Best Backpacking Gear Tips by Skeeter Sato
Ask an Adventure Leader is a writing series that gives our community an opportunity to learn from our Adventure Leaders' collective experience, expertise, and deepest excitements. This week, Skeeter (they/them) reflects on their evolving relationship to backpacking and gear. Skeeter’s blog also ends with an intro to a new series of reflections called Worth the Weight, where people in our community reflect on the extra things they might bring along on a trip, despite the weight, because of the ways they will ultimately enhance their experience. When I was a sophomore in college, I took a job at my college’s gear closet because I couldn’t find anything else. It was a closet with a mountain of backpacks, tents, sleeping pads, surfboards, snorkel gear-- anything related to the outdoors, really. I was overwhelmed and intimidated. I had started hiking not too long before I got the job, and my only piece of “real” outdoor gear was a pair of old hiking shoes that my grandma got me five yea