Cheap, Lightweight, Gear List.

I think it'd be worthwhile to combine some knowledge here and try and come up with a good, inexpensive, lightweight gear list.

A list for well tested DIY gear, and inexpensive off the shelf gear, and favorite or generally successful methods of scrounging gear.

Most all this info is scattered about here, but I think that if it was combined into a sort of list of recommendations, all critiqued, it could be a great resource for newbies and those just returning to the sport.

The main goal of this effort would be to gather good info that would lower the cost of entry as much as possible, and still enjoy the benefits, as much as possible, of going light and being efficient.

I thought of this after OM recently recommended someone read some of the gear lists posted here, specifically the 27 lb - 7-Day checklist, and I wondered how much it would cost to buy everything on that list, and what would be the least amount of money one would need to spend to achieve that goal, or as close to it as possible.

I don't mean to imply that the gear named on that list is too expensive, not at all. Only that, that list is was not compiled with a view towards the least cost to achieve the goal, and that approach might be an interesting exercise for us to toy around with, and certainly the results we'd find would be of value to others.

So, for example, let's say that right now you had no gear and a strong desire to go backpacking. You have $300 bucks to acquire the Big Three, and the rest you have to scrounge or buy with the money you have left over.

For a simple baseline, let's say you're going to camp when the lowest temps will be 45º at night, and 80º daytime highs. Could rain, could get windy.

The goal is to get everything you'll need on that 27 lb - 7-Day checklist and come as close to that 27lb mark as you can with that $300 bucks.

What would you bring that most anyone would have or can easily get?

What would you make yourself?

What would you buy?

When would you buy?

And of course, how close can you get to the $300/27lbs/7-days, goal?

I would start with recycled pop bottles for canteens and any of several varieties of home made alcohol stoves. I would use a painter's plastic tarp for shelter, together with paracord and mason's twine for a shelter, saving my $300 for sleeping bag and pack. I would haunt the thrift stores for good clothing, looking especially for a good parka/jacket and some fleece or wool items. Most of us have a fair amount of clothing on hand that is quite suitable for backpacking.

I have not read the list and probably would not agree with it anyway,
HOWEVER,
I was a hippy backpacker 40 years ago and this is how I spent 4 months hitch hiking and backpacking around California and I covered about 450 miles of hiking in the Sierras and Ventanna Wilderness.

Pack frame purchased cheaply - buy used.
Pack sewed out of nylon cloth - its just a sack after all.
Sleeping bag - flannel boy scout rectangular
mosquito net - old sheer curtain
Tent/tarp - 8x10 piece of painters plastic
ground pad - piece of 3.8" blue foam
Stove - sterno or wood fire
cooked in coffee cans
water filter - didn't need one
Knife - carried Kabob - why???
old green plastic belt canteen
piece of nylon cord, matches, flashlight (repair kit)

My baseweight was 18 pounds and my total cost (1971)
pad $6
pack frame $15
painters plastic $2
sleeping bag, mosquito net, coffee cans, etc free

I now longer carry the repair kit - what a worthless camping concevpt - like carrying a Bowie knife for protection.
Jim

There are a lot of "backpacking for cheap" gear lists around. Unless we can improve on the existing ones, maybe just send folks that direction? There are a bunch of links on Mark Verber's website.. A couple of the links no longer work. Here's one on the Gossamer Gear website: Mark Henley's Ultracheap List Here's an article (not a list, though) on Whiteblaze: Cheap Gear--How to Dirt Bag and Deal Shop Like a Professional.

I have problems with lists like these because you do not define the expected conditions. We have a big country with LOTS of different conditions and equipment needs. Does the 27 pounds include food? If so, a 220 pound young guy is going to have vastly different needs than a 100 pound older woman. Does the 27 pounds include everything- including the clothing worn and water carried?

And defining cheap does not include expected life of the piece of gear. You may get a cheap light tent that will last one 7-day trip but will be trashed in a year. This is not "cheap" for the long term.

OM, Those are all great resources, thanks for sharing them!

One of the things that occurred to me is that it would be interesting to to a yearly estimate of cost on a list like this.

Mark Henley shows a cost of $200 for an 18lb pack w/3 days of food. His list is a great place to start with and to compare what you could buy at any given moment. Some of the gear he lists I'm sure I'd be fine with. Some, I'd want to improve on, but overall, it'd work and get you out there and be pretty darn light too.

I'll definitely want to spend some time poking around "The Ultra-Lite Skunk Works" site. There's some pretty interesting ideas to toy with there.

The "How to Dirt Bag and Deal Shop Like a Professional" is a great, in depth article. I haven't read it all in detail yet, but I did a fast scan and it does a very good job for making the case that gear doesn't have to be new, expensive, or store bought and it give advice and info on how to acquire gear.

Before I try to make a list that compares with Mark's, I'll spend some time at those sites and glean as much as I can from them.

While the original version of this is perhaps a decade or so old now (?), have a look at one or more variants on the 300 dollar challenge, i.e., to ~completely outfit someone with fairly light gear for $300 bucks.

Another reference to this idea is here.

W_D, this is really just meant to be an exercise. It's for fun and learning, and I did provide a "Simple Baseline" for the conditions to shoot for. I admit that they're mild, but the idea is that this is for a newbie with limited funds or the smarts not to go hog wild spending money for their first trip, and I'll assume the expectation that they'll be going someplace that suits their skill level.

As for food and water, I think the lists here and the one OM linked to did include those, but there was not a lot of detail on that and weights are only given as an estimate. As for clothing, I don't think either list included that in their pack weights.



I agree, and I think this exercise is where a group with some experience can provide some insight on what can be expected from taking this approach.

For example, on Mark Henley's list he suggest using a "Wendy's spoon" and "Homemade Coat Hanger Stakes", and "Small Garbage Bags" for a pillow and stuff sacks.

Those are all light, but they might not even last one 3-day trip, so they wouldn't be my first choice. Neither would a pop-can stove. I prefer and would put on my list a Cat Stove instead. In my experience they are much easier to make and to light off. If there are any advantages to making and using a pop-can stove, I don't know what they are yet (other than they do look more impressive when they're burning

The other thing I'd like to mention is that, if one enters the sport after reading just the resources OM posted, they might be encouraged with knowing it's not going to take a 1k investment to get started. After those first few trips they'd have a lot of time and headroom to improve their gear, and some experience to help them with their choices.

I bought everything I needed to make a Cat Stove for $2 at Wal-Mart and my 10 x as heavy, $50 (on sale), Coleman exponent xtreme stove sits on a shelf now.

I have an $80 (on sale) exponent tent, and what now cost $90 (I paid $39) eureka bivy tent, that sit on the shelf because I use a $39 (I paid $29) Byer hammock that is lighter and more comfortable than either of the above.

Now, as you can see from the above, I have always approached this from a lowest cost position. And my progression has been both less expensive and lighter each time, but even I could have saved money and gone lighter, sooner, if I'd had found some good info sooner.

I don't use the Byer hammock, or the Cat Stove because I, or they, are necessarily cheap, I use them because they work well for me and I prefer them to the more expensive gear I have on hand. I think most all of us have made similar changes in our gear list, and, maybe we can improve on what's been out there on the subject for a bit.

I doubt we could come to any unanimously conclusive, hard list of gear, but we can offer our personal choices considering the outlines of the exercise, and those will have value based on experience.

I use the penny stove. same reason as you use the cat stove. cheap, and it works best for what I do (I find it more wind resistant than the cat).

Having said that either is fine.

The basic principle of a cheap gear list:

0) spend as much as you can on a sleeping bag.
1) simple cheap tarp - campmor silnylon for 40 bucks is good.
2) if you like comfort - something like risk's test hammock.
3) cheap blue foam pad for hammock (or on ground)
4) homemade alcohol stove. simple and works
5) Homemade pot - grease pot or heineken can
6) Pop bottle water bottles
7) nylon and wool clothing from the thrift store
9) polyester dress sock liners from the thrift store
10) running shoes
11) odds and sods (lighter, first aid, etc. etc.)

You can go a long way with that stuff, assuming you learn how to use it. Amusingly is not far from what I usually carry.

That is pretty cool phat!

It couldn't be easier to make, I love it. There's another site I have to poke around

It is unfortunate that nowadays there seem to be fewer organized groups willing to menotor the newbie. I did not have to worry about "cheap gear" when I started, because the group I started with loaned me gear until I could afford my own. My biggest initial expenses were boots and sleeping bag. Before I could afford mountaineering boots, I bought RedWing work boots and had a cobbler put on Vibrum soles. I bought a Frost-Line kit and sewed my sleeping bag. I think you also need to emphasize that a lot of gear is group gear and can be shared. I never owned my own tent until several years into backpacking. When I added to my own gear, I bought quality gear and it was not necessarily cheap, but I never had to buy everything at once.

Bill- if 27 pounds is without food and water and does not count clothing worn or anything in hand, such as trekking poles, I think it is heavy for a 3-day trip unless you are talking pretty cold weather.

If it works for Phat, it works! I am impressed with his lists because he backpacks in some challenging weather.

I think most of us work into our preferred gear selectively, over time. The savings grace for me was Army Surplus. I am dating myself, but I began romping in the outdoors at a time when genuine surplus was readily available. Some of it was quite good - I still have, and use, an army mountain cookset manufactured in 1951, but for most it , the greatest virtue was its cheap price. I bought some surplus boots for $2.50 that I trashed on the very first climb - a prime example of cheap actually being rather expensive.

As I became more enmeshed in the outdoors, I upgraded my gear, buying a Gerry down bag (a whole month's salary at the time) to replace my warm but heavy, Army mountain bag. A little later I bought my first stove (which I still have) and began cutting back on campfires. Like WD, I relied on the stoves and tents of others (or good luck with the weather) for a long time.

One really shouldn't put out a lot of cash until reasonably sure that the activity will be really meaningful.

More money and less weight, but a recent related thread on BPL might be of interest.

oldranger- We all were out in the woods smelling like mothballs! Army surplus, Goodwill and a sewing machine, and I was on my way. My favorite were the dress uniform wool pants. At NOLS we used one-size-fits-all army surplus cross-country wooden skiis for 3-week winter courses. I am 5ft 4 inches- kick turns were a challenge! I had to stuff plastic bags in the extra toe length of my army surplus ski boots. I think the Army has gone high tech nowadays- does this high tech gear ever get to surplus stores? And the Army now has more women- maybe I could actually find something that fits!

Ah, resurrecting fond memories... I recycled my uniform dress pants to a higher use also. The Army was pretty low tech then, but I think their gear has caught up with the times.

I know I've mentioned this before, but in the late 1980's the local military surplus store got in a big shipment of Air Force tropical weight pants. They were a lightweight wool/polyester blend, fixed so they were easy to alter (even big-hipped females like me could wear them with a simple taking in at the back waist which could be done without removing the waistband). Word soon got around the local hiking/climbing club, and we looked very uniform from the waist down for quite a while. The fabric wore like iron, and I still have mine! As I recall they were about $5 apiece.

My winter hiking pants are a wonderful pair of Swedish WWII wool pants I got about 6 years ago. Got them inexpensively at Cheaper than Dirt. LOVE them. Have two pair. Only downside is the dry-cleaning.

My winter hiking pants are the same as yours. I bought them for $20 at a surplus store. The first store I went to had a ton on sale for $13 and $14. But when I looked, all the sizes were 29-32 waist. My fat 38 aint getting in any of those. I was grateful to find some in my size at another store.
And, they are amazing pants. I could not believe how well they performed. I could roll in the snow with them, and they never got wet, the snow just fell off. I also didn't have to wear insulation under them standing around in the teens, or hiking when it was a hair above 0F. They started to get chilly with no insulation under them below 0F. They breath perfectly and I even wore them in my sleeping bag because they were dry after slogging through the snow for a few miles and running after my dog with the sled. I can also stand next to a fire and not worry about burn holes. I wish I had a lighter pair for summer. I have military dress pants from being in the army, but they are a brighter green then I want to wear. They might be too skinny also, since my butt has grown since basic. I wish I could find a nice pair in tan.

Oh yeah, dry cleaning. I put them in the washer on cold/cold and hang to dry.

Yes some stuff trickles down to surplus stores. With a mind on light weight hiking, you can pick through and find stuff that would work for you. There are even chinese knockoff stuff that is better than the original, as far as being lightweight. I found a canteen cup made out of aluminum (instead of stainless) that is pretty light. I also find pp/pe 2mm line for tying stuff. I found some 1.9 oz ripstop coated ponchos (in camo of course).