Ok, so friends decided to go backpacking today and stay the weekend. So I have been day hiking recently on similar terrain. But backpacking it was miserable. I am 5'5" and 215 and not in the best shape but yeah. Pack was 40 lbs with tent, bag, winter cloths, food, water, everything. The trail was moderate difficulty with mostly a steady incline. It took be 1hr 20 min to go 1.2 of the 4.4 miles to camp before i said screw it and turned around. Only took me 22 minutes to get back.

The thing that killed me was these 8" diameter logs across the path like steps. Barring erosion prevention i see no benefit to these. Every time I had to go over these, it would put extra pressure on my back till the point it was unmanageable.

Any recommendation beside get in shape? And for what we were doing the pack was about as light as I could get for my gear.