The Back in Pack ‘App’ is a mobile (iOS and Android) and web-based trip, pack and gear management application.

The App enables you to assess the gear that you carry for each of your backpacking trips: to optimise weight, tailoring gear to the appropriate conditions e.g. specific sections of a thru-hike, reducing risks and improving your on-trail performance.

Functionality

Offline data access: For mobile platforms, the app and your data will be available offline, so you can sit on a plane, perusing your lists and realising all the stuff that you forgot to pack.

Cross-platfom access: Use the app on an iPad, an Android phone and on a web-browser sharing the same data-set regardless of platform.

Gear Locker: A repository for all your owned, old/disused gear and any wishlist items. This enables you to maintain a complete record of your gear choices, assessing the impact of new items and allowing you to maintain a historical record of past trips.

Pack Lists: View the contents of each of your packs – charts and lists, by pack category (user defined), type (base, worn, consumed, skin-out) and weight.

Categorised views: Charted, visual representation of your gear weights that you carry or wear to make smart choices.

Published Packs: (Coming shortly – April/May 2025) Share your gear lists with others, for virtual pack shakedowns to gather feedback on your pack contents, gear choices and alternatives. Or for just pretending how minimal your baseweight could be. 🙂

Access the App

To access the app, you will need to create an account in one of the mobile apps.

Account Types

The App provides three levels of account enabling additional functionality.

DAY HIKER

The intent is to keep the core functionality of the pack and gear management app, FREE for everyone to use on any or all of the platforms.

SECTION HIKER (Coming soon)

For subscribers to the YouTube channel, then additional functionality will be unlocked:

• Gear lifecycle: gear archives for disused gear and wishlist for planned purchases.
• Additional attributes: Quantities owned, purchase prices and dates (future functionality: to support travel import/export documentation) and web links e.g. affiliate links which can be used in published pack lists.
• Gear and pack notes: to record specifics about usage, intent, rationale, …

THRU HIKER (Coming soon)

For paid subscription members, then further functionality will be unlocked:

• Gear and Pack Images: Make your lists prettier and make it easier to identify gear. Unfortunately it costs, to store and transfer image data back and forth – so this small subscription is to cover the additional hosting and transfer fees of this data.
• Systems: Enable reusable ‘systems’ which are subsets of gear e.g. First Aid Kits or Winter Cook Kit vs. Summer Cook Kit, or Sleep System etc… which can then be included in differing packs to make contents management more simple and efficient.
• Pack Lifecycle: Enable the archiving of packs, to retain a ‘static’ historical record associated with specifc trips for reference. This will be useful for peforming pack comparisons and for detailed trip planning (future functionaity).

Future Functionality

To be transparent, it is planned that the majority of future developed functionality will be available to Section and Thru hiker level accounts, based on the data storage/transfer requirements.

If you have any feedback about the app or requests for further functionality (no guarantees!!) then please use the contact form.

Support the App and the Website

Subscription costs do not cover the time and effort required to develop and maintain this App, the costs of having to purchase platform specific development hardware (yes you Apple!) or the required development licenses, so if you would like to make a donation to contibute to future of the App, then it would be much appreciated.

I hope you enjoy the app. TTFN. Mark.