Ben Kilbourne
5 Features Every Desert Backpacking Pack Should ...

As a kid from southern Utah, I’ve been backpacking across sandstone, down arroyos, and through willow thickets my whole life. This, in part, led me down a path of searching for ultralight or at least light-ish backpacks with attributes that make them ideal for canyon country backpacking. I have identified 5 features that make a backpack ideal for backpacking in the desert.

Gear Lists
Ben Kilbourne
Packrafting Gear List

Some people begin packrafting because they’re looking for new ways to connect landscapes. Others begin packrafting because they’re sick of schlepping their 50lb kayak around. I’m in the former camp—an ultralight backpacker-turned-packrafter with extreme ultralight biases. When I wrote a packrafting gear list about 4 years ago, I didn’t realize how strong these biases were and how much they limited my packrafting abilities and comfort. At the time I hadn’t paddled much more than the ephemeral streams in Utah’s canyon country, so my experience was somewhat limited. That list still feels applicable to a certain kind of boating, but it has its limitations. Now, I think a different gear list is needed.

This complete packrafting gear guide is written for most people in most packrafting scenarios—I hope it will help you choose a packraft, a paddle, safety gear, and all the packraft-compatible backpacking gear you need for multi-day expeditions.

Gear Reviews
Ben Kilbourne
Patching Experiments on EPL200 Ultra Fabric
Poetry
Ben Kilbourne
The Fire's Job

it is not a mountain anymore

it is now an idea of the shape

of the memory

of a dream

of a mountain

Gear Reviews
Ben Kilbourne
Searching for a Backpack that is Durable, ...

WATCH NOW

I made this video to explain why I’ve made some of the choices I’ve made as I keep on trying new backpacks.

Searching for a Backpack that is Durable, Light, and Carries Heavy Loads

The Desert's Dream

When we climbed the road out of Hurricane, Utah and spilled out onto the Arizona strip we were disheartened to see the ground covered in pillows of windblown snow.

A storm had passed through on Sunday and nights had been cold and days sunny but not warm in the two days that had since passed. We turned off the pavement onto a snowy, muddy, and frozen road and motored slowly south, watching the cold land pass beside us. The dark forms of horses stood in the cold night and paced along a fence. A jackrabbit darted into the road in front of us and ran in the patch of frozen mud between the strips of snow for miles. When we sped up, it sped up, and when we stopped it stopped. When we tried to gun it to get around, it pushed its little heart as hard as it could, ears determined, legs moving like pistons, getting up to 35 miles an hour before we backed off and conceded to just follow at jackrabbit pace.

Connectivity for Adapting to the Unexpected (Wildlands Network)

On May 16, I stood at Bryce Canyon’s Yovimpa Point looking through my breath at a dusting of new snow covering the pink slopes. The weather was expected to get worse, with snow above 6,500 feet statewide. My initial plan was to follow the route of an individual deer from her winter range near the Utah/Arizona border to her summer range near Cedar City, Utah. This particular leg of the trip was going to end here in Bryce, but the discouraging forecast made it clear this was not going to be possible within our timeframe.

Continue reading at Wildlands Network

Adding Loadlifters to HMG Packs… Or Not.

*****August 2022 Note: I’ve removed this video because I have tested a lot of packs since I made this post and I no longer feel conviction about this modification. In my opinion, it’s totally fine for straps to attach at the top of the shoulders if the straps are fairly cushy and spaced properly for a person’ s shoulders. If a pack fits like this, loadlifters are indeed unnecessary. That said, the load ratings of HMG packs are completely bananas. If they fit a little better in the shoulder I’d think they could carry 35lbs comfortably. *****

Red Butte Fence: Tracing Animal Movement and Obstruction (Torrey House Press)

Needing a break from studying, I leave the Environmental Humanities building on the University of Utah campus and begin walking towards the hills and the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. I cross roads and parking lots, and pass students slack-lining between the trees that surround the dorms. The hum of the city to my back, I step from asphalt onto dirt and begin walking uphill.

Continue reading at Torrey House Press

Hyperlite Mountain Gear Porter 4400 Backpack

The first pack I can remember owning was a green JanSport. When I was about 21 I replaced it with a blue 115 liter Lowe Alpine. I used the Lowe for a while, eventually replacing it with a Dana Designs Astralplane (also in the 115 liter range, and weighing a now unfathomable 7.5lbs), and then with a Black Diamond Infinity 60, and then with a Boreas Buttermilks 55. In retrospect, the BD and the Boreas weren’t bad packs but the swiveling hip belt on the BD squeaked and the Boreas hip belt nearly tore off one time when I carelessly stepped on it while hoisting the load onto my back. Oops.

Driving Through the Summer Storm

Near the Drum Mountains in central-western Utah the virga approached us, and we sped towards it in my 1993 Nissan truck. Dark blue and humanlike it swept the plane. It touched down somewhere, its feet the fleeting monsoon, welcomed by reaching greasewood and shivering russian thistle. Lightning cut across the dark form and we entered the deluge. Flash and boom inside of it, and flash and boom again. The rain transitioned from a heavy downpour to individual drops and the drops lessened and we looked back and the great dark form was now behind us; we had passed through its body. Lightning hit the sagebrush and greasewood plane where we had just been.