Going Light
The quickest way to ruin your first trip is to overload your pack with too much stuff, then pick some ambitious itinerary requiring you to hike 30 miles and gain 5,000 feet of elevation every day. Backpacking may rhyme with back-breaking, but it shouldn't be synonymous with it. It's one of Murphy's laws that packs invariably grow heavier as the day progresses. Backpackers loudly lament this fact, of course, and issue increasingly inflated estimates of the dimensions of their load. The longer the day, the bigger the pack of lies. The key to enjoying backpacking, therefore, is to pare the load as much as possible. In the beginning, aim for no more than 30 percent of your body weight; less is always better. Even highly fit, experienced backpackers on long trips rarely carry more than 50 percent of their body weight. Get in the habit of weighing gear on a postage or bathroom scale and knowing approximately how much all of your gadgets and gizmos weigh. Learn what different pack weights feel like, and what you can reasonably carry in different types of terrain. A weight that can be carried easily on well-groomed trails can be as cantankerous as a cross-eyed mule if you're climbing, scrambling, bushwhacking or on skis. "Take half of it and go for it" is the half-joking philosophy of mountaineering that is equally applicable to backpacking. With experience, you'll probably quickly find that you can do without many of the items you considered essential at first. Once you've learned to leave behind all unnecessary gizmos, you'll have graduated from pack rat to pack mule.

Eventually, if the sport really grabs you, you'll want to invest in your own gear instead of renting and borrowing. My philosophy on buying equipment was defined as a boy, when my dad told me to always buy good tools. "If you buy a lousy one," he said, "you'll curse it forever, but you'll never want to spend the money to buy a good one because you'll already have one that's marginally adequate." I try to define my needs carefully, buy the best I can afford, then take care of it meticulously and make it last. The cost of good gear, per year of use, is probably no higher than the cost of buying cheap gear and throwing it away when it breaks or falls apart after a year or two of service. When you factor in the satisfaction of using top-quality equipment, the investment begins to seem like a bargain.

The best place to find high-quality backpacking gear is undoubtedly at a specialty shop. Not only will the shop carry a good selection of the best gear, but the sales people are likely to be knowledgeable about its strengths and weaknesses. Most specialty shops hire people who actively participate in a wide range of outdoor sports. They can often provide valuable suggestions on what will work best for your intended purpose. If there is no specialty shop in your area, consider buying from one of the big mail-order outfits like R.E.I., E.M.S. and L.L. Bean. If you can, avoid the camping-supply sections of the discount chains like K-Mart and Target. The gear there may be cheap, but it will also be heavy, bulky and probably ineffective.

Good gear, meaning lightweight, durable, effective gear, is undeniably expensive. Console yourself with the thought that once you've made the purchase, you can vacation at will while hardly spending more than you would if you stayed home and commuted to work every day.

Next Page: The Outward Bound Backpacker's Handbook

Site Map  - 

Copyright © 2006 Beginner's Guide. All content rights reserved.
Trademarks and brands mentioned are property of their respective copyright owners.