Time was, a 5-lb nylon tent with poles, stakes, and a rainfly was looked on as lightweight, and indeed, it doesn't weigh very much by itself. As much as a sack of flour from the grocery store. But imagine loading that 5-lb tent along with a 4-lb sleeping bag into a frame pack that itself weighs 5lbs. You've gone from a bag of flour to a bag of Iams cat kibbles--what? this is how I measure!--and you haven't even packed your raincoat, never mind any food or water. It adds up quick. For a weekend camping trip in the backcountry, the weight doesn't matter too much. Shlepping a big load is an inconvenience, but not a hazard--you park your car and take all day to trudge ten miles to a likely campsite, where you set down your 40-lb pack, wipe your brow, and start cooking hot dogs. No problem! But for a thru-hiker, someone walking 8-12 hours every day, that kind of cross is frankly unhealthy to bear for 2663 miles---not to mention slooow.
Enter Ray Jardine. The old boy had some very good ideas about long-distance hiking, many of which were quite shocking to conventional backpackers in the early 90s--like wearing plain running shoes, instead of sturdy, military-style leather boots. The nerve! Sneakers weigh less, dry faster, and require no breaking in--meaning they're much kinder to your feet. Jardine found he didn't need the questionable "support" offered by those cumbersome, abrasive boots, either, once he'd applied the same theory to other pieces of equipment, because he was carrying a much lighter pack. Essentially, at some point he decided that he wasn't hiking in order to camp, he camped in order to hike, and this changed his approach to the equipment. He endorsed making one's own gear from scratch, the better to understand it and tailor it to one's needs. His philosophies changed the paradigm, spawning a whole style of backpacking now contentiously known as ultralight.
Jardine's ultralight philosophy has grown sufficiently in popularity that a number of "cottage industry" outfitters now make gear specifically designed for the purpose of long-distance hiking. You don't have to sew your own pack in order to get one that weighs less than five pounds anymore--although you might save some cash, as well as weight, if you elect to make your own gear, because some of the too-light-to-be-true stuff is awfully pricey. (There are status-seekers in every crowd.) Long-distance hikers shop with a careful eye towards balancing weights and dollar amounts. This is why they spend so much time poring over gear specs, scrutinizing the fine print, and arguing with strangers in public forums. Does the 25 ounces include the tent stakes? How many folk actually take those sleeping bags out into 20-degree weather to determine the temperature rating? Are they publishing the weight of the small-size rain jacket, or the large? What an outfitter chooses to call "ultralight" may or may not weigh less than the complete works of Shakespeare--on the other hand, something "ultralight" may or may not withstand the abuse of a 2600-mile trek. And of course, over time the definition has both narrowed and expanded, such that now we have "traditional," "lightweight," "ultralight," and "super-ultralite" designations, plus varying numerical quantifications for each, depending on who you ask. One of the most efficient ways to get a roomful of hikers worked up is to wonder aloud what ultralight means.
Jardine's a nut, no question, and I find it helpful to ingest his theories with a grain of salt, just as one would read the work of any prophet---I'm fond of hot drinks, for instance, and I wouldn't dream of thru-hiking the PCT without a way to heat water and cook food (campfires are forbidden in many areas). But as someone who moves often and aspires to exercise an "ultralight" lifestyle, I appreciate a lot of the principles behind his fanaticism. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Extra pockets on your backpack are like extra rooms in your house: you WILL fill them. Find two uses of all of your equipment. Shop used. Repurpose ordinary objects. Get as much information as possible beforehand so as to make informed choices and avoid packing anything "just in case." Above all, be creative! You're carrying your brain around anyway, so might as well put it to work.
Relatedly, some of the cuts in pack-weight are only feasible when one possesses the knowledge and experience to implement them--and I am not an experienced backpacker. I'll learn fast, I have no doubt, but right now it's all conjecture. It's good to have Paul and Matt as sounding boards.
The flip side of inexperience, however, is that I own virtually no gear. Paul's in the tricky position of owning packs and garments suitable for mountaineering, and having to decide whether they'll work for a long-distance hike, or if he ought to make the [not insignificant] investment in lighter gear. There's no pondering whether my existing "gear" will do the trick--it won't. What gear? My pack? A freebie from the car insurance company in Germany. It's fun to look at, with all the brightly-colored patches I scavenged off of Girl Scout uniforms, but by itself it weighs only slightly less than a gallon of milk. My sleeping bag is a synthetic job from L.L. Bean that compresses to approximately the dimensions of a car tire. Even my raincoat is shot. I have nothing PCT-appropriate but a pair of convertible pants and some bandannas. It's somewhat freeing to be able to choose my purchases specifically for this adventure.
Triangulating from the physical state in which I left for the Ice, I'm willing to bet that after six weeks in the desert, I will arrive at Kennedy Meadows barely clearing 100lbs. At that point a hiker acquires a large resupply of food, plus a bear canister (essentially a big screw-top tupperware to keep your food from the bears), and a lot of burdensome heavy stuff for snow-travel, like microspikes and an ice axe. This is all on top of your "base" weight, the stuff you've been carrying from the beginning. Conventional wisdom advises that, all told, one leave Kennedy Meadows for the Sierras carrying a pack no greater than 30% of one's body weight. At least the math is easy.
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