Packing day!

T-minus one day till blast off! Early tomorrow we drive up to Leavenworth with our friends who scored us the Enchantments permits! So stoked! After 5 days of unchartered nature bliss, we’ll be walking Southbound through Washington for a few hundred miles on our old friend, the Pacific Crest Trail. 

In general, my blog posts can get lengthy but normally involve lots of pictures to look at and I use a lot of simple terms like “trail was awesome!”, “had some awesome trail magic!”, “saw some awesome views!”, “stayed at an awesome campsite!”, you get the picture. Today’s post is a little more technical. I wanted to show you what exactly goes in our packs. You won’t believe how much you can stuff into a backpack. 

In general, you’ll see pictures of everyone’s gear neatly displayed in an OCD fashion without the food and water they’ll be taking on their trip. This is called your base weight. 

On long, continuous trips (where you don’t go home at all for a long time), a baseweight of under 20lbs is highly recommended, while being closer to 10lbs is encouraged as your body will be a lot happier under less pack weight. Being under 10 lbs is considered “Ultralight”. On our upcoming trip Claire and I are carrying what some consider necessities and others consider luxury items (flip flops, pillows, sitting pads, extra warm layers, etc). These are items which through trial and error we’ve learned are worth it for us to take on our trip as to not sacrifice comfort or safety, and still be relatively easy on our bodies over long trips.

At the end of the day, you carry what you want to carry. There’s no rules, and in an ideal world there should be no judgement. Thinking purely statistically though. less weight, happier bodies. In this case, Claire and I have baseweights of around 15 lbs for this trip. On our 2106 PCT trip, we were at about 18 lbs. On my 2018 PCT thru-hike, I started at about 13, and in Northern California and Oregon in the warmer weather I got down to 10.2 lbs. 

Why does any of this matter? Well, you see, depending on how many days are in between your resupply, sometimes your food can almost DOUBLE the weight you’re carrying! If you are inevitably going to have a lot of weight that you will eventually lose (by eating it), than you may as well start out with less weight that you can’t lose (baseweight (gear)).

All of our gear and our food for the Enchantments (5 days and 4 nights) 

This is it.. the whole ciabatta. Nothing too fancy, just some 20° sleeping bags, a 3lb, 3 person tent, sleeping pads, some clothes, a stove, the essential “things” bag with our things, and lots of food! Below is a similar picture, in the same room, with all the same exact stuff!

Crazy huh?!

I am rocking a Circuit ULA on the left (technically a 68 liter capacity) and Claire has a Dueter Vario 45+10 liter on the right. 

Aww, they so cute together!

With all the gear and food for our first leg, and a liter of water each, our packs are coming in right about 28lbs each.. You can see why baseweight is important here. If our packs weighed over 20 without food and water, we’d be closer to 40 lbs here. Luckily, as you are hiking and eating food, and consuming fuel, your pack gets lighter and lighter. Theoretically, when you are about to reach your next resupply, you should be back down close to your baseweight, (minus trash), allowing you to happily galavant and skip your way into town to get that hot meal and a nice cold beer! 

The heaviest our packs had ever been was in 2016, leaving Kennedy Meadows in California and heading into the Sierra. We were weighed down with 9 days of food, a 2 lb bear canister each, a couple liters of water each, and 1 lb microspikes each. Claire was at 45 lbs and I was at 48! Whew, never again!

I guess for some perspective, about 20 years ago, 30 lb baseweights we’re pretty normal and carrying 60 lbs total was by no means unheard of. Lightweight gear and lightweight materials in the backpacking industry have come a long way. That being said, the lightest gear (which we by no means have) also comes with the highest price. Sometimes this makes it inaccessible to many people. Heck, I’ve been working at an outdoor retailer with all the deals for the last couple years and I STILL don’t have it “dialed in” in the eyes of some.

Yes there are some people out there with 5 lb baseweights, and yes they might be perfectly content and warm and safe, but that isn’t a realistic goal for most people. The term “Ultralight” in relation to its true definition (under 10lbs) is in my humble opinion overused. As I mentioned above, I technically only got down to 10.2 lbs on my thruhike. (Gotta have them flip flops) However, many people would’ve considered my gear and pace “ultralight”. 

Don’t ever let anyone make you feel bullied or ashamed with regards to your gear. A, they might be completely wrong in understanding what works for you, and B, it takes time and practice to dial your gear in! Take what you feel like taking (while keeping your body’s well-being in mind). No matter how much you think about and plan out your first pack, you will most likely find a lot of gear that you don’t need or even think of some extra gear you wish you had! Backpacking is different for everyone, and that’s what makes it so damn fun! 

Anyways, I’m ranting, future posts won’t likely be this long, and will have more trail/nature pictures! 

Thanks for reading!