Thanks for all the info! I like the idea of shooting for between 20-30% of my body weight. Im used carrying a lot of weight, in the army my weapon alone weighed 22 lbs not including my combat load of 800rounds, water, food, med kit, knife, side arm.... so Im going to tend to want to carry more weight.
Try to resist the temptation a bit.. A couple of friends I've hiked with who are vets (Canadian, but hey, pretty much same gear) were looking at heavy gear when they got out and went to aquire a "civilian" rig - because they were "used to carrying a lot of weight and so it's no problem" - my answer was always "then if you pack light you'll just be able to go a lot further and enjoy it more".. Or put it this way, if a fat civilian computer nerd hikes 20 to 25 km in a day that way and enjoys it - you should be able to go a lot further
Most of the time when I sat down with them and showed them
1) Good dehydrated food and a small stove (you don't have to
eat MRE's and they are heavy!)
2) had them think about how much weapon, ammo, grenades, commo, batteries, etc. they carried.
3) got them to think "how much did the rest weigh" (the answer to this is almost always "pretty darn little")
Once they got to thinking that, other than their actual fighting gear, they hiked pretty darn light when they were "in" - there just wasn't a lot of room for "extras" after all the ammo, etc. Then I had 'em look at what I take in my list
and think and they did pretty good.
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