Bag Snuggliness

Bag Snuggliness

Loading And Adjusting A Backpack...
And getting comfy with your outer bag.

– Let's get cozy once –

Once you have a backpack you have to do something with it. That's kind of the point. Otherwise people will laugh at you. Maybe getting laughed at is your goal. Since we're all about the Hike Your Own Hike thing and being an individual and all, if you get into this to be laughed at, and you are laughed at, then you have scored your points.

Congrats. You're done. Now get lost.

But if not that, if instead you really want to go backpacking, then you need to know how to load this bag thing you've bought. There is an art to it, some basic rules, a technique.

A pompous jerk would start claiming that it's a science, but science, real science, is a way of asking questions and looking for evidence of things, maybe evidence of things you don't even know enough to expect. So loading a pack isn't science.

If technology is getting things done, then pack loading is closer to technology, with personal twists and quirks thrown in to pacify taste, which in turn is a pretty good definition of art.

So let's call pack loading an art.

Every art has rules.

First you learn the rules. Then you follow the rules. Then you come to understand the rules. Then you break the rules as you see fit, sometimes because you have become a true artist, but usually because as time goes by you get lazy and stupid.

Cool.

You can do what you want, any time you want. That's true. But it's better to find out the "right" way first so you don't have to make all the dumb mistakes that everyone else has made. You want to get out in front of the herd and make new, more up to date, stranger, more bizarre and personal dumb mistakes that no one has thought of yet.

So here are some rules to help you. Rules to practice with.

And keep Bag Snuggliness in mind. It might help you remember what is most important. B is for (b)alance, ag is for (ag)ility, and snuggliness is for comfort, convenience, and clever personal arrangements that suit you. They all relate to that bag on your back.

But, if you're a real stickler for carrying through with this fake acronym thing, then you could say that snuggliness (or S.N.U.G.G.L.I.N.E.S.S.) is something like Super Normal Unexpected Genuine Gigantic Lovely Innovative Exceptional Supreme Sexiness. Which sounds about as lame as what you would expect from a guy with nothing better to do than write a noodly book on backpacks.

OK. Let's pretend that didn't happen and talk about Balance. Balance is most important. Keep two things in mind.

First, the balance point for a load you carry on a relatively smooth, relatively level route is high up on your back.

And second, the balance point for a load on a relatively rough, relatively steep route is low down.

This is really one rule, but if you break it up into two parts you can sound smarter than people expect you to, and if you do this in a room full of people you get to draw more diagrams, which will make you even more impressive. And in a good way, we hope, though it doesn't work every time.

But you can always run away.

And try not to tip over and fall down on the way out, because you loaded your pack the wrong way. It makes everything worse, even worse than wearing your backpack to a dinner party in the first place.

– Perfecting proportions. –

Weight is important. Never forget that, but given a weight you can handle, its placement is more important than how much weight it actually is.

If a pack drags down on your shoulders or forces you to hunch over just to get by, then you have a problem, especially if you already walk that way without a pack. The higher your center of gravity the less you have to lean forward to get your pack to carry well. If the weight in your pack is high enough then you need to lean only a little.

If you have a choice, a pack that's smaller at the bottom and bigger at the top is better, and a tall, tapering pack is better than a tall wide one, and much, much better than a short wide one, all things considered. A shape like the first one fits the human torso, and a pack that is small at the bottom can't have its bottom end overstuffed with heavy things. You absolutely don't want big heavy things hanging off your rear bumper. Weight should be near your back and relatively high, not at the bottom.

Beyond this, a pack that is wider at the top spreads the weight across your shoulder area, which has enough acreage to handle it. Spreading weight is mostly good most of the time.

An internal-frame pack that wraps around your body is good. This keeps the load close. Many internal-frame packs wrap around the lower body, but get narrower toward the top. You end up with too much weight too low and too little capacity on top. For backpacking use. If you use this kind of pack on well maintained, level trails. This shape works better off-trail.

Other internal-frame packs have a taller, more slender, more rectangular shape, but they can stand too far off the back, dangling too much of the load way, way out back, and making it harder to carry for that reason. Or they may just be too tall.

Remember that you're working in three dimensions. Side to side, you want a balanced load. Front to back, you want the weight close to you. And then the vertical dimension?

Vertically it's harder.

The higher the pack's center of mass, the easier it is to balance by leaning forward just a tiny bit. But this gets tippier on uneven ground, and throws your balance point around as you move, especially if you're prone to waddling.

Having weight too low, on the other hand, is like hiking with your pants around your knees. So, half of one and 50 percent of the other.

But whatever your pack is like, and whatever the conditions are like, if you know the basic ideas you can rearrange things to better match those conditions, and to suit yourself.

– Let's get your load high, dude. –

Getting the load up high in your pack means that you don't have to lean so far forward to get balanced, and the way to do that is to get the weight over your pelvic area. How the pack is attached to your body doesn't matter. It can be hanging on your shoulders, it can be perched on your hips, it can be at the end of a tumpline that goes around your forehead. The line between your pack's center of mass and the center of the earth is what matters. As long as you arrange for this imaginary line to go through your personal center of mass as well, you'll feel OK, balance-wise.

You can see the line if you put on your pack and have someone drop a plumb bob alongside you. You can watch in a mirror, and you don't even need a permit.

A plumb bob is a string with a weight on it, is all. Place the free end of the string about in the middle of one side-panel of your pack or a little higher or lower, depending on how you loaded the pack, and the weight on the end of the string will take care of the rest. For the weight you can use a rock or a boiled egg, anything that will hold down a string, even a cat toy, if the cats are safely locked up for a while. The line that the string makes when it has a weight on it will point straight down at the center of the earth, which is where gravity comes from. Gravity wants that cat toy, and wants it bad, so it pulls on it.

Gravity wants your pack too, so it pulls on the pack. Your own center of gravity is somewhere around the middle of your body near your pelvis. Think of your center of gravity as a timid little mouse, and your pelvis as this big, safe, sturdy place for it to hide. That's why, sometimes, when you walk, you squeak a little. Some days it's due to joy, some days it's out of fear, and some days the little mousie just does not want to get out of bed at all, not even to go for a walk, and it will get pissed and squeak at you to stop. But keep going. Walking is good for both of you. What do mice know anyway?

You feel balanced if all weight you carry (including the weight of your own body and your personal, inner mouse) aligns, so when you have your pack on and the plumb bob thingy hangs down and makes a line through your pelvis you'll feel balanced. This should be obvious, even to the stupid.

OK so far?

So walking around then, in your house or out on a well groomed trail, with your load up high, as strange as it sounds, makes it easier to balance. It's easier to balance because you only have to lean a little bit to bring the load into alignment with your inner gravity detector, and then you feel pretty good.

For two reasons. (More of this two-stuff.)

One reason is that you can stand up and walk around without lurching all over, or straining, because you are balanced.

The other reason is that, since you need to lean only a little bit, you can stand almost upright, and that feels comfortable. That feels comfortable for those of us without humps or long, knuckle-dragging arms. There is a little more to this though, and it is also strange.

There has been a lot of development with backpacks and frames and straps and harnesses and all. The point being to saddle a person's hips with most of the weight, since the pelvis is a big heavy rigid bony thing and is handy as a place to put things, the way a coat rack is, first for coats, and then for hats and umbrellas, and eventually for anything you can possibly hang there, because it's handy and it's a rack and it's right there in front of you.

But actually, having the weight up high, if it's done right, transfers weight onto the shoulders and the spine (and not the pelvis, directly) in a way that makes the load feel better. Depending on how you carry it, of course. And to be clear, it doesn't make the load feel better, it makes you feel better while carrying the load. Just to be clear. Are we clear?

The spine has been working at carrying loads for a very long time, and is good at it. Putting the right amount of weight on the spine in the right way is helpful. The spine is kind of springy and works like a shock absorber, while the pelvis and leg bones, are strong but rigid and don't absorb shocks too well.

Step down off a curb the wrong way and you know it immediately. Bang! You've done this same thing every now and then while unexpectedly going off the bottom step after you thought you'd already gotten there. Big surprise, every time.

Staying flexible and springy works better.

If you carry weight then, and it's up higher, and it also leans against your upper back and shoulders, you have your whole body working for you — all those joints in the spine and all the muscles and ligaments that would otherwise be only hanging around, with nothing to do.

So stress gets spread all over, and each part of your body takes less of it. The stress flows naturally through your body, from one part to the next, and no one area gets hammered with all the stress all at once. This is why people who carry big loads use tumplines or giant baskets hooked over their shoulders, or balance things on their heads. Not because they're dumb, but because it works.

We don't do it though.

Not where I live. Probably not where you live.

We don't do it not because it doesn't work but because we're ignorant, and we're ignorant because our regular lives don't require us to be carrying things all day, every day.

– Loads that don't get high. –

The other main kind of travel is over rough ground, which may be steep as well as rough, or may be only steep. If you can't walk more than a step or two in a straight line, and have to watch the ground to avoid planting your butt or your face, then you want your load low.

This helps because of...

(Wait for it.)

Balance.

If your load is low then you don't lurch around so much. A small twitch or lunge has less meaning. Try it. Stand up with your feet together and then lean. Forward, backward, left, right — it doesn't matter — just lean. Take your pick. Any direction works. What happens is that right away you start to fall and have to go straight into serious tap dancing mode to stay on your feet. Pretty obvious.

Now try it the other way. Sit cross legged on the floor and do it. Way different. You can get a lot more lean on without losing your balance. That's the idea. A lower center of gravity makes you more stable. Like one of those dolls with the round, weighted bottom that you can't tip over.

The other reason a low center of gravity is good on rough ground is that you are more agile. You can make bolder moves without problems. It's easier for you to twist and turn without coming down in a pile. Twist and turn and lean and sidestep and be easy, my friend, for you are doing well. You don't have all that swinging mass up high, working like an upside-down pendulum. You are in control.

The opposite is also true. To stay balanced on level ground with your weight low you need to lean forward a lot because that's what it takes to get the weight of your pack over your hips where it belongs. Makes sense.

Carry a lot of weight, down low, out over your behind, and you need to walk bent over. Like a geezer. Otherwise you fall over backwards.

Which is not that great, even if you already are a geezer.

But hang on a sec.

See, this is a big plus on steep, rough ground. Leaning forward is good for going uphill. Same for going down hill, along with keeping your knees bent. Otherwise your feet slip and you do the dreaded butt plant. Take a big step up, down, or sideways? Less problem if your weight is low. You can lean more, and reach for that handhold or helpful bush, without falling over, because your center of gravity, and center of balance, are way low.

And your inner mouse will be pleased with you.

– Load me up, load me down. –

First in, the light stuff, load-wise. Remember that. Whatever is puffiest — put that in the pack first.

Your bedding, a sleeping bag or a quilt, whatever you use. Whether you travel on-trail or off, leave room down at the bottom for the airiest things you have, regardless of pack type.

Try leaving bulky things loose. Like shelters. No need to turn a tent into a log by cramming it into a stuff sack, and then go puzzling over where to put it. Shove it into your pack loose, and it will fill empty spaces and the fabric will not crease and form fault lines that crack and leak. Tent poles, if you have them, can go along the sides inside the pack, or into an outer pocket, if your pack has such pockets. Or you can strap them outside somewhere.

All your soft things can stay loose, come to think of it.

Sleeping bag, clothes, all that — loose.

Use plastic bags to keep like things grouped together and to protect them from rain. Trash bags are big and light and give you freedom to stuff whatever you have wherever you have room. Tie them closed loosely or not at all. Simply folding over the tops will keep water out while letting you compress the air out of them as you load the pack.

Plan B (there's that ever-handy Plan B).

Say you have a particular big, bulky item. OK.

Say you have a particular big, bulky item, and it's so big that the protective plastic bag you're putting it into has no extra room to be tied off or folded over. OK.

Now what?

Well, shove that item into a bag and arrange it comfortably, with the bag's open end up. Now take a second bag and place it over the top, so when you're done its open end is pointing down.

Now you have the first bag not closed off and pointing up, and the second bag not closed off but surrounding the first one the way a pillowcase covers a pillow, and pointing down. The first bag (containing your precious, large, puffy thing) is now inside the first one.

You'll be able to squeeze the air out of both bags and still get rain protection, without any tying. Both the top and bottom ends are covered, and the middle has a double layer of waterproofing.

Food.

You can break your food supply into several parcels. It's easier finding room for half a dozen small lumps than a single giant one. But. The universal rule is to keep weight close to your back, and centered. Not closer to one side than the other. Right near your spine, and equally distributed right and left.

For off-trail, put heavy things lower.

For on-trail, keep them higher. Use the bottom edge of your shoulder blades as a guide. That's roughly the area to think about.

Up in that area, between your shoulder blades, is where you carry the heaviest items, unless you hear otherwise. And you won't, so don't wait up tonight, 'cuz you ain't hearin' nothin' to the contrary later today, or tomorrow either. It's set.

– I've been framed! –

So let's cover the loading process for framed packs and then for frameless packs.

Exciting, isn't it?

At the bottom, with a pack that has a frame, goes your bedding, usually a sleeping bag. Next, your shelter, loose, stuffed around and on top of that. After that, your spare clothes, then food and water, stove and cook set. Fill empty spaces with small odds and ends.

Your shelter could well be a fairly heavy one, but if you pack it loose its weight is spread out. Clothes don't spread out so well. A fleece shirt is smaller than a tent, right? Doesn't cover as much area, right? The result is that the weight of clothing items is more lumpier (lumpier-er), but, individually, clothing items are smaller and lighter, and you can use a bigger bag for clothes to keep things loose and flexible. Or use several bags for clothing. If your food is in several parcels you can arrange that somewhat, but food is still pretty dense. With food you always have lumps. And there is only so much you can do about a stove, and fuel, and pots.

Water is extremely heavy, and you can't do without it — always a problem.

Most of the time you don't need to carry much water. In dry country, though you may have to carry a lot, and simply manage somehow. Water's weight is about two pounds per quart, over eight pounds per gallon (one kilogram per liter), so water makes a difference.

Interesting fact: water weighs over 60 pounds per cubic foot. Stack four small loaves of bread in a block, with two on the bottom row and two on the top row, forming a rough cube, and that's about a cubic foot of volume. Now imagine each loaf weighing 15 pounds (almost 7 kg). Serious weight. This sounds insane but it's true. You can play around with bread at the supermarket next time to kill the boredom of shopping while thinking about backpacking

And in case your imagination isn't quite up to that, use bags of sugar or flour instead of bread loaves. The weight will add up faster to a more realistic total.

OK, back to work.

After the big bulky items, and the mind games with water, deal with the odds and ends, the things you want to have perpetually handy.

This is where pockets shine. Some packs have a top pocket, and it might work for you. A compass, your maps, first aid kit, snacks, a sip of water, sun screen, insect repellent, and maybe a watch and flashlight are good to have handy somewhere. A wind jacket, gloves, and rain wear are good to have handy too, and don't forget sunglasses. You don't want your delicate orbs to sizzle.

Most small items are easy to stuff wherever they fit, but having them get-attable is important. Much better to pull bug juice out of a side pocket in a minute than to stop and rip everything out of your pack in a panicked, profane frenzy while inhaling clouds of things with wings, legs, feelers, and sucking parts.

Same deal for a rain jacket. It's a real bummer to get drenched, along with everything that should stay inside your pack, while you search for that rain gear, buried in there, somewhere, you hope, because you haven't seen it lately, as you pull absolutely everything out of your pack and throw it all over the wet ground.

Specifics for internal-frame packs:

• Keep heavy items close to your back.
• On-trail, keep weight moderately high, for easy balance.
• Off-trail, on uneven ground, keep heavy items lower, which keeps your center of gravity low and increases stability.
• Be sure you have everything cinched down tight too, to limit load shifting and to fend off the wobble monster.

For external-frame packs:

• Once more — heavy items up high.
• Remember to keep the load balanced, and have the weight as close to your back as you can manage.
• You'll have a more top-heavy pack, but this is easier to walk with on a good trail, which is what external-frame packs are for.
• If the trail gets ornerier, move your weight lower. If you do much off-trail walking you'll appreciate having a different pack more suited for that.

Going climbing or out for some serious off-trail scrambling? That's a different story.

Here we're talking about walking, so you want the weight well above your hips. How far up depends, on your type of pack and whether you're hiking on a trail or doing easy to moderate off trail trekking. Scrambling and climbing are not backpacking. They are different beasts with different needs. Climbers and scramblers don't belong here. Scram.

– What should I do if I become frameless? –

Frameless packs and all really light packs that might have stays or stiffeners but not real frames need a different, kinkier approach.

Generally speaking, first in is the bulky, light stuff, same as before, with heavier things up higher, centered, but with some differences.

Next to your back, put your sleeping pad. These fold up pretty well, and some frameless packs are designed to use them as a sort of frame anyway. A standard pad measuring 20 by 48 inches (51 by 122 cm) folds right down to 12 inches wide by 20 inches high, which is a handy shape that matches most packs and most backs. In other words, it folds into a multi-layered, accordion-folded pad-stack that's one quarter of its original area and four times as thick, due to the folding.

Beyond that, while packing your pack, keep everything as loose and flexible as you can until the pack is loaded. A sleeping bag or quilt in a plastic trash bag makes a cushy, soft, insulating second layer along the back of the pack (the part near your back). Or, if you sleep in a hammock, using an under-quilt, that under-quilt and your sleeping bag or sleeping quilt will be all you have for backside cushioning, so be sure to position them near your back. (If you're doing this, you'll need a pack with stiffening stays, a light framesheet, or good compression to keep it all from slumping.)

Next, stuff in your shelter, filling in the bottom of the pack. If you're going light you might be using a tarp or single-wall tent, or even a rain poncho that doubles as a shelter, all of which will be much smaller than a standard tent, and lighter, so you win twice.

Your food bag is big or small, depending on trip length, but for most trips it will be the heaviest single item, and the densest. One thing that works is to keep your food in one narrow and long bag, stood vertically on one end so it runs up the middle of your back like a long sausage. (Mmmm, sausage.) Stowing it this way will also help to stiffen the load. Get your food lump moderately high and keep it centered along your spine. Compressing the pack at the end of the loading process will hold your food and everything else in place.

Work in clothes (protected by plastic bags) toward the front of the pack (on the side away from your back), and tuck them around the food bag to stabilize it. If you have a load of water it's good to have it in several containers (preferably not the heavy, hard bottles), and arranged up high with their weight balanced equally on each side of the pack. Your stove and cookware go in the same vicinity as the water, but if you're going ultralight they weigh only a few ounces, total.

For small items, use secure pockets or carry these items collected in a mesh bag stuffed inside the pack, up at the top.

One trick that works really well is to break out the day's food and keep it handy in an outside pocket or in the pack's top pocket if you have one. This also works for an ultralight (and small) stove and cook set. That way you can just stop, fix a meal, and resume hiking without having to unpack everything and repack it again after lunch. The same goes for soap, a toothbrush, and a square of fleece to use as a wash cloth for freshening up. Small, collapsible, flexible, and lightweight water bladders carry comfortably in external pockets, especially when empty.

– Space administration. –

Keep that trash bag idea in mind, especially if you're tight for space. A big shapeless soft thing is always easier to arrange than a solid wad. And be creative. Repack your food while preparing for a trip, leaving the boxes and wrappers and all other garbage at home and carrying the food in soft, mooshable plastic bags. But be sure that they are both soft and sturdy mooshable plastic bags.

Use empty containers or the empty space in cooking pots for socks, hankies, gloves, and so on.

Share weight with friends.

Share weight with friends?

Sure. You carry the tent. Your buddy carries the water filter and some communal water. A third person carries the stove, fuel, and pots. You all carry your own food. Or spread the weight around some other way.

Light hikers have fewer problems this way, but consider your options and do what makes sense. Instead of two six-pound two-person tents for four people, you may have one 8x10-foot (2.5x3 m), 16-ounce (454 g) tarp for all four of you, so your sharing plan will be different. Even a 9x12-foot (2.7x3.7 m) tarp is not that heavy, especially if shared among several people.

Be able to strap things outside your pack. Early in a trip, before you free up space by eating food, this can help. You don't need a ginormous-huge pack all the time, but sometimes you do need more space. Use the lightest space you can find, which can be a couple extra stuff sacks.

Use things up, then fold the stuff sacks and poke them inside the pack, and by the end of the trip you'll be carrying almost nothing, and all in the smallest pack possible. On the downside, strapping things on the outside of your pack makes packing harder, makes these things easier to snag on brush, or to lose, but it's a valuable option when used appropriately.

Stick with the pack you have, if you can. No need to buy a bigger one if there is another way to do get the job done.

Plan ahead, and buy a pack with pockets, or buy or make some detachable pockets that you can leave at home when not needed. Pockets are things that thru-hikers have learned the value of. Weekenders can remain blissfully ignorant about pockets almost forever because their demands are lower. But if you live out of your pack for even two weeks, let alone half a year, you learn the value of pockets.

Most important, take only what you do need.

Rules of thumb:

• If you have it and don't use it, then you don't need it.
• If you need it but didn't bring it then you'll find a way to not need it.

Aside from food, water, and a warm place to sleep, you need very little. With a few rubber bands, some nylon line, safety pins, a couple of spare plastic bags, and an extra strap you can stay light and do all sorts of fun and useful things. Carrying a light pack is also a huge leap ahead in comfort and flexibility all by itself.

– Adjustomania. –

All the straps and snaps and buckles you get with a pack are there for a reason. If nothing else you'll want to find out what they do. Your ideal fit is something you'll have to find by tweaking, and you can do that by pulling on things, but after you get tired of that here are some guidelines.

Shoulder straps work best when they're comfortably snug but not tight. Make sure you have both of them the same length. If one is off you get weird results. On the other hand when you discover that your load is unbalanced you can compensate by adjusting the shoulder strap length until you find time to do major rearrangement surgery.

Load lifters atop shoulder straps are good for tilting your pack forward. Tightening these straps tugs against the shoulder straps, which then in turn pull back against your chest. This takes weight off the top of your shoulders. Tighten load lifters for level travel or descents, and loosen them for ascents or if you want a cool air gap between the pack and your back for a while.

The hip belt, if your pack has one, is there to take the weight off your shoulders too. It should rest on top of your pelvis and be snug enough to stay put. If it slips way down around your hips it's either too big for you or you have it too loose, and if you tighten it while it's low like that it will squeeze your hip joints and the muscles there. This is not great, but if you are stuck with a badly-sized hip belt, you can always loosen it every now and then to vary the strain, letting the pack sag and put more weight on your shoulders, for while, in between rest stops.

The sternum strap is good when snugged, but keep it away from your throat. Loosen or tighten it for variety. It also moves some of that stress from your shoulders onto your chest, which helps to keep annoying pressure out of your life.

A tight load is a happy load. Wobbly packs suck, so fiddle with compression straps to squeeze everything tight and to find your sweet spot. Compression can help temporarily to reshape a poorly loaded pack, which happens sometimes. If things get too bad then unload the pack during a rest stop and redistribute the load.

Maybe you can tough it out all day with a goofy load, but learning to deal with problems teaches you new tricks. There is nothing like fixing the same problem many times in a row to teach you the value of getting it right the first time.

Your pack's weight balance changes as food and fuel get used, and the last two or three days of a long trip will be vastly different from the first two or three, especially with ultralight packs. You might end up with spare clothes as your heaviest item, or your shelter. Adjustments and flexible thinking help you to cope.

Keep in mind that all ultralight packs depend on what's in them for shape and stiffening. All of them.

Normally, food (your heaviest item) carries well vertically and high, along your spine. Sometimes though, especially off trail, it works better to nestle your food bag horizontally, and keep it low, down in the small of your back.

If you have large, low-hanging side pockets that are close to your body, and you need to lug big loads of water short distances while searching for a camp site, then carrying water in this kind of pocket, very far forward, low, and near your pelvis, can be surprisingly stable and comfortable. For a while.

Once again, use whatever works for you, but start with the standard techniques and work out from there to feel out your own way.

Yippee! We're done here!