Pack Weight

This is a confusing and imprecise term which has been picked up by ultralight backpackers and turned into a religious debate and a weapon for scoring points against one another.

For us practical types, it's how much weight you carry. This depends on how you look at it. Base pack weight is the weight of the pack and everything in it, excluding consumables. Total pack weight is th base pack weight plus food, water, and fuel.

So, any questions?

No? Then get moving already.

 

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Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Mostly weightless. Waitless. Waistless. Whatever.

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals

Pack Bag

(1) If a tootle-flute and a drone pipe or two are attached, what you actually have is a bagpipe (aka agony pouch) with shoulder straps.

(2) For a long distance backpacker with an especially hearty appetite, this is a shoulder-strap-equipped bean bag, which handily doubles as a camp chair. The advantage of a pack stuffed with actual beans instead of plastic pellets is that beans have more calories and hurt less on the way out. Plus they are biodegradable, as you may know from personal experience. And they make their own music too, saving you the trouble of learning to play the bagpipe and having to dodge small arms fire from your hiking companions.

(3) A hiker hump.

(4) Pack, or anyway the thing that truly makes a pack a pack. It doesn't matter if you have an external frame pack, an internal frame pack, or a frameless pack, the bag's the thing. You can't do much with a frame all by itself, or just shoulder straps and a hip belt, and anyway the bag determines what the frame is internal or external to.

Yes, you could have a pack bag made of anything really (like cedar shingles, or fiberglass, or welded titanium), but as you'd guess from the word bag, fabric is the real deal. You probably wouldn't be happy with any fabric substitute, no matter how shiny, termite-resistant, or aromatic. With a correctly-sized and fitted pack bag you can carry as many cabbages or rutabagas as you need to see you through a trip, if any, or if you frequently fall into lakes and streams for example, you can augment your air supply with a windbag attachment (which, however, requires expert seam sealing).

Then again, as mentioned earlier, just stick a couple chanters on it and presto, you have your very own agony pouch to play on those lonely nights in camp when you can't sleep because you no longer have any friends. (This scenario is an example of what is called a "vicious circle" or "rotating rathole".)

(5) The fabric sack that holds all your stuff, a bag carried on your back or shoulders by means of one or more straps.

A pack bag really is the important part of a backpack. Without it all you have is straps, and that arrangement would not only identify you as stupid but would look pretty weird as well. But you're a hiker, so what the hey.

 

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Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
Me? Really this weird.

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals

C7 Vertebra

The knobby protrusion at the base of the back of your neck when you lean your head forward. It's used for backpack sizing.

C7 is important.

You need it.

C7 means that it's the seventh (last, bottom) cervical (neck) vertebra. C7 is part of your neck bone, which is connected to your head bone and connected to your back bone and used to measure you for a pack bone. Memorize that.

Anatomists like to number similar things, which is why C7 is C7 and not Louise. (Glad we cleared that up too.)

Anyway, the vertebrae in your neck are like all the rest of them in your whole spinal column. (Because the Lazy Principle. Once you got a thing what works, keep using it, 'K? Then you can take more naps and do less fretting. Fretting is for amateurs and noobs. Laziness is for professionals. Whoever designed the human body is obviously a lazy bastard professional, as you probably know by now.)

So these bony vertebrae things help keep your various body parts together and allow you to stand up on your hind legs with your head held smartly in line as all the other self-respecting tailless apes do. It's a thing, a handy one, a handy thing. And people point and laugh less when you do it like this too.

These vertebrae provide a nice home for your spinal cord while giving various bodily muscles handy places to attach themselves.

Two things about C7 are especially important.

The first is that it works with the other vertebrae in your neck to keep your head attached, of course, as you should know by now, and the other is that the knobby protrusion at its back (the "dorsal process", a place where your muscles grab hold) is a handy landmark for measuring what size pack you need. See?

Measure from C7 down to the top of your pelvis and compare to the manufacturer's chart for the pack you're eyeballing. It's easy from there on out if you're not exceptionally stupid. You're not, are you? (Please see the next paragraph to be sure.)

Note: "C7" is not the same as "C4", which is a plastic explosive and not part of your body, and should not be taken internally and tastes bad too.

That's about it. Time for my nap.

 

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Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff@nullabigmail.com
Me? No — the taste of C4 is not getting any better, even with strawberry jam.

 

Etc...

so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals

Squeeze Me Another Pack, Jack

Scheming and scribbling.

ReSqueeze Resurrection.

Two things I decided when I started going light — I'd always wear boots, and if I ever did make any of my own equipment, I'd never muck with packs, ever.

Boots: Last worn backpacking on Labor Day Weekend, 2000.

Packs: I made a Squeezo. Several Squeezos. In fact, I invented the Squeezo. Plus I did a bunch of doofus packs leading up to the Squeezo. (See link to previous post at the bottom.)

The last Squeezo I put together was in 2005 or so, and I intended it to be a last prototype before freezing the design and making a final, perfect pack. But Squeezo 2005 was so good that I just used it until moving out of the country in late 2012. I couldn't take everything so I ditched the pack and, since I was never going backpacking again, threw out my patterns, such as I had. (The shoulder strap and hip belt patterns were critical, as were several key measurements — all long gone. Picture me raging now.)

Continued scheming and scribbling.

Too bad you do that, you, now you know what dumb is. Yep. Me the dumb one. (The voice of reason is always right.)

See, it started with hammocks. The place I worked, there was a contractor crew on board, and one of them found out about Hennessey Hammocks and got me all eager, and I bought one. Fine.

Mark, if I remember. That's all I remember. It was a long time ago.

Some details begin to come into focus.

Then Mark found out about Gearskin packs and got me all eager in those parts, and I bought one of them. Fine, too.

The Gearskin is a brilliant idea, just not finished. It was invented somewhere in the late 1990s, developed to the point that it was workable, and abandoned at the halfway point. It turned out to be especially awkward for someone using a hammock. I like to camp on slopes along the trail. Some of these slopes have been as steep as ye olde 45°, and that's steep. Difficult to even stand on, but near the trail, clean and unused, often with no underbrush, with a clear view all around, and quiet. And the trees on slopes often turn out to be big enough to hang from and also small enough to hang from. None of these six-foot-thick giants of the lowlands.

Yeah, right. But come morning, there's a problem if you're carrying a Gearskin: You can't hardly pack it.

See, the way you load a Gearskin is you lay it flat (go find some photos). This is cool on level ground but not on a slope.

You open the pack, which is one piece of fabric, lay it all flat, and arrange your things on top of that. Then you leave the back on the ground and fold the front up over it like folding a taco. Then you cinch down the side and top straps.

That doesn't work on a slope. All your stuff rolls away, and what can't roll slides away. To load a Gearskin on a slope requires a minimum of three arms, which means getting an implant or bringing along a manservant. Neither worked for me, so after sewing a few dickhead-stupid shelters I thought I was capable of making a pack that would work better.

Eventually I was.

The problem with the Gearskin was that it had no inside. Under the right circumstances it was trivial to arrange all my goods just so before cinching down the pack, but I didn't camp where those circumstances applied. The real beauty of the pack, though, was that it used compression to achieve rigidity, and so it didn't need a frame. I think that my Gearskin weighed 19 ounces (540 g).

I had started ultralightering with a GVPGear G4, another frameless pack, but I moved to the Gearskin because by tightening its compression I could firm it up enough to be actually usable. The G4 was a good introduction to light packs but not practical (which was part of the introduction). By carrying a hammock with an underquilt, I had nothing remotely resembling something rigid, so, unlike those ground-sleepers with closed-cell mattresses, I dint have nothin to use as a fake frame. Anyway, top-loading packs, if I may say so, suck bigtime. They're nearly impossible to load properly, and the more soft stuff you have the worse it gets.

Abstract view from above. Overlapping flappers on front. Expandable from square to trapezoidal.

I eventually developed the idea of making an enclosed pack body that loaded from the front. Among packs we have top-loaders, which everyone is familiar with, panel-loaders, which are seldom available, even the bad ones, the Gearskin, and my design. I call it a slit-loader. It's a font-loading pack with no panel. My first designs were both slit and top loaders, but I found that eliminating the big hole up on top firmed up the whole pack and didn't affect utility at all. Part of these results are due to the two huge side pockets that I build in. Add a small detachable pocket that attaches to the pack's front to carry the cookset and the day's food, and there is usually no reason to get into the pack body during the day anyway.

It worked. Best pack I've ever used. Weighed 20 ounces plain, or 22 ounces after I added a couple wooden dowels to act as vertical stiffeners (567 g and 624 g, respectively). I made a couple of two-week, 200-mile, no-resupply trips with it. That hurt, but the pack worked. When you're starting out carrying close to 30 pounds (13.5 kg) in food alone, the whole trip revolves around pain and muscle fatigue, and that's unavoidable, but the important part of the story is that the pack worked. It expanded to accept a bigger-than-normal load, and then carried it, uncomplaining.

Since the mostly-closed design meant that I could load the pack on any slope, I could place my equipment exactly where it needed to go, and keep it arranged perfectly until I was ready to compress it all. Things went in in layers through the front slit: sleeping bag first, flat and wide against the pack's back, providing cushioning, then the food bag, placed vertically, then the hammock/tarp/underquilt in an inverted-U shape around the pack's inside perimeter. Put the possibles bag up top, stuff clothing and rain wear in the empty spaces, and you just about have it. Then begin cinching down the straps until the whole pack becomes one solid wad, and go. Beauty, eh?

I miss it.

The shoulder strap reinforcements help to pull the pack together.

So I'm trying to resurrect Squeezo by remembering the design. That's easy. The hard part is that I need to have exact dimensions. They have to be reinvented, and my circumstances mean that I have only one chance. I have the fabric and hardware with me, but only enough for one try. The fabric isn't anything fancy, just utility nylon from Jo-Ann fabrics, but where do you find that or anything similar in Ecuador? Closed-cell foam padding? Buckles? Nylon webbing? I don't think so.

I bought a sewing machine for $180. It's probably a $100 model in the U.S., but I have it. I'll sell it for half price when I'm done, which will be soon, because I have an airline ticket waiting to be used. When the time comes I'll either have a pack to fly home with, or not.

I don't know what the problem is, but all the packs I've used since my last Squeezo have hurt a lot, in the shoulders. REI Flash 45, Golite Jam, Granite Gear Crown 60, Mountain Laurel Designs Prophet. I don't know if it's the sharp curve in my collar bone that's unique to me, or the narrowness and stiffness of the commercially-made shoulder straps, but it's been what? Five cases of extreme bone pain? Yes, five — screaming, relentless, all-day, endless collar-bone pain. I had to stuff extra padding between the straps and my bones, which remedied but didn't cure the situation.

I think my former Squeezo straps were wider. I based them on the Gearskin that I had. I don't remember how wide they were, and now I have to guess. At least I have the MLD Prophet to trace from, for strap shape and length. The width and padding details I can adjust when I make the straps, but it will have to be a guess, and I do have only that one chance to get it right. I have both stiff foam and soft foam, so I can use layers. I'm hoping.

What else? I don't remember. Am I making sense? Who can say?

But I'm going to try.

Postscript.

I have more images of a pack I built in 2015 from a "replacement" hip belt and shoulder straps I bought via REI, and stuff sacks I bought at Swain's General Store in Port Angeles, WA. I may post them at some time.

I will post instructions if I get this current pack worked out.

2009 Post.

No Pack Is Made For Me. Has photos of my dear departed Squeezo (insert tears here).

Definitions: Canted Hip Belt

(1) A hip belt on a big fancy pack.

A hip belt with attitude and its own slant on things.

A hip belt that's street wise and savvy to the ways of supporting a heavy load, though it does not necessarily have its own high school diploma.

May be well-contoured but overly stiff. A hip belt like this has to be stiff, because it's carrying all the weight of a heavy pack. No wait — you are. The belt is the mechanism that transfers all the weight of a big heavy pack onto your very own soft tender hips. The hips that belong to you, the hips made of living tissue.

It's true that a canted hip belt, being angled, conforms better to your body and therefore hurts less under laboratory conditions, but you have to keep in mind that less is only less, and isn't the same as not at all.

If your pack has a canted hip belt then it's probably very well made, having been designed by engineers who intended it to be adjustable to fit a wide variety of body types. Like you when you were slim, or now, after you've gained some weight, and also your next door neighbor, who isn't anything like you (at least you hope not), but whom the belt still has to fit, as well as it fits you, which may not be exactly perfectly.

A canted hip belt may flex and move with you like a good dance partner, sweeping across the landscape, keeping time with your every twist and turn, hip and hop, swivel and sway.

But the hip belt is still the point where your fragile body connects to a heavy pack, and canted or not, there's no incantation that can take the weight away.

(2) A hip belt on a pack that you just can't face carrying any more. This is usually because your pack is too heavy, or doesn't seem to taste good any more when you kiss it, or snores thunderously in its sleep, and you canted face it any longer.

Try thinking of good and delicious yummy things like powdered sugar on crispy donuts. Or imagine what life would be like if you had a candied hip belt, or even an entire pack made of ice cream.

Think about Christmas, the fairies, the sugar plums. Try to imagine what a sugar plum might be and what you would do with it in private, if only you had one, and time enough to bend it to your will, and enough privacy so you would not ever, ever have to explain anything you thought of doing, and then did.

But why stop there?

Think about what life would be like if you had a genuine pair of Sparkle Dots Ballet Slippers from the Sugar Plum Princess Boutique.

Or a set of fairy wings. Eh?

Or a shiny, glinting, flashing tiara and matching Hello Kitty kite?

Then there's the Jingle Bells Pastel Tutu that you could wear comfortably in bear country on even the hottest day. Because it's so light, and short, and shows off your legs. And has bells.

Heck, you could spring for a Wholesale Fairy Princess Party Units Business Start Up Kit and get off the damn trail and out from under that horrible old smelly painful pack and spend all day, every day doing fun and gentle girly things like you used to do when you were young and played dress-up with your Mommy, though you'd most likely have to lose the beard.

There are worse things, maybe.

Like the one on your back.

Have a nice day if possible.

Customize Me, Pleez

When I was a little kid, shoe stores had x-ray machines. True.

You don't remember this because I'm older than you are, but I remember. Sticking my feet into the machine and watching myself wiggling my toes around inside a potential new pair of shoes was the best part of buying shoes.

The idea was that customers could check the fit, see it for themselves, and be sure that everything was A-OK, but I liked to see the wiggling bones. That was the part I liked. This was before TV, and almost better than TV was when we got it, years later. Watching your own feet move around inside your shoes was almost better than seeing 30 minutes of Howdy Doody squirming around with Buffalo Bob's hand stuck up his back.

Almost. X-rays were a modern miracle of merchandise marketing, and the time I spent looking at my feet was definitely a loop of time forever unreachable by the intensely (creepily) unsettling Clarabell the Clown. I still don't understood why a man in a terror-suit was named Clarabell, and what the hell his connection was to Howdy Doody, and I don't want to know. Not today. Tomorrow, ever. He/it be dead now forever, we hope, and gone.

And then they took all the x-ray machines away. They were called "shoe-fitting fluoroscopes", according to Wikipedia. Buggers. All gone.

"The bones of the feet were clearly visible, as was the outline of the shoe, including the stitching around the edges." Yep. That was it. Including "two other viewing portholes on either side [enabling] the parent and a sales assistant to observe the child's toes being wiggled." And then they took all the x-ray machines away. Up to then the early 1950s had been a lot of fun.

And what if "there was not enough data to quantify the level of risk until atomic bomb survivors began to experience the long-term effects of radiation in the late 1940s"? They survived, didn't they? But the machines disappeared anyway. What's a little radiation burn here and there? Kids grow out of stuff all the time, pretty quick too, mostly.

Well, a few years later television came to town, and the rest is misery. Until then I ran around outside, played baseball, fed peanuts to squirrels, watched ants crawl around on peonies, and entered grade school. Very few if any of my toes fell off, and my shoe fit didn't seem to suffer the loss of x-rays, but I missed the scientific method as applied by gimmicky machinery to an annual footwear purchase ritual.

Choice matters.

Especially for older merchandise consumers, like adults. Especially cranky ones like me. Especially cranky ones carrying backpacks around and grunting inside clouds of flies. That's why custom packs are a good idea. There's a custom pack to fit the hump of every grump. Because. That's what custom means, doncha see?

I tried last year about this time. Heard good things and contacted Mr. Sam Jepsen of JepPaks. He got confused. And backed away. Now if I try to go back to the JepPaks web site and see what he's up to, I get only "Website Expired. This account has expired. If you are the site owner, click below to login." So I guess that's over. No more Sam, no more JepPaks.

This year I contacted Mr. Christopher Zimmer of Zimmerbuilt. Sounded good. Got a positive response. He's even made a pack that was sort of vaguely related to what I want, the "ZB2 - Gowler". So I figured he'd be open to trying to do something off the beaten track and back in the bushes about half a mile, which is what my design is like — odd but very simple to make. So I pulled together my specs and dug up a bunch of photos of my original self-made pack, and. Haven't heard a damn thing back from him.

Two possibilities: He's either otherwise occupied, with illness, a vacation, his real job, a crisis in the family, or whatever, or he's blowing me off by playing dead.

"Effort or effit." That's my new motto. I'm not going to whine and beg, so effit then. I'll find a way to make the pack I need, maybe next winter. Meanwhile, I've got a pack on order from a real company, a Mountain Laurel Designs "Prophet". It's close enough to what I can put up with to work for me. I can fudge a little, find a way to stiffen it, add capacity flexibly, add compression. Its relatively generous design should let me move the furniture around, depending on which party I'm headed for.

Hey, I did set off in the summer of 2013 on a 12-day, no-resupply trip carrying a North Face 26L "Verto". And came home again. It can be done. With some fudging. Though that was not fun.

What I did was to customize it. Get the drift here? Customize.

I sewed on two ginormous side pockets which together equaled about a third the volume of the pack bag. Then I added another pocket in front (confusingly, the "front" is the side of the pack that's way out back). This contributed another big boost to the pack's volume. And then I started off carrying my hammock, tarp, and under-quilt in a largish stuff sack lashed on top. I probably had about 45L to work with in the modified pack, and even more in the stuff sack, and stowed more and more things back inside the pack bag as I ate my way through the trip's provisions.

So things can be done.

Also, mistakes were made, lessons were learned, pain was encountered. Such is life among those living desperately.

Which is why I want to get back to where I left off, with a really good and really custom pack. And it looks like I'll have to do it all myself. Such is life, period. OK, fine. I'll do it then. But not at this moment, I guess, because I don't have materials here, or time, or a sewing machine. Right now.

And yes, this is really necessary. Necessary and normal. We're all different even in the midst of our seeming sameness. Last year I tried two different packs. Both worked. Both were wrong. The first was an REI "Flash 45" and it had all sorts of confusing little straps routing themselves here and there and beyond, and the shoulder straps made me howl in pain. The second was a Granite Gear "Crown 60". Tighter, lighter, bigger, better-designed, kinda, but the shoulder straps also made me howl in pain. And a pocket ripped the first time out. And the hip belt was permanently too big.

And I'm a good fit. If I buy clothes in my size, they fit. Like they were made right for me, you know? Pants, shirts, socks, underwear — all OK. Not so much with packs. I don't know. Something's off. If you can't fight 'em, can't join 'em, then effit, 's what I say. Eff-M-All, and make your own. Which I guess I'll have to do when I can, if I can.

Which brings us around to actual evidence. Because I'm not making up all of this. Not all of it. I have the U.S. of A.'s own Force d'Air on my side here. Right here. On my very own side. And them fellas is smart some of the time. "In the late 1940s, the United States air force had a serious problem: its pilots could not keep control of their planes." See? That's Step One, observe symptoms. "'You never knew if you were going to end up in the dirt.' At its worst point, 17 pilots crashed in a single day. The two government designations for these noncombat mishaps were incidents and accidents, and they ranged from unintended dives and bungled landings to aircraft-obliterating fatalities." Check.

Step Two is to locate the cause of said symptoms. This can be hard. "After multiple inquiries ended with no answers, officials turned their attention to the design of the cockpit." Hmmm. Maybe if we take sort-of average pilots, and measure the hell out of them, and average all the measurements, we'll be able to design a cockpit that will fit...all pilots, they thought. So. What? Then what?

Zero. "Out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman fit within the average range on all 10 dimensions. There was no such thing as an average pilot. If you've designed a cockpit to fit the average pilot, you've actually designed it to fit no one." A true WTF moment, folks, sponsored by your tax dollars, or those of your parents, or your grandparents, depending, of course.

Step Three is solving the actual problem. Which for the Air Force was not the crashing planes (that was a symptom), or pilots that didn't fit the planes (that was another symptom), but the lack of understanding that "there was no such thing as an average person". And to solve the problem the Air Force had to actually do something. Because "any system designed around the average person is doomed to fail." Rather than finding hikers or pilots average enough to fit the ideal backpack or fighter-plane cockpit, the solution is to customize the hardware so it will fit actual humans.

As for the Air Force, "they were able to focus on fitting the cockpit to the individual pilot. That's when things started getting better...They designed adjustable seats, technology now standard in all automobiles. They created adjustable foot pedals. They developed adjustable helmet straps and flight suits."

As for the outdoor industry?

What. We have 16 different packs from one company, all made on the same basic plan, all in your choice of Medium or Large, so take your pick. You're sure to find a great fit, assuming that you like a three-foot-tall, six-pound, top-loading pack (empty weight) with two tiny mesh pockets outside, no noticeable compression, and a hip belt that fits anyone with a waist size from 32 inches to 48 inches. And you can stand shoulder straps carved from wood. And you think maroon and yellow go well with the outdoors.

And if you're a woman, well this year they're introducing a special model just for you. It's exactly the same as their real pack, except it costs more and has a tiny label over on the side that says "Designed Especially for Women".

Love it or effit.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: "By discarding the average as their reference standard, the air force initiated a quantum leap in its design philosophy, centered on a new guiding principle: individual fit. Rather than fitting the individual to the system, the military began fitting the system to the individual...it was a practical solution to an urgent problem.." Pretty good for government work, right?

Step Four Let's see more custom-designed and custom-made backpacks because I've got a body and goals and attitude that aren't exactly like yours, and I don't like being ornery out on the trail. Are ya with me or agin' me? (Hint: I don't really care what you think, though I'm not actually too scary in person most of the time, and not all that hard to get along with, and if you get bothered you can push me down and take my lunch money and make me cry, if that's what you like. True. So don't worry.)

Criteria (There are two.): (1) My pack has to fit me. (2) It also has to suit me: durable, comfortable, capable.

That's all then. Is this really, truly impossible? More difficult than building supersonic warplanes?

More:

When U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages

Review: Granite Gear Crown 60

Shoe-fitting fluoroscope

Desperate Living

Definitions: Bearing

(1) Bearing is the way you hold your body.

If you're a traditional (classic, or heavyweight) backpacker, your bearing will resemble a question mark. This will be due to years of trudging around underneath a great weight which will permanently deform your body.

If you are a lightweight or ultralight backpacker, however, your bearing will resemble a question mark. This will be due to years of bending over to hector absolutely everyone you meet about why you are so much smarter than they are, while they stupidly (as you see it) sit on the ground, munch snacks, rest, and enjoy the scenery.

True, you will eventually be just another old, weird, angry bent guy, but you'll be able to feel smug about it.

(2) Bearing is a compass heading, or if you are walking where the compass has told you to go, bearing is your direction of travel.

The great thing about carrying a compass is that if you end up walking off a cliff you can always blame the compass and not your own stupidity.

The most experienced outdoor enthusiasts always carry a compass for this reason, and absolutely always back it up with a map. In the off chance that the compass is right at the time they walk off a cliff, they may get lucky and have a misprinted map to blame.

Redundancy pays.

In a pinch, without either compass or map to curse, you can point to your companions. So the moral of this story is: never hike alone.

You heard it here.

Review: Granite Gear Crown 60

I'm looking for the ideal pack.

I don't think it's out there, but if it is, I want to know about it. Right now I don't have any pack. Any packs. Things are like that if you do some radical moving. Due to some radical moving I don't have much. Everything I own will fit into two duffel bags and a Rick Steves travel pack. That's travel pack as in tourist pack, the sort of thing you can drag onto an airplane with you and shove into an overhead bin.

Which is good. For doing that sort of thing. But which is not a backpack, or a day pack, but an accessory to tourism.

Last year I didn't have any backpacks either, but by the end of the season I had bought two. One was an REI 45-liter pack, and it worked, though it appeared to have been designed by monkeys. Demented monkeys. Who didn't know what backpacks were, what they were for, or how to use them.

The other pack I bought was much better. So much better that its shortcomings still annoy the snot out of me. Because it could have been great, but managed to reach an apogee of only Damn, damn, damn — why? Why didn't they think this through a little more?

In other words, the high end of mediocrity, where adequacy has been accomplished, but which is still short of even pleasant goodness, let alone greatness. Pleasant goodness in the sense of either:

• Being so fine that you don't think about it (i.e. It just works.), or
• Being so exceptional that whenever you're near it you think Dangit-all, I'm right lucky to have this here pack, it makes me feel tingly all over.

And this second pack was the Granite Gear Crown 60. Which I wanted to like, and sort of did, and still sort of do, kinda. In a way. In a way that's sort of regretful that the pack wasn't and isn't better than it is. Because it could be.

First, before I rip it to shreds, some good things. (This is called The Setup.)

• It has a nice rolltop. It's at the top and it rolls, and it has its own compression straps to crunch the top of the pack down with. I liked this part. It worked dandy-fine.
• The colors are good. Sort of dull greenish and blueish. I think. I'm not good on color, but these are the sorts of colors that, if you set the pack down and walked away from it, then you might wish you had tied a string to the pack, and the other end to yourself, so you could find the pack again. Stealth. Think stealthy colors. If I could I'd be invisible. I've always wanted to be invisible, so I like things I can't see, even if I keep losing them because I can't see where I put them.
• The pack is made well. Duh. (But what would you expect?)
• The pack is on the large side so it has room for stuff. Duh II. (See Duh for part one of this series.)
• The pack is not that heavy, at an official two pounds, two ounces (964 g), compared to four, five, or six or more pounds for light backpacks. (Insert enraged, howling Duh! here.)

OK, done with that.

Now for the fun stuff. For the disappointment. For some head shaking, and a lot of bemused annoyance. And maybe a little flying spittle (which is not a tiny fuzzy pet in a cape, whizzing around your bedroom, though come to think of it, maybe it's time someone invented one — could be a sort of flying squirrel-hamster that made some fun whining buzzing sounds that drove the cat crazy and which didn't sleep all day the way hamsters do. And flying squirrels do.).

First, it's a top-loader.

Top-loaders are easy to make and don't scare people. Everyone knows that real backpacks load from the top, so if that's what you make, then no one has to think about it. (I dunno, Ma — this here's one weird lookin pack thing, if'n that's what it is a'tall...dang.) And they are easy to make.

But hard to load and unload. And annoying, especially if it's 2 p.m., raining, and your whatever is in there somewhere, probably near the bottom, but no one knows for sure, so everything in the pack has to be pulled out and thrown into the mud while you stick one arm and then the other down in there, feeling around for it.

It has delicate, painted-on pockets.

Next to packs being top-loaders, this sort of pocket is what everyone seems to go ape over.

You know what? Let's be quick and kill this now — about three hours into the first day of my first trip with the Granite Gear Crown 60, I came to a deadfall blocking the trail at a 45° angle (you know the kind), put one hand on it, swung my legs over it, and brushed the left side of my pack against the remaining, broken-off stub of a branch. And ripped open the left side pocket. Which I didn't notice for another hour or two.

Ripped right through the soft supple stretchy mesh fabric that the pocket was made of. Didn't lose anything, but I should have. I closed the hole with a safety pin and sewed it shut at the end of the trip and swore a lot. And you know? Excuse me a moment. I'm going up on the roof to swear some more. (...) OK, that helped a little. But not much. No matter how hard I pound my head against the wall, the pain never goes away.

Pockets — too delicate for human use.

The pockets are not only delicate, but painted on.

Or are so tight that they might as well be air-brushed representations of pockets. Have you ever tried to get anything into pockets like these? It takes two men and a boy, accompanied by effulgent barking. Sometimes it's the men that bark, at other times the boy, maybe all three, plus a dog. None of that helps — pockets like these are so tight that you're lucky to have wedged in a small hankie, and anything the least bit three-dimensional tries to slide right back out and run away when you aren't looking.

The pockets are not only delicate, but painted on, and too small anyway.

See a pattern here? Get the drift? Know where we're going? Do ya? Good.

These here pockets are too delicate and too tight, and TOO SMALL. Even with a crowbar, if you manage to get something into them, you can't get much in there. AT ALL. And the tops of the pockets slope toward the back of the pack, the side that points forward. WHY THE HELL IS THIS? WHY?

What is it about pockets that are too short that makes pack designers want to make them shorter in a way that encourages your precious goods to jump ship?

Hey I'll tell you, on the pack that I designed and made and finally got almost perfect before I had to throw it out when I moved to another continent at the end of my backpacking days (the first time), my pack's side pockets were 14 inches high (356 mm), made of the same light but durable fabric as the pack body, and capacious. Each pocket held a Platypus 2.5 liter bladder, full, and if I really had to I could carefully cram in a second bladder, and nothing ever fell out, or even came close to falling out of these pockets.

Anybody listening? Hey?

Linlocs suck, big time.

Linlocs is how Philip Werner spells it, so it must be right. Doohickeys. Little superultralight doohickeys. With a piece of string and a little plastic thingy that flips and flops and locks the string when you've got it tight and then let go of it.

Amazing devices. Ever so magically light. Almost useless. Stupid.

Simple half-inch-wide webbing straps with ordinary buckles work better. You grab them and they stay grabbed. You pull on them and they don't cut into your hand. You let go and the strap is tight and stays tight. Versus the Linlocs, which are the opposite in every way. But possibly lighter. If anyone cares. Which Granite Gear doesn't, because this pack is much heavier than it needs to be, due to other features. Features. Hear me swear, McDuff.

And guess what? There are only two of these Linlocs on each side of the pack, not nearly enough, even if they worked, to provide decent compression. The two across the front of the pack don't add anything useful to the equation. Wait for weight — we'll get to that soon. Very soon.

The hip belt is too big.

I understand that you can get this pack with different-sized hip belts. I take a medium or regular pack size, even though I'm not tall or beefy. Mostly the opposite, me. When down to proper weight, I have a 30-inch (762 mm) waist. Guess what? The standard hip belt tightens all the way down to 30 inches. Which means that I couldn't get it tight enough to do much good.

You have to crank on these suckers to get them to work. And the crank hit its limit and couldn't crank no more.

I understand that you can get this pack with different-sized hip belts. In an alternate universe. Try to find someone who actually sells them. (Insert more swearing here, even more.) Even Granite Gear requires you to specify this in a special instructions box if you order directly, through the company's web site. How's that for service?

OK, Bub — I guess you're stuck with the pack eternally trying to slide down to your knees then. Crap on't. Crap, I assert, with vigor. On't and over it.

Solid wood shoulder straps.

Firm, they would say. Non-crushable. Durable, maximum-density. Poo on't, sir or madam. With vigorous prejudice.

The shoulder straps of this backpack might as well be hand-carved from walnut. They hurts. Maybe it's just me, but that's enough, innit? Me? I'm the one who has to suffer, and these shoulder straps are so unyielding that they cause pain all day (and for around a week after), and welts, one on each collar bone, and I didn't like that at all.

I do not understand this, even if I am a precious little unique snowflake and no one else in the known universe has this problem, because I do and it sucks in an I-don't-want-to-use-any-piece-of-equipment-that-does-this-sort-of-thing-to-my-body kind of way. Ever again.

Ow.

Unnecessary weight.

Due to a padded back. Due to a framesheet. (That flexes. A doofus-level flexing wimpy framesheet.)

I mean.

My pack, my self-designed, self-made pack, which was capable of carrying everything I cared to stick into it, suffered a bit from slumping, because it didn't have a frame, so I bought a couple of sticks, and on each end of each one I taped the sort of plastic cap you'd see on a chair leg or the end of a curtain rod or whatever.

That brought the weight of the pack up to 22 ounces (624 g) and in combination with the compression I designed into the pack, they stopped the pack from slumping even when not loaded perfectly.

And then at night I could pull the sticks out of the pack and wad the pack up under my knees to keep my hammock from trying to snap my legs off at the knee by bending them the wrong way.

Twenty-two ounces, with a frame (some would call my sticks stays), and no back padding.

What then, sir, did you do without back padding? you may ask. Go ahead, ask. I dare you.

And the answer is: Nothing special — it's not needed. Anywhere. On any pack. I put my sleeping bag/quilt or whatever into a plastic bag and because of my pack's design I was able to reliably arrange this against the back of the pack, where the hammock and its under-quilt also went, and if I thought I needed more padding I could have arranged my spare clothes there too, all in a flat and even stack, and that was it. No probs. Ever.

Compare that to the Granite Gear Crown 60's Super Duper Hi-Tekk™ Ayre-Flo® back panel with no-sweat-absorbing channels built in, and shucks. My way worked better. If you're carrying a backpack, and moving, and alive, your back will sweat and your shirt will stink. The back of your pack will get wet. Done.

The back of the Granite Gear pack dried, in the sun, on any day, in about 10 minutes — the same as my low-tech pack. My pack had one layer of fabric backed by my bedding in a plastic bag, so only one layer of fabric needed to dry, and no sweat could get into the pack. That one layer probably weighed half an ounce. I don't know about the Granite Gear pack's back — I'd guess four to six ounces for the padding (14 g vs. 170 g at the top end).

Sheet.

Flexing floppy frame sheet. Yeah. Yeah, right. Frame sheet. Granite Gear's got one. It's about an eighth inch thick (3 mm) and full of big holes to make it look light. It's floppy. It weighs two or three ounces. I don't get it. It helps to keep the pack's back from scrunching and folding but a couple of simple stays would do that too, and probably better. On my last attempt at making a pack I used two carbon-fiber arrow shafts, and they worked too — about an ounce (28 g) each.

The Granite Gear framesheet needed its own sleeve and since the pack had inadequate compression to provide stiffness, I left it in. But didn't like it. Between having a serious degree of back padding and having a framesheet, the pack was unusable inside my hammock under my knees, so add in a few demerits there. Not to mention the super stiff shoulder straps and hip belt, neither of which worked well for their intended functions.

And the winner is...

My pack, now gone two and a half years, and the runner-up is flexibility: If you're flexible you have ability. I got by. I get by. I will get by, but damn it hurts sometimes. And what's the fuss about a few extra ounces anyway? Granite Gear at 34 ounces versus my homemade pack at 22? Twelve ounces? Piffle? Am I a Fuss Monkey?

No, not that much. Not really. One of my nicknames for myself is Mr. TidyBowl, but that's only when I feel a need to remind myself in a teasing way not to go there, and I use it only inside my head, when speaking to myself and with myself. I'm not a Prissy Fussbudget. That much. But weight is never good. Ever. Under any circumstances. Even a few extra ounces.

Say that and a lot of people will argue. Argue with you. Prove by volume and stupidity that you are wrong because, just because. Accompanied by arm waving.

That's the way things are.

We've always done it that way.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Everyone does it that way.

Why do you want to be different?

I used to know one particularly stupid person who knew nothing about light/ultralight backpacking, was not interested in it, and who kept arguing that it couldn't be very good for anything, and that this person knew someone who tried it and went really light and then started adding things back in. (See Duh up above. Duh. Repeat as often as needed.)

This person also taught others how to backpack. And preferred people who knew nothing about backpacking. You get two guesses. Why.

And this person was also extremely short, elderly, and not strong, so use your leftover second guess to figure out who would have benefited from a little judicious application of brain cells to the process of backpacking, especially in the weight department. But if you're stupid, the answer to every question is a blank stare, denial, anger, or volume. Usually all four, applied in that order.

But if you're not stupid?

First you hear, then you wonder, then you try, then you tune. You see if an idea is any good, by trying it, and if it is any good you end up with something that works for you, by doing whatever it is that suits you yourself. The more you learn the more you customize, going lighter here, heavier there, and more personal and peculiar overall.

Which is kind of where I am if I have to summarize my experience with the Granite Gear Crown 60. It's a start. It isn't good but it can be used. The worst thing about the pack is that it can't be ripped open along the seams and put back together the right way. I thought of cutting out the back panel, but it's an integral part of the pack, so doing that would destroy the pack.

I wanted to replace the side pockets, but same story.

Leaving out the framesheet would have saved only about two ounces, so why bother?

This pack also has a front pocket, a fairly large one, but it has the same problems as the side pockets — too tight, too delicate, too small. Stuff something in there that isn't a folded jacket or shirt and you keep wondering if it's fallen out five or six miles back. You never know until you stop and take off the pack and look. I can't live with that in a pack.

Add a too-large hip belt and excruciatingly painful shoulder straps, and the weight and the lack of real compression and you have a big bag with a hole at the top end, pretty much like all the other packs out there. Except for the color.

The color is nice. I like it. Them. Cactus and Moonmist. Mmmm.

What this looks like at REI.

Fresh Squeeze

The Setup

Hoping to make it simple again.

I had to discard my self-designed, self-made pack when I moved out of the country in November, 2012.

Since then I've used a modified North Face summit pack (base volume: 32L), and a GoLite Jam (50L), but neither one came close to the light weight and usability of my own design.

The North Face is great for what it is. I added a deep pocket on each side, and another huge pocket on the front to roughly double the volume. Still, I had to strap on a large stuff sack when setting out on an 11-day trip, and it hurt. The pack is well-designed and well-made, but the shoulder and hip padding are light, and being a top-loader, the pack is as hard to load as any other of its kind.

Last summer, after my second winter out of the country, and running short on time, I bought a GoLite Jam. Some famous superlong-distance hikers use it, and at $109 it was super cheap. The pack was well-made and carried well, but was poorly designed. Another top-loader, it suffered from having that tiny hole to put things into, and its side pockets were laughably small — useless in fact, like most pack pockets.

I sloppily and quickly sewed up a couple of big side pockets, and made do.

But Ow!

The padding was even less capable than the summit pack, and the Jam weighed at least twice as much since it was made of some kind of over-sturdy miracle fabric that can withstand nuclear war. Empty, the pack weighed around 2.5 pounds. I don't remember exactly but its heft startled me every time I picked it up.

I'm talking past tense here because I cut up the pack to get the straps and hardware off it. I also cut off the front pocket and might use that until I have time to sew up one for my new pack. It might seem like a waste of money to chop away like this, but after only two trips I got to hate this pack. As noted, it did carry well, but it was a bitch to actually live out of.

Right now I'm learning to sew again. I've been away from it for several years and I'm having to re-make all my previous mistakes. At this point I'm on my third try, but doing better. Just yesterday I stopped work on the pack yet again because I found out that REI sells hip belts and shoulder straps. I ordered two of each, from different makers.

Shoulder straps and hip belts are hard to make. They're detailed, full of little bits, fussy to sew, and critical. I've successfully made several sets in the past, but that's no reason to go through all the trouble again, so I'll just attach what someone else has made and concentrate on the pack bag, which is what is unique about my design — the only part that is really important to me.

Waiting another week for the parts to get here is really a wash anyway — it would take me at least that long to sew up my own, considering all the mid-course design tweaks I'd need, and all the sewing mistakes I would make and have to undo. I've been spending at least half my time ripping stitches that I've just sewn. Yes, I need help. This might make the difference.

Until the stuff gets here on April 1, I'll work on my hammock.

OK then, what follows is the beginning of my documentation. I'm developing non-paper-based plans this time, so I don't have to lose them next time I move. I'll update this as I go along, and will probably include the plans in my upcoming book on backpacks.

Squeezo Pack

Finished Dimensions And Volumes

Pack body dimensions:

• Width : 11 inches
• Depth : 10 inches
• Height: 22 inches

Note on the design illustrations:

• Base volume has a rectangular, nearly square pack area. This is a sort of standard or "normal" configuration.
• Minimum volume has a triangular pack area in the design.
• Maximum volume has a trapezoidal pack area in the design.

In practice, these areas collapse to a more circular configuration, with the pack assuming a cylindrical shape.

Pack body volume range (ignoring the side pockets).

Pack Configuration	Dimensions	Effective Diameter	Volume	Volume
	(inches)	(inches)	(cubic inches)	(liters)
Base ("normal")	10*11*22	13.4	3088	51
Minimum (fully scrunched)	3*5.5*22	9.87	1210	28
Maximum (fully expanded)	11*10*16*22	15.0	3867	63

Side pocket dimensions.

• Width :  8 inches
• Depth :  8 inches
• Height: 20 inches

These are nominal dimensions. The pocket fabric folds over and is sewn to itself at the bottom end, making the pockets sort of funnel-shaped — almost flat with no volume at the very bottom end but square-ish and full-sized for roughly the top two thirds.

Side pocket volumes.

Nominal pocket volumes according to their raw measurements.

• Each pocket : 1280 cubic inches / 21L
• Both pockets: 2560 cubic inches / 42L

Estimated pocket volumes according to their actual shapes.

• Each pocket : 1090 cubic inches / 18L
• Both pockets: 2180 cubic inches / 36L

Total volume: pack body plus side pockets.

Pack Configuration	Volume	Volume
	(cubic inches)	(liters)
Base ("normal")	5268	86
Minimum (fully scrunched)	3390	56
Maximum (fully expanded)	6047	99

Pocket Construction

Raw fabric dimensions: Two pieces 28 inches wide by 22 inches high. There are two pockets, so this requires two identical pieces of fabric.

Finished dimensions: Two pockets of 10 inches wide by 20 inches high.

Notes:

• Each pocket sews to the side of the pack within a space that is 10 inches deep front-to-back and 22 inches high.
• Pockets have elastic sewn into their top hems. (Optional, depending on personal taste.)
• Each pocket has a grommet in the top hem for additional support when carrying heavy loads, like water. Run a cord through the grommet of each pocket and across the pack's top, then pull it tight and tie it off. (Optional, depending on personal taste.)

Construction sequence:

• Hem the raw fabric to 1 inch all around.
• Run a cord through the tube-shaped hem at the top of each pocket before closing off its ends.
• Use that cord to pull an appropriate length of elastic into this tube, then solidly bar tack each end of the elastic. (To have any effect the elastic must be significantly shorter than the pocket's width.)
• Fold and pin the fabric at bottom of the pocket so it will fit into a 10-inch-wide space.
• Sew the pockets onto the pack, flush with the pack's bottom side. Use plenty of bar tacking along the bottom and sides.
• The finished pockets will be 2 inches shorter than the pack is tall but will take up the full width of each side.

More:

Previous generation Squeezo (Looks goofy — I've since changed the blog formatting. And I don't remember if there was ever a "Part 2".)

I Need To Take What?

The details of packing a pack.

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 still 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 all 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.

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

The more efficient your housekeeping 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.

There are two ways of looking at packing.

• Deciding what to leave.
• Deciding what to take.

Deciding what to leave.

Which method is up to you. Screwing up is its own punishment. Don't plan on begging if you run out of food. Everyone needs what they have more than they need you.

True, you like your stuff. It's part of you. You want to take it all. So you do. And it starts.

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.

Deciding what to take

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, use one hand and pick one thing that you absolutely must have to stay alive, 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 thing that's absolutely essential?

Grab that. Hold it in your other hand.

From there, choose only the next item that you absolutely need. What you absolutely need for your well-being, for your comfort, for your safety. Regardless of what anyone else thinks.

So then what?

If using Plan A and deciding what to leave out, you might be stuck sagging under too much weight, 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 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. Face it, you're hosed no matter what. Backpacking is like that — the best of times, the worst of times.

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.

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, so organize the load based on how you plan to live. (It's good to plan on living. Don't underestimate the value of that.)

Group things by importance, accessibility, and weight. Similar things together, but you don't have to keep all of something in one place. Keep accessible what you need during the day. The rest can stay buried deep.

The basic ideas are...

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

That's about it then for a quick overview. A longer and even more interesting version of this advice will show up in a book I'm finishing up titled Bag On Your Back. (It's about backpacks, eh?)

Until then, have fun if at all possible.

Trends For 2015

Things change. The old has to make way for the new because retailers wouldn't be able to sell you more of what you already have. The coming year will be no different. Here's what to look for in 2015.

Packs.

Probably the biggest trend is Ultralight, and it's most notable in packs. Every backpack manufacturer these days has not only an ultralight pack, but a whole line of them. In fact, every pack by every maker is now ultralight.

And don't think that by going ultralight you're leaving anything out. That's totally 20th century.

Here are typical Packbag Features these days:

Top lid, main packbag access zipper, auxiliary packbag access zipper, stretch mesh belt pockets, stretch mesh water bottle pockets, ice ax loops, trekking pole loops, hydration ports, spindrift collar, carry handle, front pocket, Perfect-O-Fit adjustable suspension, dual aluminum stays, framesheet, reinforced waistbelt, lumbar support, two layer padded waistbelt, two layer padded shoulder straps, load lifter straps, belt stabilizer straps, bear canister compatibility, zippered interior stash pocket for storing valuables and an interior security pocket, also for storing valuables, key fob.

Weights? Only 3.5 to 5 pounds (1.6 to 2.3 kg). Empty. Practically nothing, and if you think a few inconsequential pounds to make your pack idiot-proof is too much, you can join the lunatic fringe and find a pack in the 2.5 to 3 pound range. If you dare. But do it fast, because weights of ultralight packs will continue to climb all year, and who knows where they'll end up.

Shelters.

Remember how tents developed? Remember tents? Hello?

Back when people wore armor, rode horses, and had hair coming out their ears and noses, tents were all cotton, held up by wooden frames, and every guy was named Clint.

Some time after that the Double-Wall era arrived, blossoming into colorful sheets of nylon and polyester, tensioned over flexible wand thingies, with an an outer tent to shed rain and an inner tent to do something or other that the outer one didn't.

Then one day someone dared to try a Single-Wall tent, using only that rain-shedding part.

But that's getting stale too, so look for Zero-Wall tents a little later this year.

Advantages of going to Zero:

• Quicker setup. (I.e., none.)
• Less confusing teardown — No need to count the walls when you break camp because there aren't any.
• Lighter — Zero is the number with the big hole in its middle, and so is your shelter.
• Unparalleled ventilation. (Duh!)
• Helps you work on your grim determination to survive, especially on windy, rainy nights.

Bedding.

Quilts continue to grow in popularity. After all, most of them have no zippers, no flaps, no straps, no strings, no turnbuckles or ties. Just insulation sandwiched between two layers of gauze. So simple — roll yourself in your quilt and shiver the night away.

But even the best piece of equipment can be improved, so look for things. Expect them to go in two different directions.

• The Li'l-Tucker auto-puckering self-tucking quilt that helps you slide into unconsciousness by cooing gentle nothings at you once you're all snug in there. With a teddy-bear attachment if you're one of those people. (Batteries extra. Impervious to bed-wetting incidents.)
• The All-In-Wunder. Use it as a flat quilt, or yank on the hidden zippers and drawstrings, and quickly turn it into insulated coveralls or PuffPants and matching Therm-O-Vest or even a pseudo-bag if you're feeling nostalgic. Black on one side, rescue orange on the other in case you need to signal to aliens that you want to be abducted the hell out of the woods already.

Fancy-Meals.

Freeze-dried is, face it — like stale pet droppings.

We're gonna move beyond that real soon now, with Kozi-Eats Hiker Treats, a new kind of self-heating meal pak. Just throw a package of your favorite dinner on the ground, trample it gently to fracture the chemical reservoirs inside and initiate the thermal process, wait two minutes, tear open, and squeeze the now-warm contents into your gullet. Or just stick your head inside the pouch if you're eating a meal for six all by yourself.

Each package comes with a dose of anti-emetic and an industrial-strength fart-attenuator, in case you have (a) trouble keeping it down, or (b) you don't.

When Jam Goes Bad

Frustration in a bag.

Last fall when I moved out of the U.S., I cut hard into my possessions.

I threw out clothing and gave things away, dumped my backpacking hammock, and my self-designed backpack, the best one I've ever had. Now I'm sorry about that. Sorry about losing both of those things.

Neither would have been useful in Ecuador, and weren't missed over the winter, but now that I'm back in the U.S. and trying to rebuild my backpacking life, I miss them. I now have a crude hammock setup but it sucks. I'm working on it, but it sucks. It will be a while yet.

Until things are worked out I can use what I have, or sleep on the ground. Why anyone would sleep on the ground when they don't have to, I don't know. But I can do it if I need to.

As for packs, it will be a while. I'm not settled yet. I've had an apartment for several months but I'm leaving it, going homeless again, for a while, for only a little while I hope, but who knows? Until life calms down again I won't have a decent pack.

Meanwhile, I have a pack, but not a decent one. It's a GoLite 50-liter Jam. I hate it.

What's Good

• It's made well.
• It carries well.

What's Not Good

• It's poorly designed.
• Padding is an afterthought.
• It's a top-loader.
• It's basically a stupid bag with shoulder straps.

GoLite definitely can make packs better than I can. Their business depends on it, and they do the job professionally. I can do what I need to get something functional, but my sewing is pathological and frightening. It makes children cry and decent people shy away.

So score one for GoLite.

And the GoLite pack, if carefully loaded and adjusted, feels just right. For a while.

Poorly Designed

Ever try to put something into one of those painted-on spandex pockets? Or get something out again? Fail.

The Jam has one pocket on each side, there for show as far as I can tell, because they're useless as pockets — small, short, and tight. Both together cannot even hold one quiet fart.

There is another pocket on the front. Finally, you think, a real pocket. This pocket has a long zipper arcing across its top. It looks promising.

But that's about all you can say. It promises. Promises the world, and more, but doesn't put out. Stick your hand in there and it'll be trapped — you'll need two friends and a farm tractor to get your hand out again. The "pocket" is more like a small bear trap than any other pocket ever made.

The pack I made had two side pockets as well — two ginormous, permanently-attached side pockets. Each was big enough to hold a Platypus 2L bottle. Full. Of water, with room to spare for my wind shell, maps, gloves, GoreTex booties, stove fuel, wading shoes, and all sorts of other useful trail cruft.

And I had a third pocket, a detachable one hanging from the pack's front. It held the day's food and my cook set.

All these pockets were actually useful. Take that, GoLite.

Padding Is An Afterthought

I realized this around Day Two. After deciding on Day One that this pack was the Real Deal. My version of a Las Vegas wedding — love at first sight followed by disorientation, loathing, and pain.

My affection faded fast when the pack began to eat my shoulders. The padding is too thin, around three-eights inch thick or so (9.5 mm), and far too soft. Soft padding is like a wet dream — never the real thing, and always leaving you feeling a nagging unease, and somehow guilty. At best.

My self-designed padding was some kind of miracle anonymous mutant discarded closed cell foam that I got at an odd little outlet store. Squeezing it between my fingers, hard, barely left a dent in it. It was almost like trying to compress a pine board.

It didn't collapse into insignificance, but I had doubts until I actually began using it.

In use, it grudgingly conformed itself to my body's lumps, bumps, and nubbins, but never forgot its heritage as a proud, smooth, almost painfully hard sheet, but did the job wonderfully. If left alone for a half hour, it always returned to its original shape, ready for more.

In other words, it reliably worked as padding, which GoLite's mooshable foam doesn't.

Top Loader

Most packs are top loaders. I can't figure this out. It's about the worst way possible to load a pack.

Packs might as well be vampires, or pack designers. One gets bit, then passes it on. Every pack design degrades into a copy of the previous one. One that didn't really work either.

Try to fill a top loader and you're stuck hiking with the results of a random shoving contest on your back. The pack always wins. You want is order but what you get is a mess, an unbalanced mess.

It's true that some packs are panel loaders, but they generally aren't well-designed either. I'm not inspired.

My first dim glimmerings of intelligence came from experiencing a Moonbow Gear Gearskin. (Look it up.) For a hammock user who has nothing even remotely solid enough to serve as a fake frame the way a rolled-up sleeping pad does, cylinder-wise, in some frameless packs, the Gearskin idea had promise, but required at least three hands to load. Especially on sloping ground, when it might take two people and a trained sheepdog to keep all the goods from escaping until the pack finally got cinched down.

After some fumbling I had a better idea. A pack closed at the top, but with no front. Instead, there is a curtain on that fourth side of the pack, and where the curtain's two flaps overlap, well that's how you get inside. During loading, every item added to the pack gets shoved in through the curtain's opening and stays in, because there's no way for it to come back out.

Lay the pack flat on the ground, on its back, carefully push things into it through the slit in the front, arrange them neatly in flat layers from the back of the back toward the front, fill the corners, make sure it's all properly arranged, and then pull the pack together using compression straps that close up the slit and turn this simple fabric bag into a tight, small, firm solid wad that requires no frame and minds its manners.

It worked.

It's Basically Stupid

It's a fancy kind of rucksack ("A cloth sack carried on one's back and secured with two straps that go over the shoulders.")

The GoLite does have a light-duty flexible plastic framesheet, about a quarter-inch thick (6.4 mm).

Eh.

It helps a little, but if the pack was designed better, it wouldn't need anything like that, and what it framliness it has does less to give the pack support than to provide a smooth surface against the wearer's back.

There are two straps on each side of the pack, for compression I guess, but there are only two, and they aren't muscular enough to help much.

A day or two spent backpacking with a Jam illustrates how old-school this pack is, aside from its modern fabric and annoying colors. The Jam is wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. It bulges out away from the hiker's back. In use it is a big lump of a thing, despite the company's trim-looking catalog photos.

Try to carry your heavy lump of food up high and the pack is tippy. Place your food lower and you have other problems. I tried having my food run vertically along my spine, but then everything else in the pack got displaced, and since the food was hanging too far toward the front of the pack it was too far behind me, and kept trying to tip me over backward.

The only reasonable way I found to carry my food was to put it in the bottom of the pack, where it nestled in the small of my back. But it still hung too far behind me. Just like a century-old rucksack, which it really is.

The Best News

(If you can call it that.)

Is that GoLite is selling these for $109.99, which is really pretty cheap. Though buying a pack on price is something like getting vaccinated so you can go out and get bit by rabid critters. Daily. That's not why I go backpacking.

I can't wait until my next pack is done. Really. Can't wait.

I'm foaming at the mouth just thinking about it.

More:

Jam 50L Pack (Unisex)

Gearskin

No Pack Is Made For Me

Camping Packing

Stuffing your friends.

Essentials for Wilderness Survival, Part 10: Safety in numbers.

One thing you'll notice if you ever go backpacking is that you are all alone. This is why you should...

• Never go backpacking, or
• Don't go alone.

Going backpacking can cause many problems. Among these are the loss of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or other things. This happens because when you are alone there is no one to look out for you and tell you how to do it right, or what dangerous parts to skip. And there is no one to blame if you go ahead and do it anyway.

Besides, being alone all the time is boring, like watching reruns on TV. You should never be alone, even at home watching TV. If you are alone, no one knows what you are getting up to, and it could be something bad.

Better to take a camping pack everywhere you go and keep out of trouble.

A camping pack is a special device for camping and packing, or, sometimes, the other way around. Some normal parts for a camping pack are the pack, and the back, and the other stuff. It is all very simple. First you put things in and then you take them out again, but only while standing still. It requires a special license to do this while moving and may cause accidents, so leave that for the experts. You are only trying to have fun anyway, not be in the news under "Other Incidents".

Now, the next thing you may ask is "How can a camping pack make me be not lonely?" Well, it is very straightforward. There is a military pack called ALICE, and another one called MOLLE, but they are very large and heavy and military-like, so best to try something in a smaller size, like the JANET, or even the KIRSTEN.

They come in nice colors too, but for all-around survival benefits, plus getting your spirits lifted, there is nothing better than the BARBIE pack.

This is true. Barbie the Doll has been around for ages and has all the accessories you could possibly need for wilderness survival, including that famous BARBIE pack of hers. And then the friends. Barbie has lots of friends.

Barbie's best-known friend is Ken (who is really Ken Carson — kind of a little-known secret), but there is also Blaine, an Australian surfer who sort of hung around for a while and who we're not really sure of in the same way we're not too sure about Ken, but this is about Barbie, so get over it.

Barbie is really kind of bitchen when you get to know her. She drives a pink Corvette convertible and can handle a jeep with the best of them. She has a pilot's license and flies commercial airliners while being a flight attendant during some of the quieter moments. Can you do that?

During her life Barbie has had over 40 pets like cats and dogs, horses, a panda, a lion cub, and a zebra. How about you? Same answer?

And clones. There's Miss Astronaut Barbie, Doctor Barbie, and Nascar Barbie. And friends. She has lots: Hispanic Teresa, Midge, African American Christie, Steven (Christie's boyfriend). And relatives like Barbie's siblings and cousins Skipper, Todd, Stacie, Kelly, Krissy, and Francie.

And best of all, there's room in the BARBIE pack for all of them. How many is that now? Plenty! You'll never have to worry about being unpopular or going suicidal from loneliness when you have your BARBIE pack along, and all your plastic friends, because there's always someone to talk to. Even if you get into an argument with one of them, you still have others handy. And if it gets really bad, just pull somebody's head off until they promise to behave.

But of course, things aren't always easy. Sometimes it has to to beyond conversation and quiet overnight snuggling. Which is when Barbie's physical characteristics come in handy. With a body of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), and a head of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), Barbie's energy density is right up there.

Same with all her friends and relatives. So when sacrifices are necessary, Barbie burns like that proverbial roman candle. Pile her up with all her friends and relatives and torch the lot if you need a massive signal fire, or combust them one at a time and huddle close for warmth. Either way you'll find that your new friends are there for you when you need them.

And you can always buy more.

Hardcore Hardwear

Hoist the black sail.

Would you trust your life to old-fashioned stuff?

Hey, the first stop on this road is: What are you worth, really?

This is a problem. Time magazine had an article in 2008 saying maybe $129,000, but that's if you're attractive and smell good. This leaves out backpackers.

But, also according to Time, the international standard for a random human is around $50,000.

Closer to home, if chopped, sliced, ground, and sold as cat food, how much are you worth?

Doing some rough calculations, let's say you weigh 150 pounds (OK, old-style, fruity English measurements, but we'll get past that in a sec). So that's 2400 ounces, and at 4 ounces per can, we get 600 cans.

Assuming half of that is waste, inedible (even for cats), or doesn't taste good enough to eat (even to cats), figure 300 cans worth of kitty chow. At a dollar a can, that gives you a retail value of $300, more if you are bigger and have a lot of that nice runny fat. (Which cats go absolutely ape over.)

So that's your value to a cat, but how much is your life worth, really?

Well, another way to look at is is how much you put into backpacking gear. Things get a lot simpler if you look at life from this end.

Say you make most of your gear. That means your gear is essentially worthless because it's crap. I know it's crap because I tried selling some of your stuff on eBay last year while you were on vacation and it all got returned as useless crap. Ruined my reputation too. Thanks for nothing.

So you have no value unless you buy your stuff from people who know how to make it, which isn't you. See where this is going?

OK, I understand. No, really. I don't mind explaining this. In fact I like nothing better than explaining the obvious to idiots. Seriously. It brings me great joy.

It goes like this. Your value as a person is only the value of what you own. Since you have no life and only go backpacking every once in a while just to relieve the intense agony of having such a boring existence, and do nothing else except eat, sleep, watch TV, and do those things in the bathroom that none of us wants to imagine, not even once, it becomes trivial to assign a value to you.

Here's the deal.

Buy stuff. Lots. Max out.

When you buy, get two. If it comes painted, get the two-tone version. If it's not painted, go for the rhinestones. If it's plain and simple, then make sure it's made of platinum. Or plutonium, which is even more expensive.

But you're a backpacker, right? So what about your pack then? Platinum doesn't work for packs, and you tried that whole do-it-yourself thing with sticks and a couple of rabbit hides with predictable results. So, what then?

Tweed.

Tweed, babe. Right here, right now. English tweed. It's even waterproof.

The perfect thing for you. A tweed pack.

Who cares how good it is? It's the price that counts. For you, only £565.00. In U.S. money, that's $899.49, which makes it even better.

Why? Because it's like your worth suddenly goes up 63% and you only have to sit there and click at the internet currency converter, and you can still eat chips with your other hand while doing that. So many things are so much better than sex, and this is way up there. One click does it.

Makes you feel good all over too? It does me.

Use a soft brush gently applied to remove loose dirt. Remove stains with water and mild soap. Fluff gently and let air-dry in a warm sunny spot while you sip herb tea and admire your cleverness.

But it gets better, because you can skip the backpacking and just buy gear. That way you won't ever find stains, or have any dust to brush off, and you can eat more chips, right there by your warm TV set. No stains or dust means your personal worth as a human will stay right up there, and will climb as you buy more and more, and shove it into your closet. Where it will remain safe. Forever.

So who said backpacking was nasty?

Probably some creep without a decent credit card.

More:

Right here. Your Black Sail Rucksack.

Meet The £565 Waterproof Tweed Daypack

Your place in Time: The Value of a Human Life: $129,000