If you’ve read through the previous few posts by Doug it’s pretty obvious that hiking to Everest Base Camp (EBC) is a work out. While we have Dzo (a cross between a yak and a cow) to carry our duffel bags with clothes, sleeping bags etc, it is still up to us to carry our own photo gear.

Let’s start with a pack. If you have a pack you love and are happy with it then by all means use what you like. Nothing is right or wrong as long as it works for you and is comfortable. A good photo pack for EBC should be able to carry the camera gear you want and:

• Rain jacket

• Rain pants

• Insulated jacket

• Wool or fleece hat

• Baseball and/or sun hat

• Insulated gloves

• Water bottle (Nalgene bottles are quite popular).

• Water purifier or purification tablets.

• Sunscreen

• Lip Balm

• Toilet paper (in a ziplock bag)

• Misc: lens cleaning wipes, glasses, sunglasses, etc.

If you do not have a favorite pack and are in the market for one we highly recommend the Atlas Athlete pack. I’ve used a lot of packs over the years and honestly the Atlas packs have the best hip belt and shoulder strap arrangement for me. https://atlaspacks.com/
I carried an Atlas Athlete last year on our EBC trek and that made me a believer.

Other popular packs are:
Shimoda - https://shimodadesigns.com/
Lowe Pro - https://www.lowepro.com/us-en/
Mindshift/Think Tank - https://www.thinktankphoto.com/
F-Stop - If you have an F-Stop pack and like it then no worries. I do not recommend their packs because the hip belt and shoulder straps are not well designed. Personal preference though. I owned 3 F-Stop bags and sold them once I tried the Atlas Athlete. We are not compensated at all by Atlas and buy all our products from them.

Look for a pack that has enough room for your gear and clothing while not being too large. Folks have a tendency to fill up whatever size pack they have. A 30 to 40 liter pack is plenty large enough for what you need on the EBC trek. If you have a smaller photo kit or want to carry less gear then definitely get a smaller pack. Just remember that you’ll need to fit the above list of clothing, water and miscellaneous and carry it comfortably. We had quite a few folks carry Osprey packs, which are not photo packs, but very comfortable hiking packs.
The Osprey Hikelite or Stratos are good sizes and fit a variety of body types. https://www.osprey.com/us/en/category/technical-packs/hiking/ Being able to compress the pack to remove volume so there is less room is super nice if you do not need to carry a lot of clothing or have a smaller photo kit.

Our next post will look at Photo Gear: Camera, lenses and accessories.