How to Fit Everything You Need for Backpacking in Your Pack

have you ever been stumped on the best way to pack your backpack well today we're gonna be tackling that issue we're gonna be taking all of this beautiful gear fitting it in here before we get into it please like and subscribe to our Channel we are doing our best to educate and inspire everyone to get outside and to have fun so we've had some popular videos in the past and a lot of other repeat questions from people on best practices for packing a backpack so today I just wanted to lay everything out and show you some principles that I recommend for packing a backpack efficiently so that when you're on the trail things are easier for you that they do not create as much harm or wear and tear on your body just in efficient ways to actually go above hacking your backpack with all of the things that are laid out here these are kind of my critical supplies and if you do want to see all of the things that I I'm gonna be walking through here actually putting them in the backpack make sure that you check out our essentials backpacking checklist video that will be available too so make sure that you check that one out but depending on where you actually place all of these gear items in your backpack does make a big difference not only for access but just sheer the physics of it being in your backpack if you have weight that's further away from your body it's going to act as a lever against you and be more feel heavier than it actually is so I wanted to take you step-by-step through the process that I go to in packing my backpack so I've got the Terra frame 50 liter backpack from mystery ranch and I think that I can get everything that I need into my 50 liter backpack here so in general I do recommend for most overnight two to three night backpacking trips a backpack around 50 to 65 liters I think that that's usually in a pretty good spot for most people's needs and only if you're doing really expedition style backpacking that you should go through something bigger so it might be a little bit of a tight fit but I actually kind of want that I don't want a lot of extra room in the backpack so I have kind of a loose-fitting backpack I like everything to be cinched up in very tight so let's go through and start basically I like to start with the sleeping systems I always put my sleeping bag at the bottom of my backpack I'll come back to the tent because that will eventually go on the bottom of my bag but let's start just with the seating bag and what will be inside my backpack so I like to take this and put it right at the bottom horizontal of course and what this does is it's just creating a nice platform that kind of covers the whole bottom that I can build on up from there another thing that's handy with that is that it's soft and cushiony and it also takes up a fair bit of weight so if I am planting my backpack down on the trail then I don't have something sensitive like a stove or maybe a camera that's going to be taking the brunt of that impact a sleeping bag is just a great object to have at the bottom that can be taking that impact if you just start plopping your backpack down now before I get too far ahead of myself a common thing that I accidentally do is pack my whole backpack and then I try to put my water bladder in and everything has already kind of settled in place and it's just kind of annoying to try to squeeze a bag of water into a tight fitting space so I will go ahead and take my platypus my drum bag whatever it might be and I will utilize this pouch that will house your bladder or your whatever your system is but I like to use these systems and I will slide that down right there and let's go ahead and feed this through while we're at it so we don't forget so now this is against my back and it's already in there so as I pack in everything else it's going to be a little bit easier to go there's another reason why I want to pack water here it's the heaviest item in my pack water weighs about 2.2 pounds per litre so at just over 2 liters of water in here that's four and a half pounds that's pretty heavy so I want that to be sitting as close to my back as possible so here is a much better position for my water then say at the outside edge of the backpack so I wouldn't recommend putting it in some sort of external pouch that's far away from your back so having it close to you is very convenient ok from here I'm gonna go back to building off of my base here so I'm gonna take my sleeping mattress and put that in it's kind of a bulky item and I'm gonna set that in here and build from there then I think I want to put my stove inside so let's actually put the fuel inside for more efficient use I can fill it with small items if I feel like it but let's just throw the Jetboil in down here I'll actually probably scoot the mattress to the outside and then put this closer to my back a little bit heavier than the mattress and I'm gonna start zipping this up as we go so if everything stays in place here ok the next thing I'm gonna do here is start working on food food is generally a pretty heavy and bulky so that weight really adds up as I start to work my way through all of my food items here so one of the things that I like to do is I like to take a little stuff sack this is from one of my sleeping bags just a nice little super lightweight sack that I like to organize my food with so I'll throw some of these items in here it helps keep things organized throw in my granola here probably like one of my trail bars one of my epic bars I'll throw in my peanut butter here that I love backpacking with by the way peanut butter is my favorite thing ever so then it's another easy way is to throw in your see your food bowl maybe your utensils so that it's all organized and now this is kind of like a little bit of a food bomb so it's gonna be pretty heavy so that's where I want it to sit still relatively low but against my back here now if you want to you can spread things out even more but I like having everything that I can just if I just want to grab my food bag I can just pull that out and take whatever dinner snacks or whatever I want and then I also usually have I'll set out a few things for the day like another trail bar and some trail mix that I want to be even more easily accessible and those things I'm going to put just a couple of food items up in the top loader but everything else I want in the middle of my backpack okay now would be an optimum time to start putting some clothing inside my backpack here so let's switch this up just a little bit so I still have a fair bit of room around here that I can maximize and so as I go as I start packing my backpack I like to start sliding in some clothing it's great at filling spaces and making sure that you're maximizing your backpacks potential so I'll start sliding that in and if you're wondering about all the clothes that I like to bring on a backpacking trip we also have a video about that so make sure you check out all of the clothes to bring backpacking heavier bulkier items are good to go down low extra pairs of pants anything you might be bringing there and really try to work everything around in the nooks and crannies of your backpack so things like rain jackets I'm probably going to hold off because I want this to be in a really accessible spot in case wild weather pops up on the trail I'm not fumbling around however one of the reasons why I like this backpack is that it has this really nice external zip to wear pretty much anything in my backpack is easily accessible at any point in time so that is a feature that I like about backpacks is making sure that not everything is just one giant tube moving all the way down and then the only way to get at your backpack only way to get into your backpack is to start taking everything out so when you're looking for a backpack that's a feature that I really like so that's why I like this backpack but I'm still gonna hold off and probably put this a little closer to the top got underwear I've got a buff I've got some extra socks let's start packing those items in around here okay now let's go first aid kit that's relatively light so that can go kind of on this outside edge let's say so I've got my dry bag one of the things I like to do with my dry bag is to put a jacket inside of it or some clothes that I really want to make sure if I know that the weather is gonna be dry then I'll just slide this in and use it if I need it use it for dirty clothes or things like that but let's say there's a possibility of some inclement weather I'm gonna put something like a puffy jacket in here I want to make sure that this is going to be dry if I need it later on another nice thing about dry bags is that you can squeeze a lot of that extra air out and then your stuff doesn't take up too much space so again with a just to retouch on one of the principles of backpacking as we go this is starting to get a little bit heavy so you have some bulky heavy items down on the bottom you have your water bladder close to your backpack and then you're kind of building up from there so I've got my food down here that's taking up a lot of space and is bulky and is heavy and then I want progressively lighter things as I go up higher try to keep things separate so I'll put my toilet paper in one of these handy little pouch bags that have got from mr. e ranch I might put some zip locks in here might put some hand sanitizer in here things like that that are handy so it's like okay it's go time I'm just gonna grab this bag and go and also I can feel a little bit better about just throwing these items inside my backpack okay there's a few other items here I've got my gem oil so I'm gonna actually leave this guy behind and then I will not take a full roll of duct tape I'll just take a small little bit so maybe five feet worth of duct tape in a roll maybe ten feet on a roll and I'll just roll it over itself or I'll wrap it under water bottle but this guy is going to stay to the side here today trekking poles will go on the outside of my bag or I'll be using them in my hand water bottles I can I can wait and hold off but I'm going to put one in here now this is my Grail water filter [Applause] that's gonna hang out on the side if I'm worried about something possibly falling out of my backpack I'll make sure that something like this is strapped in buckle this guy up a little bit more secure there now okay let's go I really like having a good camp cup this is one of my luxury items you can certainly go lighter weight than this but like this is a cup premiere that I really like because it's good double walled insulation keeps my coffee hot for a long time and to me that's just something I really like so I'm gonna do that I'm gonna take a luxury item or two okay now I think it's time for rain jacket my beanie things that I might want if I'm taking a break on the trail and start to get cold something I can easily throw on and then it's kind of like my top loader section so I want a few things that are easily accessible I want my map that I can easily refer to so map goes up top I've got my sun protection my Dermott own sunscreen that I'm going to throw up here so I can make sure that I'm reapplying throughout the day I like having my headlamp up in the top as if darkness has fallen I know where it is it's kind of one of those items and then I know where it's gonna be at all times so that I'm not like where my backpack did I put that and it's dark and you don't know so you're fumbling around so there are a couple of things that I like to always have in a certain spot pocket knife probably gonna actually have this on my hip but also maybe I want to throw it in my top loader here just in case I don't want that in my pocket make sure lighters same thing I like to have the small items that are easily miss placeable in a in a specific place so maybe it's like a pocket on my hip or it's in somewhere in my top loader but I like to put these types of things in the same place every time one it just helps me not forget them and then two it helps me not forget them and then so I just know where it is so I can get get to it easily let's go with a little bit of trail food I want these things that are easily accessible so I can pull them out on the trail without having to really unpack anything I don't want to be pulling up my food bag the food bag I generally think is I'm oh if I'm only I'm only pulling that out of my backpack if I'm doing a really extended break or if I've reached camp and it's time to really pull everything out okay water bottles going on this other side here probably gonna want to buckle that guy into so you never know you don't want to be hopping down a boulder and then spill in your water bottle out so I like to have that strapped in let's go trekking poles here down the side things are starting to get a little tight let's actually undo this strap I just did make sure that goes around that okay I often hike with camera equipment as well so if I'm ever taking trekking or if I'm ever taking a tripod or something like that I'm gonna put that here on the side as well there's a couple items here that maybe I need maybe I don't need I like to be able to haul water let's say in general you need to be camping like 200 feet away from rivers creeks lakes water sources as a good LNT practice so sometimes I want to have something that I can just Hall to camp that if I need to be let's say I'm cooking dinner I might be needing three or four liters of water to go through all of my water needs so rather than just relying upon one liter water bottles I can fill up something like this and then get to camp pretty easily I probably should have put this a little bit lower but it's really lightweight so it kind of is is fine kind of almost anywhere it's more of a convenience issue for where you want that but since I really don't be needing it Intel camp I should probably put that somewhere in the middle here okay wag bags which are poop related I'm actually most places don't require these so I'm going to set this off to the side that was an example from another video a little bit of camp coffee you can put this in your food bag but I like to maybe make a cold brew on the trail or something like that with these Alpine starts so I'm gonna again put that in my easily accessible zone some extra cordage pique cord something like that I've got a little bit of extra space here in this top side and that's gonna be it's for that and then pretty much the last thing is sunglasses I'm either gonna be wearing these or I'm going to put them up on my top loader again making sure that I have some sort of case so that my beautiful sunglasses don't get all scratched up so just an FYI on that well let's set those aside for now and then really the only thing that's left is my tent so I'm going to zip all this up got a little bit of room to spare see how there's some extra a little bit of room here that means I've got some extra room that's kind of nice one of the things that I like about this particular backpack is if I did want to take say like a Z light or a foam pad I'd probably want to put that up here and then strap these straps up to the top but since I put my seating mattress inside I don't need to do that but it just gives you a pack like this gives you some extra flexibility with where you put certain things so you can use this top strap for light things don't put anything too heavy up there don't put your tent up there because that's too heavy the tent is actually going to go down here on the bottom I'm gonna stuff this court inside so it doesn't snag on any branches that's really annoying set this across here so I want to have my tent down low it's among the heavier items I have so that's why it goes down at the bottom and then I certainly want to cinch these guys up and get that nice and tight and then these things that I was fumbling around with you can roll these back up so that you don't have a bunch of annoying stuff dangling okay there's my backpack I'm gonna last do these buckles and straps again I think I need to open these up just a little bit to get these to cinch okay so I'm pretty much ready to go I just want to cinch everything down if I need I can put additional things on the outside but I am a big advocate for a nice clean exterior of your backpack a common mistake that I see a lot of people making is they run out of room they want to take something else they want to take a cooking pan so they'll just strap it to the outside of their bag or they have just kind of random stuff maybe jackets that they just tie on to the exterior of their backpack and I am a big advocate for not being a junk show not only is it nice and clean and efficient to have everything inside but as stuff if you do have stuff on the outside of your backpack that's just swaying around and clanking around it's annoying for other people on the trail and it does make a difference for you as well so if you have weight that is swinging that is going to affect how you hike it's going to affect your rhythm it's going to affect your gait and that type of thing will add up over the miles on the trail so if you just have everything nice and tight it will be more efficient for you I'm feeling good about this bag altogether this is everything that I need for probably three days I've got about three days worth of food and then with all of my clothing and other supplies I can go in definitely on the trail so if you want to see another video about how to choose your right backpack we have a video about that but this is a 50 liter backpack and this actually holds everything I need with a little bit of room to spare so most people are making the mistake buying a backpack that's just way too big you just don't need to do that so everything with proper fit we have resources for making sure you get that I want to have everything nice and tight cinched well comfortable around the shoulders not pinching off any circulation around my armpits I'm looking good I'm feeling good and I'm ready for the trail so there you have it that's how you pack your backpack and these are just guidelines and principles you don't have to follow my rules exactly but I think that if you follow what I do here that will just help you be efficient on the trail and yeah that's it that's the video now you can go get out there and have your own adventures you did like the video please like and subscribe to our Channel we really appreciate it and obviously it helps you to stay informed and educated and inspired thanks so much for watching I'm Eric Hansen I'll see you later

Channel: BackpackingTV

Views: 47,517

Rating: 4.8940172 out of 5

Keywords: backpacking, how to pack a backpack, how to fit everything in your backpack, how to pack a backpack for camping, how to pack a backpack for hiking, how to pack for hiking, how to pack for backpacking, how to pack for a camping trip, Camping, backpack, BackpackingTV, tutorial, camping gear, hiking, backpacking tips, hiking tips, how to pack hiking bag, packing a hiking pack, packing for backpacking, pack for overnight camping trip, how to fit camping gear

Id: SG1va3YaLN8

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 25 2020