What? That’s Not Enough?
Other features to consider.
– So what else do I have to go on? –
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.)