I was thinking back to my first true backpacking trip (not too long ago) and thought this would make an interesting topic. I rember that My pack had to wiegh 65lbs.

I brought:
A gallon of water and a nalgene bottel full of water (for a hike through Shenandoah)
A huge, maybe 4-5lb, walmart sleeping bag
Walmart 3p tent
Mountain Smith 65L pack
Coleman propane stove and bottle and pot from the kitchen at my apt
Gerber 8" fixed blade knife
Maglite

The only thing I shaved wieght on was food. Ramen for every meal for two days.

Now I have a 1p marmot tent, Gregory pack, gsi soloist and pocket rocket, and 2oz spyderco folding knife. Not ultralight but definently on the lighter side of the spectrum.

What do you guys have to confess?

A trip down skyline trail in jasper when I was 16. Jeans. Cotton/poly sweatshirts. K-way. Canadian Tire Frame Pack. Those ridiculous car camping Egg things. Coleman Peak One stove with bottle of white gas. Frozen Pound of Hamburger. Army mess Kit. Kodiak Boots. Miscelaneous Boy Scout gear including crappy heavy tent. Giant freaking rambo knife and nothing to do with it since it's a national park trail with fires prohibited and you're not chopping firewood or defending Canada from invading commies. 6 pack of Labbatts Blue in *stubby bottles*. Hamburger didn't unfreeze except over the roaring peak one for a good long time (as I recollect, long enough to huddle in the howling wind and drink all the beer) Beer bottles are heavy.. Buddies who wanna bring beer are amusingly silly. Buddies who wanna bring beer and have new boots get whiny after a couple of days. Beer as refreshment seems much better when bought with fake ID at the ALCB than when actually drank sitting in a clump of alpine fir in snowbowl with the wind driving the rain and slush horizontal.. etc. etc. etc.

Holy crap I was dumb when I was a teenager... and I knew everything too..

My first backpacking trip in the summer of 1942, from what I can remember, from what my parents told me and from going through old photos and my mother's diary: My father (5'8" and 180#) carried about 75 lbs. My mother (5'1" and 115#) carried about 60 lbs. Little me (age 6) carried 5 lbs., consisting of my wraps and the pots and pans. In those days, packs did not have hip belts and my parents used tump lines. I was supposed to make a collection over the summer for school. I chose to collect rocks, but my parents quickly persuaded me to change to moss instead!

Tent: about 11 lbs., quite light for those days--a 3-person waxed Egyptian cotton tent from Abercrombie and Fitch (those were the days when they sold real sporting goods and didn't feature undressed models). Sleeping bags: down, with cotton shells, also from A&F. No sleeping pads (probably why we got cold at night, although coming to the amazing conclusion that we needed to fluff up the bags before bedtime did help). Clothing: cotton or wool. Ponchos: rubberized cloth. Bear in mind that this was before the days of synthetics or plastics--the only synthetic available was rayon. We also had to work within the parameters of World War II rationing, which wasn't yet severe. Obviously, though, all the gear was from pre-war days.

Move up to the mid-1980's: Pack--Kelty external frame, about 5 lbs. Tent--Sierra Designs Flashlight, about 4 3/4 lbs. Sleeping bag--some unnamed brand from a northwest hardware chain, since defunct--5 lbs. including a heavily urethane-coated nylon compression sack. Pad: 3/4 length Thermarest (I don't remember how much it weighed, but it was probably comparable to the Prolite 3). Stove: MSR Whisperlite--probably 2 lbs. including more extra fuel than I needed for a 9-day trip. 2-qt. pot from an old mess kit, close to a pound. You can see from this that I started out on a 9-day trip with a 50 lb. pack! To save weight, I made a last-minute decision to leave my camera at home. I have regretted that decision ever since!

Today, I can go out for 10 days with a 27-lb. pack. Not UL, but base weight about 13 lbs. It sure feels a lot better!

I had a good guide on my very first trip so my weight was prabably arround 45-50 pounds. It was an awesome first time out for a hipper 16 yr old in the middle of nowhere, the Sierra's. But without a guide a few trips latter, a bunch of us STUPID kids with a license to pack and do what ever, well#%??>>%$>?? How does a gallon of 151 bacardi divided up in to 3 plastic lined boda bags sound, then there's the 3 lbs of pancake mix, the plastic egg crates, one 3 man dome tent each, hammer & nails, etc...... We didn't get far, argued constantly, but we did live to tell about it... Stupid Kids..

Travelling and hiking with a friend all over Ireland and Scotland. We were carrying something like 65 pounds each, stuff like 2 pairs of jeans, pots and pans, several days of food, a large Bleuet stove (not collapsible ) and a HUGE borrowed (we had no money...) tent for four people, all cotton and steel poles weighting some 20 pounds ...
This was september/october, the weather was absolute crap most of the time, foam mats were still unheard of, the tent was drenched and even heavier...but this trip was great!
I was nearly camping for the first time, and still I enjoyed it enormously.

Good topic.

August 1998, I was 17 yrs old on my way to Colorado. I was blown away by the majesty of the land; I still am. The destination was the Chicago Basin in the Weminuche Wilderness Area. We rode the narrow gauge railroad up from Durango, getting off the train about halfway to Silverton. We loaded up the packs and started walking. I was addicted immediately. (Funny, because we never backpacked while I was in Boy Scouts.)

Tents were 8lbs, but split between 4 people. Sleeping bags were 3-4lbs. Kitchen/Food was a major source of weight: cans of spam, fruit cups filled with juice, jello cups, peanut butter, liquid fuel, Coleman Peak1 stove, huge pot and pan, skillet, and extra parts for the stove. We used iodine for our water, so that was probably the lightest category. I brought an extra clothing "just in case". Mini maglight with extra batteries "just in case". My total pack weight was about 40-45 lbs. Not too bad given my inexperience.

I've been addicted ever since.

Then: Boy Scouts, circa 1967. My pack was a canvas external frame. I used a WWII surplus canteen in a canvas cover, hung from a pistol belt. My tent was military surplus too, one of those floorless canvas pup tents assembled from two halves. I ate from an aluminum mess kit and brought steel cutlery from home. Food was all canned stuff we heated in the can next to the fire. No sleeping pad, just my brother's borrowed bag directly on the dirt. I remember freezing my a$$ of one night because the ground was so cold. Water filter: What's that? Don't know what my pack weighed. But we had fun.

.......and when I got home my dad would slice me in two with a bread knife

Luxury!

Sure, we can all look back now at how heavy our packs were and say how stupid we were when we took our first backpack trip... but it still seems like one of the smartest things I ever did.

well I did stop carrying the 30-30 and the Kabar. I actually wore out 3 of those old cotton rectangular sleeping bags. I used to take those 2 or 3 pound cans of turkey from the federal food commoditiees program, camping. They were fine until you opened them, so they were second week rations.

I think it was 1973 before I owned a thin blue close cell pad and a pack frame with a hip belt. I sewed my own pack from an old dacron mainsail. An old sheer window curtain was my mosquito net and I cooked in a coffee can and a boyscout 1 quart aluminum covered pot, over a campfire.

Anyway my pack weight for long trips without food and water was never over 19 pounds. On weekend trips 19 pounds total was the limit. I did not carry a coat. And I used an 8x10 sheet of plastic for a ground cloth that I pulled over me if it rained.

Finally - I camped out for 4 months in California and covered 450 miles in the Sierras and Los Padres national forest near Monterey carrying that gear and wearing Lowa Kletterboots.
Jim

First, y'all can refer to yourselves as stupid kids if you want, but your learning curve had to start somewhere. As long as you're learning you're not stupid!

I'm still massaging my gear to get rid of the unneccessary crap. My best incident is when my sister brought along the full hardback edition of the seventh Harry Potter book. What was that thing two thousand pages or somesuch? Well, I say it was MY incident because even though she carried it and read it, I was so jealous. I just couldn't wait to find out what happen next and there she was in her hammock with that book . . . I should have tried to rent the book for some pint sized freezer bags . . .

Oh, I did bring FOUR extra fuel canisters for a two night trip once.

Just spotted Harry Potter 7 on the shelf so I weighed it--2 lbs. 9.7 oz. Not the lightest thing to take for backpacking reading!

Oh don't get me wrong. I enjoyed that trip. I enjoy even the epic ones - and I've had a few..

(But I was still a stupid kid, Now I'm just 40 and stupid )

Yeah, that's the book that started making 10 ounce digital readers seem more practical!

I remember, maybe a year or two ago, when I carried my rain gear, a disposable poncho, a slightly nicer poncho, two emergency blankets and a pack cover for a 20% chance of rain on one of two nights we were out. Oh, anticipated lows at night? 50F. Wanna talk about paranoia of getting a bit wet! Just plain goofy.

I remember somewhere around 1972 coming across a Kelty frame pack with a hipbelt - first time I'd seen one. I loaded the sucker up with all kinds of gear, and thought I was in heaven cuz all that weight no longer hung off my shoulders!

phat:

At least they were "stubby bottles" of Labatz. Imagine the weight you saved on glass versus bringing longnecks. (phat: note spelling -- that's the way I remember it after a couple of six packs.)

frenchie:



Your trip sounds very similar to Expedition d'Irlande of 1796-97 with about the same kind of weather -- except that those French invaders in that earlier instance never made it ashore to set up camp.

In 2005, my base weight for an AT section hike from Franklin, NC to Hot Springs, NC was only 12 pounds, so I felt compelled to add the 3 pounds for the then-new Harry Potter 6. Worth every ounce of it as well! Finished it by Gatlingburg.

Not much. I still have stubbies here because I brew my own brew into them. I just put an empty on the scale:

A standard canadian stubby weighs 8 3/8 oz empty.
A now standard "long neck" weighs 9 1/2 oz empty.

In other words I carried 6 3/4 ounces less weight in glass in 1985 than I would have now (As opposed to the 48 3/4 ounces of weight in glass I was carrying...)

My god.. Now that you made me weigh one out of curiosity I know that it was THREE POUNDS and a bit of GLASS I was carrying with me.. I must revise my previous adjective of "stupid" and come up with something new and more apt to describe my 16 year old self.. merely "stupid" isn't cutting it in the adjective department for anyone who would pack three pounds of glass empties up and over this:

(bottles went over this notch) -------------------V



Oh well, at least the trip was fun and memorable in it's own way, and now being older and wiser my last trip down skyline last july started with 18 pounds total on my back (including a litre of water, and the cask strength scotch )

Actually, we nearly didn't make it ashore to England (our first step), when the hovercraft hit the landing slip at full speed in the wind and waves and ripped its "skirt" a bit.

I don't bring cast iron any more. Nor do I take the PU tarp, the pool air mattress, or the dozen eggs. Of course, we also can't leave our food laying around the way we did my first trip out; don't think we did a thing to protect it back then, just bagged it to keep it from drying out. Left it sitting on the granite while we day hiked.

And hey, it's a lot warmer with real sleeping gear! The blanket idea just wasn't the best.

They have a lot more options for bug protection now, too, and gee am I glad. (actually I'm pretty sure it was just that I wasn't paying attention to options, just grabbing the first bottle off the shelf.)

My first trip, in 1972 as an eleven-year old, wasn't too bad because my parents were kind enough to have bought me a decent-quality down bag and a Kelty external-frame pack. Boy Scout trip up Mission Creek in the Coachella Valley and out the Whitewater River. Still, I bet my pack weight was over thirty-five pounds, and I couldn't have weighed more than ninety. It was brutal.

I began "backpacking" as a part of mountaineering. My first trip was snow practice with the Spokane Mountaineers in 1966. I used an old external frame with canvas bag that my brother had from boy scouts. My mother sewed my jacket - a waxed cotton thing and a wool shirt. Wool army surplus pants that I made into knickers. We all wanted to look like Gaston Rebufett! Mom also knit me knee high wool socks and a wool hat. My first boots were Red Wing unlined work boots that I had a cobbler replace the original soles with virbrum cleat soles. I borrowed an ice axe and crampons. I shared a tent and cooking with another lady who had all the stuff. We used primus white gas stoves and aluminum pots. I think someone loaned me a down sleeping bag. I had a very hard closed cell ensolite pad.

The pack was really not too heavy - probably only about 25 pounds. As mountaineers we were "backpacking" minimalists, because we needed to be able to carry the TONS of climbing gear - pitons, hammers, and very heavy ropes.

Army surplus and sewing gear were the norm. There was not a lot of commercial backpacking gear available that we could afford. Our mountain school used the first edition of Mountaineering, Freedom of the Hills. Even after all these years, still a darn good guide to backpacking and climbing basics.

Well, I guess I did okay on the pack weight in those days, and being able to sleep well on top of four ounces of closed cell foam helped. But I will admit to snow camping with a tube tent and jeans. What's the old saying? The burned hand teaches best? The frozen butt works pretty well, too.

In 1989 I was 11 and a new boy scout. I was living in Anaheim at the time, and we did a week long trip to Yosemite in the summer. I bought an external frame pack for $5 at a garage sale. I strapped on a big cotton sleeping bag, put in some jeans, and carried an orange pup tent my dad bought at another garage sale. It was probably in the 40lb range. 5 years later, I carried the same pack to Philmont and it weighed 50lbs at the trail head. I was 16 and in sports, so it didn't bother me. In our group, me and three others kept taking gear from one of our leaders so he would walk faster. So, I started at 50 and ended around 60lbs. I wore jeans, but my shirt was either a t-shirt or an old dress shirt from my dad, with one of his wool sweaters. My only rain gear was a poncho, and we used the Philmont tents.

No clue what my early packs weighed. 8 to 12lb canvas tents, 5lbs cotton covered rectangular sleeping bags. Jerry can that could hold five galons of water. Patrol cooking gear that included a 10qt pot, a smaller pot, two fry pans, a coffee pot and eight plates and cups! All loaded up on a 12 year old, bean pole, can't weigh 100lbs soaking wet scout. We sure didn't hike very far but we had fun. Oh, can't forget the mandatory frisbee and football.