Backpacking Weight Ranks

Good work on the hapwe

Reminded me of one of my all time favorite articles

here

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/calculating_range_in_lightweight_backpacking.html

+1 Craig. I agree with you 100% on your views of this post and your gear. I have a question for you–your posted gear list is for how many days out? I carry a similar set-up for 1-3 days out and also eat cold/real food as I find it simple and tasty.

+2 Craig…well stated. There is nothing pyscho about SUL and lower when done correctly and with skill. I hover in the range of 5.0 pound base for 45+ temps and around 6 pounds for 20+ temps. I will admit to spending some coins on my kit but I have ALL I have ever needed. I have tarp and bivy and I cook hot meals in morning and evening. This weight even includes a GPS and cell phone. I sleep warmly and travel easily, mostly solo.

I really think Alan Dixon did XUL correctly (nothing survivor about it)… check his website. He did an incredible job with his SUB 5 worn+pack weight and had all the essentials.

Jamie

Zack- I've been out for a max of two nights with the five-pound setup mentioned above. I'm fully confident I could easily go for 4, maybe 5 days in my local mountains with it right now. I think the only limiting factor would be the food capacity of a small pack- all else would stay the same.

But when I think about it, I've actually done many, many nights (including the JMT) with a nearly identical setup:

Add a bear cannister for the Sierra.
Switch to a Golite Jam to hold the cannister (my homemade 6 ouncer is too small).
Add the tarp.
Add the compass and a map.
Add the sub-4 ounce cookset.
Swap the Marmot Ion Windshirt for my Driducks rain top….
…and I'm walking the JMT.

It's cool how, with experience, you know what terrain/conditions automatically change your "go-to" setup…

It's crazy how this backpacking thing can get insanely complicated if you make it so…yet it's really so simple once you know your preferences.
I'm essentially working on making the ~5 lb. list above my "standard" solo setup. Then you just tweak it here and there depending on mood/trip, etc…
If I'm in the mood for beer, the 6 oz. homemade pack certainly doesn't cut it on capacity. That's why I keep around the ol' external frame :)
Yeah, I still got one. What of it?

I'm still waiting for a BPL Southern California Pow-Wow.
For fun, I'll be the guy that shows up with 70 lbs. I'm curious how many wouldn't want to be seen with me….

I haven't seen Alan Dixon's XUL list…I'll check it out, thanks.

My gear list is pretty light- might be interesting to someone…

For me I always try to use the lower weight categories for a a goal so that I can try to look at my gear a different way and to pare it down. I have no intention of reaching some of those goals but it is a good process

>> I've got WAY more respect for the person that simply gets out ALOT.

Not so much "respect" as "jealousy"…

By the way, by way of making an "ideal" PMI / PWI formula, I kind of had to abandon the whole index thing. Instead, I'm calling it Effective Pack Weight (EPW).

Again, just keep the units consistent and it will spit out a weight. That weight is a pack that is as burdensome to the standard hiker of height S, as the pack weight you entered is for the actual hiker of height H.

For example, an unfortunate 5'0" anorexic angst-ridden young emo woman is struggling under a 9 pound pack. She enters the appropriate data into the formula and it spits out 12.25 pounds. Thus even though her pack is lighter, she is as encumbered as a standard 5'10" hiker would be with a 12.25 pound pack.
For another example, Harry the 6'5" sasquatch is zinging along the Wonderland Trail with his 12 pound pack, trying to evade the Men In Black. Having been earlier brainwashed by Ryan Jordan he knows that he should be suffering horribly under such a heavy pack. But he checks his EPW and finds out that his encumbrance is equivalent to 9.9 pounds for the standard hiker, and suddenly the universe makes sense, again…

I think that sounds accurate…

Done. End weirdness.

I laughed so hard reading this thread. Dean… seriously. WOW

Just remember mutants, it's only fair that you can't get your base weight down, as a general rule you have higher carrying power.

Also, tall people statistically make more money than the shorter of us, and there-fore should be able to afford the best of the lightest.

So stop whining and go back to playing your giant dominoes! ;P

Yeah. I was up late and got kinda punchy that night…

What really impresses me as I re-read it, awake and sober, is that it all makes sense and is scientifically accurate (as far as I took it).

But, really, it was all meant to be a farcical critique of the number-obsession of UL gearheads. (Self included.)

A lot of excellent perspectives from Craig.

I think all these categories are silly. Is 4.99 vastly superior to 5.01?

It is all about stringing a bunch of single day hikes into a longer trip. Don't need that much more stuff other than sleeping gear and a roof if it rains.

BPL is about philosophy and technique, not about is is XX-Light.

If you check my gear list, you will see it is under 4 lbs, but since I was hauling over 13 lbs in consumables, it is not that light. The gear was not to achieve some threshold, but what I needed to be comfortable given the conditions. One thing I have learned over the decades is to be smarter… and be able to continue the same type of hiking, without regard to age. I am happy to report that I now hike farther per day, than I could 40 years ago. And for me that is what lightweight hiking is all about. And as Craig is doing, my standard gear list is ~ 5 lbs. Sometimes less, sometimes more. If it needs to be a little more, than that is what it is. This past December I did a trip with sub freezing temperatures and a chance of snow. So my gear list needed to be 8 lbs.

Craig I have been thinking about a So Cal trip. Later tonight I will post an invite to a trip I was going to do solo.

When I've been considering reducing weight (and I do tend to spend way too much time thinking about how to reduce weight) the categories , whilst obviously arbitrary have been a good target to shoot for. It's not about competitiveness (except with myself)-it's about achieving a goal and gives me a reason to drop more weight. It's easier for me to do this if I have a number to get to. I've now got a sub 5 weight which I can use 3 seasons in Britain (I'm helped in this by having plentiful water). Still, I acknowledge it's all a game- have fun playing it with whatever rules you set!

My baseweight is around 11lb, which feels light to me, but the 6L of water I'm forced to carry on multi day ridge walks is still heavy…

Now that i got my new backpack(aarn) i could care less how much my gear weighs(even though i know in summers its less than 25 with 4 days of food, and winter less than 35 with 4 days of food), the thing makes carrying a lot insanely comfortable. NOw that i have it i've been throwing in more luxuries more of the time and driving up the weight without issue.

Well, more weight on the joints is more weight on the joints regardless of how well you think it carries. Of course that's an entirely different discussion.

Yea but when you step off the trail after a week with no tenderness in the shoulders, hips, knees or anything, it really doesn't matter anymore. My shoulders did not even have red marks from straps. Speaking of knees, i would think a properly balanced load would be much better for them, than sloggin up an incline with a completely lop-sided load, seems to me that would put more pressure on certain tendons/ligaments than distributing the pressure evenly throughout as much as possible. I've tried the best of both worlds, ul packs, and the bodypack, and would never go back. I dont miss my throbbing shoulders from lack of a proper support system.

"Well, more weight on the joints is more weight on the joints regardless of how well you think it carries. Of course that's an entirely different discussion."

And one that's critical as well, especially if you're getting into class 3 kind of stuff with all of your gear on your back. While my knees and ankles and so forth generally continue to work well (knock on wood?), at 43, with no signs of going backwards, things are starting to work less well than before, and mantling does my knees no favors!

Point being, given that I spend most of my outdoor time in the desert, with all water having to be carried, trying to get my base weight ever lower is a worthwhile pursuit.

I guess its just one of those things that you dont understand until you try.

Kind of a cop out. Most people don't have to try something to understand how it works.

Regardless, carrying 20 pounds is carrying 20 pounds. The effect on the body is arguably the same regardless of your perceived comfort while carrying it. A good pack (and good packing skills) will put the majority of the weight on the hips and/or shoulders such that the the force is a vertical one pressing downward. If you're being pulled backward or forward and having to fight to stand up straight you clearly have something wrong.

Not a cop out, when it is a completely different specialized load carrying system, you do have to try it before you understand how it feels. Assuming to know how a pack that is unlike any you've ever tried feels and carries requires a vivd imagination.

Sigh. Concepts are concepts. You don't have to ride a bike to understand how turning the pedals makes the wheels turn. Or maybe you do.

This is the same way. You don't need to try a pack that puts weight on the front to understand how it moves the perceived center of gravity back toward a more vertical center line.

And there's nothing new or specialized about it. Adventure racers have been doing it for a long time by carrying water bottles on the shoulder straps of their packs.

I never said you had to fight to stand up straight, but when your walking huge distances it is much more efficient to have your load centered, which is better accomplished by such a system than a traditional BACKpack.

Since adventure racers have been doing it for so long, they must know it works. When covering large distances such as a thru, etc, this type of system pays off big time. The difference between strapping your water bottle on the front of your shoulder staps, and using such a system is significant. While the idea may be similar, the aarn system is very calculated and efficient. To compare strapping a water bottle on the front of a strap to a sophisticated load centering system requires neglecting all the methods the system uses to make itself even more efficient and centered.

Everything is a concept.

I agree the load should be centered. I disagree that you can accomplish said centering better with the AARN than with a traditional pack. That assumes you know how to correctly load the pack.

If it was a miracle device, everyone would use it.

Have you tried an aarn pack? Few use it because few know if it, if it was more known it would be more used.

If your Aarn pack works for you that is great, but that does not mean that it will work for everyone. And since this thread originally had nothing to do with Aarn packs, I recommend that if you would like to discuss the benefits of Aarn packs, that you start a new thread about it rather than run this one off course.