Gear is a critically important part of our trek. The goal is to strike a balance
between carrying the lightest pack possible and making sure every trail need is
covered. There will be times when we are multiple hiking days away from the
nearest road, so every situation must be handled with what we are carrying.
We
took two shakedown hikes last summer, one on the Pacific Crest Trail in
Washington and one on the CDT in New Mexico. We learned a lot from both trips.
One of the biggest takeaways was that our gear was too heavy, and we needed to
lighten the load. We upgraded several items, including a new tent that brought
us from 5.5 lbs. down to 1.25 lbs. We also underestimated the availability of
water sources in New Mexico. In the desert section from Lordsburg to Silver
City, we will be carrying 2 gallons of water each. Those hikes also reminded us
of the importance of leave-no-trace camping principles, including camping and
cooking away from water sources and off the trail. At the same time, we kept a
few items that add comfort, even if they count as “luxuries” by ultralight
standards. Here is the breakdown of our gear.
Base weight
My pack’s base weight
is about 16.875 lbs. Pooh’s base weight is about 13.75 lbs. Halfway Anywhere
surveys CDT and PCT hikers annually, and one part of the survey asks what gear
hikers carried. For the 2025 CDT season, the average base weight was 14.4 lbs.
Pooh is a little under that average, and I am a little over it.
Big three 8.5
lbs.
The heaviest items are known as the big three: the tent or shelter system,
sleeping bag, and backpack. My big three come in at 8.5 lbs., and Pooh’s come in
at 8.25 lbs. I am carrying the tent. Pooh has a heavier pack by 11 oz. and a
heavier sleeping bag by 14 oz., so it essentially balances out between the two
of us.
Wearables 4 lbs.
The clothes I will not be wearing weigh just under 4
lbs. This includes extra socks, camp shoes, underwear, a midlayer fleece, a
puffy coat, a rain suit, and wind jackets.
Kitchen 1 lb.
Our kitchen includes
the stove, titanium pot, spoon, and water filtration system. My weight here came
in at exactly 1 lb. Most of the food we will consume will be dehydrated meals,
and we plan to cook dinner on the stove every night. The stove weighs 4.5
ounces.
Electronics 1.9 lbs.
Electronics are where we carry a few of our biggest
luxuries, including a GoPro and the equipment needed to use it. This item was a
gift from a team member when I retired, and he asked to share some footage of
our trek. We have taken that idea a step further with this blog. I hope to post
10 to 20 minutes of edited footage every week to 10 days. That footage will help
preserve the memory of this trip, and I think it is worth the additional weight.
We also have two charging bricks that are good for six cell phone charges, a
wall outlet and cords for charging all of our electronics when we are in town,
and a Garmin inReach, which is a satellite SOS device that can connect with
search and rescue if needed while we are on the trail. We will use the inReach
to communicate with our family every day so they know we are doing all right,
and it will also send our GPS location.
Miscellaneous 1.5 lbs.
The last category
is miscellaneous gear. This includes toiletries, hiking poles, a first aid kit,
a washcloth, a sun umbrella, and bear bags and rope. This category weighs in at
about 1.5 lbs.
Our daughter, Carmela, henceforth known by her trail name, The
Conductor, is coordinating our resupply boxes. A resupply box is something that
will be mailed general delivery to a post office along the trail for Pooh and me
to pick up when we wander by. Of course, we will have to wander by during normal
business hours, which may prove to be an interesting challenge. Small rural post
offices may only be open four hours on certain days. There will be a total of 12
resupply boxes, about one every two weeks.
For example, in the desert, I’m not
bringing fleece gloves or a knit cap because the overnight low temperatures are
expected to be in the 40s. Those items will be shipped in a resupply box to
Silver City, N.M. We will be carrying microspikes that attach to our shoes (to
reduce the chances of slipping down a steep, icy mountain face) in Colorado, and
those will be mailed to Chama, the last town we hike through in New Mexico. We
may also mail some things back once we get through the desert. For example, we
might decide that we do not want our sun umbrellas after we leave that section.
If so, we could mail them back to a resupply point later in the trek, likely at
the end of Colorado. We will use the umbrellas in the Wyoming Basin, which we
plan to cross in mid-July.
There is a lot of information on the internet about
gear and backpacking philosophies. The prevailing wisdom is that if you want an
ultralight pack, you are aiming for a 10 lb. base weight or less. If we wanted
to trek this light, some of the things we would have to cut out would be the
GoPro, the tent in favor of cowboy camping with a tarp, the second sleeping pad,
and the inflatable pillow. We would not carry extra clothes. We would probably
lose the rain pants. We would drop the sun umbrella for the desert. We would
lose the stove, and plan for all cold meals.
When we looked at the sacrifices
required to get our base weight down another 4 to 6 lbs., we decided it simply
was not worth it. There is a certain amount of comfort we want on the trail. If
we do not get a good night’s sleep and wake up sore, that may make for grumpy
hikers. Bears eat grumpy hikers. Comfort matters even more when we will be doing
something close to a marathon’s worth of distance each day once we get into
northern New Mexico and points farther north.
I hope you enjoyed our post.
Thanks for following along. We leave for Arizona in 4 days. If you are enjoying
our posts, please hit the subscribe button on the page, and you will get our
regular updates, which will probably come every week to 10 days when we are on
the trail.
/CS
The full base weight list...
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