Heavy Weight Beginnings

First Day Hike – felt like I was about to die…

Location: Chilco Mountain, Rathdrum, Idaho
Length: 10 miles
Weather: Sunny

Equipment:
1.(HEAVY) Hiking Boots
2. Extra Set of Clothing (Old-fashioned Boy Scout Idea)
3.(HOSPITAL SIZED)First Aid Kit
4.(HEAVY) Survival Kit – ?????? (Cursed it the entire way)
5. Raingear
6. Flashlight – ??? (Wished I dropped it off a cliff)
7. Sunscreen
8. Bug repellant – ???

Plus 2 quarts water and Lunch

When I went to weigh it… 20 LBS. And I thought that was average!

My first backpacking trip was when I was 10 (and a half!). The packing list in the Scout handbook at that time was written by a true miscreant. It "suggested"/mandated that you carry lots of "spare" things. It also included items such as washcloths and towels. Combs. Full set of silverware. Lots of stuff. The Scout motto, of course, is "Be Prepared."

That first backpack, then, had not only a bath towel, but a spare bath towel, since the first one probably wouldn't ever dry out on the trip. I had a pair of underwear and a pair of socks for every day out. I had camp shoes, and a spare pair of lightweight hikers in case my other boots got wet. I'm serious! My sleeping bag was one of the "4-pound" (fill weight only!) rectangular sleeping bags. I need not embarrass myself further (a friend and I took 9 cans of refried beans on a subsequent trip…). My pack frame reached down to my knees and well above my head. We hiked maybe five miles. It was hard work, but I loved it.

In more recent years I've done quite a bit of lake country canoe tripping. Many people see canoeing as an excuse to carry more weight; not so. With two weeks of food for remote wilderness travel with no trails out (if a moose steps in the canoe, as once nearly happened), you're stuck… and in early spring/late fall, temps to below freezing and wet, my pack weights were 70-80 pounds with food (and whisky). Okay, so that's a horrible weight. But the first time you hit a trail you also have to carry a canoe. My ultralite Kevlar skin boat weighs 42 pounds. So first-day portages were 110-120 pounds, although only up to a mile. My pack weights have been coming down over the years, a fair bit the last couple years, dramatically more so since I became involved with the forums here at BPL. My base weight last time was 22-25 pounds. Threw on the canoe for a 4-mile portage and it felt great! This spring I expect a base of ~15 pounds.

My story is a bit different…

Although I camped with my family as a small child, my first foray into heavyweight camping revolved around bicycling in the mid-80s, and I did that for many years. Of course, a light load on the bike was considered 40-45 lbs., and even though it was suggested even back then to keep the weight closer to 30 lbs., no one could see how. Traveling lighter didn't really come into play even though I had nearly wasted one knee and damaged the other. After six years and five big (over 10 days) trips, I "retired" from bicycle trips specifically and bicycling in general.

Back in those days backpacking was considered more work than play, and full of pain and discomfort (and proven true based on other posts here!), while bike touring was considered more civilized: you could go further and see more. "Credit card touring" was the ultimate, if you could afford it.

For some reason, I took an interest in backpacking in 1996, but failed to get anywhere. In 2002, after I read a lot about "go bags" after 9/11, I suddenly found myself researching sleeping bags and backpacks, albeit without the insight of lightweight traveling. In six months I had a 5.5 lb. backpack, a 2 lb. mattress, a 3 oz. baseplate compass–even a gnarly 1.5 lb. water filter. About the only jewel in the kit was my Marmot Hydrogen. A year later for a summer car camping trip I loaded everything–including my giant MSR bath towel, AA solar charger, silk tops and bottoms, fleece bag liner, and aluminum trekking poles–into my 4500 ci backpack, and found not everything fit! I did (barely!) manage to weigh it on the bathroom scale: 55 lbs.–ouch!

So here I am five years later, and most of that gear has been sold, given away, or is (mostly) languishing in the different corners of my home. Thanks to BPL and everyone here in the Forums, my 3 season baseweight is down to 18 lbs., and falling. My new quest is not necessarily to drop more weight, but–like others here on BPL–to reduce the fiddle-factor: reducing complexity and amount of equipment taken on trips.

…

Hahaha, this topic brings back warm memories…

I used to backpack with my dad back in the day when the norm was canvas tents and coleman canvas rectangular sleepingbags. the tent/sleepingbag alone probably weighed in at 10 lbs easy…

When I got out on my own and started doing my own backpacking trips, I remember the first backpack I bought was a K-cliffs 7000 cubic inch backpack that I filled with everything from a 2 person tent to a hatchet to 3 different survival books. I had all kinds of cups and lighters and junk hanging off my pack with carabiners and such. haha.. that backpack probably weighed 70 lbs. I remember going a few times by myself and thinking, "man! I must really be out of shape!" I was the steriotypical gadget happy heavy weight overkill backpacker…

I think of the things I used to pack in my HUGE pack and can't help but laugh. I'm glad I got some sence in me at some point…

I don't know the weight of my pack on my first trip, but here are some of the items I find ridiculous. I had no idea what I was doing.

– 6.25 pound Mountainsmith Pack
– jeans, cotton T's, cotton socks and undies for every day
– 3 man 7 pound tent… AND the 3/4 pound footprint
– 2 pound Coleman lantern (Glass!?)
– 3+ pound slumberjack rectangular bag
– a FULL 22oz MSR white gas fuel bottle… for 3 days of backpacking
– my kitchen was 4 pounds (not including fuel)

Also, I was carrying 5L of water to hike 5 miles, where I was camping by a mountain lake and stream. I also passed that stream 3 times on the way. I had a filter, but I just had to have all that water. :)

Ironically, my sleeping mat was lighter than what I use now – I had a ridgerest. :)

I could go back to when I was a teenager and an avid backpacker and talk about how heavy my pack was… but my thoughts are completely eclipsed by the ridiculous loads I carried for multi day operations in the military. A packing list (all the personal equipment to set a multi day OP) would look something like this:
Large ALICE pack w/straps
DCU uniform
combat boots
Kevlar helmet
Kevlar flak vest w/ceramic rifle plates
sleeping bag w/goretex bivy sack (which for some reason was not waterproof)
Ghillie jacket
day/night laser rangefinder (weighed a TON)
weapon w/optics, plus suppressor and bipod in ruck
pistol
over 350 rounds of ammo combined (heavy…)
MBITR radio and spare batteries
Night vision optics and IR strobe
1 claymore mine and 2 frag grenades
MREs (pre-hydrated heavy food) for 4-5 days
bottled water at ~3 liters a day… I don't even want to think about how heavy that much water is.

Basically it was ridiculous, had to have been close to my body weight. After humping that junk around, you either want to never hump anything again for the rest of your life or go out with a sub 10 pound pack. So here I am :-)

I've never been all that strong so I've never carried anything so heavy as many of you. But in the olden days when I was a kid, there wasn't much that was light and I remember my pack being oppressive.

My embarrassing story of heaviness was when I went to Nepal. I brought way too much stuff and had to watch little tiny porters carry it for me. I was so embarrassed and felt really bad as they labored with sweat rivulets running down their faces and sponges on their foreheads where the tumplines pulled. They didn't need so much crap, why did I?

I learned a lot about not bringing extra anything anywhere after that. Just bring the bare minimum.

My pack is still pretty heavy. 20lb without food and water on the PCT. I can go lighter in my neck of the woods by leaving a lot of things home and choosing routes near water so I don't have to carry so much.

My first backpacking trips were in Boy Scouting. Canvas, frameless rucksack with a cotton sleeping bag (!), jeans, cotton tees, big aluminum pots and skillets, cooked everything on an open fire. Later, I "graduated" to a large Jansport external frame pack that I would load to the gills! I often carried several SS pots and pans, a MSR XGK stove with a large bottle full of fuel, a heavy synthetic Snow Lion bag (probaly rated to 15* F that I carried year-round!)lots of changes of clothes, and several iterations of tents, all the way up to a Eureka 4-person A-frame. I frequently carried a hatchet or small axe, as well. I never actually weighed my pack, but it had to have weighed close to 75 or 80 lbs, especially in the winter. Other than the oppressive weight, backpacking at least gave me an intense love for being footloose and unfettered (well, at least not fettered by the trappings of day-to-day life and modern civilization.)

I still have most of that early gear in the dark recesses of storage, but I now have several lightweight packs (Mountainsmith Phantom, ULA Conduit, some experimental MYOG packs, etc.), some lightweight sleeping kit (TNF 2 lb bag, MYOG quilt, etc.), and various tarps and tarp shelters (SMD Gatewood cape is my current favorite) as well as a light kitchen (the requisite titanium stuff; MSR Titan kettle, SP 600, etc.) SP Giga, MYOG alky or BPL Esbit stove, and suitable synthetic clothing. My base pack weight (3 season) is now around 10 to 11 lbs. I still have the same feeling of freedom, but can now enjoy it without the burden of an oppressively heavy pack. I sometimes miss the feeling of novelty and discovery that I experienced on my early backpacking trips, but I don't miss the pain and discomfort of carrying all that weight. Viva UL!

My earliest camping trips were with my father, nearly 50 years ago. We would go on canoe trips in upstate NY. He grew up near Star Lake, rather rural back then, still is by and large. I remember one on the Oswegatchie River. We paddled upstream (he mostly) and camped out on two nights. We made the return in one day and I was thrilled by the "rapids". Being in a canoe, we did not care too much what we took, but I do remember a portage.
By 1968, I was camping in the Presidentials. I had an external frame Kelty, Seva 123, solid hiking boots, a Sig of white gas and one for water (untreated, right from the stream), lots of rice and gravy mix with a tub of lard for extra calories, and a 60 LB pack. I could just march from Crawford Notch right up the Webster Cliff trail. We were REAL men then, we did not need switchbacks! HA! GRRRRRR!
2 miles or so and 2500"+ climb, top out on Webster mountain and the whole world starts to opens up around you.
I remember going one summer, around '72, camping with a friend who had broken his leg the year before in a rock climbing fall. We had come up Boott Spur and were heading towards a camp below Franklin, I believe. Once we were on the flats above tree line, his leg started to give him trouble and the weather started to turn. I off loaded a lot of his gear into my pack (those Kelty packs sure were BIG!) and we beat feet down the Davis Path to get below tree line. I really over used my legs trucking 90+ pounds to get us down to safety. I still tend to get shin splints, after all these years.

While I had been camping from grade-school on I only dreamed of backpacking until my first trip, a 2-nighter when I was 14. We had just moved to 29 Palms so it was in Joshua Tree National Monument (later made a National Park).

The only way I knew to cook was to make a fire so I carried a bunch of fire wood along with 2 gallons of water. I had an Army surplus pup tent that I had dumped the poles and just used as a super heavy tarp that I slept on. (I carried it for four more years…) On top of it went my huge flannel lined rectangular sleeping bag that took half my pack, a Camp Trails Fire Fighter style with the L-shaped frame and full length removable great sack.

We brought canned food for dinners and eggs in a plastic holder for the mornings. I bet I was around 50 lb starting out, and I weighed probably 120 at the time.

By the late 70s and early 80s I had switched to better gear but still just carried way too much of it. I had a Lowe Special Expedition pack with the optional full length side pockets that would be just crammed full for a four or five day trip.

First serious trip was a month on the AT, late spring 1974.

Colin Fletcher's "The Complete Walker" was the bible. It got me thinking hard about weight. Bought a Jansport pack that weighted UNDER 5 lbs! Danner boots. Some hi-tech synth bag, probably around 5 lbs.

I was proud to be under 60 lbs. First day northbound out of Damascus I started looking in the bag to see what could go. Estimate I sent home about 10 lbs (Pearisburg?). Best we did was a 22 mile day, mostly 15'ers.

Great trip.

For me the light bulb went on when I bought Jardine's book. That book has dog-ears and margin notes and no, it's not for sale.

Peace