Lightening Your Gear Load

[mkingsle7911]

Hey guys,

I am writing today to see what kinds of tips and tricks that you have used to lighten your load and get you pack weight down. I know all too well how having a rediculously heavy pack can ruin the true peacefulness that backpacking is supposed to offer. I have some stuff up on my blog that is the process that I go through to get stuff culled out of my pack and I am always looking for new ideas to make my load a little lighter. If you have any ideas that you dont see then please let me know. I would like to open the floor to see if anyone has any tips that they can give me below in order to lighten my load.


Thanks,
Mkingsle7911
http://gahammockbros.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/gahammockbros

[HammockGuy66]

Mkingsle7911 and I are working hard to lighten our packs so all comments are welcome.

[Raul Perez]

I have my gear lists in video format in my blog.... I also replied in HF.Net

www.watermonkey.net

If you want I can email you my gear list as it stands today:

Summer 7 lbs base weight

3 season 8.5 lbs base weight

To give you an idea of what I carry.

Hope this helps,

Raul

PS

The video gear list is a tad outdated as I switched my pack to a Zpacks Blast 30 and my hammock is now the traveler with a DIY bugnet which totals 12.5 oz compared to the blackbird which was 18.44 oz

I will update those videos once I get done with my 100 mile hike to see if that set up is ideal for me.

[Del Q]

not too much food and clothes for sure

[QiWiz]

In terms of what has helped me the most, not necessarily in this order:

Cook with alcohol (much less stove weight)
Camel up at water sources and just carry what you need to get to the next water source
Eat out of your pot, not a plastic bag (reduces trash weight, especially over a number of days)
Think of your sleeping bag or quilt as just the last layer you put on at night to sleep (if you are not wearing many if not all of your non-hiking clothes to sleep, you are carrying too many clothes/insulating layers; an oversized bag helps you do this without compressing your loft from inside)
Hike in trail runners (less weight on each foot at each step)
Buy the best down you can afford (it will loft better and be much lighter)
Shelter is a tarp, not a tent
Platypus and gatorade bottles as water containers, no bladder with drinking tube
Small packs make you make tough choices
Limit food - if you are overweight like me, 1.5 pounds a day of dry food is plenty; if you are not overweight, 2 pounds a day should be enough unless it is winter or you are doing more than 15 miles/day.

[HiKen2011]

In terms of what has helped me the most, not necessarily in this order:

Cook with alcohol (much less stove weight)
Camel up at water sources and just carry what you need to get to the next water source
Eat out of your pot, not a plastic bag (reduces trash weight, especially over a number of days)
Think of your sleeping bag or quilt as just the last layer you put on at night to sleep (if you are not wearing many if not all of your non-hiking clothes to sleep, you are carrying too many clothes/insulating layers; an oversized bag helps you do this without compressing your loft from inside)
Hike in trail runners (less weight on each foot at each step)
Buy the best down you can afford (it will loft better and be much lighter)
Shelter is a tarp, not a tent
Platypus and gatorade bottles as water containers, no bladder with drinking tube
Small packs make you make tough choices
Limit food - if you are overweight like me, 1.5 pounds a day of dry food is plenty; if you are not overweight, 2 pounds a day should be enough unless it is winter or you are doing more than 15 miles/day.

Great advice!!!

[russb]

Eliminate from vocabulary "this weighs nothing". Then eliminate from your pack most of those things that were believed to "weigh nothing".

[ScottP]

the lightest things you can carry are experience and knowledge.

also, my motto is 'it takes a lot to kill you.'

QiWiz has good tips. I disagree on the food bit (for long hikes)


try lightening yourselves

check out the ultralight subforum on whiteblaze

[garlic08]

It's more than just how you pack. It's also how you live. Doing less with more can be applied to life in general.

Seeing Lynne Whelden's video, "Lightweight Backpacking Secrets Revealed" available at lwgear.com, was the first step for me. Then I read Ray Jardine's book "Beyond Backpacking". Then I hiked the PCT. It was light weight from then on.

It's not all about buying lighter stuff. For me it was simply facing my fears and packing less stuff. Both the guys above, Lynne Whelden and Ray Jardine, make their own gear and spend very little money on their very light loads. In fact, they're both anti-commercialists as far as I can tell.

The trick that finally got me below the ten pound threshold was going stoveless. No so much the stove weight itself, but the half pound or so plus the lower bulk allowed me to finally use a frameless silnylon pack which saved a full pound. And as I spend less time cooking and more time hiking, I started making longer days so fewer days between resupplies, so I carried less food so the pack got even lighter, etc.

I've sort of bottomed out at an eight pound base weight and I'm real happy with that. I realized that when I took off my jacket and loaded in the pack without ever breaking stride.

[rocketsocks]

It's more than just how you pack. It's also how you live. Doing less with more can be applied to life in general.

Seeing Lynne Whelden's video, "Lightweight Backpacking Secrets Revealed" available at lwgear.com, was the first step for me. Then I read Ray Jardine's book "Beyond Backpacking". Then I hiked the PCT. It was light weight from then on.

It's not all about buying lighter stuff. For me it was simply facing my fears and packing less stuff. Both the guys above, Lynne Whelden and Ray Jardine, make their own gear and spend very little money on their very light loads. In fact, they're both anti-commercialists as far as I can tell.

The trick that finally got me below the ten pound threshold was going stoveless. No so much the stove weight itself, but the half pound or so plus the lower bulk allowed me to finally use a frameless silnylon pack which saved a full pound. And as I spend less time cooking and more time hiking, I started making longer days so fewer days between resupplies, so I carried less food so the pack got even lighter, etc.

I've sort of bottomed out at an eight pound base weight and I'm real happy with that. I realized that when I took off my jacket and loaded in the pack without ever breaking stride.

That is awesome,and I hope to get there one day too.8lbs.geez

[moocow]

I realized that when I took off my jacket and loaded in the pack without ever breaking stride.

wow! can i fantasize over that?

i'm trying my hardest to get my loaded pack weight under 25. it seems like i have the bare minimum of what recommended complete pack lists have and sometimes less, but i still can't get close to ultralight weight.

[ScottS]

I've seen people who carry as much water as I have gear.
Don't carry water unless you're in an area that it is absolutely necessary. 2-8lbs cut right there.

[swjohnsey]

You don't have to skimp to get pretty light. I have an internal frame pack, tent with bug protection, stove and am still at 9' 7" without fuel, food and water.

[bigcranky]

Get a small kitchen scale that weighs in tenths of an ounce. Weigh *everything.* Create a gear list on a spreadsheet, and add up the weight of everything in your pack (and on your back.) You may be very surprised at the weight of some individual items that, as russb says above, you think "weigh nothing."

[garlic08]

Ditto on the value of knowing what every single item weighs.

I heard someone say that the typical backpack has over 60 items in it. Just look at some of the gear lists that get posted on this site. If you took one ounce off each item, that's five pounds. As an example, I weighed two hats that seemed identical to me--same weight, same warmth used interchangeably. On an accurate kitchen scale, I found out that one weighed 4 oz, the other weighed 2 oz. Slender people like me can trim off extra pack webbing and save another ounce or two. On items like that, I easily saved pounds at no additional cost.

But my first goal was to simply reduce the number of items--my pack list now has fewer than 30 line items. The best and cheapest weight savings is facing a particular fear or worry and realizing you might not need things like a large multitool, extra batteries, a book, a GPS, a change of clothing, an expedition first aid kit, a signal mirror, a sat phone....

[garlic08]

Correction on the math above. 60 oz is not five pounds. Oops.

[garlic08]

...it seems like i have the bare minimum of what recommended complete pack lists have and sometimes less, but i still can't get close to ultralight weight.

You might have to go beyond the "recommended complete pack lists". Ray Jardine does that, thus the title of his book "Beyond Backpacking". I thought it was whacko when I first read it, and still don't agree with everything in it (I don't like corn pasta and I like down), but there are some real nuggets there. I would not made a PCT thru (my first long hike) without it.

[Ktaadn]

Eliminate from vocabulary "this weighs nothing". Then eliminate from your pack most of those things that were believed to "weigh nothing".

This is a pet peeve of mine. Everything certainly weighs something.

[Nick&Bruce]

Everything weighs something.

I've been using this site to help me track what kind of impact that has on my total: http://www.geargrams.com/

I'm new to backpacking but starting a NOBO thru this April and thanks to some very helpful advice from some friends who have attempted thrus in the past I've been pointed in the right direction on gear selection criteria so I feel like I've had a leg up over other newbies.

When selecting gear here are the questions I ask myself:
1. Do I need it?
2a. If not, will having it make an appreciable positive impact on my hiking experience?
2b. Will leaving it home/not buying it make an appreciable positive impact on my hiking experience?
3. Whats the lightest one I can afford if I squeeze my pennies and eat nothing but ramen from GA to ME?

Of course I also look at gear reviews to make sure the equipment I'm shopping for will serve me well along the way. If it doesn't get the job done then its just dead weight.

Also when considering whether or not you'll need a piece of clothing I think it's important to consider whether you can use your other clothes as part of a layering system and leave that extra bit at home. You probably wont need more than thermals and convertible pants or even just wind pants when hiking so leave the down and rain pants at home. When you get to camp and aren't moving just climb into your sleeping bag...

Which reminds me of something I read here:
The more you carry, the more you enjoy camping. The less you carry, the more you enjoy hiking.

That being said, he're my current list minus a few odds and ends I still need to pick up: http://www.geargrams.com/list?id=6505

Keep in mind that some of the gear choices were made because I am hiking with my dog. (2 person tent, 2 sleeping pads, pack rated as comfortable for 35lbs in case I have to give him a break and carry his food etc...)

[kevperro]

Leave stuff at home and hike enough to learn what you are willing to carry. Evaluate your packing list after every trip. I'm not UL because there are certain things I'm willing to carry for the additional comfort they provide. Where you find that line depends on how/where you hike so there is no one correct UL weight. (I'm at 12.5lbs with bear canister)