How Hard Can This Be?

How Hard Can This Be?

Actually Using A Backpack.

– One foot, two foot. –

You walk. You have to. Otherwise you get nowhere. Skip the walking, and then go home, and everyone inconveniently asks how your hiking vacation was. All those people who said you were nuts to spend two weeks backpacking. Remember them?

Do you really want to look them in the eyes and admit that they were the smart ones?

No. So walk already.

And take your pack. Wear it, and like it. No whining. Work it out. Here's how.

First, select what to take, based on who you are, where you're going, the weather. Blah, blah. We've done that. Fill the pack. Covered that too. Now put the dang thing on and walk.

With most packs your back is going to get sweaty. Most packs will do this to you, except for a few external frame packs with mesh panels that keep the pack bag from contacting your back. And they aren't perfect either. A long way from it.

Kind of makes you nostalgic for the old days. When men were men, women were women, and, as Douglas Adams said, small furry things from Alpha Centauri were really small furry things from Alpha Centauri. But those days are gone, and so is Adams. No one knows any more what's going on down Alpha Centauri way.

So now we have to face reality. Your back will get sweaty. And there are no small furry things to help you.

It isn't really all that bad. Remember to wear a knit shirt made of synthetics, and rinse it a lot. Wash it every two or three days at a minimum and you should be OK.

Another thing — every time you stop, take the pack off.

This will let your back air out as well as giving your body a break. Synthetic shirts dry in a couple of minutes, and once they do you can't really tell that they've been sweaty at all, if you rinse and wash them often enough. A day or two into a trip, you will know that your shirt isn't laundry-room clean no matter what, but you can keep things under control with a little effort.

Whether you have an internal frame pack or a frameless one, it will ride up close to your back and you will be burning a lot of calories no matter how light your pack is. You will be burning calories because you are backpacking, not because of a particular pack design.

So you will burn calories and your shirt will be wet from sweat. Can't avoid it. Ventilation abates some of this, but as we just said the only way to deal with this situation is to stop and take the pack off, and wash a lot, both you and your clothing.

It might be a good reason, because of the foregoing, not to worry about having a pack with special pockets to carry water bottles in. You know, the packs that let you reach back to a water bottle, pull it out, and drink from it without stopping.

Stopping can be good.

Stopping is good.

Stopping allows you to stop.

So carrying a bottle with a built-in filter can be good too, though you still have to be sure about where you find water. Once you have the system worked out you can walk carrying little to no water at all. Then when you come to a water source you stop, take off your pack, take off your shoes, scoop up water, have a nice drink, look at your maps and your watch, take a whiz, do whatever, and meanwhile you dry out. Works fine, and every time you stop like this you also get a rest. Once done with your business, you continue walking.

Breaks are good. There's no reason to make your hike be like work.

Work is what you are trying to get away from, so don't push too hard.

While the pack is on your back it should feel comfortable. You ought to have this worked out by now. (Hint: read the previous chapters.) You've checked out packs, gotten one that's the right size and shape, learned how to fill it and adjust it and all, so the pack should feel good on your back. We've gone over shoulder straps, hip belts, load lifters, and load stabilizers. Remember?

Well, then if not, here's a quick refresher to fill some space.

– Pull on things, see what happens. –

Most packs are easier to get into and out of if the shoulder straps are loose. So, if this works for you, put the pack on with loose shoulder straps. No, not disconnected or anything. Think loosyness.

Loose enough to be pleasantly sloppy without being disconnected. Put on the pack and then tighten the shoulder straps. Each strap has an adjustment, usually at its bottom end. Pull there, and snug each strap, and check to be sure that both are the same length unless you need to compensate for an unbalanced load. If you get one strap longer than the other you'll get some weird effects. Maybe one shoulder will hurt, or you'll feel a weight shift, or the pack just won't sit right.

On the other hand if the pack is simply loaded unevenly you can deliberately and consciously use the shoulder straps to compensate. If you absolutely have to. But this shouldn't happen. Often.

Most packs have hip belts, big wide padded things. Ultralight packs sometimes have them, sometimes not. If your pack has a padded belt or anything at all wide enough to carry weight, you'll probably want to use it for that. Hip belts take weight off your shoulders. They do that by forming a cushy circle that can actually be made smaller in diameter than your hips by tightening, so once you do some pulling there, you get the hip belt tight enough for to do its job.

Again, follow the Goldilocks Principle: not too much of this, not too much of that, but somewhere in between. A too-loose hip belt won't do any good. One that is too tight will bruise you. One that is too high will squeeze your belly. One that is too low will cramp your hip joints and the muscles there. Keep the hip belt resting on top of your pelvic bones, and keep it just snug enough.

Practice until you know what this means.

Load lifters (on top of the shoulder straps) pull the top of the pack bag up against your shoulders, and improve balance. Load stabilizers (between the hip belt and the bottom of the pack bag) pull the pack's bottom in tight against your lower torso and keep it there.

So, once you finish pulling and tugging on everything you get a pretty good fit. You're all set. Start walking. But keep in mind that you'll be adjusting your pack all day.

– Never satisfied, you. –

You will keep adjusting your pack all day because you won't stay satisfied for long.

That's the good news. It means that you are alive, and that you are walking.

These are both positive signs.

Because you are alive and walking, you will get tired. That's a good reason to adjust your pack.

Maybe, during a long day, that hip belt starts to bug you. This is most likely to happen with a heavy pack. A heavy pack isn't the worst thing that can happen, especially if you are in the early days of a long trip without resupply. Even an ultralight pack will annoy you, if it's full-up past its weight rating with munchies and fuel.

So say the hip belt is giving you problems. What you can do is loosen it and let the pack sink so all the weight shifts to your shoulders. This will feel good. For a while. After that while your shoulders will hurt, but there you go. Another chance to adjust.

Every day is like this.

Sort of.

But really, if the hip belt feels fine for the first couple of hours and then seems to be giving you trouble, you are simply overdue for a break. Stop for a bit. Take off the pack. Have a snack, or wash up or something. Sit and look at the sky. This is good for the soul and for the body too.

OK, back to walking.

On smooth, even, level trails you don't need to do too much with your pack. Get the shoulder straps just snug enough, the hip belt embracing your midsection in a friendly but not aggressive way, the pack balanced left to right and fore and aft, and you're done.

It's an easy balance. The pack sits there, and you walk under it, and every now and then you stop for a break. No big deal. There isn't much else to do. Shift the weight back and forth between your hips and shoulders if you need to, and otherwise don't think.

If things get really annoying it means you haven't taken enough breaks. Take more breaks. How often do we need to say this?

If you want to do 20, or 25, or 30 miles a day (30 to 50 km), then do that, and accept suffering. If you want to do 10 miles a day, then do that. There is nothing wrong with doing what feels right for you.

Bigger mileage means more effort, more strain, less time to admire the landscape. It also gives a huge boost to your ego to prove that you can do it, but it can be a lot like driving on an interstate highway, staring at the horizon, always driving right at the speed limit, with white knuckles all day long. Slow is OK too.

Remember, you can always lie when you get home. Who's to know? Tell them you did all 25-mile days. We don't care, and neither do they, really. To them you're only a goofball no matter what.

OK, back to walking.

Rough trails or off-trail travel are more demanding. You need to think more, you need to be in better shape, and you have to pay more attention to your pack and what you're doing with it. First, make sure it's packed tight and compressed into a solid wad. Then get it balanced and snugged up against you. Third, tighten that embrace and make it even snugglier.

You'll want to pay attention to those load lifter straps at the top, and the load stabilizer straps at the bottom. If your pack has them, of course. If not, do your best with what you have. Generally, larger, more expensive, more conventional packs will have more adjustments. Light packs, no.

Always do your best, but in these circumstances (off trail) what's going to happen is that you'll be taking big irregular steps, small irregular steps, leaning right and left, swerving, bouncing up and down, and trying to balance yourself at odd angles without snapping off a leg or destroying an ankle. This means that you need the pack tight against your body so it stays with you.

No wobbling.

The pack needs to feel like one piece. It needs to be balanced, and then pulled tight against your body, and cinched down, like it's part of you.

Doing this might mean a little more fiddling with straps and belts when you stop and start again, but it's going to help you when you are walking, and could keep you from getting hurt. No sense falling over and getting bruised because your pack decides to move left when you move right. Off-trail travel is different from walking on a smooth path so you need to pay more attention to get it right.

– Moving in a 3D world. –

If you'll be going uphill for a good long while, you can loosen the pack so it leans away from your upper body. If your pack allows that.

This is where load lifters are handy. Loosen them and the pack will lean away from your upper body. Let it do that and the pack will give your back some breathing space, which is nice, because going uphill is hard work and will make you even more sweaty. What a coincidence.

Uphill walking is slower too, so there is less chance that you'll be wobbling. That means everything can stay looser. It's a good chance to pop the hip belt buckle and ease it out a half a notch. Or more.

Shoulder straps can sag some too. It won't hurt. Let the air circulate and get to you. You'll feel better for it. You will be leaning forward while headed up, and the pack will lean back a little and sit on your lower back, supported by the bones there. Sweet.

Take breaks, often.

Be good to yourself.

Downhill is harder, in a way. This always seems odd. Going uphill takes muscle effort, and makes you sweat, but it's easier on the body overall and doesn't require talent. Downhill travel can kill your knees and ankles right straight dead, and throw you off balance instantly if you make even a slight misstep, it but doesn't require much muscle effort, only staying vigilant and upright.

Going downhill you need to lean forward. It's a different deal though.

Leaning forward pushes your backside toward the upslope, and lowers your center of gravity, while keeping it centered over your feet. Forget this and your feet will slide out to the front while the rest of you does a tail-end-tango with Mother Earth. Which is not fun. She wears big boots and kicks butt hard.

So what about the pack while going downhill?

Needs to be tighter than for uphills, for one thing. Balance is a lot more important going downhill, so the pack needs to hang onto you tighter. If you move you want the pack to go with you and not to try running off somewhere else.

Shoulder straps: seriously snugged. Sternum strap too. The hip belt won't be carrying so much weight (the pack will be leaning into the back of your torso as you lean forward), so it can be left only snug instead of tight, but you should definitely keep it buckled. Load lifters and load stabilizers, if you have them, do a good job of keeping the pack sucked up tight against your back, and that is also good.

Going downhill, do what you can to help the pack hang onto your back like a monkey hugging a banana tree.

– Like a rolling stone. –

Going off trail is quite a bit like going downhill.

Move carefully, maintain balance, and keep your pack in sync like an experienced dance partner. Going off trail in open country doesn't require much more than this, though you should keep your caution tank topped up. A lot of times you'll be walking through grass or low shrubs and won't be able to see each and every thing on the ground. You'll be feeling your way with your feet as much as with your eyes, so balance and coordination with your pack are both important. Rocks tend to show up in the oddest places. So do abandoned and overgrown animal burrows. Unexpectedly drop your foot into one of those, fall over, and you have a real problem. Always be extra careful off trail.

Hiking off trail through tall brush is like this but more so. For this kind of hiking an external frame pack is miserable. You get hung up on everything. You can't help it, because parts of the pack's frame are jutting out there, sort of reluctantly going along for the ride, and doing nothing but waiting to grab anything that comes within reach.

Some of the larger internal frame packs are like this too, simply because they are big, and have so many extra straps going every whichway. But do your best with what you have.

The first rule is to keep it clean. Streamlined. Make your profile as small as possible. Keep things inside the pack. Nothing lashed to the outside, or if you have to hang something on the outside of the pack, keep it straight behind you if possible, in your slipstream. If you have a sleeping bag tied on, inside a stuff sack, don't carry it on top of the pack. Keep it behind your butt, where it will be hidden from brush. Especially if you have a huge butt.

Have a rolled up sleeping pad tied on? Hang it vertically rather than horizontally. Things like that.

Because.

Whatever sticks out above your head or to the sides will get grabbed by anything and everything around, and you will be held back or yanked off balance, continuously. Think smooth and sleek — streamlined. Then be smooth and sleek.

When going a long distance in brushy country, empty your side pockets, and stash their contents inside the pack bag. Then pucker up the pockets so they lie flat against the pack. An extra benefit of all this caution is that you don't have to worry about a pocket getting ripped open and secretly spilling valuables under an anonymous bush, or having something you thought was lashed on really well mysteriously disappear along the way, somewhere or other, in the middle of a long featureless stretch.

Go slowly.

Don't get hurt.

There is time.

– Wither weather? –

Weather can be hot or cold, wet or dry, or a combination.

Most people prefer dry weather, even if it's too hot or too cold, because there is one thing about rain — stay in it long enough and you and everything you have with you will get wet.

And then stay wet.

That's the other thing about rain. It stays with you. There is no way around it. It is a law of nature.

No pack ever made will keep its contents dry forever. It simply does not work that way. Packs have too many seams, for one thing, and seams are nothing but holes with thread laced through them. Even if a pack is meticulously made and carefully sealed, normal wear and use will eventually widen enough needle holes along the seams to let in more water than you want to think about. Plastic bags are modern miracles, and it pays to carry your gear inside bags inside your pack. How many bags, what size, and how many layers of them are things you need to work out from experience.

Some of the large trash bags for yard waste are big enough for most anything, but made of thin plastic.

Trash compactor bags are big and tough, but heavier, and sometimes too short.

A type of plastic bag called the contractor clean up bag is big and tall, and rugged, but much heavier, at four ounces (113 g) each. A bunch of these big heavy guys will add significant weight to your load. It might be enough to fret over. Or not. But keep it in mind. Find the right balance for your needs.

If the weather is dry it doesn't matter too much if it's dry and hot or dry and cold. The variations are mainly a matter of clothing and water supply.

Carrying lots of water gives you a big weight penalty, and you have to move everything else around to accommodate that water supply. If the weather is dry but cold then thoughts about water can be demoted a notch or two, but you need to keep extra clothing handy. Either way, having a flexible attitude and a pack with easy access to its insides and enough pockets helps a lot.

– Wet. –

Some people don't worry about getting the pack itself wet. As long as everything inside is well wrapped and protected, and therefore dry, they're happy.

This doesn't work well if you are using your pack as a pillow at night, or as stuffing under your knees, or sometimes if you just keep it inside a sealed tent with you, where it raises the already high humidity. A pack cover might work better, since it minimizes how much of your pack gets wet, and how wet it gets, and you can wad up the pack cover overnight and leave it in a corner. But don't forget to wrap everything inside the pack even if you do use a pack cover.

Generally, if your pack is protected by a pack cover it will be easier to keep things inside it dry and usable no matter what kind of extra protection you have for those things. A pack cover also makes the pack easier to dry out once the weather improves, since the pack itself won't be soaked, but it's up to you. You can buy a separate pack cover, make one, or use a trash bag that has slits cut in it for your shoulder straps. Many rain ponchos do double duty by protecting both packs and hikers, and some do triple duty by also converting into shelters.

– Etc. –

If the weather is humid but not drippy, what happens is not so much getting the pack wet as getting it dirty, especially in hotter weather.

Because you sweat more. Sweat is sticky. Sticky, dried sweat attracts and holds dirt. Sticky, dried sweat is dirt.

You might find it nice to rinse your whole pack every now and then, to remove salts and oils due to sweat, though it's awkward to find the right time for this, and you have to remove everything from the pack, and then let the pack dry. Packs are made of heavy fabric and are slow to dry, but rinsing out dirt and body oils might be worth it, since this also removes odors that attract critters looking for late night salty chewables.

Snow isn't a big problem, even though snow is water. As long as the weather stays cold, snow is more like clean dust than true precipitation. You can brush away snow and tolerate a tiny bit of melting. Your pack will dry quickly. Some snow may get inside but it will be no more than a nuisance. Snow, unless it is really wet, and you have a lot of it on you or in your pack, is dry compared to rain.

It's rain that is the big problem. Having a pack cover or doing your hiking under an umbrella will not only keep the pack dry, and add extra protection for its contents, but will make it easier for you to get access to the pack's insides without adding to your problems.

Huh?

You need to get into your pack throughout the day regardless of weather. Weather doesn't care about you.

Wet weather means that every time you open your pack you get some water inside. External pockets help by allowing you to get at things you need without opening the main part of the pack. For those times when you do have to open the pack, a separate pack cover provides some shelter from some of the rain. Lift the part of the pack cover you need to lift, and leave the rest of it undisturbed, in place, continuing to protect the pack.

If you carry an umbrella you can hold it overhead while bending down to dig inside your pack. This helps both you and the pack, unlike a pack cover that protects only the pack. If you wear a rain poncho covering everything — both you and your pack — then maybe you can slip off your pack while still under the poncho, pull your head in through the hole, turtle-like, and be inside a temporary tent while you open your pack. Depends on how flexible you are, how windy it is, and so on. Keep it in mind. It's a handy trick.

– Breaking time into long pieces. –

Sometimes you stop for a long while. This is usually once a day, in the evening. Time to unload your pack.

If you are all ready for bed and still don't have an empty pack then you have brought too much. One rule of thumb is to always have dry clothes to sleep in. Another is to never bring more clothes than you can wear at one time. A third rule, related to safety, is to always be comfortable, with the expectation that if you are comfortable then you are not in danger.

These three rules fight a little. They aren't perfectly consistent with each other, but they form a good guide.

If you unpack for the night, and you have everything you need out in the open, or on your body, and your pack is not empty, then something is out of kilter. Maybe by design, but if not, then it's time to reassess how much you are bringing, and how you are doing things, and how to improve your planning and packing next time.

This scenario assumes that you have already dealt with your food, fuel, cook set and stove, and all that other stuff that needs to be hung out of the reach of unannounced guests who might wander by.

A major focus for the end of the day is shelter. You might need to hunker down under your shelter while unpacking. Maybe not, if the weather is good, but shelter is still your focus.

If you carry a tarp you can set it up first, then unpack under it, and reverse the process the next morning. Traditional double wall tents don't give you this option, but some hammock setups do. It's handy in the rain.

Aside from dealing with shelter you'll be laying out your gear and segregating it.

Food, fuel, cooking equipment, and odorous items go together, and get hung up overnight.

The shelter gets erected.

Bedding is arranged within the shelter.

Spare clothes go on your body.

Miscellaneous items like water bottles, toilet paper, watch, flashlight, and so on get placed where they will be handy.

This is a time when an orderly pack pays off. Unpacking is as important as packing. If like things are together inside your pack, then you know where to look for them, and can pull them out as needed.

Unused food is normally in one lump. So are spare clothes, except for things like rain wear, wind breaker, and gloves that are sometimes needed during minor emergencies all day.

Bedding is a class by itself, normally in use all night and out of sight all day. Toiletry items like soap, sunscreen, bug repellent, and toothpaste might be carried out where they're handy during the day, but get promoted into the odorous food group for overnight storage. Even so, you keep them in designated places when you are not actively using them, so you can actively use them when you need to.

Once your pack is unloaded you can use it as part of your bedding or store it out of reach, with your food and stove. Otherwise porcupines, mice, or even deer can mess it up in their quest for salt. (Even cute little deers can get aggressive, when salt is involved.) But until you turn in, use your pack as a focal point for staying organized.

– Focus, then focus some more. –

If you have small items out, or are changing clothes, or doing anything at all, it's really helpful to keep everything in one place. A pack makes a good home base. It is an easy target to hit.

Even better if you have a white trash compactor bag you've been using as a pack liner. The white plastic makes a brilliant contrasting background for things you lay on it. Especially as evening light fades. Put down the white bag, put your pack on one corner to keep the bag from running away, and use the rest of the plastic bag as a place to temporarily lay things until you turn in.

Gloves are easy to lose. So is your sleeping hat. Socks, watch, flashlight, water bottle, overnight supply of toilet paper. Anything. Everything. Even if they're not actually in your pack, your pack can still exert a kind of gravitational pull that holds these odds and ends together.

Once morning comes, and it's time to reload your backpack, put your focus back on the pack. Put the pack down somewhere convenient but out of traffic. Even one person, you alone, can get in your way, so plan for this. It's unbelievably easy to lay something down, and then step on it, swear at yourself to be more careful, and then step on the same damn thing again. Stay organized.

Keep everything near the pack, preferably on something like a trash bag, or whatever works for you. It is terrifically easy to lose small items like a button flashlight, a little bottle of sunscreen, or pulled stakes, even when these are right in front of your face. Putting them on one of your trash bags (preferably white) means that you'll see those things before you leave camp behind and disappear down the trail.

This way you can start to load the pack and still have that handful of small but precious things anchored to one spot and not laid down randomly in places that you are sure you will remember but sometimes don't.

Planning ahead, establishing habits, and being mindless is easier than remembering to remember special things each and every day. Once it's too late, when you are hours away down the trail, in the next county, and you remember with a tingly chill of fear that you left your knife or flashlight or wallet sitting on a stone where you would be sure to see it but didn't, you have a problem, and not the kind of problem that's solved for amusement.

It's surprisingly hard to locate a campsite you left, just hours after you left it. All bushes and trees suddenly look the same, especially so if you practice stealth camping and pick out-of-the-way places to sleep, and are careful not to leave any trace of your presence.

Keep this in mind.

We've been over pack packing so you know the important things about that. The rest of the program is to stay organized.

– Organize. –

Learn the meaning of this word and then keep it in mind constantly.

Use your pack as the center of your camp world. Let it draw things to it. Break down your shelter. Lower your food, fuel, cookware and fragrant items from the treetops. Pile those near your pack. Pile your sleeping clothes there too. And your bedding.

Then begin filling the pack. When you are done you have nothing left on the ground but the pack itself, and since you kept everything in only that one spot, you don't have to go ranging around the entire camp site in ever widening circles, hunting for things you might have left behind, or maybe not, or wondering which, because you don't see anything you obviously left out somewhere.

But do that anyway.

Go sniffing around your entire camp site, hunting with an open mind for things that look out of place on the forest floor. For things you might have left behind.

Then do it again.

Every now and then you will be amazed by how stupid you were, without even trying. It happens. You fill find some precious little part of your gear that you set down and immediately forgot about.

Don't trust yourself.

But rest assured that if you always keep things together you will lose very little, very seldomly, because you will make it hard to lose things.

But again, never overestimate your intelligence.

Sometimes your supply of toilet paper will be smarter than you, and will hide where you can't find it. So hedge your bets.

– When time is only crumbs. –

Short breaks involve less heavy lifting than long breaks but they follow the same pattern. Stop. Put down your pack. Take out only what you need. Keep things together, with your pack as the center of attention. It's the largest, most easily identified thing you carry, and that makes it a great landmark.

Tripping over your pack is not a problem, it's a reminder. If you trip over it you know where it is. This is good. You want to know where your pack is.

When you stop for a drink or to peek at a map you won't be unloading much, but it's the idea that counts. Once you develop a habit you can think less.

In a way, that's the point.

Think less.

Don't think at all, if possible.

Plan ahead, develop habits, then stop thinking about the small things. Plan on using only the minimum amount of intelligence, holding plenty of brain cells in reserve and well rested for when they will actually make a difference.

Keep your things together, do the same things in the same way, in the same order, all the time. Store things in set locations, and use your mind only to double check, right before you push off again. Scour the ground with your eyes, try to remember if you did anything different this time, and if so, try to remember what the heck it was, and make triply sure you didn't play any dumb tricks on yourself.

A short break is a short break whether it's a stop for water, a peek at a map, time for a snack, a pause for a photo, or a quick check of the view. You should have a basic routine for everything you do so you can keep the housekeeping straight. Get the ordinary, boring things worked out so you can have fun.

Want to set down the pack and walk a few feet to a view? You know to set the pack down so its back (the side that goes against your own back) is open to the air, and preferably aimed at the sun, so it can dry. You know to loop the chin strap of your hat around one of your trekking poles so no stray gust of wind can suck it off into the void. You know to do this even if there is no wind, because the juiciest accidents happen exactly when they can't possibly happen.

Simple things, like that.

Always tie down your camera. It won't blow away but it can roll like crazy, and it is amazing how easy it is to kick, precisely when you don't want to, when it is actually completely impossible to do that, and then watch it roll down a 75 degree slope and vanish to a small point that immediately bounces off several large rocks just before it disappears forever among the trees far below you.

No, this one didn't happen to me. Yet.

Stop for lunch, when you have to unpack food and water, and maybe the stove and fuel and so on, and your process is a little more complicated, but it follows the same plan. Have a routine. Keep things together. Stay organized. Carry things in standard places. Check, double check, and triple check before moving on.

– Less isn't more, it's less. –

Everything above applies if you are traveling ultralight. But less so.

You won't have so many straps and adjustments on your pack. No ultralight pack has all the straps. They don't need them.

If you have an ultralight pack and you really need more padding in the hip belt, or if you pine for load lifters or load stabilizer straps, then you are bumping up against the edge of a different universe. You are trying to make an ultralight pack do what it shouldn't have to do. You need to either lighten up or move to a bigger, fancier pack. Both methods work.

Lots of manufacturers are advertising ultralight packs that weigh anywhere from two and a half to four pounds (1 to 2 kg). Or more. Those aren't ultralight packs. That's marketing, but one of these might serve you well, so don't worry about the marketing verbiage. A pack in this weight range will have some kind of frame (probably) and more adjustments (certainly).

A real ultralight pack will weigh no more than a pound (0.5 kg), give or take a few Universal Weight Units, and will have at most only a hint of something vaguely resembling a frame.

Bottom line: you'll have a bag, two shoulder straps, and maybe a light hip belt. Anything else may need to be supplied by you. The shoulder straps and hip belt will be adjustable for length but that's it. Simplicity.

Within a loaded weight range of 10 to 20 pounds (4.5 to 9 kg) this kind of pack will be comfortable. Going uphill or on level ground you won't need to worry much. On rough ground or downhill you'll need to snug things up a bit, but getting a pack balanced or keeping one from bouncing around are not so important when the pack weighs less.

Stopping for lunch or for a bath gets to be a slightly bigger deal because though your pack gets smaller as you move into the ultralight world, the things you put into it don't, so much. You might carry a stove the size of an aspirin tin but you don't carry small food to go with it. You might use a tarp instead of a four person tent, but your clothes and bedding stay big enough to fit you. Things like that.

So when you stop and pull something out of an ultralight pack, relatively more comes out. On the other hand you will carry less, so overall your trail life will be simpler. You'll have what you need but no espresso maker, no ice cream ball, no satellite phone. No kites. No guitars. The pack will be smaller, lighter, and easier to handle but other than that everything else is about the same.

As with any of the larger packs, you also want to keep an ultralight pack the focus of your world. Intelligence counts. It is your main advantage.

Welcome aboard.