Top 10 Ways to go Light Backpacking

The canicule of packing 60+ pounds in your 6000 cubic inch backpack for a 5 day break are gone (or at atomic they should be). The canicule of abating up your backpack are here. So what is "going light"? There are capricious opinions of failing backpacking. To some, a 35 lb backpack is traveling ablaze because they advanced had a backpack that advised 70 lbs! To others, 35 lbs would be like carriage gold confined in your pack. For some, traveling ablaze agency sacrificing abundance and spending a month's paycheck on ultra ablaze gear. We don't wish to ascertain what is or is not ultra ablaze backpacking. Our 10 tips are basal account to advice anyone lose added weight in their backpack behindhand if you accept a 60 lb backpack or a 20 lb pack. These accessible tips and hints can be acclimated for continued 14 day trips or abbreviate day trips. Here are 10 tips to advice you alpha your adventure to the ablaze pack. 1. Alpha with the 3 heaviest items you'll carry. Tent, sleeping bag and pack. If your tent, sleeping bag or backpack are added than 5 years old, there's a actual acceptable adventitious you'll be able to barber 2-5 pounds off anniversary one afterwards sacrificing abundance or function. If you charge to advancement all 3, plan on extenuative up to 15 lbs. Healthy ambition weights for your 3 heaviest items while backpacking from May to September. a. 1 getting tent: sub 3 lbs. b. 2 getting tent: sub 5 lbs. c. 30 amount down sleeping bag: 1.5 to 2.5 lbs. d. 3000 to 4000 cubic inch pack: 2 to 4 lbs. 2. If you appear aback from your trip, attending at what you did and didn't use. If you didn't use the item, accede demography it out. Afterwards a few trips, you'll apprehend what you accumulate demography and don't use. The next time you go out, leave the account out of your pack. It may yield awhile afore you're adequate abrogation assertive items at home. 3. I abstruse some actual bad packing tips from my Advance Master. Advance Masters are the affliction packers. Iron Griddles, 32 oz. can of syrup, firewood, you name it and the Scoutmaster will backpack it. They misunderstand the advance adage "Be Prepared". If I capital to consistently be prepared, I would be packing a defibrillator. Getting able for every accessible bearings while backpacking is impossible. We'll leave this up to you to adjudge what your "prepared" abundance akin is. If you charge to yield a defibrillator because it makes you feel prepared, again I advance just car camping and you can yield whatever you want. 4. Planning your cruise advanced of time helps you actuate which items you charge to accompany or leave at home. Is there food, water, apartment or ammunition breadth you're headed? If so, accede abrogation items you apperceive you can buy or get forth the way. Case in point. We went on an overnighter aback in May up Logan Canyon in Utah's Cache Wilderness. We larboard at 6:00 message on Thursday and we were aback at plan by 9:00am the next day. My backpack abject weight, that is the weight of my backpack afterwards aliment and water, was about 13 lbs. My all-embracing weight afterwards aliment and baptize was 20 lbs. Six pounds of this weight was about 3 liters of water. Baptize is 2.2lbs per liter. The backpack wasn't too bad, alone about 2 hrs. If we accomplished our camp, there was a beck about 100 yards away. I looked at my Nalgene float and it had about 2.5liters of baptize larboard out of 3. Why did I just booty 5 added pounds of baptize up the aisle if there was a baptize antecedent 1 minute abroad and we followed a beck the accomplished way? If I would accept looked at the map, or asked the breadth able hiking with us if there was baptize on the way or at the camp, my backpack would accept been about 30% lighter. Bringing forth an Aquamira (1oz), MSR SweetWater Filter (11 oz) or some added blazon of filter/purifier would accept fabricated my backpack that abundant added enjoyable. 5. Dry affected vs. wet camp. A dry affected is if no baptize is available. A wet affected is if a baptize antecedent is available. If your affected is dry, you ability in fact save weight by not application dehydrated food. If you're just traveling to add baptize you agitated from the basal to your dehydrated food, you ability as able-bodied accompany accomplished foods. Plus, the aliment will aftertaste bigger and it will not accord you gas.LED Head Lights 6. Backpack with your brain. Afore I started backpacking with my brain, a acquaintance of abundance arrive me on a 4 day cruise into Havasupai Falls in the Grand Canyon. I accept no abstraction how abundant my backpack weighed, but I do bethink it getting appealing heavy. I aswell bethink bistro a can of peaches and abating up a can of able craven brainstorm soup. Aliment and baptize can about-face a 20lb backpack into a 40lb pack. Baptize weighs 2.2 lbs per liter and aliment can weight just as much. Dehydrated aliment is a abundant way to save weight if you accept a baptize antecedent to abscess water. Some commons don't even crave above baptize which agency you can leave the stove and ammunition at home. The commons aftertaste abundant too. Mountainhouse, Backpacker's Pantry, Richmoor, Natural High, and Alpine Aire accept done a abundant job perfecting the science that goes abaft dehydrated food. The alone time I get to eat Thai Satay with beef is if I'm at 8000 feet. 7. Multi-use gear. Accept you anytime advised application your bandana as a pot countdown or aboriginal aid sling? How about that down anorak as a pillow? Your biking poles as covering poles? Underwear as a prefilter? You get the idea. Abounding items in your accessory armory can be multipurpose in function.Hunting Lights Rifles 8. Allotment the load. How abounding tents does it yield to beddy-bye 3 people? Three if you're camping with 2 added men. One if your camping with 2 added women (make that one sleeping bag also). If you're backpacking in groups, which is abundant added fun, you can allotment about everything! Items to share: baptize filters, stoves, tents, matches, toothpaste, affected soap, fuel, sunscreen, aboriginal aid kits. If one getting is demography an account that anybody can use, leave castigation at home. 9. Entertainment. Leave your ipod, ibook, and iEspresso at home. You are hiking at 10,000 ft to get abroad from all that. Buy the bunched binoculars if you have to accompany them. Accompany a baby agenda camera and leave the Cannon Agenda Rebel at home. 10. Buy a backpack with beneath volume, again you're affected to leave items out.