Backpacking Gear I Should Have Bought Sooner - 2020 Edition

what's going on everybody my name is dan becker and i love hiking and backpacking gear uh you know how it is you buy a piece of gear right and you start to use it for your backpacking trips and then you start to watch youtube videos and then you realize you probably should have bought something else so you buy that and now you've got two pieces of gear and then all of a sudden you start to watch more youtube videos then you're like well this guy told me to buy this and this guy told me to buy this and it just gets maddening and then by the end of the season you're like man i should have bought this when i first started out the season the year backpacking all together and it just gets to a point where you accumulate all of this gear and then you get to the point where you're like i'm gonna take as little as possible it's gonna be as lightweight as possible i'm gonna be a minimalist backpacker i'm just gonna bring like a just a paper bag and some dental floss and i'm gonna whittle a tent and here's how you know this is true go online to youtube and just type in uh gear loadouts or backpacking gear setups or whatever and everybody's is gonna be different you'll never find two that are exactly the same everybody's got their personal preferences their favorites and you think man i wish i would have bought this sooner well this is my list the 2020 version of the gear i should have bought sooner so here we go number one i wish i would have bought a lightweight backpack that carried heavier loads sooner so if you've followed my channel for any length of time you've probably discovered that i started out as a super ultra light backpacker like wannabe and then i progressed into youtuber and i progressed into just this person who loves to weaken warrior camp and hike and i'm just kind of a regular guy that goes out on weekends and i love to bring different stuff and different types of gear but i have this system that's dialed down and even though it's dialed down i'm carrying more stuff with me and i wish i would have bought a backpack that was not only lightweight because you can find really lightweight backpacks for fairly inexpensive but it's tough to find lightweight backpacks that are inexpensive and carry heavy loads i started out with a few different backpacks that were cheaper backpacks and they were really heavy backpacks because i had a huge amount of gear that i didn't know what i was doing so i carried like 30 40 pounds worth of base weight gear and then um i finally started to lower my base weight and i bought this z-packs uh it's this one right here this is the z-packs arc blast i believe it is um and that's a great backpack i really enjoy it but it doesn't carry heavy loads very well and then i eventually got the hyperlite mountain gear southwest 3400 backpack right up here this one carries about 35 to 40 pounds pretty comfortably so it's able to carry like the 8 to 10 pounds of extra camera gear that i bring with me out when i'm hiking to film youtube videos but i wish i would have thought about that early on and purchased the backpack that was able to do both so if you're looking for that kind of a backpack i highly recommend that one it's super comfortable uh and it's fantastic for carrying the heavier loads and it is a pretty lightweight backpack all right number two i wish i would have bought a sleep pad that was wide i sort of blame the original ultralight dan becker as the problem in this whole situation because everything i bought i was buying based on weight only i didn't care about functionality once i realized that functionality was going to be a huge thing i started buying things based off of functionality first and then wait uh and that's made a big difference overall because i've been able to become more comfortable that way and still remain comfortable by making sure it's also lightweight so like when i'm buying something i look at the function first and then i look for the lightest weight of all those items that uh provide a good function for me and i usually pick that one as long as it's cost effective and it turns out to work out pretty well but in the circumstance of a sleeping pad i ended up buying a 20-inch wide sleeping pad and i thought no big deal everybody rants raves about this particular sleeping bag it was the um neoair x light um therm-a-rest neoware x-lite and at the time it was like every through hike around the planet was using it all the big channels were using it ranting and raving about it and i couldn't figure out why i was so uncomfortable on this thing well it ended up being that it was too narrow and not only was it too narrow it was really noisy too it had some insulating values on the inside of it that crinkled quite a bit and it kept me up all night long or if i was like sleeping with my kid i would wake them up if i was rolling over it was just a bad thing but going to a wider sleep pad finally was like a game changer for me it was almost like being able to mimic what i did at home for my sleep system because when you get out on the trail and i've put a whole video about this i'll link that up right here when you get out on the trail and you've taken yourself out of the environment of your house and you're now in a different environment that you're not necessarily used to because you're only out there so often your ability to sleep the first night or two is obviously a little bit more difficult so being able to mimic what i've done at home by having a sleeping pad that's wider and it feels more like home i can roll around on it i don't have to worry about falling off if it's cold out i don't have to worry about my like my arm or my leg hitting the cold ground and waking me up and that kind of thing but that made a big difference i wish i would have bought a wider sleeping pad to begin with okay number three um this is sort of a controversial topic because there's like two groups of people that fall in these two camps no pun intended i should have bought a lightweight tent before i bought a hammock i started out back country camping and backpacking right away in a hammock because that's what youtube told me to do because as soon as you start looking at hammocks on youtube youtube is going to recommend every other video on hammocks on the sun and everybody's gonna tell you how great they are and they are great and i have had pretty decent night sleeps and hammocks but i started camping with my kids and i started bringing out a tent and it was a bigger tent because i needed to have me and my kid sleep in the tent together and i didn't have the money back then to buy a lighter tent and as i've progressed i've realized that i enjoy the living space of a tent and i really do sleep as well in a tent as i do in a hammock because i do enjoy the hammock experience it's a lot of fun i've got literally right now six hammocks in my gear setup right now i had another one sent to me this week by company but the ability for me to have my own living space knowing that i'm gonna sleep as well as a hammock and i know a lot of you hammock campers out there are going to totally disagree with this and you're going to tell me you know ground dwelling is terrible and it's it's really not depending on the gear that you buy and i have figured out how to do it and choose my campsites and i do know that there's limitations in campsites and you can pretty much hang a hammock as long as there's two trees on any terrain so i get all that and those are definite benefits to hammock camping and that's why i still have a bunch of hammocks and i'm still gonna do it but i prefer the tent now and i wish i would have discovered that early on i wish i would have learned how to sleep in the backcountry in a tent first i wish i would have bought a lightweight tent before i bought a hammock first all right and number four this is the last thing on the list for you guys i wish i would have bought a long spoon sooner i know what you're thinking that's pretty weird right yeah well it is kind of weird but it makes a big difference this was one of the first spoons i bought right here this is a gsi outdoors ultralight spoon weighs next to nothing you know folds up into this gross there's still food on it that's nasty oh my gosh dan becker take care of your gear this thing packs up to literally nothing i mean look at the size of this thing it's like as small as my finger but when you extend it you think it's going to extend you know a lot but it's really not it's like maybe five inches long and if you've got those dehydrated if you've got those dehydrated food bags this really doesn't get down into it without getting your hand halfway in the bag and making your hand all dirty i wish i would have not bought this as my ultralight you know spoon and i wish i would have bought something like i did later sooner this has gotta go okay this is the human gear duo um spoon fork combo it's two uh utensils and then you just pull it apart you snap it together and now you've got this really long spoon to get down to those dehydrated food bags and it weighs i think under an ounce it's like .8 ounces but to have a fork and a spoon that's long uh that also breaks down which is important to me i like to be able to break stuff down and be able to put it in my cook pot and this just barely fits in my cook pot this is about as long as this spoon is uh folded out so i wish i would have realized on the front end and bought this a lot sooner it's just one of those gear items you just kind of sit back at it seems kind of silly you're thinking about a spoon but you're like man i i really wish i would have bought this sooner alright that's it uh is there more stuff probably but i'm gonna have to save that for my 2021 edition if you guys like this video make sure you hit that like button also subscribe for more hit the bell notification so i can send you a video every single time it's released also i do have an instagram so make sure you follow me there i'll put that right here and i will see you on the next one [Music] you

Channel: Dan Becker

Views: 162,158

Rating: 4.8610487 out of 5

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Id: ilw06_QPH9U

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Tue May 19 2020