newbie

Welcome to BPL! I think you need to give a bit more information to receive the most useful advice.

The best thing you could do would be to make up a gear list. Just find a list posted in the forum and use that as a guideline for what items to include.

A gear list combined with some information, such as where you hike and how many days you go out for, will really help everyone give you a view of your options. There is not one answer for what you should be shooting for, but there are many options and you should choose the best one for you and your wife.

The big three is where most people will start. You can usually find things in your pack that are absolutely useless, and some things that are completely redundant. Those would be the first things to start with. Eliminating gear costs nothing.

The big three are the backpack, sleeping bag, and tent. The backpack should be the last thing to change as it will depend largely on the volume of the items that you carry. I can use a 2600 ci pack now, because the volume of items I carry is very low. My base weight is below 5lbs, so even with water and food my pack weight is almost always below 15 lbs (except my winter kit which is lacking).

What I recommend and what most people here have gone through is trial and error. Take what you think you need. Be aware of what you use, and what you REALLY need. From there find lighter alternatives to what you carry.

• Backpacking Gear List
Packs
• Granite Gear Latitude 2lb 10 oz
• Vapor Ki 2lb 5oz
Sleeping pads
• Big Agnes Air core Pad 20×66 1 lb 6 oz
• BA Air core mummy pad 20×72 1 lb 5 oz
Sierra Designs Ligntning 31 sqft 4 lb

Sleeping bag
• Custom Tim Marshall quilt 1 lb 6 oz
• sleeping bag (marmot trestles) 3 lb 3 oz

Cook gear
• Two titanium bowls 2 oz each total 4 oz
• Two sporks titanium 1 oz
• Salt/pepper shaker, soap, scrubber 1 oz
• Brunton pots ib (one pot) 10 oz
• cozy 2oz
• Two green plastic cups 2oz
• One nylon stuff sack 1oz
• Stove snow peak giga 3.5
• Wind screen 2oz
1 lb 10 oz

Water
• Water bladder (3 iter) 7 oz
• One nalgene 48 oz canteens collapsible 2 oz
First need filter 16 oz
Couple water bottles 2 oz
1 lb 11 oz

Survival kit:
Vaseline/cotton balls, duct tape, , magnifying glass, lighter, Dental floss, needle, safety pin, whistle, compass, aquimira tablets as water filter back up flint firestarter
First Aid kit and Personal stuff
bandaids, gauze, super glue, moleskin, adhesive tape, tweezers, 8 advil, 4 immodium ad, 3 benadryl, 3 Actifed, 2 claritan,, 2 sm pkgs cortisone ointment, 2 sm pkgs antibiotic ointment, 4 disinfecting wipes, lip balm
Personal Hygiene items:
• baby powder
• Toothbrush
• Small tube of toothpaste
• 2 rolls travel Tp and handiwipes

Total weight: 1 lb 3 oz

Misc.
• AAA flashlight 2 oz (including Lithium battery)
• Spyderco knife 2 oz
Poncho 10 oz
trowel 1oz
• Packtowel 4 oz
• Small vial sunscreen 1 oz
• Small vial bug repellent 1 oz
• Food bag 1 oz
Total weight: 1lb 7oz

Total 22 pounds.
need clothes, food fuel water. Know water filter is heavy but filtering out of the Suwannee river I need more than just treatment. Mostly hiking in Florida and will do a portion of A trial (loop hike) this spring. Planning a trip out west later this year.

thanks for any comments.

Figuring a five day trip with food, fuel, 2 liters of water and clothes will put us around 45 pounds total. 17 her 28 me.

Silverado Dutchman

Dutch,

Your target weight is a very personal quest. Your needs will be different then everyone else's, but this is a great place for ideas and feedback. Your gear list will also evolve over time, so be patient and flexible as you collect gear (it can become a hobby in itself).

Are you carrying only one flashlight between the two of you? Headlamps are awesome! One water bladder between the two of you? Raingear? Pack cover or waterproof stuffsacks for your sleeping bag? Bear bagging rope? One toothbrush?

If this is a gear list for two, be very clear on how many of each item you'll have.

Sierra Designs Lightning–substitute most other tarptent style shelters and save 1.5 pounds or more. Check out Tarptent, Six Moon Designs, Mountain Laurel Designs. All have excellent products and reputation.

Big Agnes pads–I use the BA Insulated Air Core, but am switching to the Neoair for summer use. BA are great pads, but there are lighter options.

Marmot Trestles–to what rating? There are many options of sleeping bags under 3 pounds.

Kitchen–try paring down the kitchen to absolute essentials. I get by just fine with a Snow Peak 450 Titanium Mug, Spork, and stove. With an alcohol stove, my entire kitchen is under 4 ounces. I only boil water so I just heat up the water in my mug, and either add freeze dried food or rehydratable foods. But, that's just my system.

Water– your three Liter bladder at 7 ounces is probably a Camelbak? Try Platypus bladders. Their 2 L Hoser w/hose is 3.75 ounces, plus a 1 L collabsible bottle is another 1.12 ounces. Each of you can carry that setup, weighing 5 ounces each. In my experience, unless you know there'll be a shortage of water along your trip, that should be plenty of water storage.

Filter–First Need will purify your water, which pretty much every other filter WONT do, but its heavy. Try a lighter, more traditional filter with some Micropur tabs to purify. I made my own filter out of a Katadyn filter cartridge and a wide mouth Nalgene Cantene that weighs 5 ounces. That has a .3 micron rating, which takes care of everything except viruses. Can do a liter every 2 minutes. If I really question the water, in go a couple of Micropur tabs!

Survival Kit- Your first aid kit shouldn't need to be more than 4 ounces. Add in toiletries, and it shouldn't really need to be above 6-7 ounces. Check others' gear lists for ideas.

Packtowel–unneeded or lighter options.

Trowel–use a tent stake or stick or rock instead

For EVERY piece of gear, make sure it is absolutely necessary to take (ok, most of us have a creature comfort or two, like a nice pillow, heavy photography gear, etc…) If you don't absolutely need it, then don't take it. Next, look at every piece of gear you have, and search out lighter options. Research, analyze, weigh, repeat. If you don't have a kitchen or postal scale, this is a very important investment in the quest to lighten up! Essential even!

Depending upon financial means, most of the stuff you have can be replaced by simply buying lighter gear. You can also make some of your own gear, like a new windscreen. 2 oz for a windscreen seems very heavy.

These are just some suggestions, and I'm sure some more of BPL's finest will be along to add their ideas! Good luck!!

Traditionally, gear critiques on BPL can be very pointed, and tend to favor using Psycho-Lite gear. So take all of this with a grain of salt…

If the Marmot Trestles weighs 3lb3oz I assume it is the 30-degree bag? You can get a 30-degree bag for a HECK of a lot less weight than that. (But then again, I have no experience with using down in Florida…)

There are people for whom gourmet outdoor cooking is the whole point of hiking. I am NOT one of those people so I agree- your cooking setup looks heavy to me. A 10oz pot makes me cringe; I have a 1.3L titanium pot that weighs less than half of that. But my go-to "pot" is an 850mL titanium widget in which I do one thing- boil water. No need for a scrubber, etc. It doubles as my mug. I Freezer-Bag-Cook in bag cozies, so no bowls. Salt shaker? How about individual salt packets? But HYOH.

If you are good sleepers you can get MUCH lighter closed-cell foam sleeping pads. But I acknowledge that a lot of people need those inflatable pads. If you can't sleep then what you are doing isn't "camping", it's "enduring". That's no fun.

And, yeah, if you are serious about shedding weight then the tent is a good place to start. But there are trade-offs. Most of the light 2-person tents that folks here like are single-walled, which causes problems with condensation. This is nothing that can't be managed, but it isn't as mindless as a double-walled tent. And I'm not sure how humid Florida conditions would play out there…
I'm sure some Floridian will chime in, shortly.

Seems like you're carrying a lot of water (3-4L?) and water is HEAVY. A couple of liters apiece should more than suffice, unless you are going places where water is scarce- certainly not Florida. Filter as you go. (Personally, I take every opportunity I can to pimp Sawyer filters.) And you don't need to filter cooking water, as long as you bring it to a good boil.

or you can make a gravity filter…the one i made comes in at 5oz

get rid of the packtowel and use a bandana that willsave you
3.5oz

you could go with a down quilt in place of sleeping bags
weights alot less and takes up no room at all in your pack

since it's you and your wife get a JRB large quilt…will cover 2 ppl…and cut alot of weight for you

i agree with others on the cooking setup….thats alot of weight for a cooking setup…
get a Ti pot…there cheap and well worth it ..
or you can make a DIY pot out off a beer can…and a stove for that matter

i was the same way at one time with a survival kit and this and that…but you will find out that it's not really needed
you can cut alot of that out

don't just jump into light weight backpacking…bring yourself into it slow…and learn how to use light weight gear the right way…so your next trip is a safe and fun one

just looked up the mug you have and snow peak doesn't recommend direct heat on the mug for warping. YOu haven't had an issue?

The Snow Peak 450 Titanium Mug is double-walled. It should never be placed into a hot stove flame, or you may see irreversible damage.

Single-walled mugs are fine for water boiling and fair for cooking anything thick.
–B.G.–

Yes, you're right about not subjecting double wall mugs to direct heat.
However,
my Snow Peak is single walled. They do make a double wall design. I've cooked in my mug dozens of times, and have really had no problems. A little scorching here and there, but I don't mind that. The bottom has expanded outward a tiny bit, sort of like when you pop the seal on a jar of pickles or something and the "saftey seal" pops out. It really is just a tiny bit. It doesn't affect anything for my uses, but I can see how they'd advise against it, and can see someone not wanting to do that to their mug. Me, I don't mind. And that's only happened with an alcohol stove. I had no issues what so ever with my MSR Pocket Rocket and this mug.

The mugs are just little green plastic cups. Will substitute an AGG 2 qt pot and save about four ounces.

With humidity here, two wall tents are preferable. Also don't want to spend a bunch right now until I'm sure that this is our "thing" (as opposed to canoe camping)

Figure I could get a new pack, tent and quilt for the wife and easily drop five pounds. Yes?

Thanks for all the advice.

SD

Though, now that I look at Snow Peak's website, they don't warn against using direct heat with the single walls, only the double walls….