To Walk Far, Carry Less : Camino de Santiago (15 page)

I loved the sturdy metal zippers, thick shoulder straps, and wide padded hip belt on my first backpack. I also loved zipping open the front of the bag to reveal all its contents at a glance. But I love carrying a lightweight backpack even more.

The first thing to look for in a backpack is a comfortable width and length for your torso. Just like a well-fitting jacket fits at the shoulders and falls to a desired length, a backpack should fit your body. Try different models to find the backpack that feels most comfortable.

Then add weight to the backpack and try it on again. Outdoor stores often provide weighted sandbags for this purpose. Fill the pack to equal at least 10 percent of your body weight, perhaps a bit more. No sandbags? Fill the pack with books, boots, or other weighty items. If the store has a scale, ask if they’ll weigh the filled pack for you.

The hip belt should rest over your hip bones—some say over the navel—and should feel like it’s helping to carry the load. Make sure it’s adjustable.

Adjust the shoulder straps for a fine-tuned fit. With weight in the pack, you shouldn’t have the feeling that you’re being pulled backward. The full pack should fit snug against your back. Notice if the hip belt and shoulder straps help carry the pack weight in about equal measure.

Test the chest (sternum) strap. This feature helps to center and secure the pack, so it doesn’t shift or slightly wobble from side to side as you walk. It helps keep the shoulder straps in place too. A sliding chest strap is best: you can move it up or down to where it’s most comfortable and not pressing against the stuff in your shirt’s pockets. Women, remember that a chest strap is not a
breast
strap. It should cross the upper chest above the breasts.

Walk around the store wearing the loaded backpack. The full pack should feel like it’s a part of your body as you walk. Browse for at least an hour to get a sense of how the pack feels. Better yet: if the store offers a liberal exchange or refund policy, take it home for a serious test walk.

If your shoulders ache under the weight of the loaded backpack, with no relief after adjusting the hip belt and/or chest strap, the design or shape of the pack may not be the best for your body type. Try another model.

If you’re buying online, allow plenty of time before your Camino journey. You may need to return the pack if it’s not the right fit, and that back and forth takes time.

Backpack sizes are indicated by volume. For example, you’ll see a backpack marked “40 L,” which means the backpack has a volume of forty liters. Sometimes a measurement description uses cubic inches. Forty liters—the size of my backpack—equals about 2,441 cubic inches. This means the pack can hold forty liters, or 2,441 cubic inches, worth of stuff.

Are these measurements helpful? Of course not.

A recommendation: Assemble all the items you plan to carry in your backpack and place them in a trash bag. Take it to a store that sells backpacks, and try placing your filled trash bag into different backpacks. Remember to allow extra room for food and water, and don’t forget the bulky sleeping bag, which is likely to be the largest item in your pack. Note the volume measurement for the backpack that best fits the sack full of your gear. Then, whether you buy a backpack in a store or online, you’ll know how many liters or cubic inches you need.

Lightweight Notes

Another Caution

Backpacks can be like drawers, closets, and garages.

Got extra space?

It shall be filled.

Hooks and Straps

In terms of hooks and straps, the fewer the better. You’ll never need to hang an ice pick from your backpack along the Camino. If you like a particular pack but it has unnecessary straps or hooks, buy the pack. Then save a few grams buy cutting off the features you won’t use.

Lightweight Notes

Simplicity = Lightweight

Top Loading or Front Loading?

A top-loading pack almost always weighs less than a similar-size front-loading backpack. The zippers on a front-loading pack, and the extra fabric surrounding the zippers, add to the overall weight.

It’s wonderful to unzip a front-loading backpack to see everything at a glance. But consider this: while you may appreciate that convenience for about fifteen minutes each day, you’ll likely appreciate carrying the lighter top-loading backpack every hour you’re walking the Camino.

Frame or No Frame?

I suggest a backpack without a frame, but only if your total backpack weight—including food and water—is no more than about 11 or 12 percent of your body weight.

Backpack frames, whether internal or external, are useful when carrying a heavy load. They provide a structure to help control the backpack’s shape and distribute the weight. But you don’t need the same structural support on the Camino that a wilderness backpacker needs for carrying all that food, a cookstove, a tent, and more.

Today, most backpack frames are internal. An internal frame is integrated into the backpack’s design, and not visible—although it can usually be removed. An external frame is clearly visible on the outside of the pack.

Ventilation at the Back

Some backpacks use materials and designs to create a cooling space between the backpack and your back. While these can make the pack more comfortable, especially in hot weather, the extra materials used for this benefit add weight to the backpack itself.

Consider the tradeoff: a lighter pack that is more comfortable, or a heavier pack with ventilation features that make the pack more comfortable.

Outside Pockets

One large zippered pocket on the outside of the backpack is sufficient for carrying maps, a guidebook, and rain gear. Two side pockets work well enough for carrying water bottles and other items like a snack or sunglasses.

Outside pockets allow quick access, but keep in mind that extra material for a pocket and its zipper adds to the overall weight of the pack; mesh pockets are the lightest in weight. Overall, the fewer pockets the better.

Hydration System: Pros and Cons

Some backpacks come with a specially designed pocket inside to hold a soft-plastic collapsible water bladder called a hydration reservoir. A plastic hose with a valve at the end extends from the reservoir to hang outside the pack, allowing you to easily sip water from the reservoir without having to take your backpack off.

Some backpacks come with the reservoir and hose, while others have just the internal pocket and a slit for the hose so you can insert your own reservoir bought separately.

Reservoir Benefits

• You can drink water while walking, without having to take off your backpack to access water bottles in side pockets that may be hard to reach.
  
• Water weight is equally balanced in your pack.
  
• It’s easier to avoid using disposable plastic water bottles—just refill the reservoir.
  
• Capacity: reservoirs for long-distance backpacking (rather than day hikes) typically hold two to three liters of water (70–100 fluid ounces). If there are few opportunities for water refills during parts of the route, you can buy bottled water to supplement your backpack hydration system. You could also avoid filling the reservoir to full capacity when it’s clear that you’ll have many opportunities to refill it throughout the day. Remember that water will be one of the heaviest items in your backpack—so don’t carry more than you think you’ll need (after a few days on the Camino, you’ll know the average amount of water you’ll need for each day’s walk).
  

The Case Against Hydration Systems

Whether to use a hydration system is really a matter of personal preference. For a variety of reasons, I don’t use one. I find it faster and easier to refill a water bottle than a hydration reservoir that may have to be taken out of the backpack to fit under a water faucet. Besides, handing a bartender, café owner, or restaurant worker a plastic bottle to fill (especially when he or she is busy) is one thing. Presenting the weird-looking bladder or hoisting up the entire backpack to a faucet is another.

I prefer hard plastic bottles to hold water—especially when the weather is hot—rather than the soft plastic of a polyurethane hydration system. My experience: soft plastic containers for water leave a plastic taste lingering in my mouth.

I also don’t want to deal with the cleaning and maintenance of such a system while on an extended Camino journey. The kits I’ve seen contain more than I’d like to carry: brushes, cleaning tablets, and special plastic hooks for hanging the reservoir to dry.

I have also read that hydration systems sometimes leak, particularly around the screw cap when the bladder is squeezed—and of course the bladder would experience pressure in a fully loaded backpack (as would the owner of the backpack if he or she had to dry out a backpack full of wet gear).

On the Camino

I don’t like buying water in plastic bottles—the environmental concerns about these are well known. But by refilling them again and again on the Camino, I feel better about using them. I’ve found them to be the lightest choice for carrying water, the most practical, the least costly, and reliably watertight.

Another option used by backpackers is a collapsible water bottle. These can be compressed when not in use to save space in the backpack, but I’ve read that these too can sprout leaks at the screw cap, or get punctures in the body of the bottle. Some brands could be more susceptible to problems like this, so it’s a good idea to read customer reviews. Collapsible bottles are also hard to clean, and it’s difficult to get them completely dry on the inside.

Some pilgrims prefer non-BPA hard plastic bottles (Bisphenol A, or BPA, is a compound used in certain plastics—and some governments and organizations have issued health warnings related to its use). Other pilgrims like to use a light metal water bottle. As always, consider the weight: a lightweight metal water bottle often weighs more than a hard plastic one.

Overall Backpack Quality: Notice the Details

After finding a proper-fitting backpack, consider the construction quality:

• Look for strong stitching at the seams.
  
• Look for extra fabric thickness on the bottom of the pack.
  
• Test for smooth zipping: even a plastic zipper on a pocket should move with ease. A stuck or off-track zipper can prevent quick access to that rain gear, possibly causing you to release a flood of colorful words while you get wet.
  
• Waterproof material is a bonus, but often unreliable, so you’ll still need to protect your pack against the rain. (See the next section, Backpack Rain Protection.)
  
• The fabric of the backpack itself affects the overall weight of the pack. Avoid thick, heavy fabrics. Look for thin, high-tech, and durable fabrics.
  
• Sometimes quality control fails at the factory. When you find flaws in materials or construction, look at another backpack of the same model; you might find better stitching and/or smoother zipping.
  

A wet sleeping bag or damp clothing can make your journey miserable for days. It’s important to protect your pack from rain, even if it’s supposedly waterproof. In the rough and tumble life of a backpack, waterproof qualities can be scraped away or worn off. Seams may not be fully taped, and zippers can also be a source of leaks.

Rain Cover

If you’re wearing a rain jacket, or if you’re uncertain that your poncho will keep your backpack completely dry in a downpour, use a waterproof backpack rain cover. A cover will slip on quickly and is held snug by elasticized hems. It’s lightweight, and about the size of a fist when compressed into its little stuff sack.

If you bring a sleeping pad, make sure the rain cover is large enough to cover the pad too. If the sleeping pad is attached horizontally to the top or the bottom of your backpack, it might be difficult to stretch the rain cover so it fits both the backpack and the sleeping pad. Try strapping the sleeping pad vertically on the side of your backpack—so it’s snug lengthwise against one side of the pack.

Sleeping pads strapped to the sides of pilgrims’ backpacks as they leave Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, on the Camino Francés route (I wonder if that hat made it to Santiago)

Inside-the-Backpack Liner

A liner inside the backpack surrounds all the gear inside the pack.

Even if you’re confident of your backpack’s waterproofness, and even though you’re using a rain cover, I still recommend using a waterproof liner inside the pack as well for final assurance. This is especially important if you’re carrying a down-filled sleeping bag, because down loses its insulating qualities when it gets wet.

The cheapest and lightest option for a liner is a large plastic trash bag. No need to spend twenty to thirty euros on a backpack liner when the trash sack is easy to get, easy to use, and very effective. You may need to try a different size or two to get the right fit—start with any trash bags you might have at home. The bag doesn’t need to fit the backpack perfectly: the goal is to simply surround the gear inside your backpack. I use a size that slightly overlaps the top of my backpack (which is a top-loading pack). I twist the extra material to seal the trash sack. My backpack’s top flap then covers the twisted top of the trash bag.