Stop Buying Solutions.
Start Understanding Problems.
The ocean of gear and beta that’s become available to us in the first quarter of the 21st century is staggering. It’s incredible to consider that I can head out in the backcountry with 12 or 15 lbs of gear, 10 or 12 lbs of food, a few liters of water, and disappear into the forest for an undetermined amount of time - all while staying in touch with my family throughout. 30 years ago, that system would have weighed twice as much, or more. Communication wasn’t an option. It was time to worry when you were 24 or 48 hours past due.
Modern luxuries have allowed us to go farther and faster, but it’s fooled us into thinking we need the latest gear to go at all. Paradoxically, for all the information we have access to, hikers and backpackers end up in the same places.
We scour reviews, reports, and posts for user experiences on the latest gear and the best trails. We arrive at socially curated destinations, some of which suffer the same impact as a front-country campground, all while carrying some combination of the currently popular gear. It wasn’t that long ago that people would go into the backcountry with whatever they could muster from the garage and kitchen. The adventure was in the discovery and a bit of (hopefully safe) flirtation with the unknown. Some great destinations like [redacted lake] got their namesake by young backpackers not bringing enough food (chili is heavy!), or like [redacted pass] being an outright slog and endurance test. People had to figure it out, sans beta. Does all this data and cush mean that adventure is effectively “over,” and there’s nothing left to truly discover? Hardly. The wilderness is vast.
Solutions are a system applied to a previously uncontrolled problem. Gear can be a solution, but having gear doesn’t necessarily mean the user understands the system it addresses. For instance, arriving at a prescribed location doesn’t mean a hiker knows how to navigate: along a well-trodden trail, arriving simply means walking where the plants aren’t, just long enough to get there.
The way I see it, our critical systems for wilderness travel are: fitness, nutrition/hydration, thermoregulation (including shelter), basic emergency medical, navigation, and mental fortitude. These six critical systems manage the following broad problemsets:
- Fitness: can you endure the physical challenge.
- Nutrition/Hydration: can you fuel your body to meet the challenge.
- Thermoregulation: can you regulate and maintain your body’s ideal temperature band.
- Basic Emergency Medical: can you recognize a physical emergency and intervene.
- Navigation: can you arrive, and importantly, can you return.
- Mental Fortitude: can you effectively solve being lost, cold, tired, or simply lonely.
Environmental risks, like violent interactions with wildlife, altitude, or generalized problems like “exposure,” are medical concerns - sometimes bad luck, but more often resulting from a lack of awareness.
Other environmental concerns such as inclement weather, risks inherent to a landscape, or campsite selection are fluid with solutions being governed by experience, situational awareness, or ever developing wisdom. Situational awareness is a mental process that informs decision-making. Wisdom is a result of experience, often non-transferrable, and not a system itself.
Systems like the 10 Essentials are just that, essential systems for managing risk. But they are effectively “gear” - being solutions applied to understood problems. Rather than applying gear to the problem, work on understanding the problems the system is solving. I would argue the six critical systems outlined above are a good place to start.