sort of small, quiet revolution toward the end of the 20th century, though light packs had been unremarkable and common in the 19th century and earlier.
This shows how smart we are.
The reinvention of light packing started with climbers and then filtered down to us mundane ground pounders. A lot of things are like that. First the elite with their extreme demands, then the rest of us. In motor sports the best and the fastest and the lightest and most exotic racers show up at world events, then at regional events, and then one day the local Chevy dealership has the technology for sale in sedans. They still make Chevies, right?
The same happens with muscle-powered sports. First world-class athletes do something crazy and extreme, then college athletes pick it up, then highschoolers, then wobbling Joe down the street with his jiggling gut joins in. Everyone wants to be cool and have the best.
The purpose of a light pack is to be lighter, smaller, and let you be more nimble at backpacking. This started with the alpine style of mountain climbing, which is the opposite of siege mode.
When you do alpine climbing you try to be self-sufficient. You want to go lighter and faster, go cheaper, and in more comfort. You carry all that you need and no more. You educate yourself and train your body, hone your skills so you can use your wits and cooperate with the landscape to accomplish goals rather than trying to beat the world into submission.
Rather than spending years planning an expedition, then months carrying it out (after finding an infinitely rich corporate sponsor) you stay light and move fast. You spend a few days on a quick assault. Or maybe just one day. Alpine climbing is like a guerrilla action, and unlike trench warfare. 1
Lightweight backpacking too.
Lightweight backpacking takes a little more thought and training than so-called classical backpacking, but not much more. Light backpacking can be safer, because you carry less and use it more intelligently. Packs are easier to come by, and have fewer demands put on them. Packs can be smaller, lighter, and simpler so more packs can fit the bill. If you don't plan to carry a 20 pound (9 kg) tent then you don't need a pack the size and weight of Aunt Tillie's steamer trunk. When carrying a small tent or a tarp you can use a lighter, smaller pack that costs less. Since there are more small and light packs around, you have a bigger choice, and more chance of finding one that suits you.
A light pack may be half the size of a classic pack, and half the weight. Or less. A small, light pack costs less. It's also easier for you to make yourself, or to modify if needed, if that's your style.
A light backpacking trip may last only one night, or two or three nights. But when you are experienced enough you can easily use a light pack for trips of a week or two, or more.
Where classic packs may put you in the 50 to 70 pound (23 to 32 kg) range for a week of hiking, the light pack may keep you down to the 20 to 30 pound (9 to 14 kg) range. A pack will always have shoulder straps, but a light one might not have a hip belt. Some have waist belts that only stabilize the pack but don't support the load. Likewise, light packs might also do without a frame of any kind. If one does have a frame it will be internal.
– Beams of ultralight. –
Lightweight backpacking isn't a specialty. Ultralight backpacking is. Likewise for super ultralight backpacking.
Lightweight backpacking is really a matter of using common sense and is the trend of the future, even though most backpackers haven't caught on yet. There really isn't much sense in carrying a pack that weighs four or five pounds (2 or 3 kg) more than it needs to, or in filling it with extra-heavy equipment or stuff you simply don't need.
Ultralight backpacking is generally defined as traveling with a base pack weight of less than 10 pounds (4.5 kg). Super ultralight backpacking drops that base pack weight to less than five pounds (2.3 kg). Reminder: Base pack weight is the weight of the pack and everything you bring back home again (it excludes food, water, fuel, or anything else used up during the trip). And some people even go lighter.
So what is really different about the ultralight end of things?
Not much in an ultimate sense.
The lighter you go the easier it is to walk and therefore the less likely you are to get hurt, get blisters, end up with aches and pains, or to sweat. You have to pay a lot more attention to climate and weather, know the ground you're traveling over, be aware of how and where to camp, and have a clue about what lives out there and how it might relate to your appearance inside its home. You can't afford to carry all your food in cans, or to lose a bunch of it here and there out of sloppiness.
Every gram counts.
When you get into this very light end of the sport you're looking at the lightest packs available. Take two recent models for instance. One from Gossamer Gear, the Gossamer Gear Murmur at 7.5 ounces (213 g) and a volume of 1325 cubic inches (22 L). Or the Mountain Laurel Designs Prophet, at 5.9 ounces (160 g) and a volume of 2750 cubic inches (45 L). Both packs have a recommended weight capacity of 20 pounds (9 kg), but you'd probably start hurting if you carried that much weight for long. Models morph quickly, so when you read this the exact details will surely have changed, but you get the idea.
An ultralight backpack is made of extremely light and advanced materials, and is much smaller than a traditional pack. It is narrow, may exclude even the hint of a hip belt, and has few adjustments. The idea is that you will be carrying little weight and so will not need much padding or adjustability. Also, the materials that go into the bags of these packs are sometimes unrepairable by ordinary souls. This isn't unusual. Specialized fabrics often require special equipment to assemble, and training in how to do it. If you want to go as light as possible you will have a pack that is made from spinnaker fabric or something even more exotic, like Cuben (now known as "Dyneema Composite Fabric"). And you may not be able to make perfect on-trail repairs. Then again you'll be more careful, so maybe it doesn't matter all that much.
– The purpose behind the purpose. –
The purpose of a classic backpack is to hold as much stuff as possible and allow you to carry as much weight as possible. If you carry a big heavy pack you are trying to take along as much of home as you can. This is either because you don't know any better or because you don't care. If you don't care about the bulk and weight it's because you like the familiarity of having things as much like they are at home as possible, including pain and frustration. You are likely to suffer physically but even more likely to feel that you are doing the right thing, because this is how things are supposed to be. This is what the ads all show you.
The purpose of a lightweight backpack is to provide a comfortable, convenient container for carrying necessities during a backpacking trip. If you tune yourself in to using a light pack you will have an experience that is more in line with who you are. The pack is more likely to fit your body, and the things you carry will be what you know works for you. This is a place that takes some time and thought to get to, but is worthwhile for most people. Carrying a lightweight pack lets you focus more on hiking and being part of the landscape because it gets in the way a lot less. You have what you need and only that.
The purpose of ultralight and super ultralight backpacks is to provide the option of seeing how far you can push things. It helps if you are young, strong, and healthy. If you are, then you can use any pack option whatsoever, but you might want to get an ultralight tingle from going out onto the edge. The more extreme you get the more you need to rely on your intelligence and experience, and less on your stuff. This isn't a bad thing, but you must be prepared.
Ultralighting is an experience that is more focused because it relies on the right conditions (weather, the lay of the land, distance, physical conditioning) a lot more than moseying around with a giant bag full of food does.
When done well it's incomparable, and keeps demons at bay.
