Backpacks: The Good, the Bad & The Ugly

We returned to the El Paseo de Saratoga parking lot immediately after our hike today. Since I needed a backpack to continue my conditioning, and since REI was right across the parking lot, we walked over. We were all pretty tired, but Jeremy was working tonight and he is apparently the man to see about backpacks.


Duane and I had been in to REI earlier in the week on a rumor that Jeremy was there. He turned out not to be working that night. We tried to have someone else help us. The end result was that the backpack I tried on wasn't fitted correctly and cut off my circulation at my right shoulder so that my entire right arm went numb. Worse yet, the 45 pound sandbags that they weighted down my pack with weren't resting on my hips like they ought to be - and my Achilles was aching from just short walk around the store. If this was what backpacking was going to be like, this was going to be positively grim. After it became clear that this wasn't working, we called it a night and went home.

So I wasn't certain when I walked into REI this evening that this was going to go much better. Was it the backpack or the assistants who were out of their department? Jeremy sized me up, measured my back, and then selected a couple of women's backpacks for me to try. I tried one on, weighted down with 45 pounds, and then another. They were both just a little too small in the wrong places - the shoulder straps. So he tried a men's backpack on me and adjusted the shoulder straps up a bit at the top. This was a vast improvement. My right arm was no longer going numb, the weight was resting comfortably on my hips and my Achilles was not complaining. Maybe I could do this after all! I was certainly feeling more confident about backpacking now that I had a backpack that fit!

The Gregory backpack that I purchased (Duane got the same one, though a different color) is a 60 litre backpack - plenty big enough for a 5 day trip. The most intriguing thing about it is the quantity of straps to pull in order to get it to fit properly. The shoulder straps pull at the bottom. The waist straps pull at each hip. There are load straps to pull at the top of the shoulders that make the weight sit closer to the back. There's a chest strap to pull at the front. There are two straps at the bottom to hold a tent or other gear. There are also two sets of ties and a zipper to close the main compartment. Nothing is going to fall out of this backpack by accident! There's a place to put a large hydration pack, of course, and there's also a small area underneath the main compartment to put the sleeping bag - once I buy one.