For loads of outdoorsmen and ladies, ultralight backpacking conjures up a very kooky picture. Sawed-off toothbrushes. Dingy plastic water bottles with water filters screwed on high. Backpacks — with cut-off straps — which can be no greater than a daypack.
And that was as soon as the case. However as I realized in final 12 months’s check of the greatest ultralight gear, the supply and vary of backpacks, tents, and extra has exploded in recent times, with big-name producers getting in on the sport and cottage firms going mainstream as a rising viewers goes all-in on the ultralight motion. You don’t need to be a thru-hiker anymore to go ultralight — it’s even attainable for somebody utterly new to backpacking to securely construct out their first equipment utilizing solely ultralight gear.
I’ve been spending the final couple of months planning this 12 months’s ultralight backpacking check (examine final 12 months’s huge checks right here: the most effective ultralight backpacks and the most effective ultralight tents). We’ve obtained ultralight tents and backpacks from mainstream manufacturers like Black Diamond, Thriller Ranch, REI, and Osprey in addition to smaller manufacturers like Nashville Packs, Search Exterior, Slingfin and UL mainstays like Gossamer Gear, Zpacks, and Six Moon Designs. We’ve even obtained our first worldwide UL model we’ll be testing: Aarn Packs out of New Zealand. Whereas final 12 months we tackled quilts, this 12 months we’ll be testing ultralight sleeping luggage from the likes of Feathered Buddies, Stone Glacier, Western Mountaineering, Kuiu, and Rab. We’re additionally testing cook dinner methods, with pots and stoves from Toaks, Vargo, Snow Peak, Soto, MSR, and extra.
Given the sheer quantity of ultralight gear to check (I’ve no issues about reserving out anoter full testing schedule subsequent 12 months) it’s straightforward to overlook that it’s a pattern that began comparatively lately.
The place Did Ultralight Backpacking Come From?
Ultralight backpacking obtained its begin with the publication of The PCT Hikers Handbook by Ray Jardine in 1991. In it he described a quick (on the time) hike of the Pacific Crest Path along with his spouse, finishing it in 4 and a half months. Whereas the e book covers quite a lot of matters, together with diet, coaching, and on-trail first assist, probably the most impactful portion described their gear selections. Moderately than probably the most sturdy, hardest supplies, Jardine really helpful reducing as a lot weight as attainable by choosing smaller backpacks, path trainers as a substitute of mountaineering boots, and quilts as a substitute of sleeping luggage. On their very own, maybe, these selections may not make a significant influence on a person’s mountaineering expertise. However when considered as a system, these methods might reduce the burden you’re carrying in half — or extra. Jardine’s first thru-hike of the two,650-mile PCT utilizing these new strategies took about 139 days. As we speak, the document for an unsupported PCT thru-hike (i.e., nobody helping you with meals or water) is 55 days, 16 hours, and 54 minutes.
Learn Subsequent: 50 Miles Throughout the Mojave With out Water
I hike the PCT in 2014, and it is sensible to me that ultralight backpacking developed there. In contrast to the frequent highway crossings of the Appalachian Path, PCT hikers spend their first month within the scorching, dry, and surprisingly distant outback of Southern California. Even in good years, there might be as many as 20 miles between water sources and you need to carrying per week’s price of meals in your again.
Adam Tycaster
You may have a whole lot of time to consider what a distinction of two.5 kilos (the burden of 1 liter of water) could make in your again, and the way a lot sooner you’re mountaineering on the finish of that week than you probably did at the beginning. By the point PCT backpackers end the desert and hit the foothills of the Sierra Nevada — true distant wilderness there — even those that began out as ultralights skeptics are searching for one thing, something, of their pack that they’ll go away behind.
Learn Subsequent: The Gear a Through-Hiker Depends on After 11,000 Miles
This creates a tradition amongst thru-hikers that may, from the surface, look pretty excessive. A standard ceremony of passage is the pack shakedown, the place skilled thru-hikers undergo each merchandise in somebody’s pack and inform them what they need to eliminate. There may be a whole lot of dialogue of base weights — the burden of your equipment with out meals or water or gas — with the best being underneath 10 kilos (one thing I’ve but to attain). In the meantime, individuals are positively nonetheless reducing extra nylon off their backpacks.
The State of Ultralight Backpacking Gear Now
What will get misplaced generally within the excesses of ultralight tradition is that ultralight gear has gotten actually good in recent times. Basically, good ultralight gear is extra snug, extra dependable, and has higher load carrying potential than the ultralight gear of yore. It’s additionally extra snug and dependable than a whole lot of conventional backpacking gear. And however just a few notable exceptions, it’s sometimes cheaper.
For OL’s first ultralight backpacking gear check, I invited Diana Helmuth to hitch us, creator of Endure Exterior: A Newbie’s Information to Mountain climbing and Backpacking. Her expertise of ultralight gear was rooted within the early aughts, when her mother began making alcohol stoves out of tuna cans and reducing straps off backpacks. This prooved frugal and artistic, however not all the time probably the most snug expertise. Helmuth went proper again to the normal backpacking gear she had grown up with.
Whereas a lot of the manufacturers we examined in 2023 can be well-known to subscribers of Backpacking Gentle — Six Moon Designs, Gossamer Gear, Durston, TarpTent, Zpacks, and so forth. — Diana informed me the one one she had heard of was Hyperlite. Whereas Diana had already spent a while testing a few of the better of the greatest backpacking backpacks, together with the Gregory Deva, Thriller Ranch Bridger, and Deuter Aircontact, she was shocked at how snug the ultralight packs have been, and that they achieved this with out costing an arm and a leg. “The Thriller Ranch backpack weighs like 5 kilos and prices greater than the Six Moons pack I examined with you,” she informed me.
Diana finally examined three packs — the ULA Circuit, the Six Moon Designs Swift X, and the Mountainsmith Zerk, and got here away feeling that “All of them felt actually good. All of them felt actually snug.” The expertise left her questioning backpack options which can be customary throughout conventional backpacks, together with the necessity for load lifters and even waist belts, that will help you comfortably carry your gear. “I’m beginning to understand that much less is likely to be extra,” she informed me. “Mountain climbing with much less weight in your again feels nicer, interval.”
The place Ultralight Goes from Right here
What’s most enjoyable about ultralight backpacking gear is the ingenuity concerned. Learn sufficient of the “about” pages on cottage ultralight gear websites and a sample emerges: The founder hiked a protracted path, had A LOT of time to consider how a specific merchandise of their equipment may very well be improved upon, and determined to manifest that on the finish of the path. A few of these firms, like Six Moons Designs and Feathered Buddies have been round for many years; others, like Durston Gear and Nashville Pack, are youthful. And there are all the time newcomers to the ultralight scene, together with the youngest firm on this 12 months’s testing schedule: Symbiosis Gear, which has been round since solely 2022.
And ultralight gear producers are supported by a neighborhood of backpackers who’re extra excited by how a brand new tent design might shave just a few ounces off their equipment, or a backpack might enhance their mobility whereas mountaineering, than they’re a couple of explicit model title or tried and true design. And when these concepts work, they begin to percolate. Path runners and trekking-pole tents may need gotten their begin on lengthy trails, however they’re mainstream now. And with huge names like Black Diamond and Mountain Hardwear throwing their hats into the ring, it’s solely a matter of time till we reside in a world dominated by the concepts and ingenuity behind ultralight gear, with conventional backpacking gear being regulated to the low cost bin.
