July 1982 Issue of Backpacker Magazine – Superlight Revolution

I have it as a PDF PM if you want a copy.

Edit: include your e mail address.

Sam, Thanks for posting this!

Special thanks to Ken Thompson for the assist on the *.pdf. It was nifty to return to the past, if only for a brief read. Where do the years go?

I had a friend from highschool go into this industry in the early 80s. I saw him in about 88 or so, and he was all jacked up about this movement of light weight packing. Funny to think about it now…

Thanks Ken for forwarding on the article, it was a very interesting read.

What particularly struck me was that 30 years ago the gear solutions for going lighter are pretty much the same as we have now, and the only real advances made in the 30 years since has been the selection of materials available now is greater.

The superlight challenge gearlist in the article stands up well compared to my own UL gearlist for 3 season tramping and is lighter, my only justification is I don't tramp in the Sierra's ;-). If we compared the same gearlist to that shown in pt.3 of Will's recent articles on Mountain-Superlight, the only real difference is in the choice of materials used, i.e. Cuben wasn't around 30 years ago.

Another thing to strike me was (and it should of been obvious) is that (some) people have been trying to reduce packweight long before Ray Jardine made the ultralight concept popular.

Ultimately the take-away lesson for me is that gear doesn't matter so much, it's the skills, techniques and altitudes that allow you to be ultralight, and those have never changed, and are as old and important as the hills are.

Article available here:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3QSQU2xVN0XekpkZEZVTTBSRjQ/edit?usp=sharing

Don't forget to log in or it will look blank. Thanks Barry.