Hi my name is Marco Johnson I'm the field staffing director and a senior field
instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School
What we are here to do today is talk a little bit about pack packing.
What I'm going to do is demonstrate taking all of the gear that I typically carry into the mountains with me
and getting it into my backpack. So I'm gonna go ahead and pack my pack using
the three main principles that I follow
to get all my gear in my backpack, but I use the same principles
when I'm packing my sea kayak. My friends who are horsepackers use the same principles
when they're packing their
horses and thats "A" for accessibility
"B" for balance and "C" for compressed or condensed.
You'll hear other folks use longer acronyms
other words, but the ABC: the accessibility, the balance,
being condensed and compressed, that works really really well. So let's go ahead and
take all this gear and let's get it in my backpack. One of the first things I want
to do is actually take the larger volume items that I have, the biggest one being
my sleeping bag
and turn it into a small volume item. The easiest way to do that is to use
a compression stuff sack. I feel pretty good about my compression stuff sack being
water-resistant, pretty waterproof so I'm not lining it with a trash compactor bag,
although that does an excellent job of making sure that you have a waterproof
sleeping bag stuff sack. So I packed my sleeping bag
turned a large volume item into a really small volume item
just by the use of the compression stuff sack
even though it's on the lighter side I'll go ahead and take
the sleeping bag and I'll put it at the bottom the backpack.
Kinda fills out the bottom nicely just lay it on its side at the bottom
and then another item
that I put right next to it for a variety of reasons is my fuel bottle.
1: I don't need it right away, it doesn't need to be accessible,
it does help to balance my pack out. By getting it inside I keep it from
being banged up and possibly puncturing
but also by putting at the bottom of the pack I'm keeping it below my food.
If you've ever had any white gas fumes or actually gas itself get on your
food, you know you don't want it anywhere near
your food. So I keep it below. Another thing I will put down there
is I'll go ahead and take my sleeping pad and I roll it up with a nice lightweight
chair that I've got and I slide that right down on the outside as well.
That protects the fuel bottle a little bit also takes the space up
that's right down there on the side of my backpack.
So now I've got my food left. I've got pots. I've got my shelter.
and I've got my layers. So I wanna go ahead and now start filling
out the bottom, but also wanna go ahead and start
adding weight, because the bottom layers pretty light. Now I want
weight in there because I want those dense heavier items
now to be lower in the pack to give me a lower center of gravity, helps keep me balanced.
Part of my group gear is to carry the pot.
Because I got the fuel bottle I also have the stove
I'll take my bowl and just put that inside
the pot, put the stove inside my bowl. I'm using up all the available space I have
and then my part to the rations I'll go ahead and again
fill as much of the
dead space as possible so that I'm just being efficient.
I'll go ahead and take my pot
put it right down in my pack and I'm going to slide it
right down next my back because I have a padded
back piece, I'm not gonna feel it but I'm keeping the weight
down low but also into my back. By being down low
and into my back it gives me a better balance,
gives me a lower center of gravity which works really well whether I'm on trail
or off trail and I need my balance even more.
I've got a few extra pounds of food here that I did not get in my pot
and now I'm gonna go ahead and start filling out those
areas of space in my pack with that food.
The empty food bag I'll go ahead and use again as nice padding.
Now I've got even more room down there. Now given I'm in a tent group
typically of three or four folks I may not be carrying the shelter
along with the fuel bottle, the stove and the pot.
For demonstration purposes I'll go ahead and show you
that I can take the fly of the tent
that I'm using for my shelter and that, out of its
packing bag can be put
in all those dead space's, taking up the room at the bottom of the pack.
What I have also done is I've waterproofed
all around my sleeping bag.
I've kept out some trail food for the day.
So now the bottom third / bottom half of my pack is packed.
Really light stuff or lighter stuff at the bottom, but then that dense
sort of heavier load right on top of that in close to my back.
Now I can think about some other pieces of accessibility.
As an instructor I want my first aid kit handy
so I'm going to put that in the outside portion of my pack.
This makes it easy to get to should I need it. If you're out on a personal trip
I would do the same thing, for the same reason. I would want access to my first aid kit.
Here's my rain top and I'm going to
want my rain top accessible, but I also want one warm layer
accessible. So what I can do to waterproof this,
even though I want it accessible and I find stuffing it
not in a stuff sack, to be a little bit easier is I'll actually wrap it
in my raincoat to waterproof it and then just go ahead and stuff that in my pack.
In this warm layer I also have a lighter layer, I have a warm hat, I have my gloves
and I also have my headlamp because this is typically the layer that I'm using at
night as well so all that stuff is readily accessible.
Just go ahead and wrap it real quick like this
and then again
I can stuff it right here on the outside of the pack
and it's really accessible.
A small pair of rain pants, and again
right there accessible.
Now go ahead and zip that of.
Now I've got some extra clothing layers and these
I'm probably not going to need during the day. You saw how here is really accessible
I've got that one layer,
that warm layer along with my rain layers. So my other
layers, again I have nice, fairly water resistant, waterproof stuff sack,
but these can also be stuffed in plastic bags
or one larger bag to line the inside and that keeps them waterproof.
So that was one bag of extra clothing.
Here's the second bag, right on top.
You got that set. My toiletries bag can now go in because again it doesn't have to be real accessible.
I won't need my toiletries during the day.
A small water bottle that I actually use as my mug, again that's
not necessary for being real real accessible.
Then one piece that I do want accessible here is my Camelback, which
I use as a water bottles, as a water bladder. So to protect this, I'll up this right at the top.
I'll go ahead and close my pack up.
I've got the hose coming out, so I'll go ahead and
close my pack all the way up and then I've got the hose out and
I'll just run this down through
one of my shoulder straps
and I'll be able to sip on water during the day.
It's accesible for me, easy to get to which is really nice.
A lot of backpacks actually have top lids or what some people call brains.
You can see that mine's got these
little zip side pockets on it. I like those because I can put some of the things that
I want really accessible,
real close at hand. So here's my trail food for the day.
On the other side I can put a spare set of batteries,
a small little pocket knife, compass, another lighter and my sunscreen.
I'll get that in there and all those things
are really close at hand, very easy to get to.
One last piece that I'll put on the outside: this is the center pole
to my shelter. It's pretty beefy and tough because it's made out of aluminum.
I'll go ahead and take my last straps after I've put it in my side pocket
and make sure that the last straps are on
nice and snug and this will keep the poles from falling out, and from me loosing them.
So here in the end, I've got a backpack
where things that I need are accessible:
Water, food, layers, first aid kit.
Its balanced because I started with lighter things at the bottom.
A nice little layer there at the bottom.
I went ahead and built on that with some heavier items that were down low, but
also into my back so they give me good balance
and everything's nice and condensed and compressed so I'm not gonna lose things on the trail.
Plus I don't have things hanging out that could be punctured, like my
sleeping pad or ripped up like any of my layers or punctured
like that fuel bottle. So now it's just a matter of
putting my backpack on
and we'll go ahead and head on down the trail,
because actually we want to spend our time
out there not in here dealing with all our gear.
So thanks, I appreciate your attention.