by John Smith

Created on: May 28, 2011

Nobody could really blame him for the mix-up. We even felt sorry for him—at first, anyway. Of course that was before we ended up dividing most of his load between the two of us and tying it to various parts of our body with the twine from my daypack so we could get off the mountain before dark. As we descended the steep trail back down to where we had left our motorcycles I felt compelled to again explain to him the difference between backpacking and hiking.

You see we had invited him to go hiking with us. Hiking. Having rarely left civilization he was excited at the opportunity but was worried about his ability to scale the initial ascent from where we had planned to ride into. No fear, I consoled him, there's an easier way in, and if you leave the same time as us you'll surely beat us to the trail junction. We sat there at the junction calling his name, wondering if we should start back towards the parking lot we had directed him to go to or if he had missed the junction and was on his way to the summit alone. We figured it was best to sit tight, we had drawn him a map after all, and unless he had panicked at the non-existence of a cell phone signal and gone back home the junction was the best place for him to find us.

Twenty minutes later he came tromping up the trail, moving slowly under the weight of what looked like a overturned red Volkswagon Beetle on his back. As he slowly came closer and closer, the ridiculousness of his burden became more and more apparent. Strapped to his stern was a brand-new oversized external frame pack, stuffed to the gills. Fastened to the top was a new sleeping bag. Hanging from the bottom, a foam pad. A pot, pan, and percolator hung from hooks, flanked by what appeared to be a five gallon water bladder.

I expressed my surprise that he didn't bring a Dutch oven, a fact which he quickly corrected me on, letting me know it was in the bottom of the bag. This whole mess must have weighed upwards of a hundred pounds, and as soon as he reached us he immediately went to work trying to take it off and almost went tumbling back towards the trailhead as a result.

My friend made a mistake that is somewhat common to those getting into the sport of hiking: He confused hiking with backpacking. The key difference between the two is the duration of the stay, which of course dictates the type of load you need to carry. Typically a hike, even a long hike like we were going on, is not meant to last overnight. While it is unquestionably

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