The High Sierra: A Love Story

by Kim Stanley Robinson

basic principles: 1. You don’t need to reproduce your house. In summer and fall in the Sierra, you don’t need much gear to be comfortable. So: don’t take what you don’t need. 2. Incidental dampness is not fundamental wetness, and incidental dampness doesn’t matter. This is a distinction the 1950s designers didn’t acknowledge: you don’t have to stay as absolutely dry as you typically do at home, in order to remain both warm and comfortable. Realizing that makes a lot of gear unnecessary. Condensation on the inside of your tarp? Not a problem. The only thing you really need to worry about is fundamental wetness, which ultimately comes down to your sleeping bag being too wet to work, so that you will perhaps freeze your butt. That you want to avoid. 3. For every item, all of them, take the lightest version that will still function for its purpose. 4. Try for dual use, meaning more than one function for the stuff you take with you—as in puns, where the crux word means two things and makes you laugh. Why are pirates so bad at playing cards? Because they’re standing on the deck! In a similar way, there are some items with two functions. Note this began all the way back with Clarence King and Richard Cotter, who used their sleeping blankets to make their backpacks. These days, walking poles can be your tent poles at night; backpack cushioning can serve as your pillow; your tarp can serve as a rain cape by day; your down vest is a mobile part of your sleeping bag; your empty backp...