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Lightweight Hiking "But be shod with sandals; and not put on two coats." Mark 6:9
To me the term 'lightweight hiking' is nothing more than that...a term. Where does lightweight hiking end and heavyweight hiking begin? Where does lightweight hiking end and ultra-light hiking start? Ah, bugger the labels! It's all relative to how you personally want to do it. As with all of life, take what works for you and leave the rest, but above all be a free thinker and forge your own way. The basic tenants of lightweight hiking are to find the lightest version of a certain piece of equipment. By doing this the load you are required to carry will be much lighter as well as smaller giving much greater comfort and less effort. How far one carries this concept is a personal thing. Some carry 8 LB. packs from Mexico to Canada, while some carry 30 LB. for a weekend. I find myself right in the middle of the two extremes. I remember the first time I was exposed to the idea of lightweight hiking. It was an 1993 article in Backpacker Magazine about a guy who lightened his load to 16 LB. for a four day trip. He explained what he took and what he left behind, how he found the lighter gear he took and how the lighter loads effect his hiking style and enjoyment. The system he described seemed so simple yet so intriguing at the same time. The seeds were planted in my mind. Then I read another article in Backpacker about a guy named Ray Jardine. What a radical! This guy was over the top! I bought the second edition of his book "The PCT Hikers Handbook" and was blown away by the whole system from the first page to the last. Slowly I began trying Ray's techniques on my own hikes and found what worked and what didn't work. Some of the things Ray suggested just didn't apply to my weekend warrior trips. Since the rest of the hiking world has heard all about lightweight hiking I have seen those who embrace the style, and those who scorn it. No matter what you think about, you do have to admit there are some great benefits to it. The one single thing I hear the most from opponents to lightweight hiking is, "I don't see why you want to race through the woods? You end up missing everything!", this couldn't be farther from the truth. Lighter loads do not mean faster pace. It just means that you can keep the same pace for longer periods of time which lend itself to higher miles in a day...or not. You choose. How do I do it? Most people think that beginning lightweight hiking is some big endeavor that begins with a huge change in styles (and a huge cost). Not true. All you have to do is find lightweight alternatives to the equipment that you already have. It's a progression. Buy or make a piece of gear every once in a while and use it to see how it works for you. Don't do it all at one time. How do you do it? Just lighten the load. As I learned from Charles Lindsey at his site The Lightweight Backpacker the best place to save weight is the backpack, tent and sleeping bag. The rule of thumb is to buy a pack under 3 lb., a tent under 4. lb., and a sleeping bag under 3 lb. These are the biggest factors to your gear. Everything else is an ounce here and an ounce there, trimming this and leaving that. If you can achieve this rule of thumb you are well on your way to lightening the load. Heck, this simple reduction alone could be all you need to achieve your optimum goal weight. Again, think freely and choose for yourself. Isn't it Expensive? Not if you don't want it to be. It can be about as expensive as you want it to be. Because you will more than likely be buying gear as you go you can hold out for the good deals on light gear rather than going and outfitting yourself all at once for about $1100. There are a great deal of discount gear sellers on the web and through mail order. I have put a lot of my favorites on the links page. When I finally got my load down to 20 lb. I had done it for around $400. Not bad! Another alternative to buying gear is making it yourself. It really isn't as hard as you may think. I learned the basic skills and have made a few things that turned out to be better then manufactured things because I made them specific to my needs, not what the manufacturer thinks I need. There is more on this in the gear section under homemade gear. So that's it in a nutshell! I could go farther into the anal things of lightweight hiking but as I said before this isn't so much an informational site as it is a personal web site of what I use. I'll leave that to the others...which by the way are found on the links page. |
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