Examples of “Stupid Light”

[Paul Magnanti]

One time I packed a .5 liter box of wine when a 1 liter box of wine was avail.

Stupid.

Never made that mistake again.

[Aaron Sorensen]

"stupid light" is something your find out after the fact … when yr cold, tired, hungry, in the dark, and wet

Now that's just stupid.
You need to pack according to the weather.

I see a person hiking that sees me and asks what's in my pack.
Then they ask, well what about this or that?
I just say no.

So that person is thinking "stupid".
I am just thinking "light".

Then I look at there huge heavy pack and I think "stupid".

[Hiking Malto]

Stupid light is the point just before your pack gets slightly heavier. For me it was the addition of true rain gear for east coast hiking and a better mat for a better night sleep. I would also include the switch from a razor blade to small Swiss Army knife that can be used to trim toenails. All these we're an escape from stupid light IMHO.

[Nathan Hays]

Tired, burned, blistered, hungry, dark, wet. I can deal with these. In fact, being out of my "comfort" zone is a large part of why I hike.

But unlike Aaron S., cold is the one thing I can't deal with. Several times I've found myself heading down that dark hole and each time I tell myself to carry more warmth. So this season I've armed myself with a 14oz down MyoQuilt and a 12oz down jacket (thruhiker).

And if I find myself on the SHR with Aaron and I'm chilling, I'm going to borrow his windshirt 'cause I know he can take it.

[Aaron Sorensen]

Ha, I hate being cold.
But I don't bring a windshirt.
If you are going to be cold, you put on a jacket.
The outer shell material is the same as a windshirt, so why the redundancy?

Less gear is always better!

[Travis Leanna]

>One time I packed a .5 liter box of wine when a 1 liter box of wine was avail.

[brandon hippler]

I was going on an overnight trip. I checked the weather and it was suppose to get down in the upper 50s. so i decided i was going to get my pack as light as i could. it all weighed in at 8 pounds with food and water. night fell and was amazingly cold. all i had with me was my fleece jacket and an emergency blanket to protect against the cold. well that night it got down to 40 degrees. i learned my lesson that night.

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

"Stupid Light is when you compromise something that is important to you just to save weight."

Nice definition. It includes the key point that a decision can only be designated as SL or not when considered in the context of the trips goals. Leaving a sleeping bag at home isn't fundamentally SL. It's not SL if you're hiking all night or a bushcrafter who's going to make your own. It is SL if you realize you undermined the goals of your trip (one of which is probably always safety) by shivering to exhaustion.

Ultimately we're all trying to make good weight conscious decisions to help us best achieve our objectives – whatever they are. Sometimes we fail to bring functionality that we need (stupid light) and other times we bring functionality we don't need (stupid heavy). Learning how to make these good decisions is part of the journey.

[Nathan Hays]

Looking at my spreadsheet, there's plenty room in my list to go Ultra Stupid Light!

[Jeffs Eleven]

I was guessing USL was UnSafeLight

[Max Dilthey]

"Gram weenies might be tempted to use pure spectra cord, which has unparalleled strength for its weight. But this is a “stupid light” choice: the cord is expensive, prone to knotting, and hard to work with (because it’s very slippery). Cord featuring a spectra core with a nylon sheath is an improvement, but: it’s still expensive; the strength is overkill for all but the most extreme applications; and the weight savings are negligible."

-Andrew Skurka

[Brendan Swihart]

Meh…
For me, spectra core is worth it. Where I usually hike, stakes are usually useless and I have to use rocks for anchors. I've been on more than one trip that a gusty night has shredded the sheaths and if I wouldn't have had a spectra core I know that the lines wouldn't have made it through the night.

Moral, for the umpteenth time this thread: use what fits your conditions

[Hoot Filsinger]

Stupid light is pack system so light you can't afford the gas money to reach the trailhead to use it.
Hoot

[Raymond Estrella]

Well I don't want to call my BIL and best friend Dave stupid, but climbing San Gorgonio in winter without a tent or sleeping bag was pushing it. I took this shot at 1:00 am when I got up to, ah, look at the stars. He is sleeping in his Marmot 8000 Meter Parka and Pants with an emergency blanket stretched over the snow pit he dug.

I had a tent and warm quilt so I guess he figured he had a back-up plan.

[Stephen M]

Was he going to hit you over the head with his show shoes and take your quilt and tent Ray?

[Raymond Estrella]

The blue foam you see is my sit pad. At 9:30 he woke me up saying that his arm kept falling on the snow where the down would compress and then get him cold enough to wake him. I gave him the sit pad and I think he has my shells with his under the other arm.

I wish I had a picture of the time we were near Mt Whitney in July that he brought just one of those emergency blanket envelope things, thinking that is clothes and compressor jacket would be enough for a 3-day trip. First night the temps dropped below freezing and we had frost on everything. He froze, even after I gave him my down sweater and rain gear.

I love my UL brother-in-law if only for the entertainment factor. ;-)

[Stephen M]

Sounds like a guy I knew years ago who would turn up with a sleeping bag and a pack of smokes for a trip and that was it, he would bum food and clothes off everyone else.

[Elliott Wolin]

I read somewhere that human digestive systems are way less efficient digesting raw or uncooked foods compared to cooked foods. Something like 60% vs 90% or more. That is, it is possible that you are wasting a good fraction of your food weight if you don't cook. It's also possible that this effect goes away with careful choice of uncooked or raw foods.

Irrelevant on a short trip, but maybe not on a thru-hike.

Some claim the ability to cook is what allowed our primitive ancestors to evolve large brains and develop sophisticated social systems…we got more nutrition out of our cooked food so spent less time collecting the raw ingredients, giving us "leisure" time to do other things.

In any case we always cook at least dinner, and we don't scrimp on flavor!

[Max Dilthey]

Well, sort of. You're right about the cooking thing, but not for the reason you think. It literally came down to the time one had to spend chewing raw meat. We would have to chew for 4+ hours a day just to process raw food enough to digest it, and by cooking it our bodies also devote less energy to fighting food-borne illness.

Overall, cooking did help us evolve, but not necessarily because we spent less time doing one thing and more time doing another. Cooking was inevitable, but I suspect our brain would have invented fire and math and language even if we spoke with our mouths full.

As to cooked food while camping, there is possibly a correlation between energy and raw/cooked food, but it depends heavily on the food. For nuts, it's obviously irrelevant. For some vegetables, unprocessed is probably better. For grains and meat, there's definitely a correlation between cooked and uncooked.

It's useful to remember that chocolate is heavily processed and "cooked." So are CLIF bars and Granola bars and meal replacements and perpetuem powder and military freeze-dried meals. They're all cooked or processed in some way that increases their nutrition over unprocessed food, and then packaged. You could theoretically go on an all-cooked food diet without ever lighting a fire.

Hope that helps!

[Jason G]

"Sounds like a guy I knew years ago who would turn up with a sleeping bag and a pack of smokes for a trip and that was it, he would bum food and clothes off everyone else."

yup had a buddy in college that we did a short trip with. he brought a jansport and a sleeping bag and then was complaining when he was freezing and hungry and trying to bum clothing and food off everyone else. the next day we were planning on doing a side peak and he got ahead of us somehow and we didn't think even knew which was to go so we thought he got lost and were searching the immediate area for 2-3 hours and were about to call in reinforcements when he came strolling down after taking a nap and eating all our cheese!

[Stephen M]

I must preume that he didn't get invited on any other trips :-)

[David Miles]

For me, it's when I see someone leave out some basic survival gear "because they never get lost". I've been on several rescues where the person could have spent fewer cold nights out if they had a signal mirror to signal our helicopters. Especially when we have had many trips with no incident, those items might start to look like just weights. It's like driving without a spare tire.

[Aaron Sorensen]

"Basic" survival gear for me is some lukeo tape, a safety pin, and a small piece of shammy like material.

If anything else goes wrong, you can pretty much use sticks and clothing to keep anything bent straight and get yourself to safety.

[Raymond Estrella]

Oh, please don’t get the idea that Dave is a freeloader or anything like that. He just loves to experiment with UL ideas but won’t try them at home. (It would do any good anyway as he lives in paradise;-)

Dave is the best hiking partner I have ever had. He even gets me to try “being UL” myself with his yearly UL challenge. Thanks to you guys I actually beat him once.

But he does get stupid light at least once a year. Maybe I need to write a humor article about them all…

[Dale Wambaugh]

"Especially when we have had many trips with no incident, those items might start to look like just weights. It's like driving without a spare tire."

Good analogy!

"Well, yeah, I own three compasses and stack of maps and a GPS, and a first aid kit, and I left my extra clothing and rain gear in the car, but I've never…"

[ ]read an inaccurate weather report
[ ]gotten lost
[ ]fallen down
[ ]injured an ankle
[ ]had an allergic reaction
[ ]had a heart attack
[ ]done something STUPID

And people try to refute Darwin's theories ;)

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