Traveling With Your Pack
Backpackers who travel frequently by air put additional demands on their packs. Airport baggage-handling systems have impeccable records when it comes to handling packs – they've never yet let one through unscarred. In fact, they usually treat packs with the loving care of a lion devouring prime rib. External frames sometimes get bent or broken; airport conveyor belts occasionally shear off a few of the straps and buckles that adorn internal frames. If you must send your pack on an airplane unprotected by a steel case, try to snug down all the straps and tuck the ends inside or tie them together to reduce the length and number of loose ends. A better solution is to wrap your pack, of either type, with a foam sleeping pad, then throw the entire mummified affair into a giant duffel bag. Just don't use your Therm-A-Rest, or, even worse, your $500 Gore-Tex down sleeping bag as padding. Another solution, which dispenses with the need to carry or store a duffel bag once you arrive, is to buy a specialized travel pack.

Travel packs, all of which have internal frames, allow you to hide the suspension behind a fabric panel or to remove the suspension completely. At one end of the spectrum, travel packs can be glorified suitcases with uncomfortably skimpy shoulder straps. You wouldn't want to carry one on your back farther than the VIP slots of a small parking lot. At the spectrum's other end are full-featured packs suitable for week-long treks. Despite pack makers' best efforts, however, even sophisticated travel packs tend to be a compromise between carrying comfort on the trail and durability while traveling. My preference is to protect my expedition-grade pack with a big duffel bag when I travel by air.

Be sure to take these additional precautions before heading to the airport. First, make sure your pack/duffel bag combo doesn't exceed the weight limit for a single piece of luggage. Excess baggage charges add up very fast. Seventy pounds is the limit on most domestic flights. Limits on small planes and overseas flights may be less, depending on the carrier. Some duffel bags and packs have double-pull zippers, with two adjacent sliders that let you unzip the bag from either end. Consider locking those two zipper pulls together to discourage casual theft. Don't bring any backpacking fuel on board, whether in your stove, in your fuel bottle or in the form of butane cartridges, whether attached to your stove or not. Carrying fuel on board is illegal because it creates an extreme fire hazard. After emptying your stove and fuel bottle, triple bag them to prevent fumes from contaminating clothing or food. One plastic bag won't necessarily stop all odors from penetrating your goodies. Bill Baker and I learned this the hard way during a nine-day, 150-mile sea-kayak journey in Kenai Fjords National Park. Bill had just purchased two brand-new fiberglass kayaks. Two days out, we discovered that the pilot crackers we'd brought as a mainstay were absorbing fiberglass odors right through the heavy plastic bags in which we'd stored them. Not only did the crackers taste bad, they gave us rude, fiberglass-tainted burps that lasted for hours.

Next Page: Selecting and Fitting a Multi-Day Pack

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