Budget Backpacking Gear Review

hey y'all dixie here i finally got a chance to get out on trail and test out my budget gear setup that i introduced several months ago i did an out-and-back trip for about four days on the pine mountain trail so after getting to use the gear on a trip i wanted to let you all know how it worked out for me now this video is mainly for beginners who are just getting into backpacking and don't want to invest a lot of money into gear that they're not sure they're going to actually continue to use or if you've got a child who's interested in it maybe with scouting and you want to get on something that's decent but doesn't break the bank this is kind of what this is aimed at because everything in today's video cost around 500 really a little bit less especially depending on what you might already have the shelter in my budget gear setup is the nature hike vic one person tent it's made out of 15 denier nylon and is a freestanding tent and that's the main reason that i went with this because i know when i first started backpacking using a tent that set up with trekking poles made me a little bit nervous because i wasn't too sure about my skills in doing that so if you're worried about that also then this tent will set up and freeze stand alone so if you've got some ground that's kind of hard to drive stakes into then you don't really have to stress about it it comes already seam sealed with aluminum tent poles eight stakes and a ground cloth but something that i thought was interesting about this tent is it had like one and a half vestibules because there's the vestibule on the entryway but then also on the other side of the tent there's a zipper down by the bottom of the tent so you could slide things out there like your trail runners if you wanted them under the vestibule but didn't want them you know in your way as you're getting in and out of the tent also it has two skylights which i assume are to help with ventilation since this is a single wall tent and single wall tents can be known to be problematic with condensation so my thoughts on how the tent actually performed the first thing that i noticed is it's pretty easy to set up if you've ever had any experience setting up a tent then you can pretty much kind of fumble through it and after setting it up a couple of times you're going to be a pro on the inside of the tent there was certainly less space than i'm used to but it has the reasonable amount of what you can expect from a one person backpacking tent and with that said i was able to make everything fit on the inside of the tent i just kind of slid my pack down beside me and just had everything strode you know right next to me i didn't have any problems squeezing everything in but you do have that extra vestibule space if you find yourself a bit crowded now let's talk about what i was concerned about and that's the issue with condensation considering that the temperatures at night were anywhere from the lower 70s down to the lowest in the upper 60s i knew that that was kind of the prime setting for condensation and each campsite is near a water source so that also adds to the dampness in the air at night though when it wasn't raining i really didn't have any significant issues with condensation the night that it did rain on me though i still didn't have like a steady dripping from the condensation on the walls of the tent but anytime that the rain really started hammering down on the outside of the tent that vibration made like little mistings on my face while i was trying to sleep so that was a little bit frustrating i did take a bandana and wipe down the walls of the tent and that seemed to help you know and i did that a few times in the night also i only had one skylight open during the rain because i was a little bit concerned that it might like rain into the skylight and i wanted to just only have to deal with closing one in the middle of the rainstorm so if i'd had that second one open surely it might have helped a little bit with condensation but i don't think it would have helped enough to stop the issue none of my stuff was completely soaked so again i'm not saying this is a deal breaker i would be a little bit more concerned if i was hiking in freezing cold weather but generally when people are first starting out backpacking i would recommend that they go from like late spring into early fall that way they're not getting into the sketchier temperatures of course that's going to depend on your area but you just want to be cautious of not being in temperatures that are too low when you don't have much experience that way you're not putting yourself at a higher risk for hypothermia and one other critique is i noticed that the mesh zipper on the entryway of the tent opens from the top and then down to the bottom and the only reason that i think that this was a little problematic is when i sit up in my tent at night because i'm a night owl and i've got my headlamp hanging up in my tent and everything there are bugs collecting in the vestibule so as soon as i open that tent from the top and that's you know if i want to access just something that i could have slid my hand out if it had zipped you know the other way then all of those bugs are flying in so i think it would have been a better design if they could have changed the direction of the zipper again so you could just reach out and not have all of these bugs coming inside your tent i do think that a superior option for a budget tent would be the lanchan one i've tested that out in the backyard and i think that if you're going to be hiking with trekking poles anyway and you're not afraid to kind of test out that skill a little bit before you go setting up a tent that uses trekking poles uh as the main you know frame for the tent then you're gonna save 13 or 14 ounces and you're going to come out with a double walled tent so you're not going to have the same condensation issues and also it's going to be in the same price range so i think with that if you just watch some videos and spend a little time in the backyard learning to set it up you're really going to find that that would be a better option than the nature hike vic one the pack that i carried on this trip was the 3 full gear water resistant pack that's available on aliexpress the main concern i had with this pack is that it wouldn't be comfortable due to not having an actual frame like i'm used to but it does have a pocket on the area where your backrest where you can slide a sit pad in there the one that i got from gossamer gear with my mariposa pack fit perfectly in there but i decided to go with the z light pad that my dog fancy usually sleeps on because it just gave it a bit more cushion and i had hoped rigidity but the pack was still kind of floppy like and not super rigid and while i was trying to pack up my gear it wasn't always cooperative to stand up but my z packs our call is also like that so you just kind of have to work with it or find a tree to prop it against i don't feel like the pack not having a frame in and of itself made it uncomfortable but i do think that it's really going to affect how much weight you're going to be able to put in the pack and still have it carry comfortably when i first attempted to test this budget gear out on the shell towie trace trail before hank got sick and i had to go home i noticed that it wasn't super comfortable but i did have a couple of pounds more camera equipment than i did when i went out on the pine mountain trail and that made all the difference if i had to estimate i'd say that if you've got a base weight that's around 15 pounds or so and maybe even a couple more pounds and about three to four days of food that you're probably going to be just fine thankfully because the body of the pack itself isn't rigid the hip belt and the shoulder straps are pretty firm and substantial but also comfortable so that helped with having the pack sit up on my hips and then having the shoulder straps that were comfortable but also substantial to help kind of distribute that weight that i was carrying on my back with that said though i do feel like the hip belt was a little bit too large for me so if you are a smaller build then you may have to do some adjustments there are things that you can do like put those big car wash and sponges i've seen people put those on the hip belt and just kind of like duct tape them on there i've also seen people use like pool noodles and and different things like that or you could just go with a different pack but i guess if you were dead set on this one and you're on a budget and it fits your budget there are things that you can do to make it work where it carries a bit more comfortably on top of the hips those hip bones so it helps keep the weight off of your shoulders and going forward if i was to use this pack again then that's probably what i do just do something to make it fit a bit more comfortably the hip belt is adjustable but it's just i had tightened it down as far as it would go the problem with the hip belt being a little bit too big is that it slides down your hips and doesn't sit up on top of those hip bones and then more of the weight is on your shoulders and that is something that i noticed my shoulders were kind of getting scrubbed i thought maybe it's because i was wearing a tank top and my skin just wasn't used to the material that could have also been what it was but you know after a couple of days it really wasn't an issue as far as rubbing on my shoulders but i did feel there was much more weight on my shoulders than was necessary if the hip belt would have fit properly now this pack is marketed as a water resistant pack but don't let that fool you when it rained on me there was definitely some moisture on the inside of the pack but regardless if a pack is marketed as 100 percent waterproof and you can bet your life that no water is going to get in here i would still use redundancies with waterproofing something like a pack liner which you can get a set of two from gossamer gear for five dollars another critique is that the bungee loops on the very bottom of the pack i feel like they could have been a little bit different maybe had more slack in them so that you could better slide a tent in there and tint poles and tighten it up i carried the tent a couple of different ways one time i carried it there on the loops on the bottom of the pack one time i strapped it up on top of the pack and just carried the tent poles on the bottom but they were kind of like not big enough to really cinch all the way around the tent i had to slide it into the loop so anyway i made a way to finagle it and you could too but if i was to talk to the designer of the pack then that's something that i would recommend to be changed so it sounds like i'm kind of dog in the pack but i just wanted to let you know every little thing you know that i either liked or didn't like the hip belt pockets were probably my favorite part of the pack because they're very large you can fit snacks in there i had a little camera my sony rx100 in there along with my macro lens just several different things so i really like that the mesh on the back and then the bungee crisscrosses on the back i hung my laundry on there after i had rinsed it in a creek the cup holders have a little bungee that you can cinch down to you know better keep things in there so if you've got just one water bottle with a filter on the top of it if it's top heavy it's not toppling out because the cup holder is too large so all of the other typically desired features of the pack i felt like they functioned really well and for the price of the pack and the weight of the pack if you're on a budget i really do think it's a decent starter pack all right so we've covered two of the big three items the shelter the pack and now let's talk about the third piece which is the sleeping bag for this i got the aes max ultralight goose down sleeping bag it's 800 fill power down has a comfort rating of 52 degrees a lower limit of 43 degrees and then an extreme limit of 15 degrees this is the only piece of gear that i feel like i didn't get a good test on because again the temperatures were up in the higher 60s at the coldest so i didn't get to test out that 52 degree comfort limit because just throwing it over the top of me was really enough to keep me warm but i do think that if you're backpacking in the three seasons especially late spring to early fall that this bag will work for you it's not the most lofty sleeping bag that i've ever had by any means it's also probably the warmest rated sleeping bag that i've ever had but i have heard that if you wash the bag it does loft up a bit more so that's something that you might want to look into if you get the sleeping bag and you're going to be pushing that comfort limit of 52 degrees it also depends on the individual and how cold you personally sleep at night i probably will test out the sleeping bag again when i'm out on the penhody trail this fall and i'm hoping to especially kind of push that limit of the temperature rating so i can let y'all know my thoughts on that continuing on the sleep system set up i went with the sleep and go inflatable sleeping pad for my sleeping pad it's two inches thick and has an r value of 2.1 the pad blows up very easily and also deflates easily at first i thought i was going to have some troubles with deflating it i just thought it was going to be very time consuming but when you're doing something over and over you always find ways to be more efficient so i found if you just push in the flap that you're supposed to push in when you're deflating it if you grab the outer edge of that and then pull it outside of the hole you can mash down the pad and roll it up and then push that little flap back in and that way you don't have to just like hold the flap the whole time that you're trying to push the air out of it because you feel like you don't have enough hands this sleeping pad comes with a patch kit so you can have it with you in the field in case you end up spraying in a leak but it has a lifetime warranty so you can always swap it out if you do end up punching a hole in it i honestly really enjoyed this pad the pad slept really comfortably to me even though it's not as thick as linear extra light that i typically use but it's also like a fourth of the price one of the typical complaints with the thermarest neoair extra light is that it's too noisy to sleep on it sounds like you're sleeping on a bag of potato chips this pad wasn't near as noisy to me that doesn't typically bother me but that is something that i noticed honestly this might have been my favorite piece of budget gear now let's talk about a food kit because if you're gonna cook on trail you gotta have some sort of kitchen set up with that said cooking is not a requirement you can certainly carry things with you that you can just eat like snacks all the time or tortilla or you know just something like that that you don't have to heat up you can also look into cold soaking that might be an option if you do want foods that typically heat up but you can just rehydrate them by cold soaking if you are on a very tight budget that will of course help save money by not having to buy a stove pot etc which is what i'm about to go into but that's just something to keep in mind that this is optional gear for my food pot i used old trusty which i had with me on all of the triple crown trails i mean this thing has like thousands of miles on it and i love it and i i could go with something titanium or better quality but i really do like it the official name of it is the stanco greasepot it weighs 3.6 ounces and costs about seven dollars now full disclosure it is made from aluminum so do your research and make sure that that is something that you're comfortable with for a stove i use the brs little collapsible stove that weighs less than one ounce it weighs 0.85 ounces and it costs about 17 now you got to have a bag to put all of your food in so i went with the coglins dry bag the 25 liter it weighs 2 ounces and costs 10 and the reason that you want something like this is so that you've one got a place to organize all of your food and two it makes it really convenient if you're in bear country to hang a bear bag so this bag works just fine i mean you can go with something fancy like the z-packs bear bagging kit that i typically use it's about fifty dollars and yes it's a little bit lighter and it comes with the cord but for ten bucks this is a nice bag to eat with i use the tocs long handled titanium spoon it weighs 0.55 ounces and costs 10 now this is definitely not a necessity you can use just a regular spoon from your silverware drawer at home you could always use plastic ware if you wanted to but i've seen those break several times on trail i mean the point is you don't have to have this in fact people have lost their spoon on trail and used a tent stake to eat from so i just prefer this spoon because i guess i'm a spoon snob but it's really nice the titanium holds up and the long-handled spoon is convenient if you're going to be eating backpacker meals like mountain house because you don't have to dig your whole hand down in that pouch while you're trying to eat all of this food gear with the exception of the coughlin's dry bag i've used for at least 2 000 miles on trail and would definitely vouch for it even though it's budget gear i had something similar to the coughlin's dry bag on my through hike of the appalachian trail and it held up just fine i think towards the end of the 2200 mile trek i ended up having to use a bit of duct tape and some floss to sew it but again for ten dollars you're getting a good deal now let's talk about water treatment i personally prefer a water filter there are different options like drops and tabs but i'm biased to the filters really out of convenience because i like to scoop dirty water up in a bottle and then just screw my filter on the top of it that way i can drink out of it or you know squeeze it from the bottle into something else if i'm gonna make a drink mix or make my coffee in the morning so i went with the sawyer squeeze mini which weighs 1.62 ounces and costs about 20 dollars that's about half the price of the standard sawyer squeeze filter i'm gonna be honest here if i had to throw in another twenty dollars on this budget gear setup i'd probably throw it in on the filter i just found that the sawyer mini has a slower flow rate than i'm really willing to have the patience with i mean it worked fine so you know if you're going out for your first trip and that's what you can afford it will work and it'll do just fine it did for me on this trip but when you want to like chug water you know you just can't really get enough to squeeze out now i will say if you're going to backpack in an area that has particularly dirty water sources i would think that this one might clog up a bit easier than the standard size so again this will work fine it worked fine for me i don't hate it i just personally prefer the standard size of the sawyer squeeze now let's talk about rain gear which i might be needing here pretty soon for this trip i used the frogtogs ultra light 2 rain suit and i actually only took the raincoat with me because like i said it's so hot in georgia right now that it just seemed like the rain jacket would do me fine and it did so i actually shaved weight off of what the whole setup typically weighs the small suit weighs nine ounces and costs about twenty dollars you can get it at walmart on amazon etc but you get the whole rain suit for twenty dollars and i don't know any rain suit that is this light and also this inexpensive except for frog togs i can vouch for this setup because i used it on the appalachian trail during my through hike and my first suit made it about i don't know a little over a thousand miles or so and then i had to replace it but you're talking 40 bucks for rain gear for over 2 000 miles if you're backpacking on a well-maintained trail and you're not going to be having to do any bushwhacking this rain suit will work just fine for you but if you are going to be going through more brushy areas you might want to look at a different option because it's not super durable some of the features that i like about the frogtogs suit is there is an elastic ring on the wrist area of the rain jacket so it helps kind of stay snug to your wrist that way you're not having rain water run down through the sleeve of your raincoat the rain jacket also has an adjustable hood and the rain pants are elastic around the waist the headlamp i carried with me on this trip was the nightcore nu20 it's a rechargeable headlamp that's got a 360 lumens lat the face of the headlamp is adjustable so you can adjust the beam to point down right in front of you or farther out ahead of you and this is a feature that i really appreciate in a headlamp especially because i tend to not hack a lot so my neck doesn't have to get sore from staring right down in front of my feet and it has three different beam options so there's a low medium high and then a flashing setting now the high setting is really bright but i appreciated that because every night on this trip i ended up not hiking for at least two maybe even three hours or so and then once i got to camp and was in my tent i was up for at least another two hours or so and it wasn't until after the second night that i wanted to charge the headline because i felt like it wasn't quite bright enough especially to not hike anymore so if you're not a night hacker and you were to go out on a four-day trip and only use it for a couple of hours in your tent at night before you went to bed probably not on the highest setting then it might last you the whole time i'm gonna hazard a guess and say that it would but i did charge it with my battery bank while i was on trail and it charges up pretty quickly and you really don't have to charge it all the way up again if you didn't want to as long as you've got enough juice to get you to town but i like not carrying the extra weight of a spare pair of batteries because once you use them up it doesn't get any lighter and i just prefer to ration my battery bank so i think going forward i'll probably opt to use a rechargeable headlamp the only reason that i probably won't use this one in the future is because it doesn't have a red beam setting and that's you know not super important for everybody but i do like that option on a headlamp just because if your eyes are adjusted to the dark using a red beam setting doesn't you know make them not adjusted anymore once you cut it off so it's just a little bit easier on the eyes also if you're backpacking and camping around other people having that red beam doesn't blind your fellow hiker so if you are on a budget though this is a good headlamp and you know the red beam is certainly not a necessity next up is footwear and what shoes you have on your feet is certainly important because your feet are what get you from point a to point b but when you first start out backpacking and you're going on shorter trips using some sort of tennis shoes that you already have at home will probably work just fine for you the biggest thing is you want to make sure that you have enough room for your toes in there so you want to have a thumb width space between the tip of your toe and the front of the shoe and another test is lacing the shoe up comfortably and then tapping your toe on the ground and as long as your toes aren't hitting the front of the shoe then you're probably okay and that's more or less just to simulate walking down a steep hill because you don't want your toes slamming to the front of your shoe the whole time you're going down a hill if you don't have a comfortable pair of tennis shoes though and you are on a tight budget you can check out the men's rockadia trail runners by adidas i got mine on amazon for about 55 to 60 or so and i was a little bit skeptical about how they would perform based on the price if i'm being completely honest because they're about half the price of a typical pair of trail runners that i've worn on my through hikes but these actually did a pretty good job i didn't notice myself slipping and sliding any more than in a normal pair of trail runners i even was hiking in the rain on rocks and slick wood and just you know in different situations and conditions also i didn't notice that my feet were any more sore than normal when i go out on a backpacking trip especially in that first few days i didn't have any different insoles or anything i use them just as they came out of the box now they're not the most fashionable and best-looking pair of shoes that i've ever had but that doesn't really matter when i'm getting out in nature i'm more concerned with how things function they did get completely soaking wet as i was backpacking in the rain and i noticed the next day when the rain had stopped and after a couple hours of hiking that they dried out relatively quickly now i'm sure that they probably didn't dry out as quickly as a more lightweight and more breathable pair of trail runners but i don't know that the difference is worth the doubling of the price with that said if i was going to go on a longer trip like a 300 mile trip or something like that or a through hike where i'm going for a couple thousand miles then i would probably go back to my ultra trail runners mainly because of the zero drop and i've learned that that works well for my foot but everybody's feet are different some people say altars don't work for them some people might say that this pair of adidas doesn't work for them but i just feel like it's a good place to start especially if you're on a budget now let's talk about clothing i always keep my pajamas in some sort of lightweight dry bag on this trip i took like the food bag a coughlin's 25 liter dry bag and as i mentioned with the food bag i think that they're a quality lightweight product for a really good price for this trip i either took clothing that i already had or i got something from walmart or the thrift store for my pajamas i used things that i already had just a pair of cotton shorts and a soft airy cotton top now i know most of the time in backpacking folks will tell you to avoid cotton like the plague because it tends to hold moisture and if it ends up damp then it can increase your risk of hypothermia at night but in the middle of the summertime i mean i could have stripped off the wet clothing and slept with just my sleeping bag and i would have been fine so in the summertime i do prefer cotton clothes to sleep in for my hiking outfit during the day i actually went to a local thrift store now it's one of those half luton thrift stores that they kind of make you feel bad about yourself when you try to donate clothing to them because they're like it's not the best of the best friends or whatever but i just wanted to show people that they could go to a thrift store and get things like adidas tops they even had a pair of patagonia shorts like the ones that i typically wear so just because you're on a budget doesn't mean you can't get some nice athletic clothing that's going to hold up potentially better than the walmart stuff although there's no shame in wearing walmart stuff if you don't have a thrift store nearby i actually got a couple of pairs of socks to take with me that were from walmart i took one pair that i already had but then i got the avia brand from walmart and i just made sure that those were a synthetic blend and that they didn't have any cotton in them for my underwear and my sports bra i just took something that i already had again you just want to make sure that you've got something synthetic and not cotton because during the day while you're hiking cotton can stay damp and cause chafing which is no fun and finally for a jacket i carried a fleece pullover that i already had i don't care how hot it is outside i always make sure to either take a puffy or a fleece just in case the temperature drops unexpectedly for some reason i know that i'm covered and i've got something to keep me warm and also it doubles as a pillow inside of my clothing bag so that's always nice to have too i know people will see backpackers with puffy coats and think well i must have to have a puffy coat if i'm going to go backpacking but they can be really expensive and not so light if they're on the cheaper end of things but you know a good puffy coat will cost anywhere from like 200 to 400 dollars unless you can get them on sale which is good if you're on a budget you know taking your time to get your gear as you go and finding things on sale is great but you don't have to have a puffy a fleece pullover will work just wonderfully paired with a beanie if it doesn't have a hood so just something to keep in mind so that's it for all the stuff that you truly need in my opinion to load up and take out on a backpacking trip but i did carry some other items that i would consider optional but that do make the trip maybe more comfortable or enjoyable but i also with these items chose budget-friendly pieces of gear to test them out the first thing on that list is a set of trekking poles i truly prefer to go backpacking with trekking poles when i first started using them they felt a little bit awkward but i started with one kind of as a walking stick and then slowly implemented the other one into my gate and it just helps me keep pace it saves my knees on the downhills it makes going uphill easier and now i use a shelter that requires trekking poles so anyway the ones that i selected for this trip only cost 25 dollars and they are the cascade mountain tech aluminum adjustable trekking poles the biggest thing that i was concerned about with using a budget set of trekking poles is that they would collapse on me while i was walking and actually when i first tried to test this budget gear up in kentucky on the sheltoe trace trail i was doing a water crossing and i'm stepping on the rocks and i put some pressure on the trekking poles and they started collapsing so i knew that i was going to have to do a little bit of surgery on them before this trip all i had to do was just twist and kind of tighten the locks on the trekking poles and they work perfectly now i actually tried to get them to collapse on this trip by making sure i put a lot of weight on them over time and they held up just fine i also like these trekking poles because they're fairly lightweight and also they've got cork grips on the handles i just find that my hands get sweaty when i hack especially when it's in georgia in august and the court kind of helps to absorb that sweat where i feel like foam and rubber grips just kind of i don't know slide around and feel sticky so personal preference and the next thing on the list of optional items is a battery bank now i carry a very large battery bank probably more than most people going out backpacking would need so that's not necessary if you're just going out on like a four day trip again for most people unless you're going to be using your phone a whole lot and using a lot of other electronics that require a battery bank but for most people who are just using their phone minimally to maybe take pictures and they're keeping it in airplane mode then something like the 5 000 milliamp hour charger by anchor would probably be enough for you you can get that on amazon most of the time for about twenty dollars and if you feel like you're going to use it a bit more than that or you have other electronics then you could consider the 10 000 milliamp hour charger it just really depends on how much juice you're going to need while you're out there now let's break down the total weight and cost of everything so the essentials on this list at the time that i put everything together cost me about 498 dollars and they all together weigh 10.56 pounds now of course this price point and even the weight might vary a little bit for you because you might have some of the stuff at home already that you can use also prices fluctuate online of course depending on the season and the current supply versus demand etc but this should be the typical range that you will find these items in also the weight might vary depending on the things you do already have at home so if you're not buying everything on this list and also the clothing itself would vary but this at least gives you an example to go by of a real life person who put together this list this is what it weighed and what it cost all in all i feel like this gear setup is a pretty good starting point for people who are just getting into backpacking the only thing that i would do differently going forward is to opt for the lan shan one tent instead of the nature hike tent just because of the weight savings of 13 to 14 ounces and also i think it would do a better job with condensation as it's a two wall tent instead of a single walled tent especially if you're hiking in a very humid area all right y'all that is all i have for you today and if anybody watching has experience with any of the budget gear that i mentioned today or other budget gear that's also lightweight i would love to hear your experiences in the comments below and i think just having different options for folks would be a good idea that way they can pick what works well for them based on their personal preferences and i hope that anybody watching today that is currently building their backpacking setup but doesn't want to spend an arm and a leg that this was useful to you thank you all so much for watching and we'll see y'all next time

Channel: Homemade Wanderlust

Views: 204,636

Keywords: backpacking, gear, budget, hiking, nature, outdoors, backcountry, travel, cheap, lightweight, pacific crest trail, pct, Appalachian trail, cdt, thru-hiking, long distance backpacking

Id: c1lzPuyX7bM

Length: 34min 13sec (2053 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2020