Thank you Backpacking Light, BUT…

I don’t think that you’re especially unusual in this, people often follow much of the same journey. They start off dipping their toe into camping either with their family or through a group like the boy scouts, and buy a basic tent from a big outdoor store, basic sleeping bag etc. at that point spending money on expensive UL gear seems nuts.

But gradually as you do a few trips and the idea of having a lighter bag seems more appealing, the idea of getting some more expensive gear seems more reasonable, and everyone finds their own balance.

Location and weather have a lot to do with it. I live in Scotland and I have no guarantee that the weather I go to sleep with will be anything like what happens through the night, or what I wake up to, so justifying an ultralight tarp setup is pretty difficult. However there are lots of lightweight tents in the 1-1.5kg (2-3ib or there abouts) range that are still fairly light but provide enough protection should things turn unexpectedly (or more importantly, protect you from our ferocious summer Midges! 😂). Same thing with other gear, it would simply be unsafe for me to go for any length of time with the SUL setups that some people are able to use in their locations, but I’ve been able to find what I consider the best balance between being as lightweight as possible while still covering my bases and making sure I can deal with whatever comes my way.  On the other hand some people need to deal with bear spray and bear cans, and that’s something over here I can thankfully forget about.

Some people are happy with the absolute minimum, some people feel that there are a few creature comforts that are worth the small extra increase in weight, and that’s ok 🙂

K

It’s nice to compare with “spartan” gear lists, but many like having at least some luxury.   Just saw a YouTube from a young well-known ULer back on the PCT with a custom 3/4 pyramid (w/bug skirt + tyvek), a quilt, and a full Xlite.  So there was some razzing about the (gasp!) full length Xlite. There’s cutting to and beyond the bone vs maintaining a little sanity.  Then again I’ve seen some overnighting video that entails using the underside of a concrete picnic table as shelter while pushing the rest of the gear into an 18L daypack.  When we will get to grocery sack? Minimalism is in the eye of the beholder.

Of course looking at the bug skirt and Tyvek, couldn’t one substitute [insert idea here] .. etc..

Everyone has different trips and different comfort levels.   It is good to see minimal gear lists in action though.

Im with you, and I think the name, BPL, is appropiate. reddit’s UL forum shames anyone over 10lbs it seems like, ‘of course you dont need 1/2 your gear’ is the standard answer. Yes, I know I dont need half my gear to survive, but I sure am the most comfy one at camp with a base weight of ~17lb. If I was doing a very long hike I’d take a much harder look at my luxuries, but for sub 30 mile weekends, who cares for the most part.

And thats what I like about BPL – we have the SUL’ers like Monte to keep us honest but also dont shame people for bringing a 1lb camp chair. I think BPL  strikes a nice balance of along the lines of “we’ll help you lighten your pack to whatever degree you desire”. For me, the weight:comfort ratio is best when I stay below 27lbs with all food, fuel, and water. Definitely not UL, but light enough for me!

In the 80s, all of us who were pursuing UL all did the same thing – got to “stupid light” and then retreated a bit.

Tarps are great at 10,000 feet where there are no bugs to speak of, but kind of suck (blood) at 5,000 feet.

Sleeping in all your clothes is SUL and makes it really quick to get up and going in the morning, but you value your sleep more post-40 than in your 20s.

*I* didn’t need or want trekking pole(s), but one or two along sure helped get the clients through a stream crossing or helped with a bum knee enough to justify the weight.  “You’re only as fast as your slowest sled dog”.

No-cook saves stove, pot and fuel weight but 10 days of your dinners looking exactly like your lunch gets old.

I never did, but I knew two guys (climbers, duh) who realized that a single jar of peanut butter had enough calories for the entire weekend.

Still, it was sweet to have a pack less THAN HALF the weight of anyone else along.  Until you blabbed about it and then got all the side eyes as some newbie was dragging and you end up carrying 10-20 pounds of their crap.

Probably what you are experiencing is what is known as the “Technology S Curve”.   At the start of the UL concept, there were plenty of low hanging fruit.  Base weight reduction comes rather quickly, mindsets are easy to alter.  As the concept becomes more mature, the rate of change diminishes.  It becomes much harder: we use to shed pounds, now we as down to oz and then off to grams.  The introduction of products like NeoAir, Sawyer and so forth are great examples on shredding weight.  Now, shedding weight becomes more of a challenge.  Additionally, the pendulum swings and as some of us get older, comfort becomes more important.

That being said, it is still fun to see innovation taking place.  A couple of areas where I would like to see progress is food as in calories/oz that really taste good and are good for you.  As people get down to a low base weight, food is often left out of the equation.  How about a goo 7 day meal plan that is optimized for taste and weight.

Bear canister (or food protection) are another area that could use innovation.  How about a canister that can hold 7 days of food (solo) that weighs under 8 oz?  Speaking of weight, if you’re going to take a chair (full support) how about an 8 oz. chair?  My 2 cents.

Let me change the order of a few sentences above:

“The pendulum swings and as some of us get older, comfort becomes more important. Now: additionally, shedding weight becomes more of a challenge”

Gotta get a good night’s sleep, but almost everything else except reasonably safe shelter and foul weather clothing is on the chopping block. A good exercise in figuring out what do you really need.

And Hell yeah to this!  “How about a canister that can hold 7 days of food (solo) that weighs under 8 oz?  Speaking of weight, if you’re going to take a chair (full support) how about an 8 oz. chair?”

I can get food for a week in my custom bearicade: 9 1/4, 29.4 and 578. Is there something lighter that fulfills the requirement for a canister? And I guess the bearicade isn’t ‘kosher’ everywhere according to regs but somehow in some of these same locales an ursack (which I have and have successfully used) is?  Sigh…. another thread.

Eric, what I like about your post and your gear list is how it basically covers the whole year without a lot of choices. That’s the “weight” I’ve been trying to lose: the total gear closet.

How many of one thing do I really need? Can one or two of each thing see you through four seasons?

Do we all eventually reach a lightweight equilibrium of less total items, due to age, cost, wisdom?

I enjoyed this thread. I think it’s useful to push beyond comfort and then add back in, otherwise you don’t know your limits. The best change I made was find the gear that worked for >=80% of my trips and just stick with it rather than having to fine tune each trip / be in a state of constant testing, I like Chris K “the least total gear closet” as a KPI. I mostly hit that 10 years ago and refined it around 6 years ago when factoring in my wife’s preferences (no longer do snow trips, and some some refinements for trips as a couple).  These days I have two question: is it a solo or a couple trip, and is it going to be cool (daytime likely less than 50F, night time likely less than 25F) or warmer.

As to the ultralight food protection (that isn’t a ursak)… I had hopes in 2007 that there were going to be a good option https://web.archive.org/web/20071229003302/http://www.wilderness-solutions.com/palisade_est.htm but it never launched :(

–Mark

Jon mentions food. I think this is an area of huge opportunity (and tremendous variability from person to person). Two resources that I like a GearSkeptic’s videos on YouTube and BPL’s recent How to Plan Food for a Backcountry Trip Q&A.

The GS videos (and his spreadsheets) have great insights including high variability of macros between flavors of the same product and some interesting thoughts about optimizing macro ratios and recovery strategies.

Ryan’s Q&A has some very simple strategies that make sense and he introduced me to a couple of ingredients I hadn’t tried before. This reminds me I need to try cooking with the sprouted lentils and plant based taco meat I have squired…

Anyways it’s all about optimization and making choices that keep life simple and get us outdoors more. Some people carry a heavier tent, a cushy pillow, a chair, or more food. I like that BPL encourages a rational, analytical approach to minimizing other gear.

In John Zahorian’s recent video about gear I noticed his focus on reducing the number of items he brings on a trip. I like the idea of having less things to keep track of.

Nice video, love the second half.

This is an excellent thread–should be required reading for newbies. I long ago stopped worrying about what other people thought of my pack weight and gear.

After more than fifty years of backpacking I know what works for my wife and me, both in terms of comfort and ease. And we’ve stopped chasing ounces that cost a fortune. Yes–a weightless chair and food storage would be wonderful.

But our advice in general is to spend more time hiking than you spend thinking about gear …a suggestion some find very challenging.

I agree – great thread.  Thanks to BPL, I have the gear I use very well dialed-in for the trips I take.  I keep my pack mostly ready to go and have very few decisions to make before heading out on a trip.  They are:

• Hammock with bug netting or without?
• What quilt and underquilt do I want – based on forecasted temperatures
• Am I heating water for myself (Sterno Inferno alcohol system) or for myself and others (Jetboil Sol Ti)
• Do I need a powerbank – i.e. is the trip longer than 2 nights?

Even my food choices are pretty simple now – I keep a selection of Packit Gourmet meals at home and grab what I need to go.  Snacks come from the pantry and if I want, say, a Snickers bar I’ll pick one up when I stop for gas on the way to the trailhead.

The other thing this thread brought to mind is that, at least among the regular contributors, I’d like to hike with all of you!  It’s fun to get to know some of people’s personalities via their posts and I can’t think of a single person that I wouldn’t want to spend at least a weekend with on a hike.  With that said, there are some of you that I’m afraid I couldn’t keep up with (Mike M & Tom K come to mind), but that doesn’t diminish the desire to hang with them.  And I can’t read a post by Paul Wagner without hearing his voice (after listening to his courses).

As we approach the end of another trying year, this thread has reminded how thankful I am to have access to the BPL community.

@ Eric

When I started Scouting in the late 1960s, the two adult leaders in my troop were ex Korean War veterans.  We went camping every month and usually walked 4 to 5 miles to the campsite. The Scout leaders called it camping. Today we would call it backpacking.  They limited us to 20 lbs of gear but including food.  This was before LNT so we made small cooking fires and did not need stoves. For shelter we carried Army surplus ponchos that made a 1  Scout lean-to or you could snap two together for a 2 person A frame.

During the 80s and 90s my pack ballooned up to 40 if not 50lbs until it got to the point that backpacking was not fun any more.  At one point I borrowed a friend’s Kelty special edition for a snow trip that weighed I think 7.5 lbs empty!

Thank you BPL.  The lessons learned and the advice given helped make backpacking fun again.

After experimenting with super light, I too went back to “light but comfortable.”  I still camp under my MLD Grace tarp and DuoMid but some small luxuries are important. I like to bring two pads and at least one pillow.  I also bring my MSR coffee filter and Peet’s Major Dickason for fresh-brewed coffee each morning!

I’ve actually gotten more light over time.

After I completed the PCT I found a ULA Relay in the bargain bit at the kickoff. I tried to pack my PCT gear into it and it did not fit. There was no way. Nowadays, and with the addition of some stretchy fabric to extend the back pocket to a normal size, I can fit my gear in it and have room enough for 4-5 days of food.

I’ve decided blow-up pads are comfortable but they’re too much fuss. Now that mine is starting to turn into a sphere I decided to just go back to the z-rest I used on the PCT in 2008. A cannabis gummy takes the edge off and gives me good dreams, too.

While I will bring my tent to mosquito country, I much prefer to use a tarp all the rest of the time. I have a Pocket tarp and a flat tarp. I like both kinds. I feel like I can see more around me while still enjoying the trapping of my body heat under the tarp. It’s fun to play with the different set-ups of a flat tarp.

Since I go solo all the time I still like to try new things out on trips. I kind of see my trips as part enjoying the hiking and part playing with my toys. I usually make stuff to try out more than I buy stuff to try out.

I’m still trying to find the perfect stove. So far it’s a toss-up between my homemade Ball aluminum cup stove (alcohol or esbit) and my Foster’s pot caldera cone (alcohol or esbit). Sometimes I need to bring a canister to be legal. No-cook sometimes works perfectly, too, and it’s pretty simple.

As far as light food, I have a dehydrator and have been able to experiment with that. I was able to make meals that I could roll up and stack in my Bearicade Expedition in such a way I was able to fit 11 days of food in it. Good god though, eating the same breakfast, same lunch and same dinner every day was pretty depressing.

You carry three stoves? You could get kicked right out of the food chain for that!

I am not sure Diane meant she carried all three at once.
Cheers