Backpacking Gear Spread Sheet/Tracking Tools?

[Gerald Magnes]

Does anyone have a pre-formatted spreadsheet or similar tool to recommend for tracking gear weights for backpacking/wilderness  trips.  I know there are some tools out there, and I have used them in the distant past, but have gotten lax and pack weight has swelled.  I need to cut back.

By the way, these days I’m actually more of a wilderness canoer than backpacker, but my trips usually involve a good deal of carrying (as we tend to call portaging in the Adirondacks) from one body of water to the next, so the importance of lightening one’s pack  still applies.

[JCH]

I use an Excel spreadsheet that was floating around BPL many many years ago.  It takes some effort to enter all of your gear, and I have pretty extensively customized it to meet my goals and sensibilities :), but I have never found another tool, either Excel or on-line that I like as much.

I am happy to send you a copy.  PM me with your email address.

[Gerald Magnes]

Just sent PM.  Thanks,

Gerry

[Oneil]

Just Excel, a scale, and a nerd-like sensibility here.

[Jeff Y]

No need to reinvent the wheel:

lighterpack.com

Very easy to share your link as well for assistance and recommendations with gear lists. Check the gear list tab for examples. It’s great!

[Bob Kerner]

Lighter pack is a hot mess at least lately. I spent 3 hours yesterday building my master list. More than half of it did not save. It’s gone!! Not even the categories. I tried re- doing it and the content didn’t save. Tried logging out and back in. Nope. Tried emailing them: no reply. The folks at r/ultralight say it’s been unstable lately. The fact that the word BETA is at the top of the webpage says it all.

[JCH]

“Lighter pack is a hot mess at least lately.”

That is unfortunate to hear.  I tried Lighterpack when it came out and thought it was a really good effort…certainly got the job done, and did some things really well.  I liked my customized BPL tool better so never looked at it again.  Just visited and all of my previous work was still there, however I too saw multiple and frequent “there was an error saving your data” messages.

I’m sticking with my excel tool.

[Bob Kerner]

I don’t know how LP can operate like that and why it’s tolerated, even if it is free. Yet it’s all people talk about in some circles, and for sure the ability to share it with others is helpful but at what cost in time and effort if it’s unstable.

[Roger Caffin]

When you have your own spreadsheet on your own desktop, then you have some control over your own data. And your own backups.

Sharing – to what end? My gear has its own weights; doubtless your gear will have different weights. Even the item names in my gear list will be different from yours.

Cheers

[Eugene Hollingsworth]

BACKPACKING LIGHT TRIP PLANNING SPREADSHEET CONTEST WINNERS

Meir Gottleib’s first-place winning spreadsheet

this is what I’ve been using since it was published a few years ago. I’ve tweaked it a little bit, expanded a little bit, and I have separate sheets for different conditions. I keep one for 40°, 33, 20° snow,…

I also use it when I want to just compare two different pieces of equipment, let’s say two different sleeping bags or three different sleeping bags or four different sleeping bags.

to simplify my list I built another sheet that are kits: toiletry kit, fire starting kit, cock kit, tarp cord kit… and as I modify the contents of the kit that’s reflected right back into my pack list.

i’d be happy to share my current versionAnd help you get started with it.

[Brad Rogers]

https://backpackinglight.com/2005_trip_planning_spreadsheet_contest_winners/

Like Eugene, this is the spreadsheet I’ve used since it came out nearly 15 years ago now.  It has a bunch of items in the database already, which of course are almost all out of date by now, but you can add new ones.

[JCH]

Yep!  Meir Gottleib’s spreadsheet is the one I use.

Looks like the file download links are now all invalid.

Agree with Roger re: retaining control of one’s data. Disagree re: sharing.  The offer is not to share gear weights, but to share the spreadsheet and all of its embedded calculations and processing

[David K]

I’ve been using the CarryLess app and it’s fantastic

[M B]

Weigh your own gear make your own spreadsheet add up the weights pretty damn easy.

And don’t leave anything out not a rubber band not a Ziploc bag, etc.

 

someone else’s idea of a generic app or utility is not going to be as good as yours.

 

by weighing all your stuff and working with it in the spreadsheet you will come to know exactly how much every item you have weighs.  Not only that you will also know what the options for them weigh.

 

Pack weight websites and apps are like vaping……. I saw it and said “who is stupid enough to do that?!’……… Apparently lots of people.

 

[Bob Kerner]

So I showed LP to one of my team members who’s very good with Excel. Asked him how to get it so the formulas deducted consumables and how they did the pie chart that updates as you enter items. An hour later he delivered an Excel version of LP. I owe him a beer.

[JCH]

Care to share with the community? :)

[Roger Caffin]

Please note: pie charts are a standard part of Excel. Anyone can make them. Fun, but not vital.

I do use spreadsheets for my gear, and sure they give me an approximate pack weight, but that is not their prime function. They are a powerful way of making sure I don’t forget anything when packing!

I just keep making new copies of successfully-updated ones, so there is one per trip. Disk space these days (at least for a spreadsheet) is not a problem.

Cheers

[M B]

@rcaffin

 

I do use spreadsheets for my gear, and sure they give me an approximate pack weight, but that is not their prime function. They are a powerful way of making sure I don’t forget anything when packing!

 

 

 

^Yup.

the one time I forgot some kind of knife, I got a defective mountain House bag that had no tear notch……had to pound it between two rocks to get a tear started that stuff is tough.

 

Another time found out I had no spoon.

That’s when I discovered the pastry bag technique of biting a corner off your Ziploc bag and squeezing it into your mouth. Actually works really really well once you let it cool off a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

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