Gear List

Can't believe I haven't posted this yet, but below is my current gear list.  Small items change now and then, but the biggies are mostly in place barring some unplanned nonsense.

Firstly, some definitions:
Base weight:  the weight of everything in/on the backpack, including the backpack
Pack weight:  the base weight plus consumables (food and water)
Skin out weight:  the pack weight plus everything you wear and carry while hiking (clothing, trekking poles, etc.)

I've got my base weight down to about 15+ pounds, including camp stuff, hydration system,  clothing carried, electronics, etc.  I am pleased with that.

Food will add about 1.75 pounds per day, give or take. The longest distances between resupply points have me carrying five days worth of food at a time.  That amount will add about nine pounds on the first day of those stretches with the weight reducing as the days pass and the food gets eaten.  The shortest stretch is two days between resupply.  (In the next blog post or two I will lay out the distances I need to cover each day and the distances between resupply points.)

Weighing 2.2 pounds per liter, water is by far the heaviest physical burden to bear while hiking.  A conservative water usage estimate is about one liter for every five miles walked.  If the sun is an extra hot whore on a given day I might carry a little more. Water usage is something I can only really figure out while underway since walking down a mountain for five miles is a much different beast than walking five miles up a mountain.

The amount of water carried also depends on the distance to the next water supply.  To keep weight to a minimum, I will be carrying as little water as possible between sources with just a little extra for safety. I will camp near water when possible so I can make a short trip from my campsite to fill up water containers for cooking purposes.  If I'm not camping at a site with water then I will top off as close to the site as possible, reducing my water carrying time. The Colorado Trail Data Book--which will be my only reference material while hiking the trail--does a really nice job of noting all the reliable and unreliable sources of water, including lakes, rivers, creeks and even a spigot now and then. The unreliable sources are often a quotient of the amount of snowfall we had leading up to summer.  

For the sake of determining a final pack weight average, I budget food and water for three days at  8.5 pounds giving me a pack weight of 24 pounds.  Not too bad.  Average pack weights tend to be in the 25-30 pound range (when not hiking in winter, which would add a few pounds for warm clothing, thicker sleeping bag, etc.) so I'm happily on the low end of the spectrum. It took a lot of retooling and more money than I'd like to admit to get down to 24, but on trail I'll probably consider that the best money I ever spent.  What's a few hundred bucks when it comes to avoiding excessive pain?

As for my skin out weight:  Don't know don't care.  All the items I'm wearing are in line with the other pieces of gear I'm taking as far as weight and durability go so it's fine whatever it is.  And since I'm not carrying that weight on my back I won't suffer it the same way. Socks and skivvies and sunglasses have weight, obviously, but when you're wearing them you don't feel it the same way as if you were carrying them.