I'm new here, and new to the "modern world" of backpacking although I did a lot of hiking, backpacking and camping when I was young (back in the 1960s). After many years away from the outdoor life, I have decided to jump back in with both feet. I have some ambitious dreams of things I'd like to do, and will probably share some of them in other posts, but my main purpose in being here is to learn and to put together a set of gear (home-made and otherwise) for myself.

I have no specific questions right now, but one of my quandaries is between pack types... external, internal or frameless. My first pack ( at age 11) was an army surplus bag on a packboard my father made out of wood and Masonite - it probably weighed 5 lbs by itself, but worked pretty well for me and a 35 lb pack weight plus 4-5 quarts of water. Over the next few years, I tried a pack with a strange tri-lobed tubular aluminum frame (uncomfortable and the frame eventually broke), a small frameless pack Dad sewed from parachute nylon (nice and light but too small for what we carried back then), and eventually came to love my brother's Boy Scout pack frame. I think it was called the "Cruiser" frame, and it lasted him a long time despite needing to repair the canvas pack many times.

Anyway, I see lots of tradeoffs in pack types these days, and am not quite sure what I want to choose. I love the superlight approach with a small frameless pack, but want to have enough bag volume to carry extra insulation during the colder seasons so I need a bigger pack that may not compress enough with a smaller summer load. I also want to be able to carry enough food for an extended time between resupply stops (say, 2 weeks)... that puts my load well over 30 lbs, and it seems most light packs these days are aimed at loads of 20-25 lbs max. So it looks as though an external frame is the most sensible approach, but those seem to be 5-6 lbs or more for the pack and frame alone which leads to a still higher total weight. Am I missing something?

Hmmm... that turned out a bit more rambling than I expected! I'm happy to be here, and look forward to getting to know people and learning a lot.

-- Sam