Crush Me In Your Tender Embrace
Choosing a pack by weight capacity.
– Intro: Poop heavily on your dreams. –
Here it is straight up: weight is always bad. Always. There is never any time or situation when weight is a good thing.
Say this and someone will immediately start complaining "But sometimes you have to carry a lot". True, but that does not make it good. That does not make them smart. Anyone can say stuff. Even buttheads.
Weight is never fun, or useful, or interesting, or safe. Weight is always bad.
Wise up.
The other arguments you're likely to hear are something like "Packs are heavy," or "That's the way it is," or "You just have to suck it up and deal with it". False, false, and maybe. If you absolutely have to carry a lot of weight then you absolutely have to suck it up and deal with it, if you can. If circumstances dictate a big pack with lots of heavy things inside though, that still does not mean that you yourself can actually handle it, even if you want to.
And if you don't want to, simply go somewhere else and do something different.
– Or do it smarter. –
There is no upside to being dumb.
Keep in mind that at best you are temporarily able bodied. And if you haven't noticed yet, you will learn that no injury ever heals, it only heals over, if that. Push yourself too hard, get hurt, and though it may be a while before it comes back to you, it will come back to you, and you will feel it later. Maybe years later, but feel it you will. No injury ever heals. There is no 100% recovery.
Considering the alternative, getting older is not all that bad, but as you get older you notice that your knees creak and complain, your ankles hurt, or your toes hurt, or your back does. No matter who you are you will not be stronger or more energetic when you are older than you are right now. When you get older you need to take more breaks, you need to sleep longer, and you require more time to recharge.
Weight always works against you, and works harder against you the less robust you are. Sure, maybe you are 60 years old and can still cover 20 miles a day for a week at a time, two weeks at a time, the whole summer. But you have to struggle to stay in that kind of shape. You aren't in the same class as an 18-year-old who can do that, party all night, wake up with a bad cold, a headache, an upset stomach, AND the dry heaves, and still shrug it off and put in another 20-mile day.
Carrying more weight makes everything harder.
Much harder.
And it only gets worse. After a certain age you need to work out daily only to keep mobile. Slack off even a day or two and you lose ground. Besides all that you still get weaker and have less endurance. Every day. No matter what.
And you keep getting older. Until you die from it.
– Super ultralight. –
There is a group of backpackers who carry packs that are not just light, or ultralight (beyond light), but super ultralight. Since super means above, this should really be called sub ultralight (even lighter than ultralight).
Some use the term uber light, which is a trans-lingual half-German mashup way of trying to say super dooper ultralight, but they left out the umlaut, and used the two languages and all, and continued going in the wrong direction (up instead of down).
Über licht is closer to actually meaning "over light", which is kind accurate, if you interpret that as "overly light", "crazy light", or "stupid light". So anyway, if you have to play around with terms, use not "über" but "unter" and say "unter licht". Even less, even lower, even littler, even lighter than ultralight.
OK, whatever. Screw all the mumbo-jumbo anyway. Let's just use plain old simple reliable unpretentious numbers.
Assume a base pack weight of six pounds or less (3 kg). If you are in this group you are already well aware of it. You brag, and have three blogs and a web site all about yourself. You are vastly experienced, have spent months if not years thinking about your backpacking gear choices, and have seen hundreds or even thousands of miles of trail pass beneath your knobby knees.
Albert Einstein's rule was to make things as simple as possible but no simpler. A super ultralight pack is as small as possible, and then smaller. It is as simple as possible and then some. It is as light as possible, and lighter than possible. There have been packs on the market with empty weights well under eight ounces (250 g). You, being impossible, carry a total weight of 10 to 20 pounds (4 to 9 kg) for trips up to a week long. Your pack is frameless, relying on a folded sleeping pad for shape, if you have a pad. But if you do, you've taken a standard pad, lain on it, had someone trace your outline (from shoulders to hips only, because that's all you use), and then you went ahead and cut on the dotted line, and threw away the rest.
It is possible to get by as a super-ultralighter if you know the route and terrain, know that the weather will be fair, have the experience you need, and have all the right gear to match your pack. And are capable of surviving miscalculations. Chances are that if you want a pack weighing less than a pound you will end up making it yourself. You will take the clothes you hike in, a pair of gloves, and a warm hat to sleep in. You will take a down vest, a wind shell, and a spare pair of socks. Add to this a light down sleeping bag or quilt, a small tarp, a small alcohol stove, and a cup, and that's about it.
You will know how to care for and repair every thing you carry.
And in case you forgot in the last five seconds, here it is again: You will know how to survive if you screw up.
– Ultralight. –
This used to be the scary lunatic fringe. Now it's more like a "Oh, sure I do that, don't you?" kind of thing. Base pack weights for ultralight backpacking fall into the range of six to 12 pounds (3 to 6 kg). If you are in the market for a pack to carry weights like this you already know what your choices are. You may not want to go super ultralight or maybe you can't. Maybe you need heavier bedding or a more protective shelter, or the climate in your part of the world can't be negotiated with optimism and a throw of the dice.
You will carry a total of 11 to 30 pounds (5 to 14 kg), for trips of three to seven days (base pack weight plus consumables, like, oh, food, in case you eat).
Most of the super ultralight rules apply, but in this weight range you have more wiggle room for bad weather and miscalculation. Packs in this range are easier to buy, but you will still be dealing with limited offerings from only half a dozen manufacturers, if that. You can still make your own pack, and you might want to, to get the features you know you prefer, and to leave out the rest. The pack is likely to depend on either a standard or customized folded sleeping pad for a frame, though a couple of packs have optional (and removable) stiffeners. Weights of packs like this hang in the 12 to 24 ounce (300 to 750 g) range.
– Fiat lux. –
Light is not a four letter word. It is slightly heavier than that, but not all bad.
A pack that is only light-ish is the type of pack that the big manufacturers with factories full of large machines and immense marketing departments call super ultralight. Expect to find an internal frame or framesheet to provide support. The pack will weigh two or three pounds (1 to 1.5 kg) empty, and you will tend to end up with a base pack weight of 12 to 20 pounds (6 to 9 kg). This will be the sweet spot for most backpackers. Total pack weight will be in the 17 to 35 pound (8 to 16 kg) range for three-day to seven-day trips. At the bottom end of this range you will feel delightfully free. At the top end you will hurt, but not as much as you used to.
If you go for a pack like this, it's very possible that you are a person who will carry a large single-wall or small double-wall tent, have "waterproof-breathable" rain gear, wear boots, use a canister stove, and have a real cooking pot in which you plan to simmer something. You will eat with a titanium spork, possibly engraved with your name, and you may allow it to sport one rhinestone.
This pack category is still fairly sparse but there are offerings from companies that have been in the business for decades, and they know what they are doing. Prices are reasonable, and you will find a dealer or two nearby where you can actually go in to try on the pack before you buy it. These packs will look and feel pretty "standard" (i.e., like backpacks "are supposed to feel"). No one will stare at you while you wear it, or ask you a lot of dumb questions. (About the pack anyway, though you will still get members of the parking lot patrol asking if you carry a gun, 1 or what you will do if you see a snake.) 2
You will blend in except that you will be carrying less stuff and it will weigh a bit less than what most other people have.
When you meet other backpackers on the trail they will assume that you are out overnight, or on a day hike, not on a week-long trip. When you see them you will assume that they are doing penance, and must have sinned terrible sins.
You may already be in this category. It isn't a bad place to start, since you may never need a larger or heavier pack, or a smaller or lighter one either, and it isn't necessarily a bad place to stay. Materials are durable, workmanship is good, packs come with guarantees, and features are pretty standard. Depending on where you are evolving from and how you develop you may decide a pack like this has either too many useless features, or too few useful ones (based on your own needs), but it will be in the main stream of what is currently available. Mediocrity is not bad.
Being mediocre means being ordinary and staying in the middle of the herd. Often this is good enough. And comfy. If you're in the middle of a herd you can be confident that you will not be the first eaten, which is a superbly cozy thought, and mediocrity is all about cozy, sleepy thoughts, the sorts of thoughts that you could well be turning over in your mind exactly half an instant before a huge something with mighty talons sails past the outside edge of the herd and stoops onto your helpless little self, right there in what you thought was the safe middle.
But usually that doesn't happen.
– Medium. –
This is the bread and butter category for pack makers and for retailers. From an ultralight perspective this is a heavyweight pack. It will weigh four to six pounds (2 to 3 kg) empty, and you will end up with a base pack weight of 20 to 30 pounds (9 to 14 kg). This is average for most backpackers. Total pack weights are in the 25 to 50 pound (11 to 23 kg) range. For some reason, people who get into backpacking expect to carry loads like this. Still. In the 21st century. Woof.
You might see a pack like this advertised as ultralight. If you are buying something made by the top half dozen outdoor companies, it's likely they will use the term. To them it is ultralight, because they have to work to get the weight down so low. Ultralight as a marketing term is also sexy, so it's fun to use, even though a four to six pound pack is mostly useless dead weight. If you don't know how this feels then the next time you are out shopping for food go to the baking goods aisle. Pick up a five pound bag of sugar and walk around with it. Carry it cradled in your arm next to your chest. Keep it there for ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Get used to it. You'll get a feel for how much five pounds really is, and how endlessly fulfilling it is to carry around.
Packs in this range are like the lighter ones but bigger, with heavier frames. Manufacturers of these packs are not fussing over a few ounces in the frame. Each of these packs definitely has a frame, possibly a polyethylene sheet, or a sheet of another kind, or it might be carbon fiber or aluminum, but it will be there, and sturdy, and as large as it is possible to make it.
You might even see a poster of the frame tacked up on a wall. It will have lots of arrows pointing out its features. Manufacturers like to show off technical details. They think it's cool, because it shows how smart they are. Every pack comes factory pressure-treated with secret Ingredient X-12 for your safety and convenience.
A manufacturer's pack frame poster may be scary. It may well be indeed, reminding you of a Sirius Cybernetics Terminator Borg Sub-Assembly 16-B. (You don't want to get too close to that one, babe.) You will also see advertising copy asserting that the packs built around these frames can handle large weights with ease. If that is reassuring, then go with it. Most of these packs will be presented as good enough for multi-day trips, even week-long trips, with the implication of just barely good enough. If you dare to go so light.
Don't let them scare you, except with their weights.
– Heavy. –
Come to Mama.
Want to spend $600 on a pack? If so, then this is your weight range. Your range For Extended Trips, as they put it. Like, plan to hike the Appalachian Trail? Or the Continental Divide Trail? Or the Pacific Crest Trail? "We recommend you think carefully before committing to a trip like this, but if you decide to do it, make sure that you have the best equipment." Including a pack weighing at least eight pounds, empty.
They recommend. Not me. That's a lot of weight for a hole to put things in.
Well, some of these packs are lighter than the very heaviest ones, but not by much. Say that six to eight pounds (3 to 4 kg) is mainstream, giving a base pack weight around 15 to 40 pounds (7 to 18 kg), and once you get loaded up for a week or so, expect a total pack weight of 50 to 70 pounds (23 to 32 kg) or more.
No need to talk about typical clothing and equipment you might carry — take everything. You won't want to bother thinking about that grandmother who started her backpacking life in 1955 at the age of 67, and hiked, solo, the Appalachian Trail, with a home-made duffel bag on her shoulder containing a blanket, a plastic shower curtain for shelter, a cup, a first aid kit, a raincoat, a change of clothes, and no stove or cookware. You need more of course, because you are smart and have money, and because Emma Gatewood is not your hero. 3
Enjoy then, if you can.
– Footsie Notes –
1: Answer: "No, because if I did I'd have to shoot you, and it's too much bother, given the pathetically small amount of fun it would be."
2: Answer: "We'd get drunk and go hiss behind a tree together."
3: Emma Gatewood: https://bit.ly/3mtYXqM