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Used to weigh every item in my pack, now I barely check and I'm happier
I used to spread everything on the living room floor and weigh it piece by piece on a kitchen scale before every trip. My base weight lived in a spreadsheet and I'd swap gear for ounces, like trading a 2 pound stove for one at 14 ounces. Then on a trip near Bend in June I watched a guy with a 45 pound pack beat me to camp by 40 minutes, and he was just strolling. He carried a folding chair and real coffee and slept better than me both nights. I still care about pack weight but I quit chasing grams, and my shoulders feel fine either way. Now I pack what I'll actually use and leave the scale in the drawer. Has anyone else gone through a light vs light phase and come out the other side?
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margaret_lane9d ago
That guy with the 45 pound pack and the folding chair knew something the spreadsheet never taught me. I went through the same thing around 2019, had my base weight down to 11 pounds at one point, and all it got me was cold at night and eating cold food because my stove was tiny. The part nobody talks about is that a few extra pounds on your back is way easier to deal with than being miserable in camp for 14 hours. Once you stop weighing everything you start noticing what you actually reach for and what stays buried at the bottom of the pack the whole trip. I still leave the cast iron and the full size pillow at home, but the scale has been in the drawer for years now and I sleep way better on trail.
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