BACKPACKING

This comprehensive, extremely useful guide to backpacking includes balanced judgments on equipment (packs, sleeping bags, stoves, compasses), wilderness principles (some of them low-impact), tips on wilderness areas, and even a listing of city trails. How to pack a pack, bury personal wastes, avoid mosquitoes, rainproof boots and sleeping bags: such advice is dispensed simply and directly along with the distinctive requirements of particular environments--desert, mountain, coastal, forest--and seasonal variations. A light, chatty tone, leeway for idiosyncratic personal choices, and just enough detail.