Making More Room

When packing a backpack, there are fairly strict guidelines on how to properly stow away your equipment for comfort, safety, and accessibility to what you need most. This section will cover different aspects that require close attention on the part of the adventurer to make it a pleasant time.

Distribution of Weight

Weight distribution is very important because this determines how the backpack will pull on your upper body muscles, how it will carry on your hips, as well as how it changes your center of gravity. Failure to properly distribute the weight of your pack can lead to serious injury or even death when deep in the wilderness.

Access and Compression

Access to what you need most on the trail will aide in reducing the amount of time spent packing and unpacking while on the trail by putting your most used items towards the top of the bag. Likewise, compression of the items that are less used, or used only when camped can make more room and keep gravity centered and controlled.

Weather Proofing and Externals

Weather proofing the gear inside your bag is of the utmost importance as wet or soiled items left packed tightly inside of a backpack can quickly begin to grow mold and other dangerous organisms. This will also greatly reduce the amount of resources available to you as well as ruin weather sensitive items such as some fire starters and kindling.