Your feedback have been very helpful everyone - thank you.

I don’t have the skill set or knowledge to compete with the likes of Andrew, Ryan and Justin, probably never will. But on many levels I don’t want to try and compete with them. Those are the guys many (not all) backpackers try to learn from, but there are a large number of people whose interests don’t line-up with Andrew, Ryan or Justin’s, that might be where my audience is.

Gershon that was a great post, a lot of good info there. And you actually went into my second phase - making videos. I’m not ready for that yet, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about. Once I become clearer on my thinking, I might have a few questions for you if you don’t mind.

OregonMouse’s points got me thinking, maybe I’m approaching this the wrong way, trying to provide an answer for a question not many people are asking, a gear manual probably isn’t the right course, although your idea about the decision tree TomD is a good one.

Here are a few updated questions which might serve me better than my earlier post - this is open to anyone if you feel like answering all or just a few:

• Why did you decide to start backpacking?
• What do you find most enjoyable about backpacking?
• What makes you the most nervous?
• What do (or did) you struggle with the most in terms making the decision to finally take up backpacking?
• What questions do you continually find yourself asking about backpacking?
• What do you wish you had access to, but don’t?
• What do you find the most difficult about backpacking? (choosing gear/finding a trail/skills and techniques? things like that)

That’s a lot, hope I’m not asking too much in this thread, any answers to the above would be helpful. Thanks again for the replies, the help has been great.