Backpacking for photographers
My approach to getting there
My bivy above Turquoise Lake • Lake Clark National Park, Alaska
Part One: The titanium spork
The titanium spork is marvel. A curious symbol for the pursuit of weight loss among backpackers everywhere, an acknowledgement of the fact that you really have no idea why your backpack is so heavy. You aren't carrying anything heavy. You have a few choice essentials chosen for their extreme lightness and suddenly the pack weighs 70 lbs. How did this happen? Maybe it's the weight of the fork and spoon. If you could discard those two utensils and replace them with one ultra-light spork, maybe your pack would be light again. This is the reasoning of a backpacker. This madness originates from the fact that there are 16 ounces in a pound. What follows, is that if you can shave 2 ounces off of sixteen items in your pack, you have just lightened your load by 2 pounds. It's quite simple, but it leads one down the road of the $11.00 spork.
There are two schools of combining backpacking and photography. One group is out to backpack first and foremost; they may take some photo along the way. For these people the answer is easy: a digital point-and-shoot; these days it is easy to find something with more than 10 megapixels in a package that fits in your pocket. The other school is made up of people who want to make photographs, but unfortunately the photos they want are down some distant path on the other side of some high ridge. It is these people who are always asking the question: how can I possibly carry my camping gear and photography equipment without sacrificing either my safety or the quality of my photographs? It is for these people that I offer one particular way that has worked for me.
The Pack
My basic strategy is to use a large internal frame backpack and eliminate enough weight to allow me to carry a medium format camera, tripod, and a few essential accessories. Since my primary interest is photography and not a vacation, I am willing to sacrifice some comfort along the way. Unfortunately, this means I won't be baking scones in the backcountry—I've seen it done.
Makers of camera bags will be of little or no help. There are countless photo backpacks on the market but none are appropriate for more than day hiking. They aren't big enough and they don't offer a suspension system that will support the weight comfortably over the course of a long hike. There is no way around it; you will be carrying a lot of weight. You will be happier if you start with a pack designed for backpacking and find a way to make your camera gear fit.
I carry a Gregory Palisade pack, although there are countless other packs that will work just as well. It weighs a little over 7 pounds, and at 4700 cubic inches it is just big enough for my needs. It has straps in the right spots for lashing on a tripod and the arrangement of pockets fits my needs. The most important aspect of any backpack is the fit. You absolutely must go to a dealer that will fill the packs with weight and let you try several on. Many packs come with interchangeable straps allowing you pick the correct size for your frame. When a pack fits well you will be amazed at how much weight you can comfortably carry because it will transfer almost all of the weight through your skeletal system rather than forcing your muscles to carry the load. You end up carrying most of the weight on your hips. This will be a revelation to those of you accustomed to giant photo packs that put the weight squarely on you shoulders. Although you don't need to buy the most expensive pack on the market, this is not the place to skimp. About twelve miles down a trail in the Smokies we ran into a man whose poorly-designed pack had started to come apart. The straps were sewn onto the body of the pack in a fashion more fitting a book bag. The few threads holding all the weight of the pack had given out and there he was, separated from his car by twelve miles of difficult terrain, stuck with no practical way to carry his gear. But what caught my attention was that the pack looked new. What a mess. Luckily, my hiking partner had a stash of diaper pins (something I had never though to carry) that served as a temporarily fix.
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