Fanny Packs and Day Packs
If you're interested mostly in carrying an extra sweater and a water bottle during an evening jaunt or half-day stroll, then all you really need is a fanny pack or its upscale cousin with the tony name, the lumbar pack. Fanny packs range in size from watch-pocket-on-a-shoestring to bread-basket-on-a-girdle. As your hiking range increases and the weather gets more severe, you'll find the gear you need overburdening even the biggest lumbar pack. When your fanny pack starts to look like a thrift store's giveaway box, bulging at the seams and overflowing the top, it's time to move up to a day pack.

At first, you may want to carry the book pack you once used to haul books to school without breaking your arm. You'll quickly find, however, that you've entered a race between your growing dissatisfaction with the book pack's capacity and comfort and its accelerating tendency to explode at its flimsy zippers. I'm rooting for the zipper explosion, because that will give you the perfect excuse to buy a day pack that will last you for a decade and make your hiking days a pleasure.

The day packs I like share several features. First, they pamper your shoulders with amply padded shoulder straps. Second, they protect your spine from steely-hearted, back-stabbing pieces of equipment with a foam-padded panel that covers the entire back of the pack. (Let's clarify a bit of nomenclature here: the back of your pack faces your back, while the front faces away, so you can think of yourself as a two-headed push-me pull-you as you walk down the trail.) Larger-capacity day packs, which are designed for higher loads, may protect your back with both foam padding and a sheet of stiff plastic. The plastic sheet also helps transfer weight to your hips. A well-padded hip belt makes that weight transfer more comfortable, but beware: few day packs let you adjust the height at which the pack rides relative to your waist. The wrong size day pack can leave you with a hip belt that puts the squeeze on your stomach—and that extra cheese danish you gluttonously gobbled—not your hips.

I prefer day packs with simple drawstring closures at the top, referred to as top-loading packs. The alternative is a panel-loading pack with a long, U-shaped zipper arcing across the front panel. Panel-loading packs provide convenient access to all your gear, but have one serious Achilles' heel. Even the most stout zipper tends to break or wear out eventually, particularly if it's used in sandy regions. Sand and grit get into the zipper teeth, then wear out the slider from the inside. You'll start zipping your pack shut one day and find that the zipper is unzipping itself behind the slider just as fast as you zip it together in front. With many panel-loading day packs, a zipper failure leaves you with no good way to close your pack and retain the contents inside. A top-loading pack with a drawstring can't fail in this manner. Panel-loaders also have the disadvantage that they must be laid flat on their backs to access the contents – an unappealing prospect when the ground is a sea of mud, since any mud that clings to the back of the pack is immediately transferred to your clothing when you put the pack on.

Your day pack should have a few other features. Look for a large pocket in the pack lid, but be aware that it's one of Murphy's laws that you'll never have enough room in that pocket for all the essential items that you want to be immediately accessible. Many designers include a flat pocket for maps underneath the lid, but I prefer instead to put the map in a zippered pouch hanging from my shoulder straps, where it's more accessible, and use the “map pocket” solely for invaluable items like car keys and my wallet. Once those items are safely stowed, I refrain from unzipping that pocket until I’m back at the car, to ensure my keys won’t slip out unnoticed and disappear between two unmovable boulders.

Better day packs have compression straps along the sides of the pack. These straps, usually two or three to a side, allow you to compress the load and prevent the contents from swaying to and fro, which can upset your balance when you're boulder-hopping, log-balancing, skiing or swinging through the jungle with Tarzan in hot pursuit. Compression straps also give you a convenient way to lash on extra clothing and equipment, like a fly rod, tripod or skis. I like to slide my skis tail-first down through the compression straps, then lash the tips together with a short accessory strap. Lashing the tips helps keep the skis from pivoting back and forth and whacking you in the head when you walk. Be sure the tails don't drop down so low they hook the back of your knees or catch on the ground when you're walking down a steep hill. To further simplify attaching skis, look for a day pack with a quick-release buckle on the top compression strap instead of a ladder buckle, which must be painstakingly rethreaded if you undo it completely.

Most day packs provide lash patches on either the front of the pack or the lid. Lash patches are small leather or synthetic swatches of material sewn to the pack with slots behind them to accommodate lash straps, short lengths of nylon webbing with buckles on the end, used for attaching gear that won't fit inside. Technical day packs (meaning packs designed for climbers) include an ice-ax loop, a small loop of webbing at the bottom of the pack that makes attaching an ice ax convenient. Ice axes are not just for demented people who like to climb frozen waterfalls; many early-season peak-baggers carry them to stop a slip while crossing hard-frozen snowfields in the early morning. If your ambitions include such ascents, look for a day pack with an ice-ax loop. Be aware, however, that an ice ax is useless unless you know how to use it. Novice mountaineers should seek competent instruction from a qualified mountaineering school or highly experienced friends.

Next Page: Multi-Day Packs

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