Gear Is For Using

For outdoors people, gear is better than sex. So, then it can be said, that gear organization is the outdoor person’s masturbation. I may have lost some readers already, and that is probably for the best. If you are pressing on, however, that is because you are either an unapologetic gear head, a chronic organizer, or both. No matter your predilection, we’re going to have a lot of fun.

I am entering my twentieth year in the outdoor industry. From my awkward days as a retail sales associate spouting lumen quantity, battery life, and ounce count to impress college girls shopping for little more than a water bottle and dorm socks, to my current position as an ultra-laidback ski area employee, I’ve encountered an array of outdoor folk.

When the race for the best possible parking spot has ended and we’re all opening our trunks and cargo boxes to withdraw skis, boot bags, and all manner of powder-day gear, I can’t help but notice the organized families who just really have it together. When I see papa bear reaching up to the rack and handing down everybody’s skis, while mama bear is pulling labeled boot bags from the trunk, and the baby bears, alert, involved, and with their skis shouldered, emitting an aura of readiness to shred the day’s gnar, I can’t help but warm with appreciation. While I’m booting up at a trailhead and I see the four-door pickup, with five-grand worth of racks and lights bolted to it, park right next to me, I await one of two encounters. Either the human contents are over funded, under organized punks who hike for the selfies, or the truck is carrying geared-up badasses with organizational drawers spanning the full length of their truck bed below a beefy plywood deck. On that deck sit multiple bags, fully packed, but with room to spare, and almost nothing strapped to the outside. Those capable of organizing their time as well as their kit cam strap a trusted expedition cooler to their roof rack. It is covered in stickers and packed with the perfect ratio of sandwiches to beer to ice that will provide maximum post-adventure refreshment.

How we present ourselves at the mountain, at the put-in, or at the trailhead starts with how we care for, store, and organize our gear at home. People who haphazardly throw everything in the back of the closet or in the corner of the garage until the next adventure befalls them, end up looking and acting just as haphazardly when they are in the field. But those who select each piece of their non-gimmicky gear from an array of cleaned, re-charged, and maintained items hanging from individual hooks on a calico of color-coded peg boards, end up looking like guide-gods, wilderness-skills-instructors, and learned-naturalists wherever they choose to grace the water, dirt, or snow.

It is just as important to select good gear as it is to keep your equipment organized. Too many serious adventurers falter when they become more serious about gear collection than usage. This becomes akin to the psychological condition known as Hoarding disorder, where sufferers become immobilized by clutter and unable to find the most important things when they need them most.

Do purchase all the gear you need, not all the gear you want.

Do prioritize your gear by three tiers: yours, your family’s, and then the friend-giveaways. Employing this tier structure will ensure that your retired gear finds a new home outside of a landfill and that you, the primary user, can always justify that new, brighter lamp, that stronger paddle, and that great set of touring skis.

Do not purchase gear that solves a problem that you do not have. A hatchet that is also a wrench is not necessary. A short length of cord woven into a complicated braid, to be worn around your wrist, only makes that short length of cord less accessible to you when you really need it. A stove that weighs in under three ounces but requires optimal laboratory conditions and a PhD to ignite, is not an asset.

Do own a different sleeping bag for every season. Sleep is important.

Do purchase a half dozen drybags of various dimensions and capacities. Wet gear is often ruined gear.

Do own entire racks of skis, boats, bikes, boots, and boards. Just avoid redundancies within your quivers.

When planning an adventure (and ideally, whenever conscious), do embrace science. Adventure conditions will vary according to elevation, barometric pressure, geographical location, and of course, time of year. Purchase and select gear for those recordable and observable variables, not for when the EMP hits and you need a back-up shoelace that is also a bow string but also a hunting snare, and by the way, it probably could start fires too.

In a perfect world two of the largest walls of your gear room are covered, floor to ceiling, with pegboard and one full wall is just deep shelving. I’ve had luck with all kinds of pegboard and love the deep wire rack shelves often found in commercial kitchens. Your gear is hung and shelved according to category. Each item is stored with its obvious accessories i.e., dry bag stuff sacks for each sleeping bag, batteries with each headlamp, sharpening tools with cutting tools, etc. Below or beside each item is a label, not handwritten, but printed from a label maker (have some self-respect). On the pegboard, when all the hangable goods (not sleeping bags, shelters, or clothing, they go on the shelves) are hung from individual hooks, and a small amount of space is provided for growth and expansion, painter’s tape should be used to encircle your gear by category. Each category section should be painted a different color. Now your packing list is simplified by making sure you have the necessary supplies from each color group and your new exciting purchases must fit into a color category and ideally replace an existing piece of kit.

I have been accused of having champagne taste when it comes to most things. I admit it, I like to have the best and I like to be adventuring at least one hundred days of every year. If I have the right kit on my person, in my pack, or in my boat then my mind becomes undistracted with want and worry. I focus better on the chirping of the Canyon Wren, the fluid skittering of the Fisher Cat, and Mars as it peaks over the horizon around dusk. I can go on about how overburdening oneself leads to injuries and suffering. I could make this about how in my mom and dad’s day, kids wore cotton and ran wild, brandishing dull camp hatchets. Instead, I want to wrap up with the advice that everybody equip themselves according to logic and experience, not fantasy and what-ifs. Get out as often as you can, take the time to use your gear, lest it become your collection. Pass on what you don’t need and expand this world of adventure-seeking wilderness-wanderers. The more of us there are, the more places we will be able to keep wild.