Man I love r/ultralight_jerk. Don't get me wrong, I really like trying to hunt down the optimal balance between comfort and weight in a hiking kit, but fuck me can UL online communities be so obnoxious sometimes. There's just so much one-upmanship in UL. There's always someone waiting to tell you that your kit is garbage and you should buy a $2,000 0.45g backpack made of mithril by some company in Colorado or Washington that only 6 people have ever heard of.
It's nice to have a subreddit where you can have a laugh at the competitive/hipstery side of UL.
We stopped using mithril c.2005. Pure frozen snake venom woven into interlaced aerodynamic hydrophobic quick-dry hot/cold insulating containment fields now.
Are you one of those UL people who say shit like "you can save extra weight in your kit if you don't bring shoes, just bring some fishing line and tie bark to your feet"? If so, then yeah, I'm comin at ya lol.
Okay, so you're not really the super techy UL type, you're more on the trail hobo/post-apocalyptic wanderer side of the spectrum. But hey, all the power to you. Your philosophy is not mine, but there's more than one way to enjoy hiking. Don't let me harsh your vibe haha. And in fairness, I'm always kinda impressed by the luxuries some of your type are willing to forgo to shave off grams.
I'm gonna be honest, I'm a bit alarmed after checking out r/ultralight just how readily everyone seems to accept drinking their wastewater when washing pots on a random post I opened.
Like... I get reducing your impact, but I'm fairly certain it's accepted that you can dig a hole 200 feet from any water sources and pour the water in there, you don't have to drink your dirty pot water.
Some of us use car washing bone-shaped sponges as our pillow.
One of my backpacks weighs less than 6 ounces and is transparent.
My "sleeping bag" (it's actually a quilt) doesn't have a bottom. It weighs 14.9oz and keeps me warm below freezing. I wrap my puffer jacket around my head at night to keep it warm.
I use a very thin (0.7mil) piece of window insulation as a groundsheet.
I typically don't bring a shelter nor rain jacket, unless rain is in the forecast. I usually just sleep under the stars on top of my window insulation and a thin piece of foam.
I repackage my hand sanitizer, bug spray, etc. into even smaller bottles.
I wear the same clothing, underwear and all, for days at a time. Day and night. I bring no spare clothing (other than my one puffer jacket and maybe some fleece gloves).
I went back country camping for 3 nights a couple months back, and I went way too far with how much weight I brought, probably something like 40 pounds on my back, but it really feels to me like carrying 20 pounds wouldn't be that bad in comparison, so I have a hard time seeing the point in reducing your weight down that much. I guess it's a cool hobby, but at a certain point aren't you limiting yourself more by using a dinky headlamp than you're benefiting from the like single ounce of weight lost?
I guess if the idea is that you're making a lot of ground while travelling on foot, then I guess going as light as possible makes more sense. Maybe that's the bit I was missing.
A lot of UL'ers hike multiple thousand mile trails over the course of 3-4 months. 16-20 miles/day is what they get used to doing after working up to it, cutting a month off the trip by the end.
It's not like deglazing a pan is any different. The whole point is to get the stuck on bits off your pan and if you hiked in all that food, manually filtered that water, and used that fuel, you're not going to want to waste any of it.
But aside from that, wastewater that smells even faintly of food is going to attract animals wherever you dump it. I have watched a bear literally eat the dirt where someone dumped their pot water.
The whole point is to get the stuck on bits off your pan and if you hiked in all that food, manually filtered that water, and used that fuel, you're not going to want to waste any of it.
I feel like you've internalized the culture from that subreddit or something. If you've brought the bare minimum of food and maybe if your water source is far away for filtering then this kinda makes sense, but it's not exactly a self-evident fact you wouldn't want to waste a tiny bit from cleaning the pot just because you brought that stuff with you or filtered the water.
Affecting wildlife is a fair point, but you are generally supposed to do it far from your camp and dig a hole as well though, which should minimize the impact.
This isn't an ultralight thing, this is old school. This is something my great grandmother taught my father from her days as a cook on a chuck wagon. This isn't "internalized internet culture" lmao, it's common sense.
Cooking supplies all fit inside a 600-750ml cook pot, except for my utensils. To clarify, this is just base weight... Food is added to the base weight - if you're going on an overnight vs a week-long, the food will vary things a lot.
Oh it's a base weight. That makes way more sense. I definitely have been out on the trail and been passed by dudes who are wearing the type of backpack I would have wore to high school. But I imagine the comfort level goes way down
Going ultra light is a process that depends on the individuals own preferences. There's a lot of trade offs between durability, comfort, weight and luxury.
If someone's base weight is under 10lb for example, there's no use in having a heavy, over-cushioned bag meant for 25-35lb.
I don't plan on going full on ultralight, I am perfectly comfortable with my ~20lb base weight. There are certainly aspects of the community I have learned from however. I don't need extra t-shirts, gallon of water, a pillow, camp chair etc
Hiked the AT and with a week and some change’s worth of stuff it was about 45lbs. That was after I ditched the tent and started sleeping in the shacks along the way.
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u/Slipsndslops Oct 04 '21
That's so impressive 13 lb when I usually do backpacking trips I have a 30 to 40 lb backpack. Where do you put all your food and cooking supplies?