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Before I set off on a thru-hike of the Pacific Northwest Trail in 2007, I partook in a drastic re-thinking of every piece of gear in my backpacking kit. I sewed a spinnaker tarp, some silnylon and Tyvek stuff sacks, modified my ULA Conduit pack, and weighed everything countless times. One might say I cut the handle off the proverbial toothbrush that has become the metaphor for ultralight backpacking to the masses. I copied ideas from Backpacking Light articles and forum members and scoured the Internet and my peers for suggestions and techniques, until I'd created a gear list that I believed would serve me well for two straight months of twenty-mile days. There was one item that continued to mystify me as I could not find a commercial product or homemade solution that was just what I wanted - a case to hold my point-and-shoot camera.

Sometime during the winter of 2006, I grabbed a piece of bubble wrap and some duct tape and threw together a crude sleeve to hold my Canon Powershot SD400, then started carrying it around with me in the left-hand pocket of my pants... all the time. What I thought was a throw-away project, manufactured from scraps of garbage and a few lengths of tape, not only worked wonderfully, but was so durable and easy to use that I ended up carrying it with me for the entire 1200 miles of the PNT the following summer.

ARTICLE OUTLINE

  • Background
  • Version Two
  • Make Your Own
    • Time Required
    • Materials
  • The Process
    • Step One
    • Step Two
    • Step Three
    • Step Four
    • Step Five
    • Step Six

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# PHOTOS: 13
# TABLES: 0

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