Shaving Weight
I should start out by saying I’m probably not a good person to be writing on this subject. Anyone who has been outdoors with me regularly has seen that my pack tends to be one of the heavier ones amongst the group, chock full of “what if” gear that’s rarely used and excess quantities of essentials to increase the safety-margin of myself and the group if anything keeps us out longer than expected. Still, somehow I still get a lot of people asking me for tips on how they can shave some weight off their pack, so I’ll at least share a few things that have helped me.
Question Everything
For each item, ask: Do you need that on this trip? I mean truly need, in that the trip couldn’t be a success without it? Why do you need it? I’m definitely not saying you should pare your pack down to only those items, but it is an interesting question to think about. You may realize a few things that you thought were necessities are really luxuries, and nothing lightens a pack as effectively as simply bringing less. Or, thinking exactly the opposite of this principle: maybe getting turned around one time in five because you didn’t have crampons gives you more angst than carrying crampons all the time and not needing them 4 out of 5 times, so it maximizes your happiness to bring them anyway. (That’s how my mind works.) Either way, there are a few things that are always exempt from this line of questioning: NEVER leave out your headlamp, it is the most important one of the 10 essentials, and always make sure you’re still adequately prepared to handle an accident or injury, including first aid, and warm enough gear to be stationary for hours with an incapacitated person.
Going “Fast” Allows Going “Light”
We’ve all heard the alpine mantras of “Speed is safety.” and “Go fast and light.” However, going light is in no way a guarantee that you will go fast. Going light by bringing less gear often means shrinking the margins of what you can afford to have go wrong. What you need to do is first be able to be confident you can go fast: get yourself in great physical shape, become really efficient on technical terrain thanks to lots of experience, and organize trips were you only go with people who are similarly as strong. Then, and only then, can you start cutting back the amount of time you budget for your climb, and your pack will lighten as a result. The biggest example of this is that obviously your pack becomes a whole lot lighter if you are confident you can do a route in a single day instead of as an overnight.
“Fast” Is More Important Than “Light”
Sometimes, carrying a little more weight can actually allow you to go faster. I’m not saying you have to follow any of these examples, but it’s just something to think about, and make sure your quest to lighten your load doesn’t turn you into a liability for the rest of your team. For example: I choose packs that have a few separate zippered pockets on the outside. Those extra zippers and pockets make my pack a few ounces heavier than other more minimalist pack designs. However, when I need to grab a hat, or gloves, or a snack, or my headlamp; I know exactly which zipper to open to find that item right on top, and I can grab it quicker during a break than someone who’s fishing around in their one-giant-compartment pack. Or as another example: I’ll often start out with three liters of water. I could have started out with just one, and expected to fill up very soon, but then there’d be extra time taken to treat water, adding two breaks I wouldn’t have taken anyways, and the ability to keep moving makes me faster, even if my pack is a bit heavier as a result.
Weigh Everything
Get a postage scale or kitchen scale that can weigh items up to 2 pounds, and tell you their weight to the tenth of an ounce. Create a spreadsheet so you can write down the weights you learn as you go, and then start going through every piece of gear you bring one by one. Seriously, sit down and do the work. Some of the weights may surprise you. Just by knowing how much each thing weighs individually, it’s likely you’ll come up with a few ideas to lighten things that never would have occurred to you before. Some examples:
The Big Three
This tends to be the first thing talked about in any article about going lighter, so I might as well echo it. Think about the big three, the three pieces of your gear that all tend to weigh multiple pounds in a world were we scrutinize ounces. Your tent, your sleeping bag, and you backpack. If you are willing to shell out the big bucks, replacing any one of those items with a lighter version is probably the quickest way to knock a pound off of your back. Get a lighter tent (Big Agnes Fly Creek Platinum, perhaps,) or an ultralight bivy bag, or go even further and learn to tarp-camp. Get an expensive 900-fill down sleeping bag from Feathered Friends or Western Mountaineering, and/or opt for a bag with a less warm temperature rating to bring at times when you’re sure that’ll be enough. As for the backpack, it might be better to wait and make that one of the last weight-saving purchases you make. If you wait to replace your backpack until you’ve shaved weight in tons of other areas, then you can probably get away with a smaller and less-padded pack, both of which will dramatically contribute to weight savings you can achieve if and when you do replace your pack.
Go Straight For The Best
If you’re going to replace an existing piece of your gear with a lighter version, it is going to be expensive. The best way to limit the damage to your bank account is just not do it, keep using the gear you’ve got without purchasing a lighter version. The second best way is to make one single definitive purchase, and leave no room for further temptation. Go straight for the best option that money can buy for you, no matter how expensive, or don’t buy it at all. Of course, draw the line where the gear still meets your needs. If you buy something that is lighter that what you have but not the lightest that’s out there that could have worked for you, sooner or later you’ll start feeling that same temptation to replace that gear with the even lighter option. Two or three purchases that still end with you buying the lightest possible option is not cheaper than just buying the lightest possible option in the first place. Make sure you research your options thoroughly, including comparing gear made by less-mainstream manufacturers (like Cilogear, Z-Packs, and Hyperlite Mountain Gear) so you don’t find out after a purchase that a lighter version you’d never heard of existed out there the whole time.
Weigh Your Food
It probably doesn’t matter on trips that are one or two days long, but when I start preparing for a trip that’s three days or longer, I pay close attention to the weight of my food. Create another spreadsheet just for your food. Figure out the calories per ounce of every type of food you’re brining. Anything over 100 calories per ounce is good. You can keep the average of all your food high by throwing in a little of things that are below that (like apricots, 70 calories per ounce) and a lot of things that are above that (like pecans, 196 calories per ounce.) Through experimentation and record keeping, I’ve found that on long trips I eat no more than 2900 calories per day, so for some carefully packed days I have just 1.5 pounds of food per day.
Question Everything
For each item, ask: Do you need that on this trip? I mean truly need, in that the trip couldn’t be a success without it? Why do you need it? I’m definitely not saying you should pare your pack down to only those items, but it is an interesting question to think about. You may realize a few things that you thought were necessities are really luxuries, and nothing lightens a pack as effectively as simply bringing less. Or, thinking exactly the opposite of this principle: maybe getting turned around one time in five because you didn’t have crampons gives you more angst than carrying crampons all the time and not needing them 4 out of 5 times, so it maximizes your happiness to bring them anyway. (That’s how my mind works.) Either way, there are a few things that are always exempt from this line of questioning: NEVER leave out your headlamp, it is the most important one of the 10 essentials, and always make sure you’re still adequately prepared to handle an accident or injury, including first aid, and warm enough gear to be stationary for hours with an incapacitated person.
Going “Fast” Allows Going “Light”
We’ve all heard the alpine mantras of “Speed is safety.” and “Go fast and light.” However, going light is in no way a guarantee that you will go fast. Going light by bringing less gear often means shrinking the margins of what you can afford to have go wrong. What you need to do is first be able to be confident you can go fast: get yourself in great physical shape, become really efficient on technical terrain thanks to lots of experience, and organize trips were you only go with people who are similarly as strong. Then, and only then, can you start cutting back the amount of time you budget for your climb, and your pack will lighten as a result. The biggest example of this is that obviously your pack becomes a whole lot lighter if you are confident you can do a route in a single day instead of as an overnight.
“Fast” Is More Important Than “Light”
Sometimes, carrying a little more weight can actually allow you to go faster. I’m not saying you have to follow any of these examples, but it’s just something to think about, and make sure your quest to lighten your load doesn’t turn you into a liability for the rest of your team. For example: I choose packs that have a few separate zippered pockets on the outside. Those extra zippers and pockets make my pack a few ounces heavier than other more minimalist pack designs. However, when I need to grab a hat, or gloves, or a snack, or my headlamp; I know exactly which zipper to open to find that item right on top, and I can grab it quicker during a break than someone who’s fishing around in their one-giant-compartment pack. Or as another example: I’ll often start out with three liters of water. I could have started out with just one, and expected to fill up very soon, but then there’d be extra time taken to treat water, adding two breaks I wouldn’t have taken anyways, and the ability to keep moving makes me faster, even if my pack is a bit heavier as a result.
Weigh Everything
Get a postage scale or kitchen scale that can weigh items up to 2 pounds, and tell you their weight to the tenth of an ounce. Create a spreadsheet so you can write down the weights you learn as you go, and then start going through every piece of gear you bring one by one. Seriously, sit down and do the work. Some of the weights may surprise you. Just by knowing how much each thing weighs individually, it’s likely you’ll come up with a few ideas to lighten things that never would have occurred to you before. Some examples:
- replacing two 6 oz Nalgene water bottles with two 1 oz flexible bladder-style water bottles quickly shaved 10 oz
- replacing the 5 oz dry sack I stuffed my sleeping bag in with a 1 oz cuben fiber stuff sack shaved another 4 oz
- replacing my 5 oz Black Diamond crampon bag with a simple 2 oz tupperware shaved another 3 oz
- leaving the ice axe point protectors in the car at the trailhead rather than carrying them saved another 2 oz
The Big Three
This tends to be the first thing talked about in any article about going lighter, so I might as well echo it. Think about the big three, the three pieces of your gear that all tend to weigh multiple pounds in a world were we scrutinize ounces. Your tent, your sleeping bag, and you backpack. If you are willing to shell out the big bucks, replacing any one of those items with a lighter version is probably the quickest way to knock a pound off of your back. Get a lighter tent (Big Agnes Fly Creek Platinum, perhaps,) or an ultralight bivy bag, or go even further and learn to tarp-camp. Get an expensive 900-fill down sleeping bag from Feathered Friends or Western Mountaineering, and/or opt for a bag with a less warm temperature rating to bring at times when you’re sure that’ll be enough. As for the backpack, it might be better to wait and make that one of the last weight-saving purchases you make. If you wait to replace your backpack until you’ve shaved weight in tons of other areas, then you can probably get away with a smaller and less-padded pack, both of which will dramatically contribute to weight savings you can achieve if and when you do replace your pack.
Go Straight For The Best
If you’re going to replace an existing piece of your gear with a lighter version, it is going to be expensive. The best way to limit the damage to your bank account is just not do it, keep using the gear you’ve got without purchasing a lighter version. The second best way is to make one single definitive purchase, and leave no room for further temptation. Go straight for the best option that money can buy for you, no matter how expensive, or don’t buy it at all. Of course, draw the line where the gear still meets your needs. If you buy something that is lighter that what you have but not the lightest that’s out there that could have worked for you, sooner or later you’ll start feeling that same temptation to replace that gear with the even lighter option. Two or three purchases that still end with you buying the lightest possible option is not cheaper than just buying the lightest possible option in the first place. Make sure you research your options thoroughly, including comparing gear made by less-mainstream manufacturers (like Cilogear, Z-Packs, and Hyperlite Mountain Gear) so you don’t find out after a purchase that a lighter version you’d never heard of existed out there the whole time.
Weigh Your Food
It probably doesn’t matter on trips that are one or two days long, but when I start preparing for a trip that’s three days or longer, I pay close attention to the weight of my food. Create another spreadsheet just for your food. Figure out the calories per ounce of every type of food you’re brining. Anything over 100 calories per ounce is good. You can keep the average of all your food high by throwing in a little of things that are below that (like apricots, 70 calories per ounce) and a lot of things that are above that (like pecans, 196 calories per ounce.) Through experimentation and record keeping, I’ve found that on long trips I eat no more than 2900 calories per day, so for some carefully packed days I have just 1.5 pounds of food per day.
Top picture: Jarred scrambling high on Redoubt, a destination where packing light really matters.