Granite Gear Ultralight Zipsacks can help you stay organized without adding much weight. I recommend buying a few small sacks for each of these categories of items. It makes them more accessible and brings you a little closer to enlightenment. All of these things can be grouped into their own individual package. For example, cookware, clothing, first aid, toiletries, etc. Try grouping together things that you’ll need at the same time. If you see a pile of loose, unrelated items accumulating beside a person’s pack as they search for, say, a rain shell, chances are their pack is pretty darn heavy, too. Disorganization isn’t really a cause of a bloated backpacking kit – it’s more like a symptom. When assembling your backpacking gear, organization is key. Here are eight steps toward reaching that higher level of backcountry minimalist zen … and never eating another tinned sausage.

Mine is consistently around 45 pounds for trips under ten days, but who’s counting? People compare backpack weights the way others compare the sizes of, well, you get the picture.

shedding all those unnecessary items in your pack and, consequently, all that extra weight, is all the rage right now. Really, though – minimalist backpacking, i.e. As a matter of fact, I’ve adopted a philosophy of minimalism when it comes to backpacking in general, not just foodstuffs that resemble bloated worms in a puddle of dirty rainwater. On those subsequent cold, rainy nights in the highlands of Virginia, when I sat down to tuck into a tin of musty, flaccid sausages and saltines, I couldn’t help but wonder where things had gone wrong.įast forward some 15 or so odd years, and now I’m a grown man with plenty of experience and the determination not to repeat such mistakes. In my youthful ignorance, I’d assumed that entrusting him with purchasing and carrying rations for both of us didn’t require any oversight on my end. I would later learn the hard way that the extra weight was due to my dad’s lack of backpacking experience – he’d brought nothing to eat but tins of Vienna sausages, saltines and a few chalky Power Bars. My father, ever the adventurer but never quite the technical backpacker, was joining us.Īt the pre-trip weigh-in, my father hoisted his shiny new pack onto the scale, and a dozen or so mangy outdoorsmen and women watched with horror as the needle dipped to somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 pounds – quite excessive, and even dangerous, for a few days on the AT. I recall one trip on a 50-mile section of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia quite well. Just before each trip, we’d gather at our headquarters and weigh our packs on an old hanging scale, just to be sure we were lean and mean. Backpacking trips required great preparation, and we’d hold meetings to review our packing lists. We’d hike, climb and paddle all over the country, just a rag-tag group of granola eating kids and a few parent chaperones wreaking havoc on the wild places of the world. When I was young, I was part of an adventure outing group in western North Carolina – kind of like Boy Scouts, but less formal, more oriented toward outdoor sports, and void of any religious components.

Backpacking weight tracker