The Right Gear
It's been a long time since I've travelled a long way with everything on my back. Okay, it hasn't been that long ago. Last year, when DW and I travelled through the Amazon basin in Peru , we carried everything. We had purchased backpack luggage that replaced our usual, hard-case roller suitcases because we knew we'd be going over uneven terrain and we wanted to be hands-free. But we only carried the luggage between the planes, trains, and automobiles and whatever lodging we were headed to. As soon as we were settled in our accommodation, the backpacks stayed in our rooms. Me, at Chirisan, 1998. In 1998, when DW and I were living in South Korea, we spent a few days hiking up Chirisan, the country's highest mountain on the peninsula. It took us a day to get to the trailhead, a day to climb to the 1,915-metre summit, a day to descend the other side, and a day to get back to Chǒnju, the city where we were living. For that climb, we had backpacks that each held a sle...
