Backpacking Trips: Essential Backpacking Gear

Another glorious season approaches, and millions of city-dwellers in the Pacific Northwest begin to fantasize about how they will pillage the backcountry in their SUV's, ATV's and....WTF? There goes some bastard on foot! Should we pull our Range Rover off to the side of the trail and ask if he needs help? He couldn't possibly....Wait, he is intentionally walking, AND he's carrying all his stuff with him on his back! Whoa, I'm actually remembering the last episode of Pioneer House.

Yes, some of us still shun motorized vehicles in favor of taking the slow approach to backcountry exploration. For those of us who do, we are assaulted annually with the latest products for making our experiences as comfortable and effortless as possible. Many of us carry painful memories of long approaches, grinding descents, freezing cold nights, driving rain/snow/sleet/hail and the occasional unfortunate encounter with a fearsome, hungry chipmunk. The 20% off sale at REI beckons to us to part with hundreds of our hard-earned dollars in exchange for the lightest, strongest, most compact and most breathable materials designed to relieve our every backcountry discomfort....but is it worth it? I have all the answers.

Before you drop a few hundred bones on a new ultralight tent or backpack, read on and decide then if you really want to do that.

Most of us know what our limits are. We have carried packs with gear weighing between 15 and 45+ lbs on various adventures, and we know how we felt during and afterwards. We have summited glaciated mountains and backpacked to remote lakes. Many of us have jobs that seem to have a insatiable greed for our time, and more that two contiguous vacation days is a luxury, compelling us to cram as much adventure into as little time as possible. After doing all these things, we develop a preference for what we like doing most. We have also gotten to know ourselves a little better too; whether we over prepare for any eventuality imaginable, or if we sacrifice preparedness for less weight to carry. I'll pose a few scenarios and make some recommendations for each.

• I'm a mountaineer. My summit bid begins at the trailhead at 11 PM - 1 AM, returning before dark. - You are obviously a crazed, obsessive peak-bagger, who sacrifices an enjoyable experience and safety for reaching as many summits as possible. Ok, FINE! My attack was based on jealousy of your ability to do that...or my lack of craziness. This approach to mountaineering has a few advantages over a more leisurely one. Since you won't be camping (at least not intentionally), you need only bring the most modest emergency shelter, or none at all. You can also assume you won't be needing a sleeping bag. You can forgo the weight of a stove and fuel, although an ultralight stove and a half-empty canister of fuel will allow you to melt snow for drinking water instead of humping up all your water for the day. You can also replace the extra meals needed for the longer approach with some emergency food. So you can knock off about 15 lbs or more from your load. This approach also has the advantage of making weekend trips possible, and the need for longer stretches of good weather reduced.

• I'm a mountaineer. My summit bid begins late morning, and I make a base camp, returning the next day before dark. - You are eminently wise, and your pensive, deliberate ways will bring you much happiness and success on the mountain. What's the big rush? Why bust your hump trying to summit in one day only to run out of steam or lose your weather window? If you're prepared to camp, you can wait for good weather, and you can break your climb into smaller, less exhausting chunks. As far as the implications for ultralight gear, you certainly can save yourself some pain on your approach if you lighten your load as much as possible, but generally speaking, approach day is much easier than summit day, and you can take the pack mule approach. This will largely serve to make your camp more comfortable, and a rewarding destination after reaching the summit. I've seen people lug in a small keg of beer for their base camp. If you can somehow strap it to your pack, anything is game.

• So what about summit day? Well, what do you have left to carry? You've left the heavy stuff in camp, so all you have is your backpack, mountaineering gear (ice axe, crampons, etc), boots, food, clothing and emergency gear. You are in the same position as the guy taking the single day approach, except you are well-rested. I won't get into emergency gear, because you all know you should have it, no matter how good you think you are. So let's hit the gear highlights and build a decision framework for what to buy.

• Ultralight Backpack - Worth it or not? Regardless of your approach to mountaineering, you'll be happier on summit day if your pack is light. There are many options for ultralight backpacks, and you can save up to about 2 lbs or maybe more depending on the size you choose. The drawbacks are they are sometimes less durable and generally more expensive. Therefore, they might not endure a lot of abuse (or chipmunks and ground squirrels), and you may find yourself patching it or buying another one. Check the materials carefully, and/or review the user reviews on sites like http://www.rei.com/ or Summitpost's gear site, http://www.spgear.org/. There are plenty of others, but these are my personal favorites.

• Boots - This is potentially contentious, and there are a variety of approaches climbers take with footwear, from a combination of approach shoes and heavy mountaineering boots to a one size fits all general mountaineering boot, or plain old backpacking boots. In the ultralight mountaineering boot department there are a number of choices of boots with the 3/4 length rigid shank and Gore Tex uppers. They are super light, and are ideal for moderate weather and limited mixed climbing. They are probably not a good cold weather choice, and if your climb entails a long rugged approach over unforgiving rocky terrain, you run the risk of totally shredding the uppers. They are up to 2.5 lbs lighter than their full leather or plastic counterparts. The leather mountaineering boots are highly durable, and tend to be a bit easier on the foot at the cost of additional weight, and the plastic ones are extremely warm, durable and rigid, but can weigh in at up to a whopping 5 lbs 10 oz. Holy crap. Bear in mind also that a pound on your feet is worth around 5 pounds on your back, but be careful not to compromise the protection and durability of the heavier ones. Let the type of climbing you like to do guide you here. I find the decision for a single pair of boots for everything really hard to make, and you may end up with more than one pair.

• Crampons - After footwear, it makes sense to talk about crampons, and again, you have some ultralight choices. There are multiple models made of aluminum or other alloys that weigh in at about 1 pound, but if you do any mixed climbing, you'll dull out the points very quickly. Most of the others are made of chromium and molybdenum, and are extremely strong and well-suited for mixed climbing. They can weigh an additional 1.5 pounds. Coupled with heavy boots, you could really weigh down your feet.

We all know how these trips can start out. You pack your backpack until it's stuffed and you can barely zip it closed. Then you put it on your back and reality hits: no f'ing way am I carrying all this. But ultimately, nothing gets removed because it's all essential, and you find yourself seriously wishing you had a lighter stove, or a lighter backpack. It's at this point when you ask yourself if what you plan to do is worth replacing your heavier gear. My 3 kids are too young to carry much themselves, so when we all go backpacking, I carry 7 liters of water, all the clothes, food and tents. I don't even want to know how much my pack weighs on those trips, suffice it to say that each liter of water weighs 2.2 lbs. But if the kids have fun and are comfortable, I get to go again later. If they don't, there is no next time. Part of them having fun is not having to hike too far, so I choose destinations that are easily reached. Therefore, I have no reason to try to reduce weight, and most of my efforts to reduce weight will be wasted anyway since most of the weight is from water and the kids' gear. in other words, if you choose destinations that are reached in up to a few hours, you won't be well-served replacing all your cookware with titanium or trimming the edges off maps. The pack mule approach for this works well. On longer, multiday trips, however, weight matters more as you will likely be slogging along more miles, not all of them with breathtaking vistas. There will be times on such trips when you want to move fast, such as days with greater mileage, or more climbing. Then there's always the concern that something goes wrong, such as an injury, that causes you to slow down or reduce your ability to carry a heavy load. Something as simple as a painful stiff knee can make life miserable, but even moreso if you are humping a huge load of heavy gear. What can be done? You guessed it: go light. Here's how:

• Weigh in - What can we save going ultralight then? It looks like up to 6 lbs of potential weight saved. Not bad. If possible, it would be best to take the weight savings on your feet. If you are a huge cheapwad, like me, you don't need to be any worse off with the lightweight options. If money is not an issue, you could spend more, maybe shaving some additional ounces off here and there, but ultimately you will be constrained by what makes practical sense (if you read anything I wrote), i.e. more is not necessarily better.

• Boots - Unless you know you will be encountering a lot of boot-shredding pumice boulder fields and scree, you would be well-served by a pair of backpacking boots with Gore-Tex uppers. You don't want to compromise the ankle support, and they must be water proof. It would be nice to have a stiffer shank if possible too. You'll save weight over the more rugged full-leather counterparts, but don't expect to get as many years out of them as you would full-leather boots. The price is comparable.

• Backpack – Nothing new here. If you tend to go on longer, strenuous trips, the lighter the better. Is it as critical as it is with mountaineering? I would argue no because as you go along on your week-long odyssey, you consume a significant portion of your pack's weight. Your food weight goes down every day, as does your fuel weight. My belief is that it is more important that your pack be as comfortable as possible since you'll be more intimate with that thing for longer than some people are with their spouses.

• Tent – Lots to consider here due to the wide variety of conditions. I always anguish over this decision too, because I only want to buy one tent. I hate to say it, but it may well be impossible to get the perfect tent for all conditions that's also light and cheap (I tried). Here's an interesting compromise: get a tent for a given set of circumstances, and get a bivvy for the light and fast type outings. I wouldn't want a bivvy for a long trip since I like to store stuff in my tent's vestibule, and if you're stuck in bad weather, you may well go coo-coo for coco puffs in a bivvy.

• Stove – Get the Brunton Raptor. Just trust me.

• Sleeping bag – Down is lightweight, warm and highly compressible, the latter being perhaps the most important attribute. Really the biggest downside to down is if you get it wet. The it is still compressible, but certainly not lightweight, and probably not warm. Synthetics are a good choice for warm weather since you can still get bags that pack down to a tiny size, and those are also lightweight.

I would highly recommend visiting Summitpost's gear review pages (http://www.spgear.org/) since the reviewers are people who get out there a lot and have experience with a number of different products in a given category. I like this much better that the reviews I see on merchant sites because I have no faith in the reviewers. After you read a bunch of the you will begin to see why. I will use the reviews on sites like http://www.rei.com as a guide mostly to narrow a field of many contenders, but then get the definitive word from Summitpost.

Have fun out there, pack out your poop and enjoy your new gear.