Last year, I finished the season with a respectable base weight of around 16 pounds. While discussing our upcoming Pacific Crest Trail section hike, I proudly mentioned this to Paul. "Wow," he said, "that's a pretty heavy base weight." Ouch, there goes my ego!I've recently worked a lot of overtime, so I have a bit of extra spending money. Well, I did, until 15 minutes after Paul's comment. I've ordered a new pack (Mountain Laurel Super Prophet), water bladder (Platypus Big Zip 1.8L), mattress (Gossamer Gear NightLight), Wind Jacket (GoLite Ether), and a few other bits & pieces. I've also tweaked some of my existing gear, including streamlining my first aid kit, repackaging hygiene items, and eliminating items unnecessary for the specific locale.
The verdict? My base weight is under 10 pounds! I've posted a spreadsheet, please feel free to take a look and offer any suggestions. I plan to review all of the new gear, and detail the optimization steps to get to this weight.
3 comments:
Rats, the link to your spreadsheet doesn't work.
Whoops, fixed that now!
Matt,
Your gear list looks great. I have one suggestion. Have you ever considered using a Heineken beer can as a cook pot? They weight 1oz with the lid. My kit weighs 4.7 oz and includes the pot, lid, pot stand, stove, lip guard, windscreen, cozie, measuring cup, lighter & spoon. If you want to get a sense of what this looks like www.minibulldesign.com has something similar. Regards,
Jeff
California
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