Outside Magazine’s guide to “ultra-light” backpacking

Thanks Alli.

To be fair, it's not a bad list for someone new to lightweight. Plenty of Exos, Inov8 390, and Marmot Hydrogen owners here. And the tent is a two man (kinda) free-standing. Cookset and stove is overkill when you can have a small canister and 5oz greasepot.

Probably half the weight of whatever Backpacker magazine is recommending now.

These guys are pathetic. Most of these items are certainly their advertisers' light items. The term "ultralight" is ridiculously misused as a catch phrase far too often. Too bad there's no place for a comment on the page.

the stove and cook system should be lighter otherwise I could see a lightweight backpacker carrying the tent or anyone that can't wrap their head around a tarptent or tarp setup. my 2 person cook system weighs about 12oz, and my solo weighs 4.5oz… including the stove to pot to spork to lighter…..

Sure, those three items are great. But a 21-ounce cookset? Like a previous poster said, you can just use a k-mart greasepot (mine weighs 3.625 ounces without the strainer), which costs $7. That's 1/10th of the price of the kit they mentioned. And it's even more bizarre because the Eta-Express is like a jetboil, it comes with a pot.

Maybe I'm annoyed because in my outside e-mail it was advertised as "world's lightest gear". No mention of tarps, alc stoves, or the NeoAir for dog's sake.