Getting Started

Back in Pack is a gear management and trip planning companion for hiking and backpacking. Whether you are a weekend day hiker or a long-distance thru hiker, it organises your gear, builds your packing lists and plans your trips in one place.

How Back in Pack Works

Three core ideas work together:

Gear is your complete inventory. Every item you own, or want to buy, lives here. Think of it as a virtual gear closet.
Packs are your packing lists. Pull items from your gear into a pack to build a loadout. Make as many as you like, one for summer day hikes, another for winter overnighters.
Trips are the adventure planner. Attach a pack to a trip, plan the route, check the weather and track your progress with GPS. Trips are Thru Hiker only.

The key idea: add an item to your gear once, then reuse it across as many packs and trips as you like.

Your First Steps

Sign in with Apple or Google, or with an existing email account. See Signing In.
Set your units on the onboarding screen, or later in Profile → Appearance. See Appearance & Preferences.
Add your gear on the Gear tab. You can also load sample data during onboarding to poke around first. See Gear Locker.
Build a pack on the Packs tab and add items from your gear. See Packs.
Plan a trip on the Trips tab, if you are on Thru Hiker. See Trips.

Navigating the App

The bottom navigation bar has five tabs, but Trips only appears on Thru Hiker. Day Hiker and Section Hiker see four.

Tab	Shown to	What it holds
Trips	Thru Hiker only	Plan and track your adventures
Packs	Everyone	Build and manage packing lists
Gear	Everyone	Your complete gear inventory
Discuss	Everyone	The community forum
Profile	Everyone	Settings, preferences and account

On a tablet or desktop the same destinations appear as a navigation rail down the side.

On Section Hiker and above you can also choose which tab opens at launch, in Profile → Appearance. See Appearance & Preferences.

Account Tiers

There are four tiers: Day Hiker (free), Section Hiker, Thru Hiker and Content Creator. Each tier includes everything in the tiers below it.

Free on Every Tier

Gear, gear images, extended attributes (quantity and link), categories, packs and pack analysis, browsing and copying from the Community Gear catalogue, and Discuss threads, posts, following and reporting. Changing your display name is also free on every tier.

What Each Paid Tier Adds

Tier	Adds
Day Hiker (free)	Everything above. Share up to 3 packs at once
Section Hiker	Purchase attributes (prices, dates, receipts) and the Currencies screen; pack images; pack lifecycle (Active / Archived); export a pack as PDF or XML and your locker as XML (not on the web); image attachments on Discuss posts; the Home start-screen preference. Share up to 10 packs
Thru Hiker	The entire Trips tab: routes, waypoints, live GPS tracking, tasks and analysis. Plus the Trips settings row (including trip images), Map Tiles (not on the web), My Measurements, pack systems (sub-packs), trip ZIP import, and Discuss push notifications (not on the web). Share up to 25 packs
Content Creator	Shot planning on trips (framing, lighting, camera and shot lists, with PDF export), the Shot Framings and Shot Lighting rows in Profile, and the Locker and Trips connectors for AI assistants. Share up to 25 packs

Tapping Account level opens the Change Account screen, which lists all four tiers. On iOS and Android you can subscribe, switch plan, restore purchases or manage your subscription there. On the web and macOS the screen is view-only, because subscriptions are bought in the mobile app. Your plan applies everywhere you sign in. See Profile & Account.

Two Things That Surprise People

Gear images are free on every tier. Pack images need Section Hiker, and trip images need Thru Hiker.
Theme colour and display names are free too. The one limit on your display name is that it can be changed once every 180 days.

Tip: Coming from another app? Import from LighterPack or from a Back in Pack ZIP before you type anything in by hand. See Importing Data.