The joy of a light pack on forest paths
by Dennis Palmini It has always been curious to me how long it can take some people, like myself, for example, to learn a simple lesson. I doubt anyone would be surprised to hear that walking forest paths
and climbing hills gets easier as one's pack gets lighter. But it was many years before I really absorbed that lesson in the summer of 2001. I hadn't been out packing for several years and I was 25 or 30 pounds overweight and out of shape.
Still, I decided to backpack a segment of the Ice Age Trail up by Medford, Wisconsin, one July weekend. I parked at the Picnic Point area on the Mondeau Flowage and, with a grunt, lifted the pack onto my shoulders. It was sunny and the midmorning
temperature was already in the high 80s. I left the clear, wind-swept parking area and stumbled into the brushy woods where the air was soggy and a cloud of mosquitoes rose to greet me.
After an hour and a half of struggling up and down hills, I found the 46-pound pack weighing heavily on my hips and shoulders. The large hemlocks through which the trail was winding hardly registered with me, bent over as I was like an overburdened pack animal; I was too busy staring at the path and feeling
the growing pain in my legs.
Breathing deeply, running with sweat and swatting at bugs, I rounded a small lake on my right and saw the trail winding uphill through some trees. The hill looked to be only 25-30 feet high. But my legs were quivering and I was exhausted. "What am I doing here?" I thought. "I can't make it up that hill!"
I walked back to the car. And glad I was that nobody was around to see me shrug off the pack, throw it into the car and drive off in
defeat. In retrospect, it was foolish of me, in my late 50s and with a damaged heart, to go hiking with a heavy pack.
But that winter I found the backpacking forums at www.backpacker.com. There a group of people enjoyed talking about hiking and camping. One forum was devoted to something called
"ultra-light hiking." People there talked about packs weighing only 25 or 30 pounds for a full week's worth of walking.
And some folks I encountered online spoke of something they called their "base weight" of 10-12 pounds. Several hikers even made the preposterous claim that they walked upright and enjoyed looking at the woods around them! All of this sounded encouraging.
So I began asking questions about how to reduce pack weight. I re-read, but with a new eye, the
writings of Nessmuk, Horace Kephart, Townsend Whelen and, more recently, Ray Jardine. Though it has lately become trendy, lightweight hiking has long been practiced by outdoorsmen.
Nessmuk described in his thin book Woodcraft and Camping , published in 1887, a 10-day tramp he took through the Michigan wilderness. He wrote that his "outfit consisted of a rifle, hatchet, compass, blanket-bag, knapsack and knife. For rations, one loaf of bread, two quarts of meal, two pounds of pork, one pound of sugar with tea, salt, etc. and a supply of jerked venison. One tin dish, twelve rounds of ammunition and the bullet-molds filled the list, and did not make a heavy load." Apart from the gun and ammunition, this outfit could not have weighed more than 15 pounds.
Living in the woods
A year after that troubled July trip, I again walked on the IAT over by Medford, but now my pack weighed only 23 pounds. I stepped off from Forest Road 571 and entered a magical hemlock grove, a shadowy place of ferns and black birches.
Sapsuckers clearly favored the hemlocks: all the trees showed neat, horizontal rows of holes in their rough, cinnamon-red bark.
Across Sailor Creek, understory stands of hornbeam began to appear with shredded, gray-brown bark and egg-shaped bundles of small nuts enclosed in papery, hop-like bags. This modest tree grows one of the hardest woods in the northern forest.
I reached the Yellow River late the next morning. The sun sparkled off the little stream as it swirled around a bend and
gurgled over shallow rocks before flowing off to the west. After collecting and treating, I crossed the stream, stepping on the rocks, without shipping a drop of water. A pair of masked ovenbirds showed off their golden crowns, but they were quiet, now, in the late summer.
Up a hill, bitternut hickories appeared. Their ridged, yellow-green nuts lay along the trail and their twigs sported showy, two-scaled and powdery, yellow end buds. Open sky appeared through the trees, then a glint off
a blue surface, and down a hill to Jerry Lake. It's a small wilderness lake and the waves sparkled in the afternoon sun. If only I had a canoe ....
After dark, the rains began and thundercells rolled past for 11 hours. Twice lightning split the sky directly overhead with loud flash-bangs. Despite the roaring winds in the high canopy, only light puffs of air nudged my tent. Even so, I lay awake through much of the night, wondering how, if my tent failed under the heavy rains, would I find
my way out of the sopping wet and pitch-black woods?
A wet, green frog visited me in the early morning hours and, finally, I fell asleep. I woke to the serenades of hermit thrushes and to indistinct, black silhouettes of trees emerging in the grey, morning mist. The tent had held and I was dry.
Carrying a light pack on this trip allowed me to see the landscape through which I walked. Hills were easily climbed and streams crossed, nor did I experience pain at the end of a day of
walking. And when I sat down, it wasn't because I was exhausted, but to marvel at the many, long whiskers of a red squirrel or to sketch an orange spotted jewel-weed.
But equally important, when packing light, I feel closer to the natural world. The woods are more fully my home, now, as I use natural materials and experience more directly the moods of nature. I'm not insulated from them by a collection of high-tech gear.
And this summer, my base weight will be under 13 pounds; I should
be able to do a three-night trip for not more than 20 pounds total weight. And with less gear to keep track of, one's outfit is easier to manage.
Better knowledge of my gear and the woods makes me feel safer and more relaxed than I did with a heavy load. Because I carry less weight, walking on the trails (or off) is safer and my feet can cope better with the ground in shoes that feel almost like hard-soled moccasins.
I prefer obscure wilderness footpaths where I enjoy a sense of space
and separation from busy, everyday life. In place of human noise, I hear whistling swans flying north, black-throated green warblers, snorting deer, and, if I'm lucky, wolves howling. Where I find solitude and quiet in the presence of the sacred. A light pack gives me the freedom to find such places.
Dennis Palmini is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point who has been camping and backpacking for several decades. He goes by the trail name (and screen name on the
www.backpacker.com forums) of Naangiwane, an Ojibwa word meaning "He carries a light pack."
Principles of going lightweight
I've learned that lightweight backpacking isn't about "minimalism." It is about becoming more efficient in
selecting the gear that I carry and how I use it. "Going light" is a continuing effort that is, for me, guided by several simple practices.
I list and weigh every item in my pack. Using a postal scale bought at an office supply store, I weighed every piece of gear to
the half ounce. The items of gear I will always take (tent or tarp, kitchen, first aid and the like) were listed with their weights on a computer spreadsheet. Then I listed additional items that depended on my purpose and the season, such as a sketch book and pencils, cold-weather clothing or a sleeping bag. Finally, the "luxuries," like my candle lantern, that I might bring just because I like them.
But I can no longer fool myself: I have to consciously decide whether each item
is worth its additional weight. The spreadsheet tallies up the total weight of my equipment other than consumables like fuel, water and food. This is called the "base weight," and I frequently comb through my gear list looking for additional ways to reduce it. I continually review every item by asking myself, "Do I really need it? Can I find a lighter version? Will something else perform the same function?" I replaced my over 4-pound, standard backpacking tent with a tent that I sewed myself; it weighs only 2 pounds and 4 ounces. Sometimes I take an even lighter tarp. An inexpensive down sleeping bag that weighs only 2.5 pounds replaced my 4-pound synthetic bag.
And for summer nights, a fleece blanket will save
another 20 ounces. I replaced my heavy, hardware store hatchet with a specially ordered 11-ounce pocket axe.
The standard length ThermaRest mat was replaced with a trimmed down, closed-cell foam pad; the weight of my sleeping mat went from a pound and a half to only 6 ounces. I traded in my heavy water filter for the Aqua Mira chemical water treatment, going from over a pound to only a couple of ounces.
And instead of a commercial nesting set of pans and dishes, I now use a cut-down
coffee can with a 3-cup capacity, a lightweight fry pan and a plastic cup and spoon. With matches and cleaning equipment, the total kitchen weighs only 17 ounces, and I can still cook my bannock, scrambled eggs and morning oatmeal. I take items that will do double duty. A large
bandanna is the quintessential all-purpose tool. I use it to strain water when filling my bottles, to cool my neck, to wash with, to grab a hot pot, and, wrapped around my head, to prevent heat loss while sleeping on cool nights. I can also use it for a bandage or pressure wrap or an arm sling if injured.
So I don't need to carry a separate cloth (nylon hose) to strain water, a wash cloth, pot grabbers, a separate sleeping cap, or a separate bandage.
Another multipurpose item is baking
soda. It cleans my teeth and is lighter and less messy than toothpaste. But it also powders my feet, cleans my hands, washes dishes and scours pots, relieves the pain of sunburn, windburn, bug bites, bee stings and poison ivy rash, and removes stains (even tea and coffee). I use natural materials instead of manufactured items. I cook over a fist-sized fire, splitting the wood with my pocket axe. So I don't carry a stove and fuel. But a year ago I found myself out in the woods having left my trowel and spatula back home. How was I going to dig a fire pit or a cat hole or cook my meals? It occurred to me that my axe could carve the tools out of a couple of branches. Tent poles and stakes are also cut out of wood laying around. I no longer carry a trowel, spatula
or a full set of tent stakes. (I do carry a few stakes to set up the tent rapidly in bad weather.)
Thus I use the axe for more than just splitting firewood and it enables me to "live off the land" to a small extent. Knowledge replaces equipment. Outdoor skills
reduce one's reliance on manufactured goods. The stubs on hemlock trees or spruces serve as quick kindling for fires and birch bark as tinder. I don't camp on hilltops or in other areas that catch a cold wind, or at the bottoms of hills where cold, night air collects so a lighter tent or even a tarp suffices. A lightweight, flexible tarp can be set up in different configurations to meet different weather conditions.
A thin, closed-cell foam mat suffices because I bed down on soft leaf
litter rather than on hard-packed soil. And knowing the principles of layering, I take several lightweight garments, instead of a heavy jacket, and protect myself better against the cold by removing and adding layers as necessary.
Finally, having trimmed back my outfit, I replaced my 5-pound external frame pack with a knapsack that weighs only a pound and a half. At night I rest my feet on the pack to insulate them from the cold ground. Since I'm carrying less weight, I recently bought
some lightweight trail shoes to replace my hiking boots, saving 1 pound and 12 ounces. And remember, a pound on your feet is worth six on your back.
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