Notes from the Field: High, Dry, and SuperUltraLight in Arizona

Sorry slipped my mind about carrying the poles. DUH. But you strap idea is a good one. The idea of using teqnigue to compleatly eliminate the pack in backpacking is sort of weird but its cutting edge.

If you get rid of the sleeping bag/quilt and the pad you save a pound and a half of pack weight. Just sleep on the ground in your clothes. If its raining you can pitch the tarp, or just wear it. If you get cold at night, you can hike at night and sleep during the day.

In fact, if you just wear the poncho/tarp then you eliminate the secondary use for the trekking poles and can justify getting rid of them too! That’s another pound gone.

You can then also get rid of the stakes, lines and assorted pitching paraphernalia for a few more ounces. Eliminate the cooking gear and it’s a few more ounces. But, really it’s kind of silly to be arguing ounces when there’s pounds to get rid of in the sleeping bag, pad and poles (although the poles don’t count toward base weight, you still have to carry them).

That puts you at about 3 pound base pack weight, plus you’ve lost a pound of your carry weight from the poles.

Have fun,
B

Carol,

Good luck on your sub 5 pound adventures. I’ve long felt 5 pounds wasn’t an impossible goal. I’ve done overnights in fall and spring with just the cloths on my back and the 10 essentials stuffed in my pockets. Winter overnights were done with what was typically carried in day pack while ski touring or about 3 to 4 pounds. But as with Ryan and Alan’s trips survival was the key not comfort.

Now that I’ve got some good basic ultralight gear built, over the last few months I’ve been looking at SuperLight gear. The goal being something that provided the same level of comfort found in your normal 3 season gear. So it needs to support weather extremes from low 20’s to over a 100 degrees. The other criterion is durability. It’s rather easy to build something light if durability isn’t a serious factor. But how can one build a sub 5 pound pack capable of surviving a 5 month thru-hike without either babying the gear to the max or replacing every item one or more times.

It also seems clear that designing such gear requires a greater degree of integration. I’ve toyed with several core components but am still working on developing the unified theme that ties together function, weight, durability and comfort. Not sure whether it’s possible but it’s a fun challenge.

Ron.

I’ve done a 5-day survival “backpack” with just a fanny pack. My goal in the SUL Challenge is different. I want the gear to be “transparent” so the wilderness comes into focus. With survival level gear, that’s what I focus on – survival. With too much gear, that’s what I focus on – gear. I want to find out if 5-lb is the place where I don’t need to constantly focus on survival AND the gear doesn’t distract me from my surroundings.

Andrew, contact me offline ([email protected]) with your email address and I’ll send you my gear list. I just figured that given the topic, posting my gear list here might be inappropriate.

-Tony

Ryan mentioned a 3/8 closed-cell foam with a cured surface for sub 5 pound weight. The REi blue is not cured and the other pads I have ran across lately are not cured either. What brand and store is carrying the cured surface version.

Lacking a cured surface and thus possibly a soaked pad, wouldn’t one put the pad under the ground sheet to keep dry?

An equally light alternative to using a torso length pad is to make or buy an ultralight air mattress. Last year there were a number of discussions about making super light air mattresses. One such thread can be found at:

http://www.backpacking.net/forums/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=52242&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart=all&vc=1

http://www.balloonbed.com/ is selling a air mattress which use balloons for the air bladders. “Base weight” is 3oz, plus .2oz (7grams) worth of balloons / night. The whole package (air mattress, pump, balloons for four nights is smaller than an apple. I wrote up a brief review of the balloonbed http://www.verber.com/mark/outdoors/gear/reviews/balloonbed.html

I generally found the balloonbed to be more comfortable than a therm-a-rest ultright or a good closed cell pad when it came to cushioning. I wouldn’t want to use it in cold weather since it was be less insulating and tieing balloons with cold fingers won’t be fun.

I wouldn’t recommend using an ultralight air mattress on trips where food and/or water drive pack weight up significantly because you will really want your pad to help the structure of your pack as well as providing something to sleep on.

–mark

Ryan wrote a great article called “Hiking Efficiency: A Day in the Life of an Ultrlight Hiker”. “Slow Joe” has a question?

For a long continuous hike such as an AT Thru-Hike:
1. Where is the most efficient place to carry my water?
2. What is more efficient taking a bottle out of a pocket on my pack for a drink (or someplace else) or using somekind of Platypus bottle with a drinking tube that I just suck water out of?

I have checked the weight of a lot of different water conainers. The Platypus water products seem to be the lightest ones. A small mesh pocket for a bottle would weigh less then a larger mesh pocket for something with a drink tube but if the drink tube way is more efficient day after day for several months the extra weight might be worth it.

I will be making my AT Pack so I can tailor my pack and how I carry my water bottles (s) what ever way seems to be the most efficient way. I expect to carry bottles for up to 2 liters of water.

Thanks.

Bill,

I would agree with Dr. J’s response as to the best place to carry water.

However, for my part, i believe (i could be wrong) that there are really a number of factors that might come into play. Perhaps what follows is a little bit of over-analysis (or “over-anal-ysis” in this case – a bit too anal-retentive here???).

The bottom line will end up at the same spot as Dr. J, but a more circuitous route will be followed to get there.

1. keep heavy things as close to the body’s natural CG (center-of-gravity) as possible.
2. since the natural CG is inside our body, we can’t do this. furthermore, wearing a 10-30lb pack on our back moves our CG rearward.
3. it would be nice to distribute the water around our waist, i.e. around the area of our body’s natural unladen CG. this would NOT move our CG while wearing a pack forward, but at least would no longer contribute to the rearward movement of our CG. But as you have already determined empirically (am i recalling this correctly from your earlier posts on the water-belt???), ergonomically this isn’t really practical. it would also unload our shoulder straps somewhat if the water weight was transferred from the pack’s hydration sleeve to our hip/waist-belt, but again ergonomically, this isn’t practical for large volumes of water.
4. we have a heavy moment attached to our back, i.e. our pack.
5. since the wt. of our pack has moved our CG towards our back instead of inside of us, it would be nice to counter-balance this moment by moving the water in front of us, e.g. in a chest pocket, but perhaps again, both ergonomically and from a safety standpoint this might not be a good idea since it might make bending over, climbing with our chest close to the rocks, or seeing our foot placement difficult.
6. so now, the bottom line as i see it is: read Dr. J’s post again for the right answer and forget what you’ve just read in this post.

i’ve only written it to perhaps stimulate someone else, more clever than i, to come up with a better way to carry water. as far as my own ideas, i’m “dry”.

If i want to keep moving w/o having to stop to drink, the bladder is my choice. Also, it’s easier to keep the fluid cooler in the summer & warmer in the winter if it’s insulated inside of the pack. From a drinking effort standpoint, not that “sucking” water through a Platy’s tube is difficult, but it’s obviously easier to take a Platy bottle & tip it upside-down & drink from it, or squirt it into your mouth. I find that i drink more often, every 10-15 minutes a couple or a few swallows, if i’m using a bladder. if using a bottle, i drink less frequently (b/c i have to stop to drink or else i would trip & fall – i can walk & chew gum simultaneously, however), but i drink more than just a couple of swallows at one time.

if MY bladder starts to fill, then I’m drinking too much – this occurs more frequently when using a Platy hyd. bladder. However, if the converse occurs, i have to wonder if i’m gettin’ a bit dehydrated? One thing i like about Platy bottles is that at a glance i can see how much water i have left just in case i need to ration it b/f the next water source is reached.

addtionally, for some individuals tight capsular ligaments of the shoulder joint restrict range of movement and prevent retrieving a water bottle from side mesh pocket. one could, however, use a bungee loop to afix water bottles to the shoulder straps. obviously, a bladder’s tube eliminates this issue. they even have a nice “tube director” that you can bend to place the bite-valve right in front of you mouth – sort of like Bob Dylan playing the harmonica while having both hands occupied playing the guitar. For cold weather i might recommend an insulated tube covering – don’t want the water to freeze if we forget to drink regularly.

GVP carries a bladder&tube in a side pocket of the G5 pack. he mentioned this in an email he sent me a while back. i guess it’s not too difficult to check how much is left in a bladder in the side pocket (or rear pocket of the G6 Whisper pack) as cp. to a bladder in a pack’s int. hyd. sleeve.

do you want to revisit the water-belt idea, or a variation of it?

I want to thank Ryan, Paul, and Glenn for your impute. As far as I am concerned everything is on the table for this question. I remain open to other ideas or comments.

For most of my hiking life I have used some type of water container that attached to something on my hip. For my years as a US Infantryman it was the standard army canteen on my web gear pushed back toward my back. This arrangement made it very easy to reach my canteen and I normally had a canteen on both sides. The canteen cover had 2 clips on it that let you attach it to your web gear anywhere you wanted it. The webbing on the rucksacks were even made so you could attach the canteen cover to it.

The clip weighs 0.70oz so in todays world that clip would be way to heavy to think about using. I expect something like a light weight piece of Grosgrain would work. Since I expect to use one of my external frames on my AT Hike I will look at a possible design change for the “Side Wing” idea I am playing with. The Platypus .5L water bottle weighs about 19.5oz full of water. A pouch of some type should not be to hard to make that would attach to the “Side Wing” things. I could put a pouch on both sides of my frame. I could made them out of some really light material (think Cuben maybe) one for a water bottle and the other maybe for my small digital camera.

Something like this pouch/platypus bottle would put my water bottle on my hip belt and easy to reach. I will work on this idea and see how it turns out.

I’ve seen peoples ideas for a water belt and thought it was a great idea. However unless it is integrated into the pack it could get in the way of a hip belt. Is it possible to make a system that would carry it around the small of the back at about stomach height. I think there it would have even less of a percieved weight since that’s where we would carry extra weight if we were heavier.

any chance of some pics of the Gust compression strap w/ and w/o the bladder?

thanks. understood – for the most part. what i didn’t understand, but it didn’t seem to affect me appreciation for the reply you wrote, was the “Luddite” reference in the subject line.