“Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the lightest of them all?”

"Look at Mike C! He may come across as dogmatic to some, but he's like the zen master of UL….

Eric is also a great example…. Roger Caffin too frequently comments on the pointlessness of going below a certain weight."

This has been on my mind for a while now. Should I become "that" guy? I tend to push poncho tarping pretty hard already and the Trailstar just seems like a no-brainer the rest of time but right now, despite being an outdoors guy my whole life, I'm relatively short on experience as an ultralight backpacker. So, for now, I'll leave the dogmatic approach to others. In a few more years though, well, I'll probably be "that" guy.

"When was the last time anyone literally wore out a piece of gear?"

Not falling prey to consumerism is a great point. I've been guilty of this myself at times (I'm sure most people have) but I try hard to stay away from it. I recently justified the purchase of an MLD Newt because of its compression system… the reality is more because I've just plain wanted one despite already having an Ion and a MH Scrambler.

Lots of great responses to this thread. Not much more I can add (though, of course, that's obviously not going to stop me…..).

There are a lot of folks who have been with BPL for a long time. They've grown, though, and perhaps think that BPL hasn't quite grown with them. They'd like BPL to be what they need at this stage in their development, and that's quite understandable. There are others who are coming to BPL for the first time, and they are, perhaps, where the long-timers were in the distant past. Ike said it best when he said: "For what it's worth though, I don't think BPL is as broken as you think. It is a vibrant community made up of gearheads, MYOGers, fast packers, slow packers, people who go UL for greater comfort when hiking, people who do it to challenge themselves, packrafters, skiers, hunters, minimalists, and people just lightening up a little."

As I see it, BPL is in it for the thru. Newbies in Georgia, old hands in Maine and everyone on the trail in between. The scenery is ever changing, the conversations ever evolving, the focus ever developing. And we, the BPL community, are changing and evolving and developing right along with it, only at different paces and, at times, down different trails.

In the end, it's only important that we all had a good hike, whatever direction we chose to go. And hopefully, we'll all have tales to tell and share, because we can all learn something, even if just a bit, from each other.

I still think that what today's BPL needs most of is patience, civility, understanding, and acceptance of diversity in thought and action.

And more cuben.

> I still think that what today's BPL needs most of is patience, civility,
> understanding, and acceptance of diversity in thought and action.
>
> And more cuben.

Now that's a platform I can get behind!

He who dies with the least toys wins.

It can be about whatever you want it to be about.

This forum is for those who want it to be, in part, about gear.

That includes me, who is carrying 50% less weight.

But I did run across a couple and their dog in the Never Summers who invited me to a dinner of fresh trout cooked on their gigantic steel fry pan. The dog even had his own tent, and deserved it for all the stuff he carried. Would never carry all that stuff. The trout tasted awful good, though. As Aaron said on another thread, "To each their own."