Tips from the Pro

Drop the lid of your nearly empty pack inside the main bag to prevent it flopping around.

Pin a stuffbag inside the pack to stop dense items from gravitating downward

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Since you can't avoid having the"monkey" on your back when backpacking, at least make it a better behaved primate. Use the following five tricks to tame your pack so it's more comfortable and user-friendly while on the trail.

Stop Lid Flop

Pack lids are often heavy with small dense items, and can flop around annoyingly when your pack is nearly empty — such as when you've set up camp and are gamboling about with a few items in your full-size pack. The same flopping can happen when you've donned most of the extra clothing in your daypack, too. Even if you really cinch down the lid straps, the annoying movement often continues — and the lid can be pulled too low in the process.

Here's a quick, easy solution:

Drop the lid down inside the pack and simply tighten the drawstring. This effectively prevents the lid from flopping around — and it's even easier to get into the pack bag than when the straps must be undone.

Fight Gravity's Drag

Murphy's Law of the Inconvenient Migration of Stuff means that dense items (especially waterbottles, hydration systems, large cameras, and fuel) tend to gravitate to the bottom of your pack, especially when the pack is not full and tightly packed. Those are precisely the items that often need to be handy and whose weight should be up high and close to your back between your shoulder blades for easy carrying.

Here's a simple solution:

Suspend a stuffbag to form a pocket inside the pack at an appropriate height. Attach it with safety pins to the strong internal seam that encircles the top of most packs. That way the pins do not pass through to the outside skin of the pack, and it's usually easy to push the pins through just the binding tape on the seam.

If you use a waterproof stuff sack, such as Outdoor Research Hydrosealbags (various sizes and prices, www.orgear.com), you have extra protectionagainst a leaking bottle or hydration system wetting the pack contents. Justdon't put the camera in with the water bottle!