Backpacking — In Or Out? Six simple questions for your mind.
Let's talk concepts.
By Camilla "MouthPuncher" Woolsox
B ackpackers aren't the world's dumbest people. No really, think about it.
If you are truly dumb, are you going to put some stuff into a bag and go out hiking in the rain? I mean, you can't call that exactly dumb. Can you?
The word dumb has only four letters. This is actually too small to capture a big idea. Like whether hiking is dumb, or hiking in the rain is dumb, even.
You need at least five letters for a big idea. Take death, for example. Get my drift? Much bigger territory already, and only one more letter.
As words go, dumb is not that useful, and if you are a backpacker traveling light, maybe you don't even have it with you. True, dumb has only the one syllable and is easy for most of us to pronounce, but on the other hand...
It's. Uh. Um. Something...
Forgot where I was going with that.
So ideas. Can be tough, right? Let's talk about something else then.
Hey! What's in and what's out this year?
Number 1 - Dirty Underwear.
A perennial topic. If you wear it, it will get dirty. But if you don't wear it, it can't! So, in or out?
Number 2 - Toilet Paper.
Another favorite. I bet you've seen this stuff at home, but did you use it? And if you did, did you wash it and use it again, or just toss it after the first time? I bet I know the answer to that one!
But say you're backpacking, what then? A little tougher, isn't it? I mean, you've already got stuff to bury, but do you want even more stuff to bury?
Depends on how you feel about moss, leaves, and pine cones. So, in or out?
Number 3 - Eating Other People's Food.
Call it unguarded or call it temporarily available, it's still food, it's there, and you're always hungry.
Can you blame the missing food on chipmunks? Bobcats? Alligators? It depends on what's hiding in the bushes. And how fast you can eat. And if you are good at making up stories. So, in or out?
Number 4 - Washing Your Butt In The Creek.
OK, we all know the rules, but some rules are more equal than others. Like they say cleanliness is next to godliness. Want to argue that one, Buster?
Sure, it makes a difference whose butt is being washed.
And whether your drinking water comes from upstream or downstream. And which end of this butt you are on.
And if anyone is around to see you. So, in or out?
Number 5 - Lying About Your Mileage.
Maybe you're thinking that lying is always bad. If so, when bedtime comes, think about walking up all night to make your numbers.
See?
And if you slip up and accidentally switch to kilometers you can multiply your miles by two, round up, and sound extra gnarly. Who said the metric system was no good? Some dope, right?
You're a hiker after all, and you're damn tired and you can't always remember how to carry the semicolon or whatever the hell they use in that metric stuff anyway, and who cares? So, in or out?
Number 6 - Sleeping 10 To A Motel Room.
This is for long distance hikers and party animals.
Generally, long distance hikers (or thru-hikers as they call them, WTF?) are just about the most tedious, boring, dead-headed, dull-witted, ho-hum, irksome, slow, uninteresting, wearying, and least fun people in the world.
But cheap. So they often try this.
Does that justify splitting the cost of a $75 motel room 10 ways? Or would you rather party with some actual humans who scratch less and don't stink and snore? Just sayin. So, in or out?
Though it can be exotic and fun, most of us are not quite sure about the whole "camping" idea.
Say you drive to a forest campground. OK so far, but what then?
You may expect to find an expanse of clean pavement and modern facilities, but few so-called campgrounds are this well equipped, even in today's world, and most actually expect you to put your tent somewhere out in the dirt.
Try adjusting yourself to these shortcomings by slowly easing off the pavement. Allow plenty of time to avoid vertigo or panic episodes. Eventually you will overcome most of your revulsion.
Now once you are past the yuck factor and are ready to put up your tent on dirt, things get easier. (True!)
One step that "pros" use is locating a Park Ranger, a kind of hired help. These are the ones wearing uniforms. Your Park Ranger will gladly offer you a selection of camp sites for perusal. Take your time and don't be shy about asking for an upgrade. Rangers are there to serve you.
Once you have your site you are ready to start camping, like in olden times.
What to look out for.
Forest water is not house-broken. It can be unreliable. Rain even in faraway mountains can make the water near you rise up and do strange things. Stay well back from it. Do not touch anything but bottled water.
Dead things may be present. Like trees and suchlike. They are also known to fall on people, especially while changing clothes in their tents, for some reason. If you smell a bad thing, it may also be dead. If you have had a pet, you probably know about this. So if you find a dead thing, even a bush, ask your Ranger to tend to it immediately.
Wandering hungry animals are a sign that lazy campground staff did not feed them properly. Well-fed animals won't come and bother you. Your Ranger should also be able to verify that all animals will be back in their cages by nightfall, but it never hurts to check on this in person to be sure your Ranger is doing things by the book.
Putting up your tent.
Some campers use the location of the latrine as a factor in siting a tent. Since this is not a topic we like to think about, we will avoid it.
Preferably you will be camping in a nice meadow with soft grass. If the grass is too high you have a problem, so just go ahead and trample it flat, then start a big fire.
The fire will be cheery and show which way the wind is blowing because things "down wind" will start burning from the sparks. For best results, put your tent on the other side of the fire.
Ideally you should have practiced putting up your tent at home, but this is not practical in most apartments, so leave yourself plenty of time for this exercise. Pound those big nail things into the ground and then put the rod things inside the special things sewn into the tent until it all begins to click together, and pretty soon you will be done. It couldn't be easier, really.
Finally, just to be safe in case some of the animals forgot to go back in their cages and are wandering around unsupervised, start another fire, but well away from your tent. This is where you will cook to "throw them off the scent" as the saying goes. (Most animals are actually pretty dumb.)
Cooking is easier than at home because camping food comes in colorful pouches. After supper throw a rope over a tree and hang your food and dirty dishes a few feet off the ground to keep other campers from being tempted.
Relax and enjoy the wilderness.
It's probably getting dark by now, so put on your official Gortecks camping sweater (available at all the better stores) and break out the booze.
Ingredients for Camping Drinks:
Alcohol — Tequila, Vodka, or Gin
Juice — Lime Juice, Orange Juice, Coca-Cola, or Kool-Aid
Syrup — Maple Syrup is traditional for campers, but Karo or Mrs Butterworth's is OK, or some runny jam
Salt — (In case you have worked up a sweat getting your tent to work.)
Combine the ingredients and drink.
Traditionally, camping drinks are stirred with a stick of beef jerky. If this does not soften the jerky enough so you can eat it, try relieving the boredom by using your jerky to stage playful sword fights. This is handy because if the alcohol and altitude go to your head, it is much harder to kill or maim any of your friends with jerky sticks than real swords (speaking from experience here).
When the booze runs out it's time for bed. Luckily you drove here, so you can crawl into the back of your SUV, roll out your sleeping bag, and have a cozy night safe from all the kooks out there in the woods. Always keep a loaded gun under your pillow, of course.
From: Bethany-Anne Pawlicker <pawlicker@pathwayofempowerment.com> Date: Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 6:41 AM Subject: Dave, thanks for helping my youth group with your backpacking and hiking webpage
I just wanted to send you a quick e-mail to say thank you.
My name is Bethany-Anne, and I am a student teacher working with a group of disadvantaged middle-school kids. We wanted to come up with some ideas for things to do outdoors. You know, ways to enjoy these last few weeks of summer.
All the kids thought hiking was a great idea, so that's how we found your page. It has some great info that we will be able to share. Thanks for all the help! :)
Oh, and one of the girls in my group, little Katie, found a great resource on hiking safety during her computer time that I thought I'd share with you. It's www.Lowest-Price-Canes.com. Could you add this to your page?
Little Katie is a bit shy around the others, so I thought showing them all your page with her link on it would help her stand out a little more. And that way I can award her a gold star for initiative too! It would do wonders for her self-esteem, coming from a troubled home and all.
Plus, I thought other hikers looking for safety information would appreciate your thoughtfulness, especially since as you might guess, www.Lowest-Price-Canes.com has the lowest prices on the whole internet! Check out their walkers, wheelchairs, and incontinence supplies as well - no one undersells www.Lowest-Price-Canes.com!
So thanks so much, and I hope you have a great rest of the summer! I can hardly wait, and dear little Katie seems to be so excited that she's even wet her pants again!
Ms Bethany-Anne Pawlicker
P.S. It just occurred to me that you might like more information on our organization, Pathway of Empowerment.com, so here goes.
Well, as you can see at our web site, there is no About Us page, and no Contact Us page, which just take up unnecessary space. Since we're on a tight budget and cramped for space we decided to leave these out.
Also, we don't list any staff, or mention a location, mostly because it's a kind of small operation. I'm sure you've heard about nonprofits!
If you do a web search on our URL thing, it will just bring you back to our web site - no wasteful mentions by other charitable groups, certifications, licenses, testimonials by parents, sponsors, or any of that.
Partly this is due to us keeping a low profile, as you can tell from the whois information listing our address as a PMB (private mail box) in Belize, with super low-cost computer servers in Vietnam and Botswana.
So I guess that's about it, unless you'd like to help us cash some checks.
We don't have a bank account, instead relying on the kindness of random strangers, and really, are there better people than hikers? We can send you some checks which you deposit, and after keeping 15%, just wire the money back to our PMB in business-friendly (and low-cost!) Belize. Simple, yet effective!
And if that isn't right for you (I surely understand) we do have a contact in Nigeria, a prince no less, who is trying to get a large sum of money out of that troubled country. He certainly could use help from someone like you, so don't be shy about getting back to me.
Sincerely, Beth4You@KinkyBethany.com (My real job! ;)
To use a pack you've got to fit a pack. To fit a pack you need to know where you fit in the scheme of things. Where you fit is where the tape measure says.
You may be big and tall, or short and small. You may be circumferentially imposing, or willowy yet pleasantly wiry. You might have a heavily muscled butt and thighs but pipe-cleaner arms, or arms like the Third Army but toothpick legs.
None of this gives us any clues. Too vague, like indecipherable thoughts from an undisciplined mind dreaming of improbable worlds.
Those seven league boots you once heard of - they might fit you, but the pack that goes with them? Maybe not. Granny's herb-gathering bag, on the other hand, might be just the right one for you, whether you like it or not. No way to tell, for sure, without getting out the tape and generating data. You might even get excited and work up a sweat.
So do it already.
Wayne Gregory (Ever hear of Gregory packs?) was supposedly the first to figure out a standard way to fit packs. Eventually people caught on. Now everyone uses one method, his, and here it is, complete with measuring tape...
First, get a flexible measuring tape, the kind used by tailors and anyone else who sews. This is made of cloth or flexible plastic so you can wrap it around waists and shoulders and thighs and drape it over whatever hills and valleys turn up, and generally allow it to go with the flow. This is option one.
Option two is for cheapskates, bachelors, and engineering types who don't see the value in buying something to use only once. Option two is a long piece of string. It works. Elderly bachelors and late bloomers sometimes know what they're talking about. You can even press used dental floss into service. Just when it's almost too frayed to use again, right before it whoofs out into a hopeless puff of fuzz.
Rinse it clean, let it dry, and boogie on.
– Like a voyage of discovery, but closer to your butt. –
The first step in finding out what size pack you need is to compute the length of your torso. In case you are wondering what the heck that might be, it's the part of you between your tail and your head, excluding your neck, any feelers or pincers, and your carapace, if you have one. (You shouldn't, if you're human, but it's OK if you're not. No biggie. You are also welcome. Just keep your nippers under control.)
Other definitions of torso have it extending lower, but those body parts aren't used in backpacking, and, hence, they do not count, here.
Torso? Done.
So then, measure already.
Start at the top (assuming that you are standing and your head is not up your butt). Tilt your head forward and use one hand to find the big bony lump where your neck meets your shoulders. This is the business end of the seventh cervical vertebra, which is technical medical language for the bony lump at the base of your neck. (But inside your skin. Keep that in mind. All bony parts should be on your inside and remain there at all times.)
So far, so good.
Continue.
Once you've found this lumpy spot, begin measuring. Whether you have a nice, smooth, professional looking tailor's tape made of high quality PVC-coated polyester fiber or a piece of string, the procedure is the same - start at the lump and work down.
It helps to have a partner for this, but it's probably not worth a long courtship, the agony of wedlock, and having Uncle Fred hanging around leering at you for reasons that never become clear. No need to get married for this.
A friend will do.
No friends? Rent one.
Or you can handle it yourself.
If you're a tough guy (women aren't likely to try this) you can anchor the top of the tape (or string if you really are that cheap) to the back of your spine with an ordinary thumb tack. Pushpins work too. If you are actually dumb enough to do this, though, you are on your own as far as infection and nasty complications that do or do not result in death.
Just to be clear about it.
So you have the top end covered. Now go long.
Run the tape down along your back as though you are putting masking tape on a window frame before painting it. You want to measure the whole length of what is actually there (you) without taking shortcuts, so run the tape over all the bumps and down into all the dips, keeping that tape in contact with your skin as you unroll it downward.
Your next question, and we can see this one approaching fast, is where to stop. Great question.
Stop when done.
Here is where planning helps. You plan so you know when you've measured enough. You plan so you don't go on and on and keep measuring down your whole backside, across the room, and out into the street.
You are done when: you are near but not on (or in) your butt.
– Anatomy counts, even yours. –
And how do you tell that?
Well...
It helps to know some of your own anatomy before getting involved in this, but don't fret. You can pick it up along the way. How? Put your hands on your hips. The soft stuff you feel is called love handles and we want you to keep them in reserve for later. Some time later. Probably very much later. Possibly decades from now. Also, your hands are too high. Go lower.
(Remember to wash your hands after this procedure.)
We are looking for a something, a place, a position, an essence, an underlying framework.
The fundamental you.
Imagine yourself a noble warrior of ancient Greece, all iron and bronze, muscle and bone. Skip the muscle and iron and bronze and so on. We want the bone. Go for bone. So then, Achilles, find the bony part on the top side of each hip. This is the part of you where your belt rests when your pants aren't falling down. This pants-up state is good for many reasons, all of which are irrelevant at the moment, so proceed to the next paragraph.
Hi.
Continue, please.
Having reached the bony parts of your hips you have found your iliac crest. Which is actually the top of your pelvis. OK, now, if you keep your hands there on your hips and point your two thumbs toward each other, horizontally, across the small of your back, the imaginary line connecting the tips of your thumbs will cross your spine.
The point where that imaginary horizontal line crosses your vertically-oriented lower spine is where you stop your downward measuring. If you are doing all this alone you can mark the spot with a piece of sticky tape, or a dab of all organic, non-toxic, pesticide-free, washable ink, or if you are tough but dumb, push in another thumb tack right there. (Or go get a tattoo).
So you now have a marked route, descending from the base of your neck and extending the full length of your back.
That distance, the one you want to measure, is between your seventh cervical vertebra and the top of your iliac crest. The measurement is a magic number that all pack makers use to size packs. If you were to become a pack maker you would have to know how to make packs based on this number (so your packs could come in various sizes to match actual people, who also come in various sizes), and of course you'd have to learn the secret handshake and the secret whistle, and how to make the secret-recipe french toast, but we can't cover those things here.
Despite all the measuring, each pack maker sizes packs a tad differently, which is why custom packs were invented. And cosmetic surgery. And God has a big hand to play in how your body turns out, and if not God, then The Giant Lizard Thing, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or someone else, like your parents. But here's roughly how it works most of the time:
Pack Size
Torso length (in.)
Torso length (cm)
Extra small
14 to 15.5
35.5 to 39
Small
16 to 17.5
41 to 44.5
Medium
18 to 20
46 to 51
Large
20 to 23
51 to 58
Scary big
above 23
Yikes!
Congratulations. You now have a torso length. Please continue to the next step.
– Put the lead in. –
For this next step, pack manufacturers recommend that the pack you try on has some weight in it. This makes sense. How much sense is up to you, depending on the size and use of the pack. Kelty says you should have 25 pounds in there, minimum, with 35 pounds being ideal. Those 11 to 16 kilograms of ballast are maybe not much if you are planning to use your pack to carry hardware for remodeling back country huts. Or something like that there.
But if you are a lightweight or ultralight backpacker these "minimal" to "ideal" weights might be overloads that a whip-wielding overlord would want you to haul, but that you wouldn't, given a choice. Something to keep in mind.
The suggested test weights for fitting a pack do vary by manufacturer, starting at 10 pounds and going up, with most manufacturers suggesting between 10 and 25 pounds (4.5 to 11.5 kg). Again, this is for traditional packs advertised for their magical properties which allow you to carry everything at once and not feel anything at all. For small, light packs, the bottom end of this range seems about right. Say around 10 pounds or 5 kg.
It's best if this weight acts something like the weight in a real pack. For example, if you want to fit a pack in a store, you can bring along a 10-pound bag of sugar but that is not very good. Neither is a 10-pound bag of salt, or a 10-pound bag of flour. Or any-sized sack of monkey chow. All of them will only sit in the bottom of the pack, in one hard lump, and give you an evil, unblinking stare with those tiny beady eyes of theirs. And even worse than that, each and every one of them will be a lump.
Better to at least roll up your monkey chow (if you insist on it) in a jacket or two, and stand this wad up vertically in the pack. Some outdoor shops have something like not-too-heavy weighted pillows so you can stuff a pack and more realistically spread the weight throughout it. Much better. Try something like that. Anything to avoid those beady eyes, right?
Right.
– Better packing through strapping. –
So there you are, freshly scrubbed and all shiny, having removed the washable ink spots or the thumb tacks or tattoo and having survived the massive infections, blood loss, hospitalization and so on. Now you know your torso length, have an actual pack on, are weighted down, and you want to complete the fitting process. Good for you.
Put your clothes on and loosen the pack's straps.
Do both. This is important.
Then put the pack back on. (Because it's easier to get out of those hospital clothes and into your own if you take the pack off first, so do that. But then you have to put the pack back on, so do that too, OK? And then loosen the straps.)
Shoulder straps adjust at their bottom ends. On about 98% of packs. Tighten them using whatever kind of adjusters they come with. If these straps are not padded along their full length then for comfort the padding should extend down at least one and a half hand widths (roughly five inches or 13 cm) below your armpits. The straps should be snug but comfortable, wrapping over your shoulders and around your torso. They should hold the pack bag snugly against your back.
Want more details? OK then. There are two ways the shoulder strap tops attach to pack bags.
Way the first: If this is an ultralight pack with relatively simple shoulder straps and no load lifters or anything, the straps are sewn directly into the pack bag near its top. The point where the straps attach to the pack should end up at or only a little above your shoulder level when the pack is fully loaded. That is, the straps go pretty much straight back from your shoulders and are sewn right into the pack right at that level.
Way the second: This is for fancier packs. If the shoulder straps attach to the pack bag behind you, down between your shoulder blades, then by definition the straps must attach to the pack below shoulder level. Two to three finger widths below shoulder level ought to be close. A bit more, maybe. Don't worry exactly where, just see if the pack feels right. This kind of pack will likely not be ultralight, but one made for heavier loads, and its shoulder straps will probably have load lifters, which we'll get to in a minute.
If the pack has no other straps then you are done, except for deciding if it feels right.
– Hafta test it! –
Here's how to check.
First, decide if it feels right. If so, you are done.
If it doesn't feel right, then try another pack. This works, eventually.
On the other hand, if the pack you're looking at has more straps to fiddle with, shoot for the hip belt next and leave the rest for later. If the hip belt is plain webbing (a waist belt), all you have to worry about is whether it is long enough to go around you and if there's enough extra hanging out each side to pull on when adjustment time comes around.
But things are hardly ever this simple, so let's see what we can work out.
In case your potential pack has a padded hip belt, you first need to know your size. Measure your waist right above the top of your pelvis (that darn ol' iliac crest again) and go with that. As a rough idea, try these size ranges:
Hip Belt Size
Your Waist Size
(in.)
(cm)
Small
22 to 28
56 to 71
Medium
28 to 34
71 to 86
Large
34 and up
86 and up
If your pack does have a belt of some kind (either a hip belt or a waist belt), then put on the pack, click the buckle, snug up the belt, and see how it feels. The buckle ought to be at belly button height, and it ought to work smoothly and easily, and you should be able to center it.
If this is a true hip belt with padding and all, its bottom edge should be roughly one to one and a half finger widths above the top of your hip bones. You might need a friend to help you figure this out. Then evaluate how well the belt gets along with your body, which is the point.
Get that sorted out and then...raise one leg. (No, seriously.)
Raise one leg.
Make your thigh horizontal. Either hind leg works.
The top of your thigh should now be pretty well level with the bottom edge of the hip belt on that side. See how the hip belt feels. Raise the hip belt if you need to. Just see how it feels when you have that all sorted out.
While backpacking (and carrying real weight) the hip belt needs to just fit over the top of the pelvis and will press down over it. On fancier packs, the hip belt's top will sort of "lean in" or narrow a tiny bit too, like an inverted funnel. This helps generate comfy snuggliness. The weight in the pack will push the belt down and help to press it into place. The belt should not sit low. If it does sit too low, you will have to tighten it like crazy, trying to make it work, and that won't help much - the tightening will only put the muscles in your hips in a nasty vise-like grip, which does not work well at all. No, no, no.
It does not work well at all, so pay attention now.
If the hip belt fits properly it should straddle your iliac crest, with about equal overlap above and below that top-of-the-hip-bone level when the pack is fully loaded. Then, when you really tighten down the hip belt it will put most of the pressure onto your pelvic bones (not the muscles lower down).
And when you do that tightening, you should still have some free space on the front side of the hip belt, in the buckle area.
This means that the two padded halves of the belt do not quite bump up against each other. Measure the gap at the buckle and look for a minimum of three or four finger widths of slack. If the buckle is off center, you can fiddle with it to center it, and now is the time to work that out. Better now than three weeks from now when you're out on the trail somewhere and you discover that something is horribly wrong.
OK, slack.
If you have the loaded pack on, and have the hip belt cinched up and snug, and can still cinch the belt even tighter, then you are in good shape. There will be some days when you will do anything you can to get the hip belt tighter. It is much better to have a belt that looks somewhat too small for you (but actually isn't), and has lots of tightening leeway left in it.
Because.
What you can't do is tighten a belt that is too big. If the belt is too big, it is too big, and you will never get it tight no matter how hard you pull on it. But if the belt is just right, or even a little bit too small, and has leeway for adjustment, then you can both tighten it and loosen it as much as you need and still be in fine shape.
Be sure to check this.
And then, you know what?
Check it again.
In case the above wording is not clear, here's another way of saying it. Ready?
A hip belt has two sections.
Fixed
Adjustable
The fixed part (the part with the padding and with the pockets and so on) should look too short. It should actually be too short to go around your waist, because if that fixed-length part goes all the way around your waist, then you have no way of getting it tight, because you can't adjust that part of the hip belt. Which is where the second, adjustable part comes in.
The adjustable part is what? Adjustable. Right, and this part makes up the rest of the hip belt, allowing you to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze by pulling it tighter and tighter and tighter. But you can't make a hip belt tighter if the adjustable part has nothing to do - if the fixed-length part is too long to start with.
Better? Clearer? OK with that? Eh?
– Getting stern with your sternum. –
And now we go to step three. (Bet you thought this was going to be easy.)
You are now strapped in, ready for takeoff. The shoulder straps are snug, and the hip belt is too. There is enough weight in the pack to give you an opinion.
It is sternum strap time.
The sternum strap is for keeping shoulder straps from getting all wild and crazy and doing things you don't want them to. The sternum strap also helps to lessen pressure on your shoulders and make the weighted pack pull on your chest rather than just hanging from your shoulders. Sure, you say, the hip belt does that job, but no, not all of it. Don't be a dummy. Check out the sternum strap. It helps a bunch too.
Pull the sternum strap snug enough for it to feel comfortable without restricting your breathing. Its top is probably around three finger widths below your collarbone. Too high and it chokes. Too low and it gets into the breast area, and it really has no business messing around there.
Be sure you can get it too tight.
Yes. Too tight.
If you can get it too tight then you can have it less tight, which is what you want, but if you can't get it too tight then you probably can't get it tight enough either. Same as with the hip belt. See?
Time for our next sanity check.
Once again, depending on which pack you're stalking, this just may be it. This just may be the right pack. Or not. So decide how you feel about the pack now. If you have run out of straps then you are done. This pack is either acceptable or it isn't.
– Tug it and snug it. –
But in case there are more straps we'll move to the load lifters on top of your shoulders. (Remember? These are also called load levelers or load balancers).
Tighten or loosen these guys until the pack bag conforms to the shape of your back. When done (and you should do this with the pack full, even if it's mostly fuzz) you have the top part of the pack pulled up tight against or kind of over your shoulders.
Got that? The top of the pack might be pulled a bit over the top of your shoulders like it's giving you a hug.
The load lifters ideally form a 45-degree angle from a point near your collar bone up toward the top of the pack. Assuming that the pack is fully loaded and tight as a drum. If you notice that the tops of the shoulder straps have crinkled and humped up and lifted off your shoulders, then the load lifters are too tight, or they weren't designed properly. When this happens, the stress is no longer going through the shoulder straps all the way across the tops of your shoulders, but runs through the load lifters for part of that trip, and things shouldn't be that way. They are for pulling the pack closer to your body, not for supporting its weight.
But when you have the load lifters just right they not only hug the pack closer to you but also shift stress from your shoulders to your chest because they tug on the shoulder straps, but without taking over from them. The load lifters plus the sternum strap spread that stress (the weight not carried by the hip belt) across your rib cage while moving if off the tops of your shoulders.
This is a Very Good Thing. Really!
Next, if your pack is in the very fancy range you also have stabilizer straps on the hip belt. Most packs don't.
These work like the higher-up load lifters we just talked about, but they pull the bottom of the pack closer to your lower back, and operate between attachment points on the hip belt and points low down on the pack bag. Using these straps keeps the center of mass closer to your body, improving balance, and also helps to stabilize the pack.
The load lifters work on the top of the pack and the stabilizer straps work on the bottom of the pack. If your target pack lacks them, don't fret. They are way optional.
– Mmmm. Creamy smooth. –
Up top, the weight gets spread over the largest possible area, so you don't have any hot spots where weight is concentrated. Some weight is on top of the shoulders but much of it is spread over your chest and back as the pack, the various straps, and your body work together in this enterprise.
Below, where the hip belt is, the weight transfers through the padding into your pelvic bones, which can take it, provided that the padding is adequate.
– Final instrument check. Almost done. –
Take a short cruise. Bend over. Twist. Reach up. Raise and lower your legs. See how the pack feels. Go up and down stairs.
If the pack feels like it belongs with you, then maybe it does.
You can also try some fine tuning, loosening these straps and tightening those. Raising this and lowering that. If the pack has enough straps you can shift the balance from side to side, shift it forward or back, or move weight onto or off your shoulders as needed. This gives you flexibility for different loads and different environments. You might not need much flexibility, but it's nice to have options.
Now you are a pro. If you are in a store that is bright and clean and warm and dry, you can have loads of fun doing this. Take your time. Find the perfect pack. Play with it. Praise it. Rejoice.
Then set the pack down and leave. They will remember you. Don't doubt that. Especially if a staffer has just spent two hours helping you to locate and adjust the perfect pack. Yes.
They will remember you.
Walk away.
This is a good move. Go away and come back a week later, preferably after trying on other packs elsewhere, or using your old pack, if you have one. Especially after using your old pack. The old pack will remind you of what's wrong with it. And of what's right.
Then when you return to the store where you got what seemed to be a perfect fit from what seemed like the perfect pack you get your own second opinion. Once you have it all worked out, buy the pack where you got the help. You owe it to them. Don't be a dick.
OK, fine, so Mr Smarty Pants Writer Boy here hasn't thought about mail order.
Ah, but he has, wise, gentle, and good Reader.
Ultralight packs (real ones) are generally mail order only, made by small companies without retail stores you can walk into. How about that then?
Well, pretty much the same deal.
Try on a few packs close to what you think will work. Don't waste anyone's time, or lead them on, but see if you can get a feel for small and light packs one way or another. Maybe you'll even find one that works. Hey - buy it already!
Try a friend. Wheedle. If you are on a hike with people you don't even know, so what? Ask. Ask anyone if you can just try their packs. Ask anyone anything. Look at packs. Read reviews online.
Then re-measure yourself carefully, re-check reviews, revisit online catalogs and read between the lines.
Keep a couple of things in mind.
First, you can always sew on straps or buckles later, if you know what you want and know what you're doing. Some pack makers provide custom options, or you can find someone to do the sewing for you.
Then, once you are totally dialed in to your needs you can design your own ultralight pack and have someone make it for you, or you can make it yourself.
Most importantly, small light packs are small and light. They stress you less. While no ultralight pack will have an adjustable frame, and won't have the full complement of straps, buckles, pulls, snaps, zippers, bun warmers and pot holders, they don't need most of them either, so you'll be fine.
– But wait. There's more! –
Really. One more thing. Again.
If you spend a lot of time in a store, checking out this and that, and get good help, and find the right pack, buy it there.
Support the store and the people who help you.
Do not learn about packs and how to fit them, and decide which one is right for you, and then buy that pack via mail order to save $20. At least show your gratitude. Make sure that the people who help you get paid for that help. Ultralight packs are really not available in major stores, but maybe you'll find a light enough pack that you really like anyway, and that's OK.
Just remember to support decent people who support you. You will need them later, so help them stay in business until then. We're all in this together.
Iseen guys like you before, all over. The hills are crawlin with copies of you, like ants. It used to be that you couldnt swing a city boy by his trekkin poles without takin out a couple dozen more.
Little secret here. I used to be like that too. In my own lovely way of course.
Telltale signs: ginormous black blobs staggering around all over, trippin over the shrubbery and swearin a lot, or moanin. Crates and baskets strapped on, all tippy and wigglin around like crazy. Thats you with your pack, Bub. I seen it. I seen you. I seen it all.
First thing you think about, you want to go backpackin, is all them nice little ponds still as glass, all the clean air, the blue skies, snowy mountains all around like you see in a truck ad, and a dragon fly or two and a couple of birds twittering and chirpin off to the side and flittin here and there.
So you figure you will get a truck and drive around until you see a nice little mountain pond with a patch of green grassy meadow tucked in right next to it and the air will be all clear and clean and cool and sparkly, and you will park there and hike 10 feet and set up your tent and have a hell of a time and life will be good and you will come home after that all gnarly and mountain man like.
Nice wet dream Bub.
The first real step you take is start askin around, how do I do this backpackin thing I want to go out and see them mountains and have some fun like everybody else and be close to nature specially as I can drive my truck right there and not even get sweaty and all and your friends are all sittin there with there beer guts hangin over there belt buckles and starin at you like a pig that just farted and never heard that sound before. Kinda still and dopey with wide eyes. Not quite breathin. Mouth open. Not sure what happened or what to do next, none of you, so you all have another beer and talk about the great outdoors and how its so great and all. And about which truck is the best one. And why women cant understand any of it and never will.
And then eventually you have to talk to the experts because this itch is gettin stronger and you have some money and you figure you might as well spend it on gettin out there and havin fun, seein as how you moved from Nowhere, Nebraska to Mountain City, Montana just so you could look up and see them mountains every morning and get out there whenever you wanted and never have no troubles no more with pimples or dandruff or gettin dates, and being free as the wind and a mountain man with hair on your chest, so you do it.
You have your choice of outdoor shops and you pick the one with the biggest parking lot and the most stuff inside, including flashing lights and fine wood paneling and experts swarming all over the sales floor in vests, even if you have to drive 200 miles to get there because its worth it. You can tell they are experts, these people because of the uniforms and since uniforms cost a lot they have to be good for it.
And the next thing you know you are standin by the backpackin wall where there are about 600 hooks and each and every hook has some thing on it and they tell you the experts, that those things there are official backpacks, as used by the pros and by real backpackers and such and each one looks about the size of Grandma Redlayczyk's steamer trunk that came across with her from the old country on a coal powered rusty flakin clanking shakin iron tub of a ship. You have seen this (the trunk) in one of those old brown faded pictures with the spidery hand writing on the back in some gibberish language that those people used to fool with before they came over here and turned into your grand parents.
But you are proud and you dont let on that you are gettin a bit dizzy and startin to pant standin there and tryin to decide what in hell you are lookin at. All you see is a bunch of big lumpy things and bright colors and what looks like lots of belts hangin off the side of each one and wads of plastic buckles and things, you can recognize those at least, and then Todd is there to help you. He is a pro and has a name tag that says Hello my name is Todd and he smiles at you and right there you are not too sure about Todd at all even if he is wearing the uniform. He looks smooth all over, too smooth, and smiles too much a little bit girlie you think, especially for what a backpacker should to be, but you figure you might try talkin to him because you are still bigger than him and you do work all day every day and can pound the snot out of him if he gets funny on you, even a little. So what the hell.
But he sure was not what you expected, he is not even wearing boots at all, just flat shiny shoes. And they are clean like the rest of his clothes. Too clean. Suspicious, this is. This is suspicious here for a start. Has this guy ever been outside at all? Maybe just to let the cat out you think, but he knows more than you do, or so you suspect, you hope, anyway he gets paid to do this and you dont and you want to go backpackin and have fun in those mountains right outside close by there so you talk to him like you know what you are up to even though you dont know diddly and figure you can pick it up as you go along and the next thing you know you are standin outside in the parking lot with about $800 worth of stuff in your arms and then you are havin trouble fitting all of it into your truck but you are sure that you did the only right thing possible under the circumstances and cant wait to get home and try to figure it all out.
Maybe a week goes by, maybe two, and you still have all this stuff laid out in your place on the floor like a big diagram of the life you want to step inside of if you can only figure out which cord to pull to open the front door to it.
You have it laid out just like the cover of that book you got at the libary because you didnt want Todd to see you buying a book at the same store on how to go backpackin but you really needed a clue so you got this book which was written by a guy who wrote this entire book on how to buy stuff and put the one thing inside the other and on top of the other and wrap it all up, and strap it down and get some food and put that in there, and some fuel for the stove (you have this teeny brass stove that looks like a toy but puts out enough heat to smelt iron ore straight from rocks into barbells and it cost a lot but all this stuff does and you want to do it right), and you put plenty of water in those special bottles for backpackin water and all, and on the cover of that book it shows all this stuff laid out right tidy and square like this guy knows what he is up to and he is English or something, a little suspicious also, but came over here for the freedom we alone have and has walked all over hell and back and you want to do that too, though not have to be English if you can avoid it, so you got the book and laid it all out, all your stuff, the same way, and there it is, and now what.
Now so the first thing you did already was unpack every single thing and touch it all and try to figure out what the heck it was and which side was up and why you bought it in the first place and which part of the other thing it was supposed to fit into or latch onto or whatever, and then you put each thing down on the floor all laid out in a square right where it was before and after a while you had your plan.
Some of this stuff is for sleeping in, or on, or under, and some is for the rest. Like for food.
You have a stove, and a cup, and a knife and a fork and a spoon. Then a frypan and a cook pot and a plate, all made for each other so they nest, and then a bottle for the stove fuel and those water bottles for the backpackin water, and still there is more, a lot more.
You have your clothes, special hiker boots and all, with covers for them that go halfway up your legs, and an official bandanna, red, in case you ever have official trouble so you can officially signal to authorized official search parties and aircraft that will be sent out to see to your safe rescue. You have inner clothes, under clothes, over clothes, outer clothes, windy day clothes, warm day clothes, rainy day clothes, all of that. The boots weigh about 6 or 8 pounds, seems like, which appears to be light considering the size of them and all, but heavy considering you have to wear them and all. They feel like they been hacked out of lumps of aged antique wood and about as stiff and lots more expensive than that even. Solid. Thats it. Solid. Solid and expensive.
So you have all your new stuff splayed on the floor in order left to right and top to bottom and after you get tired of touching it and looking at it all and turning it over again and again you play with it and try to figure out how each thing works, or at least figure out why you bought it. You go pretend camping in your head, on the floor.
Then after a while you put water into the backpackin water bottles and have a drink and decide to use the cook kit to heat soup in the kitchen, like you are out in the deep woods far from any cares, like in the olden days when men were real men and it was all clean except for one or two spider webs and an ant or two and you could come face to face with a moose or a bear any time you went to take a leak, not just the whiny cat that follows you to the bathroom every time you go in there now and watches you, but a real, big, dangerous animal with ideas of its own and maybe some plans for what to do with your leftovers after dinner. Its dinner. Meaning you.
And so maybe you plan on a hot drink too, in the kitchen there, on your little stove.
So then you read the little booklet that came with the stove, and then pour out some fuel to burn in it and spend about a week cooking stuff out back. If you can call it cooking, just adding hot water and watching all those little plastic chips swell up and turn into noodles and beefy beef chunks with spice flakes but after a while you have to quit this or go broke or crazy and anyway you start gettin bloaty something fierce from eating it so you go back to good old all American pizza and beer for your day to day nutritional needs but still you play with the stove, making cowboy coffee in the cup and drinking it outside, tryin to get it right so you dont cook all the hide off your tongue every time you have a cup of it, or die from the jitters afterwards.
So you go on like that until you get things figured out or at least you think so and now you are ready to make a real backpackin trip and its only one night and a few miles but it almost kills you so you are sure that you are doing it right because its supposed to hurt, no pain no gain after all, and then you do it again and again until the snow comes and you figure you are a smart boy after all.
Every time you stop to make camp you spend about an hour looking for a flat spot up one side and down the other, and clearing about a eighth acre or so of anything that could get in the way or be lumpy and it feels so damn good to put that pack down when you get there that you know you did a good days trip or else it would not feel so good to stop and then you take everything out of your pack and lay it out and pretty soon you have half the landscape full of your stuff which is OK when no rain is falling but kinda sucky if it is, but thats part of the game you think, and it all works out pretty good for a few years this way though every time you get a new catalog in the mail you look at stuff and try to figure out how you can make it lighter though a 6 pound tent seems to be about as light as you can dare to go and a 5 pound sleeping bag the same, unless you want to try one of those feather bags which everyone warns is a bad deal if you get it wet, though you didnt get wet so far but you are worried that as soon as you try one of those you will get it wet and be in real trouble but life is pretty good never the less, all things considered.
And so it goes, and then you get a little older and you learn a few things, mainly that you dont know a damn thing which partly goes with gettin older and partly goes with gettin smarter and partly goes with startin out thinkin you do know all the answers and you begin to catch on that there is another way to do all this stuff and as crazy as it sounds you do not need to carry all kinds of weight or even a lot of the things that every one says you do need to, including the guy that wrote that book, who is dead now anyway, and the other guys who wrote the other books despite there being published authors and all, and havin there books in libaries and on sale at book stores with there pictures on them inside the back cover. Despite all this, they do not know it all, as impossible as that seems. I know. I know now. It took years for me to figure this out. Life is crazy.
So heres how that works then as I see it.
There is a rule that goes by the name of The Big 3, or the Big Three Plus 1, the big 3 being the tent, the sleeping bag, and the pack, and the 1 being the stove and the cook set and all that stuff.
The big 3 are the 3 things you have as a backpacker that are the heaviest, and biggest and bulkiest and make you hurt the most when you carry them all over the landscape especially if that said landscape is interesting, as you have heard the saying may you live in interesting times, so it is with the landscape, the most interesting being the one with the most personality or attitude, mainly how high does it go and how low does it go, and how many lumps are there, and those are the places that most of us go backpackin if we want the best pictures but require a lot of up and down walking which is extra hard carrying a big pack and lots of stuff in it so heres how it might go.
First you are really dumb and dont know a thing and know you dont know and you fake it for a while and then you read up and talk to people and try stuff and catch on and go with the flow, you get out there in the middle of the middle of the stream, the main stream, and do it all just like every one else and that gives you confidence that you are doing it the right way and will be safe and happy and no one will laugh at you and it will work out.
So then you have caught on and you are now an expert too and if there is ever a question you know the answer because you read the book, or you read all of the books, and many magazine articles, and bought the right things from real official stores and went backpackin and came home again and mastered all of the knobs and buckles and dials and the other flight controls of every piece of all your equipment and you know each and every one of the manufacturers of everything thats ever used for backpackin like tents and packs and boots and sleeping bags and so on, and a lot of it you have tried personally and spent real money on, sometimes trying one thing and then another, or from one manufacturer and another and back again and so it goes, and you just about know it all and so you are smart and have made some mistakes on purpose just to test the rules but mostly thought things through and made a small change here or there but stayed right in line with the way things are done and you have been gettin by. Which makes you a expert.
And then maybe one day you meet some loony who is doing everything wrong, or you read about one or two of them and you wonder why they would be so nuts and how they could manage to do it all wrong and still live because you know if you want to go backpackin for a week you have to carry 60 pounds or more, maybe like 70 and here is some nut walking around with half that or less and not dying every day and you write that sucker off. Hes dead meat by tomorrow afternoon, latest.
Maybe years go by, maybe only months but you are conservative because you really know what works and what does not work, and you keep seein these random single loony-tuners who keep not dyin but you are sure any day now it will happen but it dont and you keep reading up on there exploits and after a while, one day for no reason you can figure out you realize you may know it all but you are bored and you are not havin fun any more and you are carrying a whole lot of weight around and you think maybe you will just try being dangerous for a little bit once and then the whole world collapses in on you and you realize that you do not know every thing at all and maybe not much of anything at all and there is a complete entire whole new way of doing all this and you too can get by with say 25 pounds for a week of backpackin, excluding water which you can pick up when and where you need it.
So bam, another door opens just like that.
From there it is like being 12 years old again, when you did not know a damn thing and the world was this wide big thing like the first time you saw a camp ground when you got out of the car and all you wanted to do was run wild and go nuts and explore everything, and you did and your parents were yelling at you back at the car to come back and be careful and you just did not care and so you ran and ran and they were mad later but you loved it and you lived and you learned a lot just by running around nuts like a little kid, which you were, and thats how you feel now and you want to do the same thing some more.
So thats what you do and it changes you.
Here is step 1. Cashier your tent. This is the big item, the one that causes the most grief, your home on the range. Your refuge, your sanctuary, your little zippered hidey hole where you can crawl inside and shut out the whole big wild world and be safe.
It is the single biggest thing you carry around, the tent. If you are like most people you think that a 2 person tent is the smallest tent that will work for 1 person so thats what you have. It used to be in the old days not that long ago that the lightest tent like this you could get was 6 pounds, about, minimum, like I said.
Well, things changed. Things are a whole lot lighter now, more radical. You can now get by about a pound lighter, 5 pounds, amazing but true, so this tent is still the most heavy thing you carry. Start here.
Whatever you need you can do it. Buy a tarp or a tarptent or make one, you can make one out of some 3 mil plastic sheeting and play with it and that might be good enough, who knows? You do. Try it. Even that heavy plastic sheeting is light next to a double wall tent. Be generous, cut a 8 by 10 piece out of it and put a couple guy lines on it and cut a ground cloth to sleep on and you are still under a pound and ½. So you can save 3 to 4 pounds right off the bat, assuming you started with a light tent, or save even more if you are one of those nuts who takes a whole 4 person tent for your self alone, like a dome tent, which I have seen people do. Some people are more gnarly than I am, hard to believe, even some females who should of known better.
Plenty of small tarps on the scene these days. Tarp is not a bad word, only 4 letters in that word but not bad ones, good ones. Even a whole 8 by 10 silnylon tarp is only a pound, and you can get your self under that, and a cow, or yourself and 6 to 8 raccoons and a whole family of mice besides. Plenty of room for all. Silnylon is new stuff, pretty near, it is only really light nylon fabric impregnated if I may use that word with some kind of space age silicone stuff that soaks in and makes it water proof but does not hardly increase the weight much at all, and it is light, and does not peel off. You can make tarps or tents out of it, or buy ones that other people made and it is sweet. Done.
Step 2, get a reasonable sleeping bag. Maybe you have a reasonable one. Like a safe one. A 5-pounder, all puffy synthetic fill with that nice synthetic smell. Keeps you warm. In a flood you could float away and down the river and not wake up until mid morning when the sun got too hot, and otherwise not notice a thing, do a Mr Floatie all the way to the sea and not even get soggy just bob like a happy cork.
Fine for you, but. You can go a whole bunch lightern that.
One way is to put your faith in feathers. Little tiny birds, did you ever wonder how they can sleep outside naked all night? It is the feathers. Birds do not wear pants. No vests, no parkas, they all go commando style and live to cheep about it. It is the feathers, boys.
It dont take much. Try a down bag. Lots available now, 1 pound, 2 pounds, ought to be plenty to pick from. Good enough for most. Save another 3 or 4 pounds over your puffy synthetic bag and probly be warmer at the same time, it packs smaller too. Not much need to fret over gettin wet. Down bags dont work so good wet (neither does any other bag, come to mention it). Down bags you cant wring out and fake it, pretend you are OK, they take forever to dry, but figure in this - how many times do you get a sleeping bag wet? Think about that. If this is you, out there gettin a sleeping bag wet all the time, you really want to think if you should be doing something else. In the last 30 years I got my sleeping bag wet exactly 0 times. Down works fine. Light, poofy, cozy, warm. Dont wet your bed and you will be fine, is all, and you shouldnt be doin that anyways. Not around me you shouldnt.
So by this point you saved 6 to 8 pounds and hardly did anything. You can feel that. Startin to feel like real weight has gone missing. You dropped the double wall tent and then replaced your sleeping bag. Only two things you done and look at that.
Next.
The subject we have all waited for. The 3rd of the 3, the pack. You can take a tarp out for a test spin. No need to go far you just go. Back yard is fine if you have one, and it is free of lizards and motorcycle racers and most firearms. Take your tent and your tarp and set up both. And your new sleeping bag, maybe the old one too, if you want. Sleep in the new tarp in the new bag and leave the big old tent there set up with the big old sleeping bag in it just idling all night like a sweet V8 Cummins diesel and if you have a problem it is all right, you can crawl over and crawl in and turn up the heat and watch the fuzzy dice sway gently until you fall asleep again. It is not only OK it is smart, and being in the dark no one can see you anyway, or wants to sit up all night and watch to see what happens, if you are in the back yard. Do this a time or 2 and you have your new system pretty near worked out, all thats left is the new pack.
Which can be a bunch smaller now, the pack, by leaving out the bulk of the old tent and the old sleeping bag. Because you are carrying less weight and less bulk you can have a smaller pack and one that does not need so much support. Maybe no frame at all but thats a personal choice. Certainly it is up to you. Especially if you are coming out of a long term relationship with a frame pack say 20, 30 years, this will be a big change. You can go from 5 or 6 pounds for the pack down to 1 in 1 big smooth jump. It is not unheard of. Even some light packs have a little bit of stiffener inside, maybe an ounce or 2, thats OK. Hardly matters next to several pounds, or maybe your sleeping pad works OK as a frame and thats OK too, you can go even lighter with that. You can try that and see how you feel.
So say your old pack was 5 pounds and the new one is 1 pound. So now you saved 10 to 12 pounds overall, with the tent and the sleeping bag, and the pack added up, and the first trip you go on you will not believe it at all, you will be singin with joy no doubt about it, and you will never want to go back, either home or to heavy backpackin.
So thats The Big 3. The next step is if you have a big stove and a bunch of pots. Specially a white gas stove, some people still have those, but even the canister stoves are heavy. Stove and a canister of gas, at least a pound, all added up. Dont sound like much but wait a couple seconds and keep reading. Thick aluminum pot, half a pound (stainless steel is even more if you are nuts enough to carry it or bring one along to swat mice with).
So an alcohol stove is something to try.
Try it it wont hurt you dont have to stay with it just try it and sort out your thoughts later but it is worth a try at least, so do that.
You can make one, an alcohol stove, or buy them all over now, not like it was even 6 or 8 short years ago, and it will come in at a quarter ounce to a ½ ounce. Use an aluminum cup to heat water in, or a small and light pot, find something you like, the right size and shape and cost, or even use one of those big beer cans, 25 fluid ounces and so light empty it almost floats away on the air, and fun to empty out before use, or an old tomato can, its not that heavy even if it is steel. All around you can save another pound or more just between the stove and cooking utensils, specially if you get 1 plastic spoon and leave the rest out entirely.
And then from there you can cut back some more. Take a 3 blade jack knife or versus takin a single edge razor blade? Take a cotton towel or take nothing? Take a pillow or use spare clothes? Like that. Think it through.
After a while you can drop another 3 — 4 pounds of stuff you never use or take things that are not so heavy or that can do more than one thing. Use your imagination and after a while you have re-invented the whole sport of backpackin and can go places and do things you never expected. You can get to be a gnarly old happy fart and dance along the trail whistlin, lettin your tail switch around behind you with joy while watchin all them others grunt and sweat and stumble around havin to take dangerous baby steps under those enormous packs.
Go ahead, make them think your stupid. The jokes on them, Bub.
(Note on the so-called metric: take any figure above and either divide by 2 or multiply. It sorta gets you close. In case your one a them.)
Not happy yet? Few of us are, for long, but there’s no need to whine. You can have all sorts of fun with packs. There is at least one pack design for everyone. Sure, maybe you got stuck with the pack meant for Verbal Funderburk, but that’s OK. You can ship it back to him and grab another one. Or throw it away. He doesn’t even know that you got his pack, and who the hell is he to tell you what to do? 1
This is backpacking after all, home base for HYOH (Hike Your Own Hike). The same attitude applies to BYOR (Backpack Your Own Route), CYOPALAIITH (Carry Your Own Pack As Long As It Isn’t Too Heavy), WITWIVF? (Where In The World Is Verbal Funderburk?), and HIYH (Honk If You’re Horny).
Chill out, kick back, relax, cool your jets, skate, slide, slow down. Have a nap. The myriad forces of industry in every land on the map are right at this very moment sewing up a whole buncha packs, and sure as shootin’ at least one of them is right for you.
– Pockets! We need pockets! –
Ship more pockets! Pronto!
Pockets are handy, and yet sometimes a nuisance. You can keep things in pockets. You can lose things in pockets. You can lose things from pockets. Yes. Things fall out, right? So you can lose things from pockets. Right? Pockets flop around. Pockets look sloppy. Pockets look cool. Whatever, right?
If you want to climb or scramble, or you do a lot of bushwhacking off trail, you don’t want so many pockets. Pockets catch on things. They tear. If you get dumped upside down and land on your head your pockets will try to empty themselves. ’Nuff said, not even considering your head.
But if you live on the trail as a backpacker, even for two or three days at a time, let alone months, pockets become your best friends. Decent pockets are like shelves with training wheels. Use pockets right and most everything you need will be right there when you need it, and stay there, because if pockets are designed right they provide storage that is handy, and safe too.
Stop for lunch and what? Food? Check. Water? Check. Stove? Check. Fuel? Check. All there, in pockets, if you only reach for them. Check.
Get hit by a rain shower? Pull your jacket out of a pocket, in a flash. All set. Maps, lights, spare socks, warm hat, whatever, right there. In a pocket. Pockets make things available, on your schedule, which is instantly, without fuss.
If you like working this way, then you’ll want to look for a pack with the right numbers of the right kinds of pockets in the right places. Most packs with external pockets have either heavy fabric jobs with big zippers (if you have an old style hefty-duty external frame pack) or light mesh ones puckered shut by elastic. Mesh pockets tend to be skimpy, and hug tight against the pack. This looks good. It’s tidy, with the pockets almost vacuum-sealed flat, but you can’t get much into them. Or back out, if you manage somehow to shoehorn your stuff in there. They could just as well be pictures of pockets silkscreened on the pack for all the functionality they give you.
Removable pockets or pocket-like detachable auxiliary container thingies might help. That way you can position them any place on your pack that they can be tied to, and stuff each one back inside the pack as you empty it, or leave them all at home, as needed. These guys are heavy though, if commercially made. Durable, well made, but over-designed and almost bulletproof, like the built-in pockets on an external frame pack. Made to defeat the ages, and therefore weighty. But you have the option of using them or not. Or making your own.
Most packs don’t have enough pockets, or they’re odd, like those short slanted-top models on the sides of many packs, supposedly meant to hold water bottles in an ez-access way, so you can fetch a drink without breaking stride. But a bottle can hop right out of a tiny pocket. They’re too skimpy and feeble to securely carry decent-sized water bottles, and not big enough to be useful or anything else, at least in the opinion of someone who has come to love huge, deep, welcoming pockets that will swallow anything.
You ask me (Thank you, glad you did.), and I say a pack should have at least two side pockets, each big and strong enough to hold a 2.5 L Platypus bladder full of water. That’s 5L of water, for a total of 5 kg or 11 pounds. Tank up at the last water hole before sundown, on your way to a stealth camp, and you have enough for at least a skimpy evening bath, morning washup, and breakfast — maybe supper too if you can’t manage to eat along the trail first. Get pockets of that size and you have no problem shoving in a rain suit, a warm hat, a wind shell and some gloves, or almost anything else you want available in a wink, when you’re not carrying water at the end of the day.
– Mutation through adjustments. –
The more options you have to adjust, twist, shorten, lengthen, fold, unfold, tighten, loosen, lift, twist, raise or lower your pack, the likelier it is that you will find comfort in all situations.
This is true.
This untrue.
If you carry 30 pounds or more (14 kg), which most backpackers do, your pack will hurt you at some time. It will be an uneasy truce, with equal parts of love and hate. Maybe the pack will even hurt you most of the time. Putting on your pack will be like lacing into an iron corset. At the very least you will get welts. Maybe rust stains.
Face it — bolting weight onto your body is a stress test. Your body isn’t made to have stuff bolted on, or to carry it that way, or to carry anything at all. You aren’t made to carry anything, ever. It’s an unauthorized modification and may void your warranty. You can fudge and fiddle and try out various things, but at some point you will have to deal with the concept of testing to destruction. And the part that gets destructified could be you.
But that’s your problem, then, innit? Really.
Don’t say you didn’t receive fair warning.
What helps, short of catastrophic failure, is having a pack that you can adjust. Most packs these days come with the basics and beyond. Way beyond. Finding out what the “way beyond” part is, is a discovery exercise for the reader. That’s you, kid. You have to do it yourself no matter what, so go for it. The rest, the basics, are pretty simple, but you still need to pay attention. That’s why we’re here. To help.
So.
Each pack has a personality. The pack bag has a size and shape, which is a convenience feature provided to you free of charge by the laws of nature. And then. Shoulder straps, for example, are cut different ways and are all made a bit differently on each pack. You have to try packs on yourself, by yourself, for yourself, and check out each and every dimension.
Here are some things to look for.
Test for scratchy bits. Make sure that there are none. The heavy synthetic fabrics used in packs all too often have poorly-done, not-quite-finished-off cuts. These are made with hot irons that melt fabric and leave saw-like edges or claw-like scratchies. Or you might find hard folds ending in sharp points, or odd lumps here and there that don’t agree with your body. Watch for them.
As for fit, all shoulder straps have adjustments. See that you can shorten or lengthen yours enough to suit your body.
– That’s basic. But what if I’m not a basic person? –
What then, Mr Smartypants?
We’re getting there. Fasten your hipbelt.
Another thing (see, we’re getting there right now) is the load leveler or load lifter straps up top, where the shoulder strap goes over your shoulder.
These must be easy to reach, and located properly, for you. When the pack is loaded these straps need to angle up from your shoulder toward the pack bag, at roughly 45 degrees. Very small and light and simple packs don’t have these. If you carry 10 or 15 pounds (up to 7 kg) then maybe this isn’t important enough to bother with. Load lifters, load balancers, or whatever they’re called can be really handy though, even for relatively light loads. In a pinch, you might be able to retrofit them if your chosen pack lacks them and you still want them.
The sternum strap is the little doohickey strap that goes across your chest and connects the two shoulder straps. Depending on how you are built this might be an essential or an annoying and useless extra. The simplest packs have straight shoulder straps. Most shoulder straps are curved to go around your neck, around your torso, and so on. No one’s body is straight and square, so those simple-minded shoulder straps may be tempted to do things you don’t want them to, like slide off your shoulders. Or they might simply not be that comfortable, without the tensioning option that a sternum strap gives you. We’ve mentioned this before, but never get tired of being tedious, so stop whining and read on.
The sternum strap (cinch strap, chest cincher) tightens the shoulder straps up against your torso to stabilize the pack, and keeps the shoulder straps where they should be. Additionally, it helps move a bit of weight off your shoulders and onto your chest area. If you have one (a sternum strap), it’s nice if you can slide it higher or lower on your chest as needed, even if you don’t have breasts big enough to require detouring around. (Man-boobs, remember them? Them too.) Anyway, since commercially-made sternum straps are buckled on, and are therefore removable, you can decide when to use yours, and when not to.
The hippety hoppity hip belt needs to be big enough to encircle you easily while leaving enough room for squeezement tunability.
What you want is the ability to cinch it down so tight you almost cut yourself in two. In other words, if you need a hip belt then it should be a hip belt with an enforcement attitude built in. But it also needs generous padding. Those two qualities work together. Make sure the hip belt lies comfortably on your pelvic bones. Get one wide enough (that is, tall enough), and be really sure that it is well padded.
The padding, now that we’re talking about it, should be thick. How thick is up to you but as a rule of thumb more is better and firmer is better. Soft padding sounds nice, and feels nice if you pinch it with your fingers, but firm padding actually works. This goes for all areas having padding — hip belt, shoulder straps, and anything else that’s going to pressure you.
Soft padding immediately scrunches down and becomes useless, and then you hurt. Firm padding slowly and reluctantly conforms to the shape of your body without totally collapsing the way soft padding does. That’s why firm padding works, and why it slowly rebounds and recovers its original thickness and shape once you pop the buckle and release the hip belt. After the first few uses, soft padding stays flat and never recovers, which means that early on, if you have soft padding, you no longer have padding. Pay attention to this.
Smaller, lighter packs need less support from a belt because you carry less weight. Keep that in mind. If you want to go light then you need to do without some things. One of those things may be a hip belt. Keep proportionality in mind. Some people shun hip belts, and it’s your call.
A hip belt buckle must be easy to fasten, must stay securely fastened, and be quick to release. And that’s all you need. Usually this is a non-issue, but check it anyway, in case someone in the design department screwed up or someone in the accounting department cheaped out on this item.
Some hip belts are removable. Some packs don’t have hip belts. Is one of these right for you? Some packs have waist belts, which are minimal stabilizers made of webbing that can’t really support any weight. How about that? If you want to carry the lightest and simplest pack, you will have neither hip belt nor waist belt. That might work or it might not. A pack with a removable hip belt lets you dither without reaching a final decision, but if you leave the belt at home you can’t add it back while on the trail and may end up whimpering for days.
You can carry this kind of removable hip belt stuffed in your pack on some early, shorter, exploratory trips and see how things go, reattaching it if needed. But this would be a dumb trick for normal trips. If you need it you need it. If you don’t you don’t. Learn what’s right for you and then do that.
Some hip belts have small pockets all over them. Check it out. Think about it. There are many other doo-dads on hip belts these days, but they are mainly for the marketing folks. If you need a six way, roller bearing supported, color coded, motorized swiveling hip belt with built in massage fingers and rechargeable battery pack with docking stations for a cell phone, motorized fork, pocket camcorder, and laser pointer, then that’s beyond where we are here. Find a book on heavy packing. Or find a fast talking salesperson and make sure your pants are stuffed with cash before you enter the store.
Or join the Marines, especially if you also want to shoot at stuff.
– Inhale and exhale as needed. –
The ideal is to have a stable of packs, one for every kind of trip, and one for each kind of load. You can’t have that. Mom said so.
What you can have is a couple of packs designed for different load ranges. Or one pack that can cover all that you yourself need. Many packs, especially the lightweight ones, accommodate expansion pretty well. Most packs are top loaders, and it’s easy to design an expansion collar (also known as an extension collar) into the top of a pack. Larger, commercial packs made of heavier materials, and containing a frame somewhere (usually built into the pack) don’t inhale or exhale as readily. They are more rigid, and more or less fixed in volume.
On the positive side, a commercial pack (commercial meaning made by International Mega Corporation, Inc. or one of its subsidiaries) can be carried kinda-sorta reasonably well half full because of the help it gets from its frame.
A light pack, either totally frameless or one that depends on a folded sleeping pad, is touchier this way.
All lighter packs, if they’re decent at all, are more heavily reliant on compression. It’s fairly easy to poke a few more goodies in at the top, tighten the drawstring, roll the top flap closed, and be on your way. Or pull on a strap, or do whatever the particular pack needs. More compression means a tighter, more secure load without extra weight.
Likewise when you empty a pack. Use up food or other consumables, and you need to adjust the pack to make it leaner, and once again tight. The pack has to shrink. Most light packs are fairly good at this too, up to a point.
A good pack both inhales and exhales, and you can also breathe easier if you have one of these. The pack gets taller or shorter depending on how much you carry, and its girth also changes a bit, but less dramatically.
Many packs have a couple of compression straps on the side panels. These squeeze the pack bag front-to-back. They hold everything tight, regardless of which direction the pack gets loaded from, or how full it gets. Framed packs have heavy vertically-oriented straps too, for top-down and bottom-up compression. A pack needs some kind of unvarying basic rigidity for the up-down compression to work well. Without a measure of built-in rigidity, the pack bag sags and gets lumpy, or leans one way or another, or gets too short for the shoulder straps and hip belt to work right. The required rigidity comes from a sturdy frame. A sturdy frame is a heavy frame, so look out.
For frameless packs, battening down the top hatch helps a lot without helping a whole lot, because they have essentially no vertical rigidity for up-down compression to work against.
A few packs have prominent and beefy horizontal straps. These squeeze and compress the whole bag like a bear hugging a sack of bacon. This can be useful but it’s trickier for a maker to pull off, and fussier to use.
These horizontal straps tend to squish the pack, and dig deep into the sides of the pack bag, which balloon out every place where the straps aren’t, like what happens when you squeeze a handful of mud it skooches out between your fingers. This sort of compression helps, but a better way to do it is to get even tension all around the pack bag, tension that is applied through all of the pack bag’s fabric, and not just via a few narrow straps.
This is harder to do.
Some packs have crisscross lattices of cord on the front and sides. You’ve seen these. They make sort of a diamond pattern. They give an impression of tidiness. They have been around for ages, and they look great. They have that Official Backpacking Stuff look.
Some hikers use them as clothes racks, for keeping things handy, like a rain poncho or a windbreaker, but a pocket is more secure. Your things can all too stealthily slip out from under a set of cords, but they won’t jump out of a pocket. Cordage, overall, is more decorative than useful, and good for only minor adjustments. If you yank on the cords embracing your pack, then good luck getting that serious, bone-crunching compression you want. Cord isn’t like webbing straps, isn’t wide and flat, can’t be grabbed as easily, can’t be pulled as tight, but is better than nothing — it does help, and you’re better off with it than with nothing.
See if it works for you.
So how many packs?
Generally you’ll want a small pack for short and light trips (day pack) and a big one for long trips (backpack), but finding a pack with an adjustable volume might just make it versatile enough for both, so all your trail days get easier. If one pack does work for you. And it’s going to be really small for a backpack.
– Indestructicize me! –
Durability is important.
If you don’t think so, then try this thought experiment. Imagine that you are made of cotton candy. That fuzzy sweet stuff on a stick. True, fuzzy and sweet may already describe you, but now imagine yourself a light, slightly neon pink color and let’s get on with it.
You are a cotton candy person.
Now go for a walk in the rain. Poof! Suddenly you’re a puddle of sticky goo and the ants are all over you. Because you weren’t durable.
So you want durability. You want your pack to be durable. Everybody wants a durable pack. But there is durable and Durable and DURABLE. (We could continue, making the letters bigger, and so on, but you’ve probably gotten the drift by now.)
Durable, that’s the word.
Durability is relative. In a lot of ways.
One way of thinking about durability from the ultralight or ultra-ultralight end of things is to assume that an extremely light but well-made pack will last one season, if given reasonable care. If normal people label you as fussy then you might get two seasons out of a superlight pack. That seems nuts, but pushing materials to the limit and beyond the limit means you get less and less durability.
Newness itself can become your safety margin, if you have no other.
You’ve heard of doing more with less?
That comes first.
The next step is doing less with less.
You might do scary mega-hikes, but if so you carry less and you do fewer dumb and dangerous things. You care for your gear because you have to — the gear you have chosen has no safety margin. This is the sense of doing less with less. Here’s another thought experiment — Drop kick your old pack from the 1960s and you break your foot. Drop kick your Area51 MicroNegaWeight Syntho-Pack from EtherealGear and it explodes into a cloud of colored lint. That’s the difference.
Durability goes the other way too. You can look for something more durable than ordinary. Maybe the places you hike are gnarly. Fine. Most commercial packs are designed to carry loads of 30 to 60 pounds (14 to 27 kg) and do it for years without care or maintenance. That should be good enough. If you need more you can have a pack custom made or custom modified. Other than that your selection process won’t change much.
One reason packs are so heavy (and durable) in general is because makers don’t like to get sued. Another is because people expect to carry a lot of weight. These two considerations don’t have to be part of your life.
All things being equal, more durability is always better. But durability adds weight. And weight is always bad. You want to see weight go to zero, or even go negative if you can swing it, but you’d like to see durability go to infinity, if not beyond.
If you could, you would make that work. But durability and lightness are mortal enemies, and because you don’t want a big fight taking place on your back, you look for a workable compromise. Unless you are nuts. If so, keep reading anyway. At this point it couldn’t hurt.
– What is durability good for? –
You might ask this with a straight face. You might, but probably not. Nevertheless, let’s humor you, just this one time.
Durability is good for abrasion resistance.
If you climb, do heavy scrambling, or explore rocky slot canyons, your pack will scrape around on rocks. That’s hard on anything, packs included. You most likely want to avoid a featherweight pack under those conditions. Or you want the ability to repair it on the trail, on your own, if you do take a light pack into scary territory.
What is durability good for? You might ask again. (In case you forgot where we just were.)
Durability is good for heavy load resistance. Sounds dumb, but look once.
Carry a heavy load and the pack needs to cooperate. Some packs suck at carrying heavy loads. Generally a frameless pack is tolerable up to 20 pounds (9 kg), or a bit more, for a while. If you have mad pain tolerance skillz.
But that gets old.
Carry more weight and you need a pack built to take the stress. And built to transfer that weight to your body in a non-destructive way. The pack will have some kind of frame and heavier-duty fabric and fittings. Weight strains everything, so the pack needs to be beefier. No surprise there. The pack also needs a good way to get rid of the pain and stress of that weight by transferring the weight of its contents through its frame and padded parts onto the parts of your body that can handle it. That’s another kind of durability.
Instead of durability though, think toughness. This is the same thing, but expressed differently.
What is toughness good for, you ask.
Great question. At least now you’re asking a different question. Good.
Good. We like that quality in you. So.
Toughness is good for puncture resistance. Again this sounds odd, but. Some places are thorny.
Thorns poke.
Thorns poke packs, and can poke holes in packs, or poke holes and then cause tears. Tears can bring tears, to your eyes, and thorns can too, all by themselves, but we’re talking about packs. Quit whimpering. It’s packs we’re interested in. Tear resistance is a kind of toughness that everyone appreciates.
Maybe you’re in a wet place, and you count on your pack to be waterproof, which is being tough in yet another way. Tough against water. Usually you are better off with waterproof bags inside your pack, but there are circumstances where a pack made like a dry bag that river rafters use could be the right thing. If so, it needs a tough and slippery hide. And water resistance. And puncture resistance. That might be an edge case, but it’s one more category to consider when choosing a pack.
– A color for every yokel. –
You can choose a pack by color, maybe. Go ahead. Dare ya.
Packs made my mom and pop outfits come in the color you get. Packs used to be green or black. Then they went to bright blues, or crimsons, with a few yellows. Today, right this minute? Who knows? Maybe it’s gray this year. Maybe neon puke green, with sparkly tassels — who can say? Big outfits often give you two-tone packs in two options, like dark green on light green versus red on gray, or gray and yellow versus gray and blue. Eh.
Not much choice, overall. Want choice, make your own or go the custom route.
If color is really important and you absolutely can’t get a pack with a bright enough or dull enough color you can always fit it with a lightweight cover in your favorite color, which is a good excuse to carry a rain cover or lightweight plastic trash bag. Other than that, you’re stuck. A light color will keep a pack a bit cooler, and a dark color will do the opposite while hiding dirt stains, but neither matters enough to make a difference, except for hiding the stains. That’s about the end of it.
– Observe yon weather event then. –
If you like the rain cover idea you can do that. Waterproofing a pack is impossible for mortals, though a few people going on special trips have used that river runner dry bag option. You might find something you like, in a dry bag with shoulder straps already attached, but the fabric will be designed by Clyde and Elmore, The Stiff and Heavy Brothers.
Option two is to find a dry bag and modify it by adding shoulder straps. Still from Stiff and Heavy. And then, because of that sewing business, you have just punched it full of holes. Neener neener.
Packs and rain just do not play well together. Rain always wins. (Hint: remember the sewing and holes bit?)
So choosing a pack for weather resistance is not really a productive pursuit. A pack cover is an extra item to take, adding weight and complexity but it keeps most rain off the pack.
The real waterproofing happens inside the pack, through the clever use of plastic bags. Maybe double or triple layers, around key items like cameras and other electronics, your bedding, and your spare clothing. In a pinch a large plastic bag can go over the whole pack, filling in for a dedicated pack cover, or if you wear a poncho, and it’s big enough, throw its tail end over your pack. This is probably the best option.
If.
(More ifs follow shortly.)
If you can use a poncho (mild, calm weather, not windy). If you can stand to use one. And so on.
Picking a pack on its ability to defeat rain is a waste of effort though.
Likewise for other aspects of weather. Cold doesn’t hurt a pack. Neither does heat. If you travel where it’s hot, stuff key items deep inside, insulating them with your bedding and clothing and they will stay cool there. Some desert travelers have used umbrellas for shade, which keeps the sun away from the pack entirely, as well as from you.
Wind is only an issue if you carry a big pack and the wind is able to throw you around. Wind doesn’t directly affect anything about the pack though.
Packs don’t rust or corrode but sunlight will eventually deteriorate the fabric. There isn’t much you can do about that, and one kind of pack or one brand will not be better than another. If you do a huge amount of backpacking the fabric will weaken in time, but if you carry a light pack and are reasonably smart you’ll be replacing it long before you have problems, and if you carry a heavy pack, the fabric is so durable and the pack so overbuilt that you might not ever have a problem because of ultraviolet light degrading it, no matter how long you live.
Beyond that, nothing you encounter is likely to hurt a pack or give you a basis for choosing one over another.
Keep in mind that some chemicals will affect pack performance. Unless you are especially unlucky you will not walk through a cloud of chlorine gas. What you might do is innocently launder your pack and somehow end up putting it into water containing chlorine bleach. This weakens nylon. Don’t do it. Sailboaters know not to sluice the salt from their sails by rinsing them in the backyard pool. The same applies to packs. Avoid heavily chlorinated water.
– Conclusion. –
We’re done. What’s for lunch?
– Footsie Notes –
1: Or you can forward that pack to someone else, who might need it even more, like Ave Maria Klinkenberg, Barbara Savage Machinest, Bobo Yawn, Consider Arms, Constance Stench, Craspius Pounders, Gaston J. Feeblebunny, Gizella Werberzerk-Piffel, Humperdink Fangboner, Larry Derryberry, Louise Ghostkeeper, Mary Louise Pantzaroff, Naughtybird Curtsey, Primrose Goo, Rapid Integration, Rat Soup.
All real people, by the way: http://bit.ly/1waDJAr
But hey, on a personal note, whatever happened to Grover Icenoggle, Bismarck High School, class of ’66? I used to know him. And Egwan Spelmanus? (Ditto. Not joking either.)
