is there anyone out there that doesnt care about super light hiking?

[Del Q]

UL - Ultra Light is, to me, a separate class in the hobby we call backpacking

From my personal experience, at or under 30 lbs all-in (food & water) is a great target / level for 98% of all hikers.

yes, takes some money and some planning.

As of right now, at 54 years old there are certain "comfort" levels I am willing to carry, including:

Whiskey or whatever "booze" I choose to carry, I am a section hiker, at the end of the day, nothing washes my single serve SPAM down like some good stuff from the liquor store.

Ditto waterproof bags and separate bags for all of my gear. I like to be organized in life & on the trail, same thing applies to keep my gear DRY

Clothes - I used to carry extra, no more. Lighter, thinner, layers, works for me

Gear - the newer gear does cost money, this is MY hobby, saving up for new gear also works for me. Less is more.

No Cook - again, as a section hiker I am fine with not having any warm food for 10-14 days. eat in town, splurge in the off hiking season. Learned no cook mode from serious thru hikers like Trek and Eric D. If it works for them it defintely works for Del Q

At 220lbs and dropping, a 30 lb pack is X % of my body weight

Looking at Spring 2014 hike, hope to be closing in on 210 lbs...............started this journey 245lbs + body weight and 40+ lb packs.

UL is a matter of perspectivem age and time

[Wise Old Owl]

Del- Q there is enough there on No Cook to start a new thread if you like.

[Malto]

I don't care about "super" lite hiking. The super lite hiking backpack did not make it to neels gap with out repairs. The super lite tent got wet. The super lite sleeping I will never part with it performed good. The alcohol stove I would not bring until May, it is just to slow for cold weather hiking (march and april) days start out short with little hiking time, 10 min wait for dinner is just to long. I refuse to eat remain noodles every day. I want better food and it has weight. I love this one, the tarp, in heavy rain the water ran down the mountain at least 1 to 2 inches deep and I got soaked. the wind fluttered the tarp so bad one night the noise keep me up all night. Snow falls sideways and I was covered under the tarp. It takes lots of stakes and cord to get a good solid tarp set. OH and in the summer I woke up with bugs up my nose and all over my face.

With all due respect, skill and experience don't weigh an ounce. Sounds like your quest for lightening your load outpaced your experience and skill level.

[Wise Old Owl]

Good pick up Malto - 1234 if an alcohol stove is good enough for the mushers at the Iditerod... well fill in the rest.

Isn't a tarp pitched with a down side on the wind? Could it be folded under you depending how big it is?

I expect to get wet, cold, & hungry - its all part of being outside and being prepared.


FYI never had Remain Noodles is that a Zombie Apocalypse food?

[squeezebox]

Seems as though trail comfort is opposite ends of the pendulem to camp comfort. You have to decide how much you can do without to be trail comfortable, tarp no tent etc. And you need to decide how much you're willing to carry to be camp comfortable. better food, better stove, bigger better tent, etc. So what are you comfortable with ?

[Wise Old Owl]

You have that right - its learning to use items that have dual use and others that you are willing to do without.

[Gonecampn]

For myself, the limit is 25lbs. I weigh 107 - 110 pds. Anything over that and I feel it in my knees. I really don't hurt for anything on the trail though. I learned the hard way about the dry bags! Definitely a must have!

[Leanthree]

Some of it is that the technology has come a long enough way that you can carry the same functionality for 10-15 lbs less buying the gear today vs 10 years ago for the same inflation-adjusted price.

[Gray Blazer]

I'll never be a real hiker cuz that UL stuff is expensive. I have managed over the years to get the wt down to 30 lbs with 4 days of food and I carry a lot of water ( I don't know why. There are plenty of good springs on the AT) and I stick small water bottles in all the extra spaces in my External 70's Jansport.

[Pedaling Fool]

Weight training is the best way to fight the degrading force, i.e. gravity. Simply reducing pack weight is a shortsighted attempt to fight gravity; you must fight gravity with gravity.

What do you think is the average pack weight of all the decrepit old people walking around?

[kayak karl]

What do you think is the average pack weight of all the decrepit old people walking around?

This is the second thread you have used "decrepit" to describe old people. do you have a problem with older people on the trail??

[garlic08]

I'll beat Mags to it--you should read the essay he wrote. HMHDI!

Frankly I care not what other people carry. But if someone (like me ten years ago) reaches their later years and can no longer carry the load, and is interested in getting back on the trail and is willing to listen to new ideas, I'll expound at length about how to lighten the load and have more fun doing it. I think that's why you see a lot of responses here about UL ideas, and it may seem disproportional--the hikers who do it are really excited about it.

[Bronk]

On my last hike I carried a gallon of water, 2 bottles of wine, a couple pounds of potatoes, steak, etc, etc. There's nothing wrong with doing stuff like that. You're the one that's got to carry it. Some people will probably make snide remarks about the weight you carry...single those people out when you say things like "man this steak is good" or "this sleeping pad is really soft" or "I love how spacious my tent is, makes rainy days like this so much more comfortable." Having said that, on long hikes if you've got something in your pack and you haven't used it for over a week, then why are you carrying it? And I ask this as someone who has carried loads of crap I didn't need for hundreds of miles but eventually decided to get rid of everything but the basics...by the end of my thruhike attempt the only thing I was willing to splurge on weight wise was food, but I still had my 5 and a half pound tent and a $10 Walmart sleeping bag that probably weighed 5 pounds as well because that's what I had and I wasn't at the point where I was going to spend piles of money to drop that weight...but I didn't have much else in my pack because I had established a personal rule that if I hadn't used it in a week I got rid of it. I personally wouldn't spend hundreds of extra dollars on ultralight equipment, but as equipment is replaced and I have to buy new stuff, how much it weighs is definitely a factor in choosing that new equipment...I bought a 2 pound sleeping bag for $40 on sale. I wouldn't have paid $200 for it, and if the one I had was still serviceable I wouldn't have even spent the $40, but because I needed a new one and it was reasonably priced, I was excited to get a 2 pound bag.

[Tuckahoe]

People love to bash UL... But I don't see anyone carrying bricks either. At some point we can all agree that less weight is better, it's just a matter of opinion when that point is.

This post sums up the topic pretty well.

[Wise Old Owl]

Weight training is the best way to fight the degrading force, i.e. gravity. Simply reducing pack weight is a shortsighted attempt to fight gravity; you must fight gravity with gravity.

What do you think is the average pack weight of all the decrepit old people walking around?

do-not-resent-growing-old-1.jpg

..............................................nuf said.

[Pedaling Fool]

What do you think is the average pack weight of all the decrepit old people walking around?

do you have a problem with older people on the trail??

My remark wasn't about old people on the trails. It was about all the decrepit (not deragatory; just fact-based description) old people that are seen all around us in normal life settings. What is their average pack weight?

The point being that many of them have probably never backpack. You can look up the % of Americans that run, but if you do a google search of the % of Americans that hike, all you'll get are links about tax hikes.

Worrying about an extra 10lbs on one's back, let alone an extra 10 ounces, is missing the point. But that's what you get when you're obsessed, you miss the point.

[Pedaling Fool]

do-not-resent-growing-old-1.jpg

..............................................nuf said.

I don't resent growing old; I welcome it


I'm so misunderstood

[Odd Man Out]

do-not-resent-growing-old-1.jpg

..............................................nuf said.

Or as George Burns put it when asked what it's like to live to be 90 years old:
"Beats the alternative"

[Coffee]

With a 13-15 pound base weight, I am not close to being "ultra light", but my pack weight is still among the lightest of the backpackers I've encountered this year on sections of the AT, the Grand Canyon, and on a JMT thru hike. I only recall one true "ultra light" backpacker - he was a (very fast) PCT SOBO thru hiker I met in Tuolumne Meadows. Most hikers on all trails I've been on this year have had traditional gear and heavier packs and seem to get along fairly well regardless. I think that it becomes much more important on a fast thru hike of the long trails like the AT, PCT, and CDT. Based on my typical pace and intended timeframe for my PCT thru hike in 2015, my assumption is that I'll be spending an average of 10-12 hours per day hiking and very little time awake in camp so "trail comfort" will be paramount. But fast thru hiking seems to me to be a niche activity compared to more typical weekend backpacking - perhaps spending 6 hours/day on trail and lots of time awake in camp and that would logically call for different choices IMO...

[Wise Old Owl]

celtic-owl.jpgMe too.