How long have you been a lightweight backpacker?

I started hiking only in 2004. I swapped out almost everything and went from traditional light (40 lbs pack weight) to UL (23 lbs pack weight) on my third trip (the same year). No fun being a pack mule.

Since 1982.

–B.G.–

I discovered Ray Jardine's book "Beyond Backpacking" in 2004 (recent edition named "Trail Life"). Everything changed for me then.

I had almost given up backpacking due to age and general deterioration, convinced I could never carry the loads I did in the 1970's and 1980's (I was probably correct!). After reading the book I started making or sewing my own gear and looking for much lighter replacements for everything else. Our 25'th wedding anniversary was coming up so we planned a two-week hike around Mt. Rainier on the Wonderland Trail.

The five of us (wife and college-age kids) had the time of our lives on that trip! The rest is history.

I supposed I might have discovered UL and BPL without Jardine's book, but you never know. I owe him more than can ever be repaid.

When I started planning for a Philmont trip with youngest son, then 14, now 28, I also read Ray Jardine's book, began my quest to lighten up, and came to Philmont in 1997 with an 18 pound base pack. Not very light by today's standards, but at the time, most of the adults that saw me with the crew thought the boys were carrying all of my gear, since I had "just a daypack". I've reached the point of being very happy with a base weight of 8-12 pounds, with no intention of going SUL or XUL. One obstacle is my XL size and 11.5 4E feet. I'm going out this weekend with an FSO weight (From Skin Out: everything worn and carried including food and water) of just under 20 pounds. For the expected weather (mid to upper 20's) that's very respectable IMO.

Took my first real trip in January 2007. It was my wife's idea!

I had a heavy kelty pack, some crappy Slumberjack bag, a beefy Sierra Designs mountaineering tent, and a 2 lb sleeping mat. Loaded up my pack, my wife took a school backpack, and we slugged it out a few miles from our place up north.

Slept on a dang sheet of ice and wondered why I was cold. (wife had the pad).

Began my research and almost immediately found BPL. By the time I could be considered a "lightweight backpacker," it was the summer of 2008.

Even though I found this place early, I still went through the paces of getting gear, figuring out my style, and replacing said gear. Over and over. Its a process.

2 years. I discovered alcohol stoves, and making them was so awesome that I got pulled into the rest of the community. I also blame my buddy Jason for getting me more interested.

I remember the conversion point for me was a solo weekend where my pack was 50 lbs, and a bunch of the mountaineers were hiking past me with light packs on and I thought – "this sucks." I was carrying 3 nalgenes filled with water. In the CASCADES, where there is water every 5 feet.

That was when I flipped hard.

:)

>In the CASCADES, where there is water every 5 feet.

That made me chuckle out loud for some reason. :)

469 days

…

i have always tried to reduce my pack weight. in Boy Scouts i would secretly put stuff in other kid's packs so i wouldn't have to carry it. on one trip, we had to backpack 20 miles and the truck would be at the camp site. i filled a trash bag with my things and hid it the crew cab.

jump forward to adulthood and in 2005 i was very careful to reduce my weight to about 25 pounds before food, water, and fuel. did a few days on the AT and got an education from several other hikers. the week after that trip i had decided that 25 was too much and worked very hard to reduce my weight more. i haven't stopped reducing and reviewing since. i'm closing in on 12 pounds base weight for 3 seasons, about the lightest i can go without a wholesale shift in my gear and methods.

"I'm going out this weekend with an FSO weight (From Skin Out: everything worn and carried including food and water) of just under 20 pounds. For the expected weather (mid to upper 20's) that's very respectable IMO."

Robert –

very respectable number for the temps. i should have brought a warmer jacket and was at 23 with my heavy pack in the same kind of temps. it's not the cold that gets me, it's the wind.

ultralight in the 80's at Philmont was 35 pounds!

Lightweight, with a 13 to 18 lb base, a bit over 10 years after reading Ray Jardine's PCT handbook, after it was featured in a Backpacker magazine article (1999 iirc). The Mountainsmith Auspex was the cat's meow and replaced my heavy Jansport Rockies. Great pack but I busted the seams carrying a bear canister on a trip to the Olympic NP. Busted some seams on the following Granite Gear packs too, until I joined here and reduced the rest of my load.

>In the CASCADES, where there is water every 5 feet.

Damn, I still do that…

No idea, I joined here two years ago but I would have to guess somewhere around 2.5-3 years?

I was always at least a lightweight backpacker though.

Started hiking in the late 60s and kept pack weight to 25 lbs total…then with all the fancy new hi tech gear it crept all the way to 40 lbs total ….in late 80's I had had enuf of the heavy stuff and got it back down to under 12 lb baseweight…about 25 total (sometimes higher on longer trips cuz of food) where it's been since…

I started reading and talking about backpacking online around 1993. I was ten years old. Lightweight probably came up on my radar around 1996. Started reading BPing forums regularly around then. Bought the first production run of Golite's Breeze (and I think Ray's puffy jacket). Bought Beyond Backpacking the week it hit store shelves (1999?). I think that I took my first ultralight trip the week after I got Beyond Backpacking. I got a LOT of flack for having a frameless pack with no hipbelt while still carrying my copy of Beyond BPing into the woods. Soon tried the full Ray system. Sewed his tarp and quilt (both worked poorly).

Good times.

I was looking for lightweight gear and used gear. Researching sleeping bags landed me in the gear Swap forums. There I was introduced to all these new options that REI and the like never mention. A new world of opportunities….

I'm. Currently at a 13 pound. Base weight and plan to drop below 10 pounds this summer. In one year I plan to start an AT through hike with roughly 1/3 the weight of my last AT hike.

When I moved to Las Vegas I was a "traditional" backpacker with a 7.5 lb. Dana Terraplane pack.

After getting into BPL and Backpacking Lightweight sites I "saw the LITE".

Now my 7 day load W/ 2 liters of water is 28 lbs. Not too bad IMHO.

PACK> REI Cruise UL 60
TENT> TT Moment
BAG> WM Megalite (overfilled 1 oz.)
PAD> Thermarest prolite reg.
STOVE> Caldera Cone Sidewinder W/ESBIT or wood fuel (or Brunton Crux canister stove)

Not UL but light enough for now.

Thankfully, I started lightweight, which was almost 3 years ago. Happened when I was researching it after my son crossed over into Boy Scouts and found BPL. Have no idea what my weight was my first trip (simple overnight with him), but my next trip (solo in the Smokies) I had a base of < 19 lbs. Now I'm about 12.

Since 1982.

–B.G.–

P.S. My base was below 20 lbs in 1982 too.

"Bob, are you really suggesting that some of us have been lightweight backpackers since before Ray Jardine INVENTED it in 1996? Next, are you also going to tell us that Al Gore did not invent the Internet?"

No one claims Jardine invented UL (he doesn't, nor does Al Gore claim he invented the internet). It is true that Jardine helped bring it into the mainstream more than just about anyone else I can think of, by a long shot.

I had a friend who packed lightweight in 1973 and we all thought he was crazy and foolhardy…in those days you bragged about how much your pack weighed (more was better!) and how safe you were in doing so. My friend bought into multiple-use gear and we though he was cheap and/or weird.

Amazing how times change. I haven't seen him since then…if I did I'll tell him he was way ahead of his time and I should have listened to him long ago. Instead I bought into the "better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it" philosophy.

I started on the UL path in 2001 … about 10 minutes after finishing my first backpacking trip in about 20 years, a trip I fondly recall as "My Near Death Experience". It turned out that I was no longer the pack mule I once thought I was!

"P.S. My base was below 20 lbs in 1982 too."

I remember doing a three-day Yosemite trip in 1983, and my total pack weight was 14.5 pounds.

Shelter was about 3 oz., total cook gear was about 2 oz., sleeping bag was 1 lb. 15 oz., which was radical back then. Food was only 2 pounds for three days!

It was that original article in Backpacker Magazine that got me started.

–B.G.–

"No one claims Jardine invented UL (he doesn't, nor does Al Gore claim he invented the internet). It is true that Jardine helped bring it into the mainstream more than just about anyone else I can think of, by a long shot."

Elliott,

It was just my attempt at satire :)

I don't think lightweight is in the mainstream yet. Actually the only thing I have read that was not in common use that Jardine highlighted were quilts. Everything else I had seen or used. Rivendell sold frameless packs in the 70's, tarps were really common in the 70's more so than tents in the backcountry. My first backpacking shoes were Converse sneakers, etc.