Where does durability win over light weight?

I love Gatorade bottles. They are tough and light. I don't like nalgenes. The plastic seems to get dirty easily and they aren't totally see-through.

I carry two 500 ml/16.9 oz water bottles purchased from a grocery store. Weight is 1/3 of a Gatorade bottle (11.2 grams vs. 33 grams), and cost is negligible. Never had a failure on any length trip. Replace them about once a year. If I was dry camping a lot I would carry four of them.

Nalgenes aren't perfect, but they're better than plastic bottles. Plastic bottles like Gatorade bottles leach, mostly phthalates, into your drinking water if they're heated or in direct sunlight.

http://www.ewg.org/chemindex/term/480

The new Nalgenes made without Bisphenol-A aren't near as dangerous to reuse. If you're gonna use gatorade bottles, replace them once every two weeks if you can.

I use mountain biking shoes. Nicely padded, aggressive tread, and a steel shank under the ball of your foot to reduce foot fatigue on rocky/rough surfaces. I have a pair of Mavics now. Weight for the pair is 31.7 oz.

I always carry 2 quart-size G2 bottoles and have a 3L Play for around camp in reserve.

Always go with the MSR Groundhogs for at least SOME of my pegs.

In winter, I always carry two sleeping pads, an inflatable and a Ridgerest….and it's saved me once.

In winter I tend to err on the side of an extra "just in case" layer of clothes….feel very justified after reading this week's hypothermia article.

If on a long hike, I don't skimp on meds that could potentially preserve completion of the hike vs. bailing out.

I hiked in my Mavics during my Northeaster bike tour, for three miles.

It was hell.

You're one original guy :D Don't let me stop you, but you couldn't pay me to join you!

This is a really interesting and important question. Durability wins when the cost of failure is greater than the value of the weight savings. The cost can be financial, loss of fun, loss of health or life, or negative impacts on others or the environment.

I generally value weight savings at ~ $10/oz for durable items (things that will last for triple digit trail days). If something's going to blow out every two weeks, it's not worth paying a lot more for it even if there no other potential costs.

Potential loss of health (by which I mean long-term health) or life is not a readily quantified cost, but it's the big one, and in practice, it's the cost that most often drives my key durability/backup decisions. (I'm generally willing to put up with loss of fun as a potential risk, and I wouldn't do things that have a significant impact on others or the environment unless it was a life-threatening situation.)

Potential loss of health or life due to gear failure is generally only a major risk factor when I am in deep wilderness, with few prospects for self-rescue or rescue facilitated by other backpackers who are in the area. If I'm one day in, or near a well-traveled trail, and the weather isn't crazy awful (which one has to be prepared for, if that's a possibility), there aren't many ways I expect gear failure to endanger my life. (Exceptions include gear failure that can cause a catastrophic fall or a drowning, or the concurrence of multiple bad things, such as a serious injury or illness combined with gear failure and bad weather.) Please note: you have to know yourself and your experience level, know the risks associated with your destination, and be able to make good determinations about these things for yourself. My comments are not meant in any way to suggest what risks might be incurred or appropriately assumed by others.

If my pack, tent, sleeping bag, or any other piece of equipment fails, I may have a miserable time, but on most trips, it's unlikely to be life-threatening (if it is, then I have to protect against failure). Lack of food is no fun, but going without food for a day isn't going to put me in any danger. I need to be sure I have enough water, and if it could potentially be really cold (or if I could get cold and wet), I need to take measures to ensure that I can stay warm enough to be able to get out.

Looking at it this way has substantially altered my thinking about acceptable failure rates and about carrying backups for most things. If I'm under-estimating the risks, I hope people will help me to understand my error(s), but for me, under most backpacking conditions, failure of most of the items I carry is not going to be catastrophic.

*Pack – I'll find a way to carry what I need
*Shelter – Unless it's totally shredded, temporary repairs or improvised alternative configurations can usually suffice short-term
*Sleeping bag – same as for shelter
*Sleeping pad – Unless it's winter when I need the R value, worst case is I sleep on hard ground
*Water purification – I do tend to carry chemical backup on long trips, but the cost I'm insuring against is loss of fun and discomfort, not long-term harm
*Water bottle – In the desert, the ability to carry water is your life. Where water is reasonably plentiful, improvised water carriers will suffice.
*Clothing – Temporary repairs can take care of most clothing failures.

For most of what I take, if it fails, I'll make do until I'm out and replace it then. The only things I routinely carry spare of are a Photon and firestarter.

The potential cost of loss of fun (including loss of comfort) depends very much on the individual and the trip. On a thruhike that's going to be seriously disrupted by a time-consuming stop for replacement of a broken item, I'd be more concerned about durability than I am when I'm going on a 1-2 week trip. And if it's going to ruin your trip not to have your favorite toy when you're 45 miles in to a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, it might be worth bringing two of them!

Cheers,

Bill

"Where does durability win over light weight?"

Women? Hey, just asking….

"Women? Hey, just asking…."

I appreciate durable. Weight is their issue, not mine. ;)

Sometimes when I look at shelters and wonder if they'd last in the middle of Maine's 100-mile Wilderness, all I can think to ask myself is…

"How likely am I to make it onto Discovery Channel if I survive without it?"

I notice a lot of people shaving ounces in clothing. While I agree that I could do without a lot of stuff, rain gear is one area where I don't skimp.

My Marmot Super Mica rain jacket really fell apart on me when I was up on Camel's Hump. Peeling seam tape, 10-inch tear along the shoulderblade seam. Had it been like, early spring, that could have been a REALLY big deal, but luckily, it was mid-winter so the snow was dry and frozen, and the waterproofness was not relevant.

I very happily added about 5 ounces to my pack by replacing it with a Patagonia Super Cell jacket. It's almost double the weight, but the material (Gore-Tex Paclite) is a lot tougher, and doesn't look near as likely to fail.

Would the Marmot work most of the time? Yes. But having a 10-inch hole in your rain gear during a 38ºF thunderstorm in Vermont is a nice way to get hypothermia, and I'm not risking it.

Backpacking light, for me, is about not bringing a 4lb cast-iron pot and a chair into the wilderness. It's about wearing wool so you can bring less clothing. It's about packing nuts and CLIF bars instead of ritz crackers for the calories to weight ratio. But once my base weight is down under 15lbs, I've never been convinced at bringing flimsy clothing, paper-light shelters, and uselessly small knives and flashlights. I'll put the extra 6lbs. on my back as an insurance policy every time.

I will say, Sleeping bags and pads can definitely be fragile for my use. I'm always super careful in camp. I don't mind lightweight fabrics and thin membranes here, since they really don't see any abuse.

Winter, hawt

Its that simple ;)

"Would the Marmot work most of the time? Yes. But having a 10-inch hole in your rain gear during a 38ºF thunderstorm in Vermont is a nice way to get hypothermia, and I'm not risking it."

In keeping with the idea that the most important piece of gear is the one you carry between your ears (at considerably cost, I might add), what would you do if that happened? Take it all the way through the various possible scenarios.

Bill S

Option 1 is to stop, set up camp, and warm up with a fire.

Option 2 is to drape a sleeping bag over me. This is one of many reasons I only use synthetic sleeping bags.

Andrew Skurka (I know I quote him a lot, but his advice is usually great) talked about how he left rain pants behind one trip and it slowed him down because of the amount of times he had to warm up.

And how far is it back to the trailhead or to other sources of safety?

I'm sorry, I don't understand where you're going with this…

If you put on enough clothing that is not down or cotton, you can usually get yourself warm enough even when getting wet from rain. If you are warm enough hiking dry with a long sleeve base layer, putting on a light fleece or wool sweater over that might be required if you are getting wetted out.
But then what happens when you get to camp and you don't have any dry clothes? You have to instantly crawl into your sleeping bag to get warm or getting a warm fire going (not easy to do in a hurry when everything is wet).
What really sucks is when your sleeping bag isn't warm enough by itself and you are relying on wearing clothing. You encounter a situation where you are too cold when hiking and have to take out some of your sleeping clothing. Your sleeping clothing gets wet and you have to sit there trying to dry out your clothes by the fire just to get some sleep.
In my experience, a little redundancy in clothing is sometimes worth it.

People have completed thru's or multiple thru's with cuben shelters. on the LT I met an AT SOBO with a cuben lightheart Solo or Solong that was perfectly fine (so it had made it through 100mi wilderness and White mountains)

i use Silnylon as parts of my tent (LH solo) and pack (exos 58) and am aware it is less durable than my car camping tent and climbing pack. my summer and shoulder season quilts are M90 with synthetic and 1.1 nylon with down. trail runners feel better than boots for me. carbon poles over AL. inflatable pad over foam.

Backpacking light-er takes a mental shift that you may need more experience to make. It takes personal experience to know how far or long you can hike, how much food you need for a weekend, for a week, for multiple weeks with resupplies and how it changes. your previous perceived weaknesses in products might change.

You may want to question why you had gear failures? what popped your water bottle? what caused your jacket to peel and then tear? what could you have done to prevent it.

I think Williams last post means, if something goes wrong, how far is it back to the car if you need to bail. If you are a few mi from the road you can be more bold than if you are 50mi. To put it in your bike background (which i share) I carry 1 tube most of the time… for centuries i bring 2. for 30mi or less i bring 1 bottle.. 30+ i carry 2.

I think a lot of your questions will be answered on their own after you hike more. I'm guessing you don't think about much when you hop on a bike anymore? You probably don't treat your road bike like a mtn bike.. avoid potholes etc instead of slamming into them.. 23mm tires are less durable than 2" tires but are worth it. you probably don't wear a full face helmet on the road etc.

My water vessel weakened at a seam. I don't know how I could have prevented it, other than replacing it earlier. There wasn't a lot of wear.

In regards to the jacket, I think the answer to why it failed falls somewhere between poor quality and extreme use. Wearing the jacket all day as a wind layer, wearing it to bed as barrier against wet clothing that I was drying out, and then wearing it around camp means during this particular trip, it saw a lot of use. I also often used it as a raincoat when I wasn't camping, and I routinely biked in it all winter as a windbreak.

So, for me, adding 5 ounces for a durable raincoat is a no-brainer. I beat the daylights out of rain gear, so a membrane piece instead of a thin sheet of nylon coated in DWR is a good upgrade.

I kind of understand the point about how far it is to the trailhead, but in that case, I want to err on the side of caution. It is not acceptable to me for my raincoat to disintegrate because I very well could be two days from my car, or more. I need something stronger. I know I have my brain- and I'm completely sure I'd figure something out with a sleeping bag and several other layers that would get me back home alive, but if I can skip making that kind of decision by bringing durable rain gear, that's a good use of my brain as well.

Because my sleeping bag sees very little abuse, I'm happy to go ultralight there. Running shorts, sunglasses, a down jacket for camp- I can and will shed ounces by using extra-gossamer materials.

But honestly, maybe it's just me; I see no difference in 10lbs versus 15lbs, and that extra 5lbs can mean more durable materials for your tent, pack, rain gear, and shoes. I could go to 10lbs base weight, but 15lbs feels only slightly heavier and can mean a huge difference in what you're able to do. Even if I was two days from the trailhead, if my gear is ready for 100 miles of travel or more, I stand a higher chance of enjoying myself and my overall safety increases.

Just my 2 cents!

5lb can also be 2 more days of food between resupplies. Which could be just handy or really necessary depending on the hike.

seems like you used a very light jacket for purposes it might not have been built for. much of my hiking stuff i only use for hiking. Biking with a flapping jacket probably put a lot of stress on it. taped seams can be sealed or retaped i think.

I don't use my hiking socks, tent, quilts, pack, probably other stuff for things other than backpacking. I have my old tent i use for car camping, old sleeping bag, climbing pack, biking jacket, socks. basically use heavier duty gear for when weight doesn't matter.

It doesn't really flap- it's form-fitting. I don't think cycling wore it out, and I need my raincoat to do both.

A seam on the inside of the right front lost a section of seam tape about 12 inches long, and then the next day, an unrelated seam between the shoulderblades tore. It's just not a very durable jacket- I'm glad I replaced it. I think it's also worth saying that the Marmot raincoat was $180 on sale for $140, and I replaced it for free through Zappos with a $250 raincoat on sale for $150. Zappos ate the $10 difference. That's service!

And yeah, I have one pack for winter camping and trips with my college, since I volunteer to carry a lot of extra stuff for the relatively short hikes. It's a 90L Kelty, and it weighs 6lbs by itself.

I get out my sub-3lb 40L pack for serious hikes where weight matters.

I get that 5lbs means 2 more days of food, but I am prepared to carry 10 days worth of food in my pack at any given time. With the exception of the 100-mile wilderness in Maine, 10 days worth of food is a reasonable amount to carry between resupply points (as far as I know). If I come up on a situation where I have to carry 12 days worth of food (my pack does have room for a little extra) then I will just grin and bear it! 5lbs does not make or break trekking for me.

I'm just encouraging an exploration of what the actual options and risks are (including whether, under these circumstances, hypothermia was a significant risk).

Your other solutions sound fine as plan b, and would enable you to continue your trip (a sewing kit or safety pins with some seamgrip, duct tape, or a reasonably tough plastic bag, might also allow you to continue). But it's always important to know whether you can rely on plan c (bailing).

If bailing is always an option, equipment failure's more about inconvenience than about danger. If it's not, then you better be able to rely upon your equipment or your ability to repair it, or else your life's at stake.

From my perspective, durability vs light weight only really takes on meaning within the context of the trip.

Bill S.

PS added as edit – From a risk standpoint, two days from the car is different from two days from a trailhead or other safe harbors. I haven't done enough New England backpacking to know the options, but are there places other than 100 mile wilderness where you can get two days from a road? If so, and you're willing to share, PM please!

My backpacking isn't too extensive. Most areas let you go a few days in one direction, but you're usually in a corridor, so less than 1 day from a road. The Green Mountains have a few good spots, and Glastenbury Mountain is a favorite. The nearby White Mountains are plenty extensive, especially the White Mountain National Forest and Banff Nat'l Park. Of course, in the Whites, 1 day from a road could easily be five or six because it's so hard to navigate…

There's a third factor here that is pretty significant to me. The cost of backpacking for someone on a salary is nothing. For me, with college loans and graduate school looming, replacing a raincoat might mean saving for a month or more. So I need some stuff to last, or be covered by a warranty.

"There's a third factor here that is pretty significant to me. The cost of backpacking …"

I certainly get that. That's why I started with the financial cost of failure in my initial reply!

Bill

PS – if wanting to save weight and $, under conditions where a ripped jacket won't be a safety issue, Driducks and similar is worth looking in to.