BILL HOKE
If it’s been years since you went backpacking and all you can remember is how bad that old backpack dug into your ribs, bent you over and made you miserable, I’d suggest a trip to your local outdoor store to see all the new lightweight gear.
While you are there, pick up a copy of “Hiking Light Handbook” by Karen Berger, Mountaineers Books.
This sensible, practical book can help you lighten your load and bring the real joy back to backpacking. It’s packed with practical tips and real backcountry experience. You’ll learn how to cut down without going without.
Ten years ago, my wife dropped me off at the Lake Cushman ranger station, said she would pick me up at Dosewallips in six day. I stood in the parking lot, looking at Old Blue, my trusty Lowe backpack, and reached to pick it up and heft it onto my back.
I had been packing and repacking for this trip, my longest solo hike up to then, for months. Bob Wood had suggested this hike, He sent a few pages from his trail notes and I had photocopied (with his permission) the pages from his “Olympic Mountains Trail Guide’” (indispensable for hiking in Olympic National Park).
The weather forecast looked good and I was fit and ready until I hoisted the pack on my back. My last weigh-in before leaving had me with 58 pounds of gear, and the water bottles I filled from the Skokomish River added the final insult.
Hours later, sweating and hurting badly, I stopped at the bridge at Eight Stream, put my pack down (dropped it) and was seen (by a passerby who pretended not to notice) as I kicked at my inert pack, shouting for it to get up and get moving. I had had enough and it was only day one. My pack refused to move on its own.
I made it 13 miles to Home Sweet Home (before the shelter there was burned down — another story for another time) and spent a wonderful night there, planning my next days and cursing this backpack. I was finally ready to face the fact backpacking was No Fun if I had to lug so much weight. It’s one thing carrying a lot of gear and hardware on a climbing trip, but did I really need 58-pounds, plus water, for a 50-mile hike on mostly good trails in the Olympic Mountains?
No, I did not.
When I arrived at Heart Lake, below O’Neill Pass, I took the mandatory day off Bob Wood had insisted I take. Before I began to explore the heights and wonderful area of LaCrosse basin, I took everything from my pack and made a really honest inventory. While I should not admit it, I sorted out pounds of unnecessary food, took it far from camp and buried it all under piles and piles of rocks.
No mas.
Jump ahead a few years and I am returning from a three-night solo hike of the Skyline Trail. I’m approaching my parked truck at the Irely Lake parking area where I see two backpackers hoisting unbelievably huge packs in preparation for their 50 miles.
I am down to two remaining cookies and my pack weighs 18 pounds of basic gear, including tent, sleeping bag and pad, stove, fuel, and rain gear. I can hold it out with one arm. It weighed 31 pounds when I left.
“How much are you carrying?” I ask one of the men.
“Seventy-five pounds,” he replied with some bravado.
I watched them trudge off, noticing that the weather is turning bad. They are in for some long days carrying those enormous packs up and down what Bob Wood calls a strenuous trail.
They stared at my pack and I said, again, that I am not day hiking, I’ve just completed a hike they are beginning and I am carrying 41 pounds less than they are.
Forty-one pounds!
They stared at me.
What happened?
How did I shed all this weight?
First, I discovered that Old Blue, with side pockets, weighed almost seven pounds.
Empty.
I also discovered that one of the first truths about backpacking is if you have a big backpack, you will probably fill it.
So I cut back, got a smaller pack and looked really, really hard at what I thought was essential. I did not cut the ten essentials, but I pared down my one-pound first aid kit to a few bandages and some duct tape wound around a half-pencil.
I tossed out the French press in favor of instant Via, carried a small canister stove and just freeze dried foods.
No more trying to cook three-course meals, and out with big cook pots and just said no to frying pans.
I carried just one cup, and one plastic spoon.
Out went the extra socks and the heavy parka. I substituted one headlamp for one flashlight. There were no binoculars and I carefully culled personal gear down to a small spiral notebook, no novels, and just one map.
It all adds up.
When I hit the Skyline Trail this lightly laden, I found myself eating up the miles. I was doing in one day what it had taken my partner and I two days just a few weeks earlier.
I was enjoying myself and pounding out the 12 miles from Boulder Creek to Kimta in one day. Then the next day I hop scotched past buggy Beauty Lake, from Kimta to the Low Divide and to 11-Mile, a seventeen mile day. Then I went a final 12 miles the third day, in five hours.
When I came to a steep stretch, I found I could eat it up, powering up trails that had left me huffing and puffing, cursing and kicking poor Old Blue.
While I drove home in the rain forest-like rain, I wondered about the two hikers with their 75-pound loads and wondered if they were having fun yet.
I doubted it.
Going light was transformative, and it did not mean I was going without. And I was not cutting my toothbrush in half to save weight. What I was doing was paying attention to every single item. As much as I loved Old Blue, I found a better way in a smaller and lighter pack.
And a good book to tell me how.
Check out the new gear, get this book to help you make the tough choices and I positively promise you will re-discover the joys of backpacking and going light.
Happy Trails