My old camping buddy

I spoke with an old camping buddy that I spent extensive time camping in the Sierras with. He looks at his backpacking gear and says he knows he will never go backpacking again because his body can't take it.

I asked if he still had the Kelty White Phantom pack (51 oz) and he confirmed that he did. I told him to sit down with his gear and leave out everything that he never used and to put it in that pack. I told him I thought he could get down to 20 pounds for an overnight without spending a dime but he couldn't take the tent.

I'm not certain that he believed me or that he would try or what he would then do if he was sucessful?

I have another homeless friend who always takes 75 to 100 pounds of gear for an over night - seriously. I told him that backpacking gear is different than his homeless gear and he should try to pack a simple backpack and let me go through it and remove things.

some people give up, and some struggle along, and some sort of watch the others and wonder.
Jim

I see a few guys who have given up camping and bping, bad backs, knees, or hips and them thinking about all those pounds they used to have to carry, can't talk them out of it or into it.
I'm whittling away at a few more pounds, only thing holding me back is the money to acquire a lighter bp, shelter and bag. These would take away my vintage stove acquisition money and my new gig, Coleman lanterns. The three new items come to over $800 or so and I would only lose a little over a pound to a pound and a quarter. Maybe one item a year?
Duane

May I resonate with this topic! Here's my 2 cents:

"Hard to change, easy to stay the course"

Most of my friends think I'm giving them the gears when I tease them a little about their load. Except for a postive experience with Jason, a 30 something hiking companion who really was interested in choosing better lighter gear, I've found most people from 50-75 can't be bothered to think differently.

Something really funny happened with Jason. We each had water containers. I had 2 plastic bottles with 1l each and a Cantene taking 4l for around camp. Jason just commented, "my platypus is fine, it holds about 2l". So I noticed it was pretty big and we tested it, it held almost 5l and he was packing it full every morning of the trip. I was carrying 2l and drinking 1/2l right at the start so generally carrying 1+l. What a huge difference it made to pack weight! We had a big laugh about it when we figured it out.

My neighbor, Randy, has been a tough one to convince to get lighter. All his gear is from the early `70s and his old Kelty pack is big and klutzy when he's got it loaded that it's got to be tough to deal with.



I really love that quote.

Randy's watched me get a lot lighter over the past few years, and I'm sure he's wondered about what I was doing too, but after our past few trips he's really beginning to see the beauty in the changes I've made, and he's even been telling his buddies about it, and now several want to do some trips with us this coming season.

I'll be excited to have them along and hopefully they'll enjoy themselves enough to want to keep going.

But there are a lot of others our age who I know could go, and I believe would love it too, but they won't. They recall hauling 75lbs in their military days, or old backpacking days, and being miserable, and while they love being outdoors, they won't go backpacking anymore either.

Yeah, that's because they haul their entire cache of belongings. They aren't camping, just staying mobile. Don't blame 'em a bit. They can get light if they want or need to. I see one guy that hangs around downtown Dallas that uses a disguarded baby stroller (one of the heavy duty double wheeled jobbies) as his 'truck'. You'll see him all over town pushing that thing.