Make Mine More Than A Bag, Please
What Backpacks Are Made Of,
Part 2: March Of The Doodads.
– Now Hear This: Doodads are required by law. –
Yeah, like you believe that.
You might have one of those little wiggly plastic Hawaiian dolls in the back window of your car, or a bobblehead Bug Eyed Earl.1 Or, for traditionalists, the hanging fuzzy dice. And each can make a person's life so, so rewarding.
But you don't need them.
You are not required to have any of them. In fact you can do all your driving with a plain car, and all your backpacking without cup holders.
You can hike with only a duffel bag perched on your shoulder the way Emma Gatewood did. She was the first woman to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, and the first person to do it three times. She didn't even start her backpacking career until she was 57, and did without frills like tents and stoves. So it's nice to keep things in perspective. Emma Gatewood was not a weenie and you do not have to be one, unless you actually choose that option.
But having pack accessories like a frame, shoulder straps, pockets, compression straps, and cinchers, and so on, can be handy, so here we go. Let's look at them.
– Firm yourself up with a frame. –
Frames are nice and evil. Not nice and also evil at the same time but nice overall except for the evil parts.
A frame gives your pack some place to hang out, a set of rules to live by, even a reason to live when you aren't there to keep it shaped up and stuffed with your things, stroking it occasionally and murmuring gentle encouragements.
That is nice, the frame thing. The stroking part, well, don't tell and we won't ask. And it's also nice (the frame) because frames are intermediaries. A frame translates between what the pack wants to do and what your body wants to do. It's a buffer, the frame is, taming the mismatch between organic lumpy you, and inert lumpy Mr Pack.
Or Ms. Pack. Works either way.
Now for the evil bits.
The evil is that a frame doesn't do anything else besides the one thing, which is to be a frame. A frame is never un-framey.
You can't keep water in a frame, or eat a frame when your food runs low. The frame doesn't get lighter as you use it up during your trip. And you can't use a frame to wootle a slightly melancholy but ultimately reassuring and uplifting happy tune, as you could if it converted into a bamboo flute. But maybe you aren't the wootling kind anyway.
A frame is only a place to hang your pack. Single use is bad in lightweight backpacking. Everything you take should have more than one use. More than two if you can manage it. The more functions you can make a thing serve, the more gold stars you get, so...
Too bad.
Get over it. If your pack has a frame you are stuck with it.
Your pack frame is most likely made of an aluminum alloy. Aluminum is pretty light, pretty cheap, fairly stiff, yet fairly flexible. You can bend the stay of an internal frame into the shape your back needs in order to feel comfy. If your pack frame is external and made of welded tubing, then aluminum is good for that too. Aluminum doesn't rust, and corrodes only under duress. It can be welded and stay welded. It is cheap and pretty light. It is a well-understood material, so it gets used.
A pack frame may also be a fiberglass, carbon fiber, or aluminum hoop, or a pair of rods, hollow or not, that run vertically. If aluminum, this sketchy type of frame is usually adjustable for fit (by bending). Many internal-frame packs use an aluminum alloy shaped into two long flat slats. Very bendy. Manufacturers are clever and this kind of frame can come in a variety of shapes, but it is still pretty minimal, though it can be combined with another kind of frame or with compression to make a hybrid frame.
Framesheets are currently popular.
A framesheet is a frame in sheet form. (Extreme duh moment, right? I mean, you ought to remember this from earlier.)
High density polyethylene is favored for framesheets. (You can also say "frame sheets" if you prefer. S'OK.)
It (high density polyethylene) is light, rot proof, and cheap to make. But not adjustable. A pack with a framesheet is like a pack built around a board. The framesheet is big, rigid, and solid. Some makers stay with that concept and others come up with alternate shapes that look like the letters X or Y, in attempts at making an internal frame work better. Some of these frames or framesheets have multiple attachment points so shoulder straps and hip belts can be adjusted for different body sizes. They also use various alternate plastics besides polyethylene, but the basic ideas are the same.
No matter what, you still can't eat it.
Also, the frame, of whatever kind, is still a single function item.
– Strap me in, Scotty, by the shoulders if possible. –
Strap Type One: Shoulder straps.
What can you say? Gotta have 'em.
Please to excuse us please if we keep repeating some things, but it happens to be fun. And fills space. Now back to the show...
There are basically two varieties of shoulder straps. Very light, usually frameless packs have a tradition of using short straight shoulder straps. The top ends of these straps are sewn straight into the top of the pack bag with some sort of reinforcing anchor so the strap doesn't rip out right away. (Yes, to be extremely tedious, this has all appeared a few pages back, but I hope someone will decide to pay me by the word so kick back a notch and chill out for once.)
External frame packs usually have the shoulder straps attaching directly to the frame up near your shoulders. This is a similar technique but more industrial-looking. A grommet in the strap and a clevis pin connect each strap directly to the metal frame, which is something only this frame style allows.
And the other variety of shoulder strap is...not straight!
Internal frame packs normally attach shoulder straps to the upper middle area of the pack's back side, about where your own shoulder blades are. These straps almost always follow an S curve. This curve first routes the straps up to the shoulders, over them, then around your neck, and finally back outboard toward their rendezvous with anchor points at the pack's bottom where they do things that you can't watch. This double curve makes the strap fit the body's contours better, makes room for your neck, and helps keep the straps from sliding off your shoulders, something that straight shoulder straps will do whenever they get a chance.
– Tough and rugged yet cushy and cuddly. –
Most shoulder straps are padded. If you've never really appreciated this then you will about eight seconds after you decide to try out unpadded straps.
A few very light packs have offered "hollow" shoulder straps that allow the in-stuffing of spare socks, moss, dirt, stray fuzzy animals, roadkill, or whatever you can find that looks remotely like padding.
Nothing doesn't work. Go ahead and try. A fabric pocket full of nothing simply twists into a bunch, a shape that efficiently saws through your flesh and will try its best to eat your collar bones as well. You need some stiffening to make a shoulder strap work, and enough padding to prevent endless hours of annoying, unamusing agony. The kind of agony that's like a toothache in your shoulders. The kind of agony that will make you crazy in five minutes, homicidal in 10, and suicidal in 11. Don't go there.
Solved for most: Normal shoulder straps come with synthetic foam padding sewn in so you'll never know the horror of trying to go without. So unless you do exploratory surgery on your pack you'll never really know what is in there, but you won't care either, as long as it works.
If your pack is very light, the fabric used for the shoulder straps will be heavier fabric than the pack bag, normally anyway. Heavier fabric handles wear and tear, and abrasion. Get dusty, or get the straps dusty, and every time you slide the straps around it's like sanding them. Tough fabric works. On the other hand, pack bags made of very light fabric work because you can exercise care in handling the pack as a whole, but shoulder straps get rubbed and twisted and yanked on all day, every day, so even if your pack is so light that it's little more than an idea, its shoulder straps will still require relative sturdiness.
A lot of shoulder straps have mesh or absorbent fabric on the side contacting your body, to provide comfort through breathability. You may or may not care and they may or may not help you much. It's another personal thing. Unless you have an external frame pack that holds the whole pack away from your body, you will do about a thousand times more sweating on your back than anywhere else, and shoulder strap technology will not keep sweat stains from appearing all up and down your backside. No matter what, you will attract dark, ominous, and ravenous clouds of bugs everywhere you go, and the bugs will always be worse than damp shoulders. Or a damp backside.
– When in doubt, add more straps. –
Speaking of straps in general, this is one thing pack makers do best. Pack makers love straps. Vertical ones, horizontal ones, angled ones, external ones, internal ones. Narrow ones, wide ones. Some straps have their own secondary straps, for obtuse and inscrutable potential adjustment purposes you will never be able to understand. Depending on the pack design these straps may be useful, or may simply be more heavy doodads that require more pages in the owner's manual that you never get around to reading.
Strap Type Two: Shoulder strap adjusters. Shoulder straps you need. We get that. The big mooshy, padded top part of each shoulder strap, the part that actually goes over your shoulder, that attaches to the pack's bottom by way of another, thinner connecting strap that runs along your rib cage and passes by your hips? You needs it. In fact two of them, one for each side. (You needs 'em.) They are adjustable. At the bottom end. Via shoulder strap adjusters. Fine.
Strap Type Three: Load levelers. No, we simply couldn't let it go at only one or two kinds, believe it or not, and this third kind of strap also has a use in some cases.
Called the load leveler in country A, these may also be called load lifters, load adjusters, load balancers, or balance straps in countries B, D, D, E. (Or used interchangeably and randomly.) They connect the point on the shoulder strap at the top of your shoulder to the top of the pack.
Why, God? Why oh why? Why more straps? What could they possibly do? Please end this agony of not knowing. Tell us!
Easy. Pull on these load levelers to cinch the pack up close to your body, or loosen them to let the pack angle back.
Huh.
You'll find a personal setting, and fiddle with it only if the pack radically grows or shrinks in volume, or weight. These straps are useful if you want to let the pack drift away from your back where the trail is level and smooth and the day is hot. You can get some cooling air in to your back. (Note: They're used almost exclusively for framed packs whose frames are not external.)
Load levelers are also good for those times when your load is a little unbalanced, side to side. Usually you'll adjust the overall shoulder strap length at their bottom anchors. But load levelers are handy to tweak your balance while moving, short of stopping for major readjustments like shoulder strap length or actual repacking of the entire pack bag.
Super ultra light packs with straight shoulder straps don't come with load levelers. These packs are stripped to the bone, and the small weights they carry don't normally require adjustment. If you are desperately unbalanced, and using a light pack, it's time to dump out the contents and try loading it again. Not likely. But if you really truly do have this kind of problem with a light pack, it's usually because you are stupid, and straps can help there, because they'll keep you preoccupied and off the trails.
– More? Oh, yes. –
Strap Type Four: Compression. These can be either really useful (if the pack is built around compression) or mere decoration (if the straps only give token tightening options). Compression can be vertical or horizontal, or can go both ways.
Vertical compression is pretty well confined to the pack's top end where there's a flap or expansion collar to close down and cinch tight. But most compression is horizontal or circumferential, going around the pack at a constant altitude. This keeps all things inside the pack squeezed nice and tight. Circumferential compression lets the pack's volume swell or shrink as needed while keeping it rigid. This is useful.
If you need it. Otherwise not, eh?
– Dr Dingus's Amazing Expando Thingy. –
Otherwise known as an expansion collar or an extension collar.
Yes, we're doing this one more time, until we all get it.
Some packs have a big pocket up on top, and a zipper on that, and you can keep things there, and if so the whole shebang operates like a big lid on top of the pack bag. Or like a built-in purse. That's OK.
But we are more interested in smaller, lighter, simpler packs, and most of them, when you get to the top, have a drawstring. And perhaps an option to roll it up and fasten it with a bit of velcro. Or maybe a lightweight flap. Think of a stuff sack.
But think mostly of puckering.
When this top part of the pack is extra high, like another 10 or 12 inches (25 to 30 cm) above the top of the pack bag, you have, in fact, an expansion collar.
These expansion/extension collars are useful early in a trip when you have lots of food and fuel, and need some extra space. Or when facing tough weather, and need to carry extra clothing. Just carry more by extending the load up higher, and then later roll the fabric back down as your consumables get et. (Eated?)
Problem: The pack loses some of its structural integrity with an expansion collar — you can't really get a pack drum tight when it has this big flappy sort of additional empty-closet thing on top, one with a giant hole in its middle. No matter how many velcro straps you have up there, its structural integrity will win no awards.
But the extra room can be handy. Especially if you're a slob and don't plan. But you'd be happier with a big heavy pack if that's the kind of person you are.
Not saying anything. Not judging here. Just remember that option.
Front loaders (panel loaders) don't usually have an expansion collar, though if you design and make your own gear you can have it both ways. You can even make the whole pack look like a teddy bear if you want. A pink one. It's cool. It's all cool. Hike your own hike and like that. Bunny rabbit packs are nice too. I think I have six of them now.
– Pockets. Hey kids, let's have fun with pockets! –
Pockets are essential, if you're that kind of backpacker. If not, try it for a while.
Pockets turn a pack into an appliance. With pockets you are no longer a beast of burden carrying a featureless locked wad. You enter into a dialog with your pack, and the two of you converse all day as equals.
Many climbing packs brag about their lack of external pockets. Or at least their makers do. Climbers don't want pockets hanging up on things. Climbers live on danger and testosterone. We understand. Backpackers burn off their testosterone in the first day or two, and become increasingly skittish about danger the longer they manage to remain alive.
Because backpackers do expect to come back alive. Backpackers do not much care about making one glorious fireworks-filled push toward glory. Backpackers stay very, very near ground level. Backpackers live on the trail, sometimes for months, and they need things handy. All the time. Every day. In order for them not to die. They really like the not-dying part of backpacking. As a backpacker, you may not get invited to many parties, but you'll still do way much better than even the best dead backpackers. Keep that in mind.
If you ever carry doohickies, doojiggers, gadgets, gimmicks, gizmos, gubbins, thingamabobs, thingamajigs, thingummies, whatchamacallits, whatsises, widgets, toys, tokens, amulets, or nose drops, you want a pack with pockets. Pockets are great for many things, including all of the above, and more.
Where else would you keep your lint collection?
Pockets these days are mesh. Oh so many are.
In the olden days when frame packs were king, when "hiking clothes" meant jeans and a T-shirt, when footwear was nine-inch-high oiled leather boots, and cook sets were steel, then pockets were made of the same fabric as the pack bag, and they closed up tight with large steel zippers that had brass teeth like chisels.
Pockets these days are mesh, held closed by elastic. Pockets these days also lie tight against the pack's body, so you can just about squeeze in a small hankie with help from a friend who has a pry bar. Or maybe you can get a candy bar in, if it's a warm day and you don't mind smooshed soft chocolate. Mesh lets you see what is in the pocket, and as so many people say, you can put wet things into a mesh pocket and let them dry as you hike. Unfortunately, most people are idiots.
The drying never happens. Because if you get something wet and then wad it up, even if one side of it is exposed to air, it won't dry. Not in one lifetime. Possibly not in two.
OK, but mesh looks cool.
Yes.
But.
On some very light packs the pockets are solid fabric because solid fabric is lighter than mesh, which is, in turn, relatively heavy. (This is true!) If you make your own pack you can do whatever works. Solid fabric is stronger, unless you get really heavy mesh, but heavy mesh is even heavier, and solid fabric doesn't snag on twigs or thorns like mesh, which is made for snagging. (mesh, noun: Something that snares or entraps.)
Packs with pockets, especially packs for long distance or light hikers, are pimped as having at least one water bottle pocket. This pocket is set up so you can reach back and get at the bottle while walking. Sounds great, very efficient and all, but what you might enjoy more is actually stopping for a couple of minutes and taking the damn pack off your back, and then having a decent drink of water. Just a thought.
And hey — did you ever look at one of those "water bottle pockets"? They're cut low, so the top half or two-thirds of the bottle sticks out, and is easy to grab, but which also means your precious water bottle can jump out at any time at all, run away, and hide where you'll never find it.
Anyway, what is it about backpacking that's supposed to be efficient? Backpacking is the exact opposite, innit?
– Useful is good and true. Useful is OK. –
Pockets, OK. But be sure that any pockets on your pack are really useful.
Unless you get an external frame pack you'll likely find that external pockets are made of mesh (Mesh again!) strung tight. So tight. Maybe even spray-painted on. This looks really good in a store, and keeps the mesh from flapping around and hanging up on things all the time, but it means that the pocket is going to be good only for looking at, or for small, flat things. Really flat things. Really small, thin, flat things. Is that what you want, or would you expect to put actual three dimensional hiker-useful objects into those pockets?
Like food.
Think about it that once. Twice.
One handy move is to break out the day's food before leaving camp in the morning, and keep that food, along with your cook kit, fuel, and stove, outside the pack, in a pocket. When you stop to eat you can get down to business right away without unpacking anything but the food, fuel, and cook kit.
Likewise for a wind shell, gloves, and a warm hat in cool breezy weather, or for your rain wear on a showery day. Keep rain wear inside your pack and you'll get wet while digging it out, and get rain in your pack too. Pockets are great for this, but small, tight pockets are almost useless. Because they don't actually have room for anything except good looks.
– You supply the butt crack, we'll do the rest. –
Last item: Trail tool belts.
Some pack makers provide extra pockets on the hip belt, or they provide pockets as options that you can stick on the hip belt. These are great for small cameras, small snacks, sunglasses, lip balm, other diminutive but useful things. These pockets are usually proprietary to a particular brand of pack. As with everything else, you need to gain experience and decide what works, for you. The more little pockets and hideaways you have, the more complicated your pack gets, and the heavier it gets. And the more expensiver.
Say you use these pockets and get everything sorted out. Then you hike. Then after a while you can't remember what went into which pocket. Or whether you forgot something at home.
But there is room to play here.
Imagine a belt. Imagine a collection of pockets that go with that belt. Depending on what you want you mix and match. Pull out the belt, select the right pockets to go with it, and take that out on a day hike. No weight on your shoulders, no sweat on your back. Versatile, adjustable.
Say that belt goes with your pack, normally, but is removable. Then you can use the pack with or without this hip belt, and use the hip belt alone, with a few pockets, as a light day pack. Wear it around your waist, or over one shoulder.
Or not.
We're easy.
Want a beer?
– Footsie Notes –
1: Bug Eyed Earl: http://bit.ly/1tThjz2