17 days and 201 miles of walking later, the Big Walk I described last month has come to a close. For the backcountry inclined, I can highly recommend the John Muir Trail as a true scenic masterpiece; for those more interested in product design, there's plenty to tell also.

For starters, my stance on electronics in the backcountry is mostly unchanged -- they are to be avoided whenever possible. The two electrically-powered objects in my pack, a headlamp and a camera, both performed well, but batteries are dense little things, and add noticeably to the weight of anything requiring them. The charge remaining in the camera, moreover, became a subject of constant concern: things just get more and more scenic as you head south down the JMT, and the worry that a photo snapped on day 14 would prevent us from shooting one on day 17 superseded concerns about hypothermia and twisted ankles, and that just ain't right.

Many of the other technological wonders that I carried turned out to be well worth their designers' efforts, though -- here's a reveiw of five of them:

Trekking Poles. Komperdell C2

These constitute the only major addition to my backpacking equipment list in the past decade, and while I had my reservations at first, they turned out to be worth every gram and dollar. We're not talking about that many grams to begin with of course: the carbon fiber construction makes them exceedingly light, while providing more rigidity than my partner's aluminum ones. The only damage to either pair, in fact, were suffered by hers, a pair of Black Diamond poles, which bent slightly after a fall while traversing a patch of late season snow.

For such a recent entry to the backpacking canon, trekking poles show remarkable utility. They deliver on their main selling point of reducing knee impact on heavily loaded descents, but I came to value them in other ways too: powering up endless switchbacks, preventing slips in treacherous snow fields, and especially in maintaining stability during the hundreds of stream crossings encountered in any Sierra hike. The ability to gain solid purchase on a stream bed while balancing myself plus 35 pounds of pack on a slippery stone frequently made the difference between a quick traverse and a debacle of skinned knees and soaked clothes. They also make a convenient way of keeping packs upright during mid-day rest stops.

The design, like much backcountry tech, is stripped down and highly evolved. A two-part carbon shaft quickly adjusts in length with the flick of a cam lock (short for uphill, long for downhill and stream-crossing), and a tungsten carbide tip gives solid purchase on both stone and earth.

I have three complaints. The first, perhaps unavoidable, is the hollow, tapping, scraping sound they make while in use, though this may be a sign of unfamiliarity, and will eventually seem as "natural" to me as the tromp of boot soles on soil. The second is in comparison to my partner's Black Diamonds, which collapse into three sections rather than two. Even when fully collapsed, the Komperdells are still nearly a meter long, requiring they be strapped to the pack externally when not in use, rather than tucked conveniently in a side pocket; a 3-section version, though, would certainly offer less strength and greater weight.

The really unforgivable flaw is in the grip design, which features a series of grooves along the back surface. Ostensibly to improve traction or airflow (they do neither), their main effect is to generate hand blisters with great efficiency. My partner's grips use a more sensible design, smooth as a pebble, allowing prolonged grasping rather than the constant shifting demanded by the Komperdells to prevent injury.

Headlamp. Princeton Tec Quad

Outstanding. The arrival of cheap, high-power LEDs was a godsend for backpackers, and this unit from Princeton Tec makes excellent use of them. Lightweight and waterproof, bright enough for all reading and camp chores, simply adjusted for proper angle, and efficient enough to go all 17 days of the walk without a hint of dimming, all on three AAA batteries.The real design coup on this one is the well thought-out single button interface. To conserve power and avoid blinding your campmates, the headlamp offers three brightness levels, plus a fourth setting, a bright flashing that seems absurd unless you live in a town (like I do) with lots of cyclists who strap headlamps to their helmets to improve visibility in traffic. One press turns it on at full brightness, with additional presses cycling it through the other settings, but only initially. Once a setting's been chosen, leave it alone for five seconds or so and the cycle resets, so that another press simply turns it off. A small nod to usability, but a deeply considerate one. Thanks guys.

Boots. Danner Mountain Light After 200 miles with these on my feet, I despise them for their weight, and love them more than ever for their protection. Long-distance heavy hiking boots seem to be one category nearly impervious to technological advancement, for despite decades of improvements in materials and assembly techniques in athletic footwear, there still doesn't seem to be a better boot design than the one-piece full-grain leather upper with a steel shank, stitched down to a heavy lugged Vibram rubber sole with a chunky heel. Half the rangers we met en route were wearing the exact same model.

I cursed their exceptional weight every morning as I laced them up, and praised them each evening. A backpacking boot's job, after all, isn't to be light and flexible; it's to form a rigid, nearly impermeable box around your foot and ankle, protecting it from the shards of fractured granite that often form the trail surface, holding the ankle upright during a twisting misstep, and keeping the water out during a brief river plunge. My partner's nylon and split-grain light hikers weighed far less, but frequently left her with swollen, sore, blistered feet at the end of the day.

Water Bladder. Camelbak 100 oz.

Here's one product where design improvements have made a world of difference. Water bladders started taking over from canteens and bottles around 15 years ago, when Camelbak and its competitors showed you could carry the same amount of water with less weight and more flexibility, cradled nicely inside your pack, and easily available for sipping at will. I bought an early Camelbak in 1998; my partner a couple of months ago. After a week on the trail, we practically stopped using mine in favor of hers.

The improvements responsible? All of them. My push-button mouthpiece, for starters, has been replaced by a bite-style valve on hers, far less prone to leakage. Her screw down cap is larger, for easier filling, features a well-designed handle just below the opening, and a hook for hanging inside the tent at night — extra useful in the astonishingly dry night air above 10,000 feet. Whether it's a function of tight competition or just the demands of a utility- and weight-conscious customer base, the small advances in this design have been genuinely useful.

Bear Canister. Garcia Backpackers' Cache

In a field of specialized equipment, this lies at an extreme. Bear canisters are only used in a handful of areas, such as Yosemite National Park, where large bear populations overlap large volumes of human visitors. While "bear-bagging" -- the practice of hanging food from high tree branches at night -- was standard practice through the 80s and 90s, the resourcefulness and tenacity of ursines in search of an easy meal has led certain areas like Yosemite to make the use of locking, bear-proof food containers mandatory.

The design challenge presented here is unique: as one ranger pointed out, it must prevent access by an animal that's extremely motivated, several times stronger than a human, and smart enough to learn to ride a bicycle. Humans who use them also expect durability, easy operation, and light weight, making for some very tight constraints. Most solutions have settled on a rigid polymer cylinder shape (carbon fiber in more expensive models) with either a screw-down lid or tool-operated locks.

The National Park standard model, available for low-cost rental where you pick up your wilderness permit, is the Garcia Backpackers' Cache, a 2 pound, 14 ounce monster with two steel cam locks operated by coin or screwdriver, and an exhortation to "Save the Bears" embossed on the lid. It holds around 6 days of food for one person when smartly packed. The excess weight is a subject of much griping among first-time users, but encountering a party whose camp has been ravaged in the night (we met one last year) is enough to convince most hikers of their good sense.

The production volumes on these canisters can't be very high; even within the backpacking industry, the bear can is a specialized product. This is evidenced by a retail price of US$60+, pretty hefty for what's essentially a thick plastic bucket. It also comes out visually in one of the small details: a pair of strengthening ribs on the underside of the push tab used for popping the lid out from the canister opening. These lids get stuck from time to time, leading to some rough handling and high stress on this small feature. My suspicion is that early versions lacked this reinforcement, leading to some very inconvenient snapped tabs and inaccessible food. The shape of the ribs suggests they were hastily added to the injection mold with a few quick swipes of an end mill: not pretty, but simple and effective. Classic backcountry design.

Flying in the face of all this gadgetry are the Through-Hikers. The John Muir Trail shares most of its length with the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2650 mile long grand route that stretches from the Mexican to the Canadian border, requiring a six month commitment to hike it from end to end. The folks who make this commitment are encountered briefly, usually hiking south to north, primarily identified by their full beards, blazing pace, and extreme lack of gear.

Covering 20 or more miles in a day, taking high passes so early in the season they still involve hour-long snow crossings, Through-Hikers make a mockery of most backcountry gear assessments, having long ago ditched most of the goodies relied upon by us JMT-walkers only in it for a few weeks. They wear one change of clothes and re-wash it until threadbare. They hike in trail shoes or sandals (usually Chacos). They carry no poles, no water filter, and the flimsiest of sleeping mats. And for the most part, they seem to be having a great time.

The reason for this disparity is obvious after a few moments observation: such tools are only necessary for the inexperienced and unconditioned. Three months of mountain walking leaves you with toughened feet and a nimble step that makes the impervious box of the heavy boot obsolete. Stream crossings with a heavy pack demand poles for stability only until you've done a thousand or so of them. An eye for safe water sources means no fear of unfiltered water, but takes weeks or months to develop. And so on.

Once upon a time, the only people walking in mountains like these did so for a lifetime or a living, so a few months apprenticeship in the lore and fitness required to make it safe was no big thing. Today what was once vocation is now sport, and that apprenticeship is rarely completed. Even the Through-Hikers pause in towns along the way every week or two to resupply and rest. In its stead we have these highly designed objects, that allow us to walk, drink, sleep and eat in places that might otherwise kill us. I am no mountain man, but with the right tools in my pack, I can simulate one, at least for a few weeks at a time.