How do I pack a rucksack so it carries well?

A rucksack that hurts is usually not too heavy, it is badly arranged. Weight carried away from your back acts on a lever and pulls you backwards, so you lean forward to compensate and your shoulders take the strain all day. Move that same weight in against the back panel and level with the shoulder blades and the pack pulls straight down through your hips, which is what the hip belt is for.

What you'll need

• A rucksack with a hip belt
• Dry bags or stuff sacks (optional)
• Compression straps (optional)

Step by step

1. Empty it and sort the contents into heavy, medium and light.Water, food and anything dense is heavy. Clothing and a sleeping bag are light and bulky. Packing straight in is how weight ends up wherever it happened to land.
2. Put light and bulky at the bottom.Sleeping bag, spare layers. The base of the pack sits low against your back and weight there swings and drags. Filling it with the light stuff is what leaves room in the middle for the heavy stuff.
3. Put the heaviest items in the middle, hard against the back panel.Roughly level with your shoulder blades and pressed in towards your spine. This is the whole technique. A water bladder or bottles right against the back panel is the classic way to do it.
4. Pack medium items around and above the heavy core.They wedge the heavy items in place so the load does not migrate outwards or downwards as you walk. A load that shifts is a load that becomes uncomfortable an hour in.
5. Fill every gap.Air is what lets a load move. Socks into shoes, small items into corners. A firmly packed bag carries better than a half-empty one of the same weight.
6. Put what you need during the day in the lid and hip belt pockets.Waterproof, snacks, map, phone, first aid. If getting to something means unpacking the bag, you will not do it, and then you will be cold or hungry rather than briefly inconvenienced.
7. Keep heavy things off the outside and off the top.Anything strapped to the outside swings and levers. A heavy item at the very top makes the pack top-heavy, which is genuinely unbalancing on uneven ground.
8. Pull the compression straps in.They exist to hold the load against your back rather than to make the bag smaller. Tighten them after loading and again after the first ten minutes of walking.
9. Load the hip belt before the shoulder straps.Loosen everything, put the pack on, sit the belt on top of the hip bones — not on the waist — and tighten it. The belt should take most of the weight. Only then snug the shoulder straps, then the load lifters, then the sternum strap.
10. Walk ten minutes and readjust.Everything settles. A single readjustment after the first stretch is the difference between comfortable and enduring.

Tips

• Waterproof from the inside with dry bags or a liner. Rucksack rain covers deal with the rain and not with the water running down your back into the top.
• For an off-trail or scrambling day, pack the heavy weight slightly lower than usual — a high load is less stable when you are moving unpredictably.
• Alternating which hand carries anything you have not managed to fit inside is a poor substitute for making it fit inside.

Common mistakes

• Heavy items packed at the top or in the outer pocket — Weight away from your back levers you backwards. You compensate by stooping, and your shoulders and lower back pay for it all day.
• Carrying the weight on the shoulder straps — The hip belt is the load-bearing part. If the shoulders are sore, the belt is probably too loose or sitting on the waist rather than on top of the hip bones.
• Packing so nothing you need is reachable — You end up not putting the waterproof on until you are already wet, because getting to it means unpacking on a hillside.

If it doesn't work

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