Heck my wife loves to backpack, as long as she doesn't have to carry a pack. So sometimes I take her and her pack a couple miles in and then hike back for my pack. what a guy huh?

But anyway I've been thinking about the 50 to 20 pounds concept and decided to write about it. So first off, people with a lot of heavy mission hardware, like climbing gear, cameras, food etc, are gonna have heavy packs regardless of their baseweight.

So I'm thinking I've carried a 54 pound pack and I'm wondering what the baseweight was, I'm thinking 24 pounds as this was 32 years ago. We were out for ten days and I think we had 18 pounds of food each. We were in Kings Canyon heading up to Ray lakes making a slow loop. So 36 pounds without food. I wonder if it included water, sure lets say 2 pounds, which is now 30 pounds. I had Kletter boots, an ice axe and crampons and cold weather gear. I'm guessing that theres about 3 plus pounds of ice axe and crampons. I probably had 2 x 24 ounce white gas bottles and a whisperlite and my Warmlight down airmattress, but alas, I've always had about a 3 pound pack. My tents have gone from 8.5 to 3-4 pounds, some lighter.

Anyway I wanted to show how a 50 pound pack can suddenly become 20, don't put any food, fuel, water, crampons, iceaxes or climbing gear in it.