Hi Davester..

I own an MEC Brio 70 - it's enormous.

I only use it in the winter, strapped to my sled, when I am carrying a buttload of stuff...

Buy your backpack *last* - trust me. you can RENT a brio 70 from MEC in the meantime. think very carefully about what you want to buy for other gear first. If you want to do West Coast Trail, you can do it relatively lightweight, and have a blast, or you can do it like the newbies do and suffer under your backpack.

The reason I say this is that the brio 70 weighs a lot. darn near 7 pounds. To put that in context, I did two nights in the rockies in august with 9 pounds for all my gear, excluding food and fuel. My backpack weighted 500 grams.

Now that doesn't mean you need to go that light, but if you're
careful about what you take there are much much lighter backpacks you can buy at MEC that will get you down west coast trail.

last year I yoyo'ed it - I started at port renfrew, hiked to bamfield, turned around, and hiked back to port renfrew again.

I did pick up a food bag at the bamfield end of the trail, so I only had to carry food enough for one way.

My pack weighted 27 pounds at the start of the trail - *with* a litre of water and all my food in it.

have a look here:

http://bofh.ucs.ualberta.ca/beck/pictures/wct2010
http://bofh.ucs.ualberta.ca/beck/pictures/wct2008

what's in my .signature below is pretty much what I took on West Coast Trail. I might not reccomend you hammock it your first time on that trail, wct is not the easiest place to hammock in some spots.


Edited by phat (02/25/11 11:53 PM)
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