And seeing the snail, which everywhere doth roam
Carrying his own house still, still is at home,
Follow (for he is easy pac’d) this snail,
Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.
JOHN DONNE
WE MEET TWO distinct types of hikers in the woods: the kitchen sink and the hair shirt. Maybe you know them too. Maybe you’re one or the other. Some people carry more than you can possibly use on a two- or three-day weekend; others less than you need to enjoy a reasonably good time.
The kitchen sink believes in carrying it all, everything to make himself comfortable in the woods, along with every precaution against a wide range of possible emergencies, from hypothermia to hangnail. With his pack bulging and stuff sacks strapped on top or hanging below, he grunts along, sweat pouring from his overworked body. Maybe you can’t take it with you, but this fellow will obviously try.
The hair shirt subscribes to the go-light school, toothpick-and-a-match, survive on as little as possible. He drills holes in the handle of his toothbrush and bivouacs in a rain poncho.
These two traditions have deep roots. It’s Atlas versus Mercury. He who bears the weight of the world on his shoulders versus he of the winged foot. It’s Paul Bunyan versus John Muir. Goliath versus David. Connie versus Big Stoop (remember, you “Terry and the Pirates” fans?). Late Gothic versus Rococo. Mae West versus Twiggy. The difference is more than a matter of pack weight; it’s a contrast in approach to the outdoors, a divergence of personal style, almost a split in philosophy.
On his pioneering explorations of Yosemite Valley and the Sierra Nevada, John Muir carried incredibly little—sometimes just a couple of blankets and a food box small enough to strap to his belt, containing only grain meal, sugar, and tea. Muir is not only one of America’s greatest champions of conservation, he is also the patron saint of the go-light school.
Muir’s modern-day successor as lord of the Sierra backcountry was Norman Clyde, who spent 40 years exploring hidden valleys and making solo first ascents of difficult routes almost right up to his death at age 87 in 1972. But Clyde was the opposite of Muir as a backpacker. His typical 100-pound pack might include elaborate fishing gear, two pistols, camera equipment, extra pairs of boots and clothes, several large kettles, a wide assortment of dishes, bowls, and cups, canned food, and perhaps a few chunks of firewood if he were going above timberline; plus the famous Clyde library of books. “The pack that walked like a man,” he was called. Surely Clyde was the patron saint of the kitchen sink breed.
The New England inheritors of the Clyde legacy have traditionally been the hut men of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s chain of huts in the White Mountains. These college-age lads used to stock all the food and equipment for huts that were as far as 6 miles from the road over mountain trails, with as much as 3,600 feet of elevation to be gained. Their packs of well over 100 pounds humbled many a tired vacationer whom they steamed past on the trail. Back in the 1950s, the hut boys at the 4,900-foot Madison Springs Hut began packing all the parts of a Model T up to that remote and rocky windswept col, intending to assemble it among the boulders. Sober authorities intervened, and a helicopter flew out the parts as part of a cleanup campaign in the 1960s. These days the AMC is deemphasizing the load-carrying legend of hut life; modern hut men are hired more for their hospitality or their ability to interpret the ecology around the hut, and there are now female “hut persons.” Loads are still respectable, but packs over 100 pounds are frowned upon. An era has passed.
The modern backpacking ideal is to cut weight ruthlessly. The western outdoors painter Roy Kerswill says he gets along fine for five days on a 16.5-pound pack, including camera, sketch pad, and brushes. He carries no cooking gear because he eats cold food only, and he’s worked it out so that he survives comfortably on a half-pound of food per day.
Many years ago a New Englander of outsized legends, a fiery eccentric by the name of Arthur Comey, boasted of multiday trips with his famous “Ten Pound Pack.” Incredibly, Comey’s 10 pounds found room for many items we would scarcely consider necessary today—razor and shaving soap, washcloth, bathing trunks, moccasins, and ax, with sheath and whetstone.
Considering the obvious advantages of the go-light approach, we wish we could report that our normal packs are models of how to go superlight. Not so. Part of our problem is that we do a good deal of winter camping, when some heavy gear is unavoidable. Somehow we can’t bring ourselves to part with it in summer.
For example, for years we were accustomed to a roomy, stormproof tent. It’s very useful in winter, especially in exposed campsites or spots where you might have to sit out a storm for a full day or more. Being accustomed to this luxury in winter, we went on enjoying it year-round. We carried the Bauer Expedition model, with the front and back vestibules, snow flaps (in July?), and a weight of 12 pounds (grunt!).
It took the “new ethic” of clean camping to wean us away from our beloved Bauer for summer camping. Now we swing along the trail with somewhat lightened loads (and fewer backaches) since we made the switch to hammocks. We’ll tell you more about that in chapter 10.
For winter camping, we’ve discovered the delicious advantage of the sled over the backpack. As long as you aren’t trying to climb too steep a slope, it is much, much easier to drag your overnight gear on a simple plastic sled. When you stop walking with a pack on, that 50 pounds is still on your back unless you struggle to set it down and heft it back on again. With a sled, when you stop pulling, that 50 (or even 100) pounds sits there on the snow, not on your back.
Otherwise, we have learned the lessons of weight too slowly. For many years we were hung up on a model of headlamp that gives strong light while leaving both hands free; but it ran on four D batteries, while the handy miniature flashlights run on two tiny AA batteries. Today we’re content with the little flashlights and a jerry-built head rig for converting them to headlamps if we need to.
We were very reluctant to give up the marvelous Optimus 111B camping stove. We knew it was great for melting large amounts of snow (again . . . in July?), but it was also virtually the heaviest of the myriad models of backpacking stoves on the market. We’ll have more to tell you about this in chapter 11.
Last fall we noticed that in an obscure corner of our pack we’d been carrying—all summer—a file for sharpening crampons on ice-climbing trips.
An anthropologist named Woody Allen claims that there are tribes in Borneo that do not have a word for “no” in their language and turn down requests by nodding and saying “I’ll get back to you.” Well, our ability to reject articles from backpacking trips sometimes seems about as effective. So, for years in went the extra batteries, the extra sweater, the extra fuel.
If you want to avoid getting into this bind, we can suggest a number of things that we’ve seen in the backcountry that you don’t need:
1. A folding foxhole shovel, an old Boy Scout favorite; it might have been great in World War I, but who needs the weight in today’s backwoods?
2. A mallet for driving tent pegs; you’ll need it to set up a circus tent, but not for the typical weekend camping setup.
3. A tool kit, including a wrench, needle-nose pliers, screwdrivers (regular and Phillips), and scissors; we find that a 4-ounce Swiss Army knife, plus a little parachute cord, will suffice for emergency repairs.
4. Various camp stools and folding chairs—even folding toilets, as if these matters can’t be taken care of without specialized equipment.
5. Cosmetics for the ladies. One handbook for women in the woods advises that “using a deodorant daily in the backwoods is a must.” And we’ve seen recommended equipment lists that include a nail file and clippers (again, these are handy on a Swiss Army knife).
6. Carbon monoxide detection kits. No kidding—one widely quoted authority on camping says that you should never use a portable cookstove inside a tent without a carbon monoxide detection kit. Who wants to lug a kit around when thoroughly ventilating your tent will solve the problem?
If you eliminate all such non-necessities, but you still find that your pack outweighs a Notre Dame linebacker, we offer these 10 tiny tips on how to coexist with the enemy. Alas, these ideas grow from long personal experience. If your pack is heavy:
1. Keep the weight high; load the heavier items near the top of your pack.
2. Keep it all close to your back; avoid bulky items strapped on the outside in such a way as to pull you over backward.
3. Get everything into or onto the pack; don’t try to carry anything in your hands, unless you go in for a walking staff (or in winter, an ice ax or ski pole).
4. Use a waist strap to transfer most of the load from your shoulders to your hips; on most modern packs this is standard.
5. Once you put the pack on, plan to walk steadily for long periods and not to stop for “rests” very often; frequent rest stops, taking the pack off and wrestling it back on, will delay your progress interminably and use up more energy than the rests restore.
6. Adopt a slow, sustainable pace with a steady rhythm of regular steps; if you can sort of roll your weight from one foot to the other you can get a momentum that eases the strain. A stop-and-go, herky-jerky motion makes the full presence of the pack felt.
7. In winter, try using a sled for most of the weight, although this approach may be appropriate for some itineraries and not others.
8. Winter or summer, plan itineraries that fan out from base camps so that you aren’t always carrying all the weight. Enjoy a light day pack for most of your upper-elevation walking, and camp low—which eases the impact on fragile alpine ecologies as well as your back.
9. Cultivate strong young companions who like to show that they can carry enormous weights. Then, as you walk uphill, ask them short questions that require long answers, so they have to do the talking while you gasp for breath as unobtrusively as possible. (“I didn’t quite follow the theory of relativity. Would you go through it again?”)
10. If all else fails, and you must carry weight, grin as you bear it. Think positive; like so many activities that seem purely physical, packing a heavy load is 75 percent mental. If you can pick up a pack, you can walk all day with it—if your frame of mind is right.
We know a marvelous fellow, Win Thratchett, with whom we’ve been on several winter camping trips in the Adirondacks. Thratchett’s the kitchen sink type, par excellence. He carries an enormous pack, but he’s ready for anything. In fact, he’s never so happy as when some unusual emergency requires some obscure item that only a pack of his size could possibly provide. When a trip goes smoothly, Thratchett’s unhappy—all that extra weight for nothing.
On one trip a young friend broke a snowshoe and was bemoaning the inadequacy of his planned patch job, which made use of a stick, a strip of rawhide, and tape. Along came Thratchett, who asked (somewhat eagerly, we thought) if he could help. Our young friend allowed as how what he really needed was a pair of wood screws just the right size.
Thratchett looked delighted. “What size?” he asked as he swung off his enormous pack and started into it.
The other man felt this was just too much and remarked somewhat acidly: “Five-eighths inch, and only flatheads will do.”
Thratchett looked momentarily nonplussed, but buried deeper into the dark recesses of the pack. When he came up, triumphantly clutching his tool kit, you could sense his satisfaction as he asked:
“Brass or steel?”