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My brother in law swore I'd wreck my knees on the Eagle Rock loop with a 38 lb pack | Backpacking Routes - Rigidtalk

My brother in law swore I'd wreck my knees on the Eagle Rock loop with a 38 lb pack

So my brother in law has been backpacking the Ozarks for like 15 years and he kept telling me not to do the Eagle Rock Loop in Arkansas with my old external frame pack because it would be too heavy, and that I needed to drop down to 25 lbs or under before I tried it. I did it anyway last October with a 38 lb pack and honestly finished the 26 mile loop in 3 days with zero knee trouble at all. The worst part was the two river crossings where I got soaked, not my joints. He also said the climb out of the valley would kill me, and yeah it was steep, but I just took it slow and it was fine. Now I'm wondering if pack weight actually matters as much as people say, or if he was just repeating stuff he read somewhere. I'm 5'10 and 178 lbs and in decent shape so maybe that's part of it. Curious if anyone else has ignored that classic 20 percent rule and gotten away with it, or if I got lucky and my knees are just waiting to get me in my 40s.

2 comments

2 Comments

davis.dakota6d ago

Did you change anything else at the same time, like your pace, how often you stopped, or what shoes you wore? That matters here because 38 lbs is heavy but 26 miles over 3 days is only about 9 a day, which is pretty chill mileage for someone in decent shape. What were your typical training hikes before this, both distance and pack weight? Also curious what your base weight was versus the 38, since food and water can hide a lot of the real load. Not trying to dog you (a win is a win) but one good trip does not really tell you if the rule is wrong or if you just had enough margin to cover it.

leo_harris6d ago

Kept my pace slow and steady on the climbs and wore trail runners instead of boots, which I think saved my knees more than the pack weight did. My base weight was around 24 lbs and the rest was food and water, so the real load lightened up a lot by day two. @davis.dakota is right that one trip proves nothing, but I did train with 35 lbs on local hills for a month before going, and I think that prep mattered more than the number on the scale.