Shaving Weight

I began my reentry into backpacking around two years ago. It was the fall of 2022 while searching YouTube for upgrades to my trekking poles when the YouTube algorithms fed me videos related to improved sleeping pads, quilts, and backpacking pillows for a better night of sleep in the backcountry. Poor sleep while camping was the main reason I hung up my big backpacks for around twelve years.

Once I decided to get back into backpacking, like many of my hobbies, I went all in. I set a goal to hike the whole Ouachita Trail (OT), a 223 mile trail that stretches from east Oklahoma to Pinnacle Mountain State Park just outside of Little Rock, Arkansas.

The gear I had in my gear closet was outdated. Some of it was in bad repair. Also, weight and quality matter more for multi-day backpacking than for one night or weekend trips. We were finally at a point, financially, we I could afford to spend on some better equipment to make my time on the trail as enjoyable as possible.

There was an initial set of gear I owned, a set of gear I purchased for the OT thru hike, and gear that I have purchased during and since the thru hike. This article is really a means of satisfying my own curiosity about the shifts and changes in gear and to see how much my pack has lightened over the course of the last two years.

How much weight have I shaved?

I want to compare apples to apples here as much as possible, so I will be limiting the list of gear items to

Packs
Shelters
Sleep systems
Cook kits
Hydration kits

Packs should be relatively self explanatory. I'm not counting things like stuff sacks or other incidentals. Only the backpacks themselves. There have been three in all. For the shelters, I'm counting the tent(s) and tarp, plus poles, stakes, and required guy lines. Sleep system includes bag/quilts, under insulation, and pillows. The cook kit includes stove, wind screen, and cookpot. Hydration kit includes filter, collection bag, and bladder or bottles.

I'm going to provide the weights in grams mostly because that's the simplest system. I'll convert to lbs at the end.

OG Kit

My "Original Gear" Kit consisted of items I purchased back in the early to mid 2000s. These are the items I had to start with before completely revamping for my OT trip.

Pack

My backpack was an Osprey Atmos 50. I still own this pack. I used it on my first shakedown trip in preparation for the OT before I got the Durston pack. It feels like a chunk to me now, weighing 1590g (3.51lb)

Osprey Atmos 50

Shelter

The tent I had was an old REI Quarter Dome free standing tent for three people. It weighs 2494g. I had a set of North Face V type stakes for that tent that weighed 110g. Total weight was 2604g (5.74 lb).

REI Quarter Dome 3

Sleep System

I had a North Face mummy bag. I no longer own this sleeping bag, but I believe it was the Thunderhead 3D. It was a synthetic fill bag and was relatively bulky. My best estimate of the weight based on "vintage North Face Thunderhead bags I see for sale online is 2636g. I didn't use a pillow back then because the standard recommendation was to stuff extra clothes into a stuff sack and use that as your pillow.

In addition to the bag, I used Therm-a-rest, self-inflating sleeping pads. The one I was using weighed around 907g.

Total weight for the OG sleep system was 3543g (7.81 lbs).

Cook Kit

When I was more actively trying to backpack, I was using an MSR Whisperlite stove, but I upgraded a few years later to an Optimus Crux Lite canister stove that was considerably lighter. I think I only used that stove a handful of times though. Weight for the Crux Lite, 85g.

I also had a solo cook pot that I used. I don't recall the brand. It was made of steal, had a lid/cup. I don't think it's sold anymore. My best estimate for the weight is 317g based on similar items. I didn't do enough backpacking to have worried about wind. It was all fair weather weekend trips.

Photo is the Crux stove. I had Crux Lite. Very similar.

Total cook kit weight; 402g (0.88 lb).

Hydration Kit

I was using an MSR Miniworks pump filter. This was from before the advent of lightweight squeeze filters. The Miniworks filter weighed 454g.

MSR Mini Works pump filter

The recommended hydration setup back then was a water bladder that ran a hose from the bladder inside your pack, over your shoulder, to a valve you could drink from. I believe it was a Camelback brand. This is a low estimate, but 250g. I say that's low because the product I'm looking at with that weight is around the same capacity, but the one I had was also in an insulated sleeve that was somewhat heavy. I would like to add here that aside from the fact that my new systems are lighter, they are also a heck of a lot easier to use on the trail. Digging those hydration packs out of your full backpack was hard, but cramming them back in was a huge pain in the butt.

Hydration kit total weight was 704g (1.55 lb).

OG Kit total 8843g or 19.5 lbs. That's a lot for just those items. Wow. Worse than that, that gear was harder to use and left me uncomfortable. To be fair to the 3 man REI tent, I never intended to use that for solo backpacking. It was purchased for car camping and/or backpacking with kids/wife.

OT Kit

These are the items I purchased before the Ouachita Trail for use on the OT.

Pack

I purchased the Durston Kakwa 55 for the OT. It weighs 965g (2.13 lb) on my scale. I have written reviews of this pack and reported my experience using it in other articles, so if you're after that information, you can just search for Kakwa 55. Mine is the 2023 version. It's a decent pack for a decent price.

Durston Kakwa 55