I usually carry at least two Space Pens, which have waterproof ink in case my notebook gets wet, and usually a refillable pencil as well. They weigh half an ounce each.
Some hikers now use small electronic notebooks, often ones that will connect to a modem so they can send e-mail and update Web logs either via their cell phones or when they reach a standard phone. I prefer my notebook. I did try a PDA to see what it was like, but I found the tiny keyboard difficult to use. Also, I sit in front of a computer for too long at home working. Out in the backcountry I prefer not to do so. But such portable devices are there for those who want them.
Documents and Papers
The documents you need to carry on a trip can amount to quite a collection, though they never weigh much. On trips close to home, you may need none. On any trip abroad you’ll need your passport, perhaps a visa and hiking permit, and insurance documents. It’s wise to carry airline or other travel tickets too. It’s useful to have some form of identification such as a driver’s license in case of emergency. While walking I keep my papers sealed in a plastic bag in the recesses of my “office.” Trail permits, if required, also go in a plastic bag, but I often carry them in a pocket or my fanny pack so they’re ready if I meet a ranger.
In case your documents are lost or stolen or you have an accident or become ill, it’s a good idea to carry a list of important information, including who to contact in an emergency, separate from other paperwork. Leave a copy of this at home, too. You should also leave as detailed an itinerary as possible, including dates when you expect to phone home, or send a card, letter, e-mail, or fax. (See Chapter 10 for more on trip lists.)
Wallet and Money
In the wilderness, money serves no purpose, and on short trips close to home I carry very little. On long trips money is essential at town stops. I try not to carry loose coins, which are relatively heavy. It’s best to carry small-denomination notes, since in remote places there may be no place that will accept large bills. I also carry a credit card, in case of unexpected larger expenses. I used to carry my wallet—nylon, 1.5 ounces—with me, after removing the extra clutter it somehow generates. But it’s not waterproof and it’s easier not to remove the clutter. Zippered plastic bags will do, but they don’t last long and I hate throwing them away, so now I use an Aloksak from Watchful Eye Designs. Aloksaks are tough, reusable transparent waterproof bags with zip closures. Mine is the smallest one—4.5 by 7 inches. It weighs a quarter of an ounce. Larger ones could be used for books and maps.
Watch
I’m often tempted to leave my watch at home, but a watch has its uses, even in the wilderness. It’s helpful to know how many daylight hours are left when deciding whether to stop at a good campsite or push on. When the sun’s visible, you can estimate time fairly accurately, but on dull, overcast days it’s almost impossible. A watch with a built-in calendar also helps keep track of the days, something that can be confusing on long trips. Checking your watch when you stop for a break may also help get you moving again, especially when you realize that the intended “couple of minutes” has somehow become half an hour. If your watch has an alarm, you can set it to wake you for morning starts. These days I wear a wrist altimeter, the Suunto Altimax, that tells the time and date and has an alarm as well as being a barometer, altimeter, and thermometer.
BINOCULARS AND MONOCULARS
Few walkers carry binoculars, which surprises me. They’re practical for scouting the trail or the country ahead and for checking out whether that dark lump under the tree you’re approaching is a mossy boulder or a bear (I once changed my route when a dark object in a distant berry patch turned out to be a grizzly). I use mine regularly, and they’ve often saved me from taking a route that would have led to a dead end or an obstacle when hiking cross-country. I also use them to survey rivers from a high point for possible fords.
Aside from functional uses, binoculars open up the world of birds and wildlife to the walker. Whether it’s otters playing in a lake, a grizzly rooting through a meadow, or an eagle soaring overhead, binoculars allow you to watch wild creatures from a safe distance (both for you and for them).
There are a wealth of ultralight minibinoculars. Mine are 8x21—at 5.5 ounces the lightest pair I could find. I’ve had them over a decade, and the make—Sirius—has disappeared, but there are many similar ones. They’re so small I carry them in a shirt or jacket pocket. When selecting binoculars, note the relationship between the first number, which is the magnification, and the second, which is the diameter in millimeters of the front lens, known as the aperture. The size of the aperture determines how much light the lenses admit. Large figures mean plenty of light but also more weight owing to the bigger pieces of glass. Divide the aperture by the magnification and you can get a figure called the exit pupil. The bigger this is the better the image in poor light. My minibinoculars have an exit pupil of 2.6, which is low so they aren’t much use when it’s very dull. Again, though, a bigger exit pupil means heavier binoculars.
A monocular is a lighter alternative to a pair of binoculars, of course. I find monoculars harder to hold steady and focus than binoculars and gave up on mine many years ago. However, a reader suggests they are easier to use than binoculars if you wear glasses. There are many models, the lightest weighing just 3 ounces.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Taking photographs is probably the most popular nonessential backpacking activity. Everyone likes to have a visual record of trips. But if you simply point the camera at every scene regardless of the light or viewpoint, you may end up with pictures that aren’t very satisfactory. Those who take the time and care to study the details of a place in order to make the best picture, the one that most reflects how they see it, may share my feeling that this gives them a deeper appreciation of the wilderness.
Anyone wanting to pursue the subject of wilderness photography further can learn a great deal from the late Galen Rowell’s books and from Outdoor Photographer magazine.
Photography is about seeing, not about equipment. No amount of expensive gear will make someone a good photographer. That said, the more ambitious you become, the more gear you end up carrying. I used to carry around 10 pounds of cameras and accessories, which seems an enormous amount to the nonphotographer. But I’ve become something of a professional over the years, and I go on most walks knowing I have to come back with a set of pictures. Recently I’ve cut the weight by half, though, and my photos don’t seem to have suffered.
Cameras
There are two lightweight choices for backpacking cameras. A compact camera or a single-lens reflex (SLR) with interchangeable lenses. Either may be digital or use traditional film. For similar-quality images you’ll pay more for a digital camera, and it will weigh more too, but digital cameras do have the advantage that you can see the picture straightaway and delete it if it’s not what you want. Digital images can be downloaded directly to the Internet and displayed on the Web or e-mailed as well. I carried a digital compact on the Arizona Trail—a now-discontinued Ricoh RDC 5000—and some of the images did appear on a Web page.
Most compacts are fully automatic, though a few have manual settings. Weights start at just a few ounces. For those who have no interest in photography but would like to have some pictures of their trips, a fully automatic compact—digital or film—is ideal.
However, even the best compacts cannot match an SLR for versatility. SLRs take interchangeable lenses, so focal lengths are limited only by what you can carry. And with an SLR you look directly through the lens, which helps with composition.
My main camera for more than two decades was a film SLR, with a semiautomatic compact as a backup. Currently I use a Canon Rebel, since it’s very light; with a 24-70 mm zoom lens, the total weight is 23 ounces. I now also have a Canon Digital Rebel that weighs 32 ounces with the 18-55 zoom lens and battery. This is 9 ounces more than the film Rebel but image storage cards only weigh 0.2 ounce and 140 top-quality images will fit on one 1 GB card, equivalent to four ro
lls of film at an ounce each. On trips where weight isn’t paramount, I also carry an 80-200 mm lens (10 ounces). Zoom lenses are lighter than the three or four fixed-focal-length lenses they replace, and they aid composition—wilderness pictures are often taken from positions you can’t change, like the edges of cliffs and the sides of mountains. As a backup, I carry a Ricoh GR1s compact, which weighs 6.7 ounces and has a superbly sharp 28 mm lens.
There is a wide choice of SLRs, most of them of high quality. Choosing one is really a question of which features, price, and weight suit you. Top names are Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Minolta, Olympus and, if you have the money, Leica. Professional models are heavy and bulky. For hiking lightweight ones are fine.
One big problem with most cameras today is that they’re totally dependent on batteries to operate the autofocus, autoexposure, motor-wind, self-timer mechanisms, and in digital cameras, image capture. I always carry spare batteries.
Filters
Filters are often overused, and I carry very few of them. I want the light and colors in my pictures to look natural. For protection and to cut out ultraviolet light, I keep a skylight filter on every lens. I also use a polarizer to cut glare and to darken blue skies. If the sky is bright and the land dark (or vice versa), I use a graduated neutral-density filter in a filter holder. Each filter weighs about 0.75 ounce with case.
Film
I nearly always take color transparencies (slides) because they work best for publications and slide shows. The speed of the film, the ISO, is important. For fine detail and the best colors, 100-speed film or slower is best. I mostly buy film with prepaid mailers so I can send it home to be developed during a long walk—the results are waiting for me when I get back. With print film, faster speeds—200 and 400—can give good results and are easier to handhold in low light. Fuji Velvia 50 is the outdoor photographer’s favorite, but 50 ISO is quite slow for handholding. I use Velvia with a tripod at times, but mostly I use Fujichrome Sensia 100 and Kodak EBX 100.
Individual rolls of film don’t weigh much, but a half-dozen thirty-six-exposure rolls with canisters weigh about 7 ounces. I average a roll a day.
Supports
In low light and with slow film (ISO 25 and 50), you need something to steady the camera. (As a rough guide for handheld shooting, the shutter speed should approximate or be faster than the focal length of the lens. For example, a 28 mm lens shouldn’t be handheld at slower than 1/30 second; a 200 mm lens no slower than 1/250.) A camera support can be as simple as propping your arms on a rock, bracing yourself against a tree, or even lying down.
If you carry a monopod, minitripod or clamp, or tripod, you don’t need to rely on natural supports, which may not be in convenient places. My trekking pole has a screw in the handle to which a ball-and-socket tripod head can be mounted, making it a monopod. I use this for wildlife photography when I don’t have time to remove my pack and set up the tripod. There are many small tabletop tripods and clamps, but the lightest I’ve seen is the REI Ultrapod (2 ounces), an ingenious little device that can be used as a tripod, and with a Velcro strap, as a clamp. I sometimes use it on ski trips, strapping it to a pole. It’s too light for long lenses, but it works well with standard zooms.
I use a tripod most of the time, both for self-portraits and for low-light photography. The problem is finding a lightweight one that doesn’t develop the shakes after minimal use. I have several; the one I use most is an old Cullman Backpack tripod that weighs 21.5 ounces and has been held together with duct tape for the best part of a decade. Slik’s 26-ounce Sprint Mini tripod looks like a modern equivalent. I usually strap my tripod to the side of the pack so I can get to it easily.
Protection and Carrying
You can protect your camera by carrying it in your pack, but you won’t take many pictures that way. I like to sling a camera across my body so that I can get at it quickly. But it’s vulnerable there, so I keep it in a foam-padded, waterproof case. There are many such cases sold by Tamrac, Lowe, Crumpler, Tenba, Kinesis, Camera Care Systems (CCS), and others. Weights of padded cases range from 3 ounces for compact cameras or wide-angle lenses to 12 ounces plus for cases for SLRs with telephoto lenses. I attach my CCS camera case to a wide adjustable webbing strap. The compact camera and telephoto zoom also live in padded cases kept, along with filters and film, in a small stuff sack in a pack pocket.
Cleaning
I carry lens-cleaning cloths for removing marks from lenses and a blower brush for puffing out the inside. But the danger of damaging equipment in field conditions makes me keep cleaning and tinkering to an absolute minimum.
Recording
You may think that you’ll remember the details of every photo you shoot, but you won’t—unless you take very few pictures or have a phenomenal memory. You need some method of recording each roll of film or photo as it’s shot. Occasionally I keep a tiny notebook (0.5 ounce) and pen in a pocket and note down when and where I start and finish each roll, plus any particular details I want to remember about the pictures. To relate the film to the notes, I photograph this page on the last frame. Sometimes I mark photo locations on the map in pencil. Most often I photograph trail signs and other identifiable markers so I can relate the photos to them. An advantage of digital cameras is that the time and date of the image are recorded, which can help greatly in identifying it.
ENTERTAINMENT
Reading Matter
Because I’m a book addict, I always carry at least one paperback on every walk. Too often I end up with several. There are three kinds of books that might find their way into your pack: trail guides, natural history guides, and books for pure entertainment. On my 124-day Canadian Rockies walk, I read thirty-six books, an average of one every three and a half days—twenty-four were fiction and twelve were nonfiction. This doesn’t include a field guide that I carried all the way, parts of which I read several times, and a trail guide I carried on the first half of the walk.
Natural history guides are a problem because you usually need several if you want to identify trees, flowers, mammals, birds, and insects. In a group, each member can carry a different volume, but the solo walker has to be selective. I usually carry the smallest bird and tree guides I can find, sometimes adding a flower guide if the weight can be kept down. The lightest guides are the little Finder books published by the Nature Study Guild. The ones for trees are particularly good. I always look for a guide that covers everything, but sadly these are few. The best I’ve found is Ben Gadd’s Handbook of the Canadian Rockies, which is a complete natural history field guide and also covers geology, history, weather, and much more. I carried it when I hiked the length of the Canadian Rockies. It weighs a hefty 2 pounds in the latest full-color edition, though. On the Arizona Trail I carried the National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to the Southwestern States (16.5 ounces).
A planisphere showing the stars in position for each month is well worth carrying if you’re interested in identifying constellations and planets. Small ones weigh less than 0.25 ounce and take up no space. I don’t use mine often, but when I do, I’m very glad I remembered to bring it.
Radios, CD Players, Etc.
Tiny radios in the 3- to 7-ounce range could be worth carrying if you grow bored with reading or need to rest your eyes. Himalayan mountaineers now regularly take portable stereos or MP3 players for use on the climb as well as in camp. I used to carry a radio now and then (on the pretext that it was for weather forecasts), but I rarely used it because, even in the tent, it cut me off from the world I’d come to experience. Proponents of radios point out that books do the same, but to my mind they don’t have the same effect; you can still hear the sounds of nature when reading. Modern devices have many uses. As I write this, a friend is hiking the Pacific Coast Trail with an Ipod, which not only contains his favorite Beach Boys’ tracks but is also being used to download and store images from his digital camera. If you use a radio, please use headphones. Sound carries in the quietness of the wilderness. I remember comi
ng off a high Pyrenean peak, my eyes set on a necklace of mountain tarns far below surrounded by green sward ideal for camping, only to be greeted, while still a half mile away, by the tinkling sounds of music coming from the only tent I could see. Once down there, I found the sound permeated the whole basin, so I pushed on into the next valley bottom to camp—much later than I’d planned, but in quiet.
Cards and Games
There are various games that groups can take along for entertainment, and, of course, you can make up your own, but a deck of cards is the most obvious lightweight entertainment to carry. You can buy miniature decks, though a standard one weighs just 3.5 ounces. I’ve never carried cards, but a companion did on a ski crossing of the Columbia Icefield in the Canadian Rockies, and we played many games during the four days we spent stormbound in the tents. You could carry cards on solo trips for playing solitaire, though I can’t imagine wanting to. A hiking book I read many years ago did recommend carrying a deck in case you became lost. Don’t panic, the author recommended; just sit down and start playing solitaire, because some damn fool is then bound to pop up behind you and tell you which card to play next!
Thermometer
Few people carry thermometers, but I’m fascinated by the temperature data I’ve collected over the years. My immediate finding, reinforced whenever I camp with others, was that it’s never as cold as people think. Also, I’ve noted that you really do feel warmer when the temperature drops a few degrees below freezing and the humidity falls than when it’s a few degrees above. On the Canadian Rockies walk, I recorded no temperatures below freezing during July and August and only three freezing nights in September; yet by the middle of October it was freezing hard every night. During four days I spent stormbound on the Columbia Icefield, the temperature in the tent ranged, astonishingly, from 28 to 75°F (−2 to 24°C), depending on whether we were cooking and whether the doors were open. Having such data gives me a reference for what temperatures to expect when I revisit an area, which helps with planning.
Chris Townsend Page 52