If you have to analyze whether to buy the newer, lighter stuff, you're doing it wrong. This is pure, emotional consumerist obsession! (Hi, I'm Glenn, and I'm a gearaholic...)

Nice piece of analysis, though. I'd probably come closer to $70 or $80 a pound (no way will I calculate it - too much chance my wife might find the piece of paper!)

However, how do you put in another variable: the change in style that is the big weight saver? How do you quantify using freezer-bag cooking instead of real cooking for example? When you switched from real cooking to freezer bag cooking, you probably didn't buy that new titanium pot right away - you eased into it by leaving one of the pots from your old two-pot set behind, and maybe eliminated a cup and bowl, too.

When I started down this road, I was at roughly 35 pounds of gear for a weekend (before food and water.) My first round of lightening up cost me nothing (reducing to a single pot, no cup, bowl, or fork; leave out the chair kit, no spare clothes, letting the rain jacket double as a windbreaker, paring down the first aid and repair kits, leaving out the groundcloth, etc.). It saved me 13 pounds. Then came the gear switches, saving another 8. So, how do I fit the 13 pounds of omission into the analysis?