I Need To Take What?

I Need To Take What?

The Gory Minute Details Of Packing A Pack.

– Hey, this is serious! –

So now let's get desperately serious. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and on the trail each and every morning is desperate. Stuffing your pack is about the most serious thing you're going to do on any normal day next to scratching, shooting snot rockets, and speculating about what would happen if you never went home again. Stuff your pack wrong and it will hurt you, all day. Leave something out, like a few tent stakes, your water treatment, your stove, or the car keys, and you will be hurting. Promise.

So you have to get it right.

This is a good excuse to have a checklist, a clipboard, extra pens, and carbon paper. Maybe an assistant, too. Possibly two assistants, so they can both watch you, and check each other. This is important. Every day, every time you open your pack, you have problems. The first problem is finding what you need and getting it out. The second problem is putting it back. Back were it fits, back where you can find it again. Back where it won't fall out.

But most of all, back.

Leaving a fuel bottle under a bush is bad form.

Setting off with your only pair of gloves dangling from a pocket is begging for punishment.

Having to pull everything out of your pack to get at a matchbook sucks big time. Always.

Sure, sometimes you can't avoid it, but try, OK? At least try to avoid it. The less you have to handle all these things the smaller your chances of screwing up. The less housekeeping you do the more time you have to hike. Never tempt the gods. They will whup you like a chump. The gods love to do that. The gods love to do that more than anything else at all.

But best of all, the less you do the less you have to think.

Ahhh...There's a thought!

If you want to think the best place is at home where you can put your feet up and fall asleep in a comfy chair with your mouth open, where no one will see you except the cat, who just might join you.

You don't go backpacking to think. You go backpacking to goof off. There's nothing better than walking along with an empty head, totally blanked out and vacant, allowing healthy fresh air to blow freely through your now empty cranium, completely blissed.

Aim for that.

– Take me, I'm yours. –

There are two ways of looking at packing.

• One is deciding what to leave.
• The other is deciding what to take.

Which method you use is up to you. The good news is that sinning is its own punishment. Take too much or too little and it's your problem, all the way. Don't plan on begging if you run out of food. Everyone else needs what they have more than they need you.

Have pets? Watch them. They are instructive. It's fun if you have two or three. Lay out some treats, but not enough to go around. Watch them fight. Yes, your nice, considerate loving pets, even if they were litter mates, are now snarling, scratching, biting balls of homicidal fury.

Now extend that to a backpacking group full of people you've never even seen before. If you forget your food then don't expect anyone to share the love. Instead, plan to lose an amount of weight equal to the amount of food you left at home.

Deciding what to leave is hard. You have stuff. Everybody has stuff. Stuff all over. Stuff to wear. Stuff to eat. Stuff to stuff inside other stuff. Stuff that goes outside stuff. Stuff and stuff and stuff.

You got stuff.

Everybody got stuff.

Get it?

You like your stuff. It's part of you. It works. It gets into your head, so you think about it.

How about taking those socks with the little smiley faces? They could be fun. Maybe you wear things like that, or maybe the socks were a gag gift once, and you've never worn them because they're really dumb, and now you stand there thinking, Hmmm, we're going to be out in the woods, having fun, on vacation. So I could pull these on and see what happens. Goof around a little. Sure, why not?

And it starts.

Take a spare cup. An extra shirt. Only small things. One of these and one of those, just in case. Might be useful. Nice to have. Maybe. In case. You never know. Better safe than sorry. An inflatable pillow couldn't hurt, could it? Binoculars would be fun...

So there you are then, your pack is so heavy you can hardly pick it up even though you aren't carrying water yet, or food. And all you have in your pack is the bare essentials. Plus a few extra things. Just a few, but they're all really light, so what's the deal?

You've just been creamed.

Blindsided.

Flattened by an express train that you yourself assembled from parts. It weighs 18,000 tons but it's all light stuff, so it can't actually be heavy. Right?

That's one way to do it - Starting with everything and deciding what to leave. The other way is deciding what to take. For this, plan on taking nothing. Zero. Zero is step one.

Next, for step two, pick one thing that you absolutely must have to stay alive. It helps to break things into categories and pick from each category. Clothing. Shelter. Food. Bedding. Like that. So pick one thing.

Then branch out.

Say you've picked one piece of clothing, but what can you do with only a pair of underpants? Got to have a bit more, so what's one more piece of clothing that's absolutely essential?

Try that. Pick it out. Hold it in your other hand.

You need footwear, and pants and a shirt. One shirt to wear on the trail, and another one when things get cold, or when you wash the first one. So now you have under pants and footwear, outer pants and two shirts.

Likewise for a second pair of socks, but since you're trying to pick only what you must have, you debate it with yourself, and choose to include only what you absolutely need. For your well-being, for your comfort, for your safety. Regardless of what anyone else thinks.

Then you think about wind and rain protection, depending on the climate and local weather. Gloves. Boy, that's about it. There isn't much else you need there, so move on to the next category.

Shelter?

How big, how heavy-duty? Double wall tent for four? For two? Single wall tent? Slim wisp of a tarp? It depends. On you, on where you're going, on how long you'll be out, on what the weather will be, on how much else you'll be carrying. On whether you'll be alone or not. Start with nothing on your list, then pick the minimum you need to get by. Find out how smart you are.

The same with bedding, food, fuel, odds and ends like first aid equipment, your pack itself. Chances are, for most people, if you try to pack this way you'll end up with less.

If using Plan A, deciding what to leave out, you might be stuck sagging under a lot more weight than you need, but if something unexpected happens, you'll have a spare, or just the right odd thing to fix the rare odd failure. Like if you have super glue along, and a wheel falls off one of your little plastic model cars, you're set. If you want to be.

Following Plan B, deciding what to take, you might find that you left out something you really do need, or that you don't have that spare thing you could use, or that you can't really cope too well if, for example, you have a July snowstorm instead of humid, drippy heat and thick clouds of mosquitoes, all of whom really want to get into your nose.

So either route can take you to a place that sucks. But it's up to you. Something will always suck. No matter what, you can count on that.

– The best of times. The worst of times. –
Backpacking season.

Face it, you're hosed no matter what. Backpacking is like that. You're never comfortable for, let's say, more than a half hour at a time. Usually not over three minutes and seventeen seconds, tops.

The experience can make up for that, after time, when you forget all the painful crap. Or maybe your whole trip turns to crap, which happens, and you get a world of discomfort and have a lousy time too. It happens. But that's your problem. We're talking about backpacks here, not getting touchy-feely. No sniveling.

So. You have now decided either what to leave or what to take. Done.

Let the pain begin.

You have to distribute the load. We got into some of this in the last chapter. It sounded so easy. Like you could sort of just, hey, take your stuff and put it into the pack in the right way and go. But it isn't as easy as that. It is important to get the ideas right, and keep them in mind, and know how to use them, but there is more.

It's like the old saying. I had everything perfectly planned, and then life got in the way. Or something like that. You've been there. A mouse in your food bag. Or a rattlesnake in your pants. Something. You still have to manage because once you're in over your head, you're in, and it really doesn't matter how deep, because having a snake in your pants is not theoretical. You gotta do something, not think about it.

So distributing the load in a pack is not only a matter of putting things into the pack in the right order, and getting them into the right places. It is a lot more like what those people do with the plates. They used to show up on TV a lot in the old days. The folks who have a bunch of sticks, and they spin plates on them. The whole stage ends up full of spinning plates on sticks, and the performer keeps running around, spinning them up again as they get slow and wobbly. These people usually have a few more plates on sticks in their hands too. It gets busy.

Loads are like that. Real loads are.

Every day you start fresh, and if you have it right your pack is OK. Then you stop and tank up on water. Or you stop for lunch. Or you stop and wash some clothes or have a bath. No matter what, every day you are fiddling with your pack all day long, and fiddling with what's in it. You're adding weight or removing weight or moving things around. So no matter how well you plan things, and no matter how terrifically you loaded your pack in the morning, it gets rearranged all day long.

The basic ideas are...

• Soft things against your back
• Light things toward the bottom of the pack
• Heavy things higher up
• A balanced load
• And necessities where you can reach them
• Be as stupid as you have to be, but no more.

– Groping in the dark. –

But that isn't the whole story. A pack is not a suitcase.

Dumb as a box of rocks describes a suitcase. That's all it is. A box. With a handle. You put things in, crank it shut, lock it, and hope to see it again at your destination.

Packs, no.

Packs are alive, active, intelligent participants in every step of every trip. Packs are companions. They are servants and they are mentors. A pack can actually teach you a lot. About yourself, about life, and about making compromises.

When you load your pack in the morning you not only need to get the right things in the right places based on composition (soft and puffy vs. hard and lumpy) and weight (light vs. heavy), but you have to organize based on how you plan to live.

It's good to plan on living. Don't underestimate the value of that.

Some things stay in the pack all day, like your shelter and bedding. Some things have to come out at least once or twice, like food, stove, pots, cup, and so on. Some things need to be handy, and might stay in the pack all day, or might not. They might come out once, or several times, like a cat who can't wait to get out the door, and then when you let it out, it can't wait to get back in again. Rain wear is like this, if it's a showery day, but mostly sunny, but showery again. And then sunny.

So within the basic guidelines you need to group things by importance and accessibility and weight.

Water is a real problem. Loading up on water really shoots tidy plans to bits. Water is not only heavy, but if you take a lot of it on board, it's bulky too. Now do that just to survive, and you have two more problems - extra bulk and extra weight. And one more - suffering with it because you stay alive.

Water is probably the nightmare item.

Ahhh, life.

If you are traveling through hot dry country, you'll need to carry a lot of water, and you'll need to get at it constantly. Then, whenever you have a chance, you need to stop and take on some more water. This means that you dig around in your pack a lot, adding and removing weight, and changing where the lumps are. And the balance. And urinating. If you drink enough.

But normal trail life is like that anyway, just not so intensely.

Most of the time food (and what goes with it) is probably the main issue, and tastier than water.

Most people eat at least once during the middle of the day. Some also have the evening meal on the trail, and possibly they even wash up along the trail, before even thinking about looking for a camp site. This requires a stop, then removing the pack, pulling some things out (like food, your stove, cook set, drinking cup, fuel), cooking a meal, cleaning up, and repacking before continuing.

Your main food supply will be the heaviest single item most of the time, for most trips. It can stay in the pack. What you need during each day can be separate.

Keep the day's food at the top of the pack, or in a front pocket, or distributed between side pockets. A small alcohol stove is a blessing because even the heaviest and grossest of these, commercially made, weighs only three ounces (85 g, but if you make your own it could be one sixth this weight). And these stoves are small. Which means you can put this kind of stove almost anywhere. If you have a two pound (910 g) stove the size of a small cantaloupe, it is not so convenient. Cooking pots work the same way.

The main idea here, though, is that you don't have to keep all of something in one place.

Food has a good side and a bad side. Your main food supply is big, heavy, and bulky, but you can pack it so that today's little bit of food can be put somewhere else, all by itself, for easy access. See?

Alcohol fuel is good that way too. Doesn't need to be pressurized inside a steel can, isn't explosive, isn't corrosive, won't take your skin off, is basically not toxic (but keep it out of your mouth, nose, eyes, ears, and so on), and it simply evaporates if spilled. Alcohol can be distributed in various containers around your pack as needed.

Water is harder.

A lot of people like to carry big, expensive, bulky and awkward water filters. If you have one then you have a chance to build pack packing skills. Figure out where in the heck you can carry the filter so it's handy and safe, and so you don't contaminate the clean end through contact with the dirty end. (Most people aren't bright enough to even realize that this is a problem, much less avoid it.)

Using chemical water treatment drastically cuts weight and bulk, but you still have to carry treated water, just as if you filtered it with a heavy filter.

Using a bottle with a built-in, just-in-time filter means that you're always stuck carrying the weight of a filter, but you can get by part of the time without carrying any water. Instead, you scoop up what you need when you need it, and filter it as you drink. But then again, you have to carry the bottle even if it's empty. And the filter.

Other things you might want handy during the day are an extra shirt, if you get chilly, some bug protection (either chemicals or netting), a wind jacket, or wind jacket and wind pants, or full-on rain protection.

Then you also have maps to worry about, and maybe a compass, sunscreen, a hat, gloves, nail clipper, lip balm, flashlight and a few other odds and ends.

– Herd management. –

It pays to keep similar things together.

OK, remember that we're not talking about the things that you put into your pack in the morning and then leave there. We're talking about things you assign to temporary homes during each and every day.

Your day's food may be a small enough lump so it can stay by itself in one small bag. If you have a small stove and cooking pot, then these stay together. Many canister stoves fit inside cooking pots. Keep the pot gripper there, and the wind screen, and you're set.

A water filter will be a single item, though you need to pay attention to which end is which, and since the filter is partly wet, you'll want it separate from everything else as well.

Spare clothing is good in a small stuff sack or in a plastic bag. Something like an extra-warm second shirt, spare socks, wind shell or rain jacket, and gloves can all stay together.

Maps are good in their own small herd.

Depending on where you are and with what maps, you might have half a dozen of those. A ziplock bag might work, stuffed into a side pocket or some other place that you find handy.

Really small or high value items like sunglasses, sunscreen, bug repellent, lip balm, compass, or knife can stay in what some people call a ditty bag, or what the old mountain men called a possibles bag. What's in a possibles bag is what you might possibly need. Inside the top of your pack can be a good place to put this so it won't fall out or get knocked loose, or you might have a pocket that closes securely.

If that works for you.

Some packs have special arrangements for small water bottles, rigged so you can reach the bottle as you walk. Sometimes you can carry a water bottle up front, in a hitch on a shoulder strap, but mostly it will be in a side pocket. If you need more than one full water bottle at a time, try assigning them to the honorary wing man herd, one bottle on each side of your pack, or one on each shoulder strap, to maintain an even strain.

– Odd things without end. –

Most things you carry will be easy to figure out, but then again every trip will be different, and every day of each trip will be different. This kind of defeats the attempt of trying to approach divine unconsciousness, the drooling bliss of an empty mind, but generally when you deal with ordinary things like food, stove and fuel, clothing, water, and maps, you are able to handle it. Try it, it's not that hard. It gets to be nearly automatic.

Some things you carry are more difficult than the ordinary things though, things like chemical substances.

Things that have odors, for instance.

Exercise care in keeping and carrying odoriferous items. They belong off by themselves, shunned by everything else you carry.

So where would that be then, dear Author guy? Where would an ordinary mortal with one small pack put things "off by themselves"?

Think virtually. Think virtual distance. Think about having protection close to hand. This phrase definitely has more than one meaning, so we'll try to imagine an appropriate meaning at this point.

For you, Gentle Backpacker, in this context, protection means plastic bags. Sorry if that's a letdown, but in reality the plastic bag is precious and kind, and protective too. And you are a backpacker, remember, and so you should be used to scratchy, crinkly things that sometimes irritate the skin. It's not that bad once you get used to it, so back off a bit.

All plastic bags are good though some are gooder than others, which is where the crinkles come in.

Ziplock bags are convenient, can be sealed and re-sealed until you get tired of doing it, and come in all sizes. The freezer-storage ziplock bag is good, especially the brand name bags. They are of thicker plastic and block odors better than something like the sandwich-weight bags. Especially so for the brand name bags. That's part of the answer.

What sounds like a total lie is that polyethylene, the plastic that goes into these bags, is permeable. That means odors go through it. Sometimes like smoke through a strainer. Some odors go faster than others, of course.

Try it.

It's true, so very true.

Put a bag of double spice chai tea in a ziplock bag and try to smell it. Or use straight, uncut cinnamon or any other strong spice. Orange peel works. You will smell the spicy goodness. Now imagine that you are a large, hungry, powerful critter snuffling around in the bushes and your sense of smell is 500 times as good as any human's.

Just imagine.

So. There.

Another experiment, in case your sense of smell is on the dull side.

Fill a ziplock bag with potato chips. The politically-incorrect kind. Not anything dry roasted or baked to an airy, flavorless pouff of brittle, soulless crunchiness. Not New Age™. You want the old retro, heart-stopping kind, the knuckle-dragger's favorite, made from grease, salt, and just enough potato to hold the two together. Fill a ziplock bag with these chips, crushed fine, until the bag is nearly full.

Now set the bag aside for a day or two and check back. Pick it up and rub your hands all over it, then look at your hands. Look at the spot where the bag has been sitting. If you used a sandwich-weight bag the palms of your hands will be covered with grease. Right. You don't believe this at all, do you? Go try. Look at the grease spot that forms where you leave the bag. You won't have trouble finding it.

Seriously.

Guess who found this out the hard way? Yep. Guy who wrote this.

Now imagine that you are a fuzzy little twitchy snuffle monster out in the woods, crazy with hunger, and you smell yummy, greasy chips in a bag. Even better, imagine that you find the bag by bumping into it some midnight and you can check it out by simply licking.

It doesn't matter that you have no idea what this stuff is. In fact, that's even better, because your tiny brain likes new treats just as much as any other brain. New! Treats! Go for it! Bite it! Bite!

Bingo. It's Snack Time.

Now imagine that you weigh seven hundred pounds (ever so many kilograms), you have these nice long claws, and a bunch of teeth to bite things with, big and strong as iron spikes, and some scrawny backpacker starts waving his arms in the air and making unpleasant noises at you. So what are you going to do, big fella? Go home hungry? Really? No. Didn't think so.

Gentle Backpacker, you do have some options. For excessively odorous things, consider double bagging, using two freezer weight ziplock bags.

Or try getting some of those super extra expensive super extra thick bags made for backpackers. They are so thick that, even with a big gob of peanut butter inside, they are even ignored by hungry mice. That sounds good. If it really is true, and some say that it isn't, and doesn't work, not all that well.

Or, try those bags that are made for baking roasts and turkeys. Different plastic, much more odor resistant, and you can double or triple bag as needed. These don't have a ziplock closure, but a knot or some twist ties or stout rubber bands can seal them.

The idea here is to group odorous things (often in groups of one item), and keep those odors away from everything else. You don't want odors escaping, or grease covering the inside of your pack. If you have toothpaste, sunscreen, or bug repellent, or soap, in addition to your food, make sure to keep the odors blocked so they can't get to everything else in your pack, like your shelter, bedding, clothing, or the pack itself.

– Here come da dribble monster. –

Anything that spills is a problem.

Water is bad but fuel is much worse, even if it's tame old alcohol. Let's not go into the issues of white gas or kerosene. You can imagine.

Remember those odorous things? Think about having the inside of your pack covered with bug repellent or sunscreen. Dr Bronner's soap is a miracle substance (shampoo, hand soap, bathing soap, toothpaste, mouthwash, and dish soap all in one bottle) but it smells good enough to eat (because it's made with food grade ingredients, and is spicy-smelling) and will be a goopy mess if spilled. Gotta guard against that.

Whatever you have in liquid form needs special handling.

For fuel there are special containers. Know how to use them.

For smaller, mostly oily or sticky or odorous items, use a bottle, keep it upright as much as possible, and store it inside as many bags as you think you need. Remember too that air pressure varies as you change altitude. Close up a bottle of sunscreen, stick it into your pack and ascend 3000 feet (900 m). Guess what? Poom. That muffled sound like a gentle explosion? That's the bottle popping open. Goop goes all over.

Goop, goop, goop. All over.

Or if the bottle has a screw top, the goopy stuff spooges out along the threads in the cap. Spooge or poom, same effect. Goop everywhere. Plastic bags and care will save your butt, though some things are always messy no matter how careful you are. Remember to keep liquids under control. You will be so glad you did.

– Howdy. –
They call us Slim, Lumpy, Hefty, and Deadly.

Slim If you have any kind of tent, large or small, single wall or double wall, you likely have poles or wands or whatever they call those things this month. Some packs have special pockets for these. Some don't. But you'll be sorry if you lose or break even one of these things, so pay special attention.

Practice. Work up to long, intensive trips by taking shorter ones first. Learn how to handle your odd items. If you switch to a tarp or a hammock you might not need to fuss at all, or you might need to fuss more.

The un-slim but lumpy things? Will remain lumpy.

Cameras, binoculars, and extra footwear are probably the main lumpy items. The easiest solution is to do without. If you hike in shoes these may also work, with loosened laces, around camp, just fine, in place of special camp shoes. Or you can make light sandals from spare insoles and thin shock cord, at about two ounces (60 g) a pair.

Cameras are always awkward, brittle, sensitive to water, and expensive, as are binoculars.

Small specimens from the lumpy group can hang from from a neck strap all day. You might not even notice the weight, but for the larger items you need a plan. There is an infinite variety of binoculars, monoculars, cameras, video cameras, audio recorders, cell phones, GPS receivers and whatnot. Go figure. You are the expert in what you own, but keep in mind that carrying some of these inside your pack defeats the point of taking them, and carrying them outside your pack means that they're in your face all the time, and in the weather. Think it through.

The heavy. Best inside the pack. Whatever it is. Let the pack and the pack's suspension system handle it.

The dangerous - Yikes!

Aside from a small knife and a bottle of fuel there shouldn't be much. A single-edged razor blade, carefully wrapped, serves a lot of people in place of a knife. A can of pepper spray, if you need that sort of thing, usually has an available holster, and you want it outside somewhere, within reach.

If you carry a gun you run a huge risk of shooting yourself. Or someone you love, or at least like. At an inopportune time. And guns are heavy. And illegal in a lot of places. Think three times about this one. Then repeat the thinking part. Is backpacking truly your sport?

– One more time. –

You should have this memorized by now, but we'll run through it just for fun.

Do this...

• Big, bulky, light stuff in the bottom of the pack.
• Heavier things higher.
• Keep it balanced.
• Make sure you can get at what you need without ripping it all out.
• No odors, please.
• Don't lose things.
• Work out your own system so you can stay comfortable and safe.
• And don't take too much.
• And don't shoot unless you really mean it.

That's about it then. Have fun if at all possible.