Where do you find UL products?

I got my ULA Catalyst from Down Works in Santa Cruz.
http://www.downworks.com/downworks/Welcome.html
Great place for sleeping bags too. The Patagonia outlet is across the street.

+1 for downworks. They also carry western mountaineering, granite gear, and montbell (I believe the only montbell distributor in CA?)
As for cool stuff like Zpacks, ya just gotta order it and try it out. Personally I've never been disappointed.

To find GoLite you have to go to one of their retail locations, they don't sell through any other stores. According to their store locator, the only store in California is in am outlet mall in the town of Cabazon a little ways east of LA.

Edited once I found my compass…Touche, Bob, touche.

"the town of Cabazon a little ways west of LA."

I didn't think that you could get much further west than LA.

–B.G.–

Be easy on him. I've got that geographic dyslexia too, where I get east and west mixed when typing or speaking quickly.

Gene,

Back on topic: The best place to check out UL packs might be a BPL GGG event. Lots of BPLers with their gear, including their packs. So not only could you try many different packs on, but you could see how gear is packed in them, and get honest user reviews from people who've used and abused the packs.

Other than santa cruz down works, there are no stores that sell ultralight backpacking gear. It's all sold online through small businesses.

"Do you just have to order a pack, try it on, then send it back if you don't like it?"

That's about the size of it. It's advisable to check on the return policy-who pays for return shipping etc. The problem is you might not be able to judge a pack until you've put some trail miles on it.
The cottage gear makers are very interested in helping you and would like to make sure you get a pack that you'll like to begin with. Contact them, ask questions, get advice.
I've purchased 3 packs online. Maybe I'm lucky but I've never returned a pack because I didn't like it.
The one pack (not UL) I purchased from a retailer was a different story. I sold it after suffering through 2 overnight trips.

Many of the ultralight gear companies are cottage manufacturers who make their gear in house. The labor costs are very high compared to larger manufacturers who get their stuff made in a factory somewhere in Asia. If cottage manufactured gear was sold at retail, the price who be extremely high. This is why cottage gear is reasonably priced, because there is no retail markup.

Keep reading and searching this forum for the products you are interested in. There is so much information and reviews regarding fit and features of the brands you have listed so you should be able to narrow down your choices when ready to make a purchase. The true fit of a pack will eventually only be realised with some trail miles. If you are not happy with the purchase then there is always gear swap. The depreciation on the sale could be considered rent you payed while testing the item.

Since there are quite a few BPL members in the Bay Area, you may have some luck meeting up with the owners of a specific item if you post a request here (offering to buy them a beer, of course).

To be honest if you are looking at buying off the shelf then you really need to be trolling through the conversations on BPL even looking into the SUL link and just search and read. Then research items on manufacturers sites and compare. Then come back and read the reviews on said items

If you want to go even lighter then usually it takes adopting a new approach and field testing to see if said ideas work for you or not. This means altering some preconceived ideas/expectations of being out there in the wilderness and facing your fears regarding some of 'must have' items that usually aid in creature comfort. Having said that some of the really light UL gear is home made (some simple some not so).

Part of the love for this camping thing for me is finding and testing out new ideas and gear!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm newish to BPL and this is the first I've heard of GGG. I just googled it and it looks totally cool. And we're big fans of Henry Coe park. Thanks for the heads-up on that.

Gene

Careful, they might get all sad that a new face wants to join… I hear the OG crew is all upset that they had a successful event with about 80ish people this year, and they want to call it quits or change it to keep it to just their little clique… they didn't like that there were multiple cliques there this year. Ha!