Every Ounce Counts

The summer of 1999, after my freshman year of college, I ventured on my first backpacking trip with two friends in the Canadian Rockies of Jasper National Park. I had yet to consider the very concept of weighing my pack, let alone each item within it. A rough guess as to our individual pack weights is somewhere in the range of forty to forty-five pounds, and this is after emptying eight liters of water out of the dromedary I had hanging from my backpack, which I carried for the first few uphill miles! Even though we had a water filter, I thought carrying water would be easier. Hah! From perusing old photos, I can see that we were wearing cotton t-shirts and jeans! Three days later, basking in the after-trip glory at a local pub, we bragged to the cute young waitress about our trip on Jasper's thirty-kilometer Skyline trail. She smiled and listened to our story, and then slammed our egos by mentioning that she ran the same trail the previous Saturday for fun.

My next trip was rather miserable. It was closer to home in Minnesota on the Lake Superior Hiking trail with my brother Ben. We certainly weren't in good shape, and I'm guessing our packs weighed in the range of forty to forty-five pounds again. We assembled our gear from my dad's and cousin John's extensive collection of old camping stuff. Our cooking pot was actually one inch thick along the sides, which I'm sure weighed several pounds. Ironically a normal kitchen pot would have been much lighter, but we brought this one along since it was a "camping pot." We considered ourselves lucky to have my dad's 1970s-era one-burner stove, which was roughly equivalent in size to four Mac Mini computers. That was lucky because our alternative was a two burner Coleman camp stove. I had recently purchased a brand new Granite Gear Stratus Access pack, which weighed seven pounds. We also had my dad's external-frame elk hunting pack, also from the seventies. The external frame pack dug into our backs and was horribly uncomfortable, so we carried considerably more weight in the Granite Gear internal frame pack. And in the sense of fairness, we swapped packs back and forth throughout the day. It rained constantly the entire three days, and one mile from the end of the trip my left knee popped under the strain of the heavy load. For the next several years, pain in my knee reminded me of this trip anytime I went for a run.

I continued backpacking despite this miserable experience. Pack weight lessened as I replaced the 1970s equipment with more standard backpacking gear, until I was down to a thirty- to thirty-five-pound pack. My wife Becca and I did a four-day, thirty-mile trip on Isle Royale in the summer of 2003. This was Becca's first backpacking trip, and she was carrying about twenty-five pounds, which was a decent amount for her smaller build. I wore a knee brace for my bad knee. On the second day Becca's feet were in considerable pain, and we realized that she has over-pronating arches. Her feet were in pain the remainder of the trip, and combining this with the typical rigors of backpacking produced a poor first backpacking experience for Becca. This was the point I realized something had to change if I was to continue backpacking.

ARTICLE OUTLINE

• The Beginning
• The Transition
• The Reality Check

# WORDS: 2240
# PHOTOS: 6