New Pack

Staggering along the road to the Boy Scout camp with my brand new canvas rucksack loaded well beyond its capacity was my introduction to backpacking. I was 12. Fast forward 60+ years and I am sporting a 23 ounce backpack made of cutting edge materials and a contoured strap and carbon fiber stabilizing system that would have been unheard of when I started. State of the art back then was a wooded pack frame with canvas rucksack attached, a so called Trappers Frame. The pack and frame alone easily weighed several pounds. Strap on a canvas tent and a wool blanket or two for a bedroll and you are starting out at 15 to 18 lbs without any other gear, like your iron frying pan.

Counting the rucksack, I have owned a dozen backpacks during my life. After college I had a mammoth 80 liter Camp Trails aluminum frame pack that weighed about 7 lb. empty. A few years later I picked up a JanSport behemoth that probably weighed 8 lbs, but had metal flaps that attached the alloy frame to the hip belt. It was an engineering marvel. As I got older I gravitated to beefy, rugged, manly packs with lots of pockets and doodads. I didn’t need all that stuff, but marketing being what it is, I thought I did. Finally, in my fifties on a family trip, I was lugging this heavy and enormous pack with a heavy tent, heavy sleeping bag, several changes of clothes, and a lot of other stuff you “need” for camping. We were climbing up to 11,719 foot Oh Be Joyful pass in Colorado. My knees were anything but Joyful and were killing me and I realized I was not having any fun. I decided there and then that I would have to stop backpacking. I had loved backpacking and camping for decades, but realized that I just couldn’t physically do it any more.

When I got home I was getting ready to sell all my camping gear and take up some old person’s hobby like checkers, when a chance conversation with my daughter’s boyfriend (now husband) introduced me to ultralight backpacking. He lent me his copy of Backpacking magazine which was a special issue about the subject. Suddenly, I realized that my days in the wilderness might not be over. If all my gear weighed 15 lb instead of the 45 lb, then there was hope.

So I bought a postal scale which measured in grams and ounces and had a maximum limit of 5 lb. I weighed everything and started paring away all the unnecessary gear. I got a new pack, new sleeping bag, new tent over and new mind set. And slowly, but surely I shed pounds off my pack weight. My starting base weight (weight of all gear without food, water, or fuel) was 45 lb. My final base weigh was 13 lb. Suffice it to say that a 13 pound pack is much more enjoyable to carry than a 45 pounder.

My new pack replaces my previous one that is showing the thousands of miles it has traversed. Mainly, I was worried about the shoulder straps holding up for another season, so it was not a hard decision to get a new one. It is a Zpacks Arc Haul Ultra. At 70 L it is capacious and has a very nice suspension system making it comfortable to carry. And at 23 oz, it is several ounces lighter than the pack it replaces, Always a plus. I just recently took it for a spin on an overnight trip in the Cascades. I will file a brief trip report on that trip in this space shortly.

Until next week- Happy Trails