I Tried Extreme Ultralight Backpacking...

I'm about to start a backpacking trip with a pack that has a base weight of only five pounds I want to see if the benefits of having a lighter pack like being able to cover more miles as well as the reduced likelihood of injuries are true or if I'm sacrificing Comfort protection and durability in order to achieve a lighter pack in total with food and water this pack only weighs 10 pounds I'm starting off today with some pretty significant elevation gain we're heading up over that pass there and I'm really curious to see whether having the lighter pack makes going up elevation a lot easier as well today we're gonna be covering a lot of distance I want to see if I'm able to move faster and more comfortably once I get to Camp I'm really curious to see how my sleep system does I definitely cut a lot of weight in a lot of different areas and my sleep system and shelter were one of them thank you I've done this hike up with a heavier pack and it was definitely a lot easier with a pack that only weighs 10 pounds I was able to move a lot faster the step ups were a lot easier and being able to kind of hop over the rocky sections was a lot easier as well I'm gonna take a little break here rehydrate I am carrying two liters of water because I am in the desert and that's about half the weight of the pack right now but what I'm not carrying is a water filter a filter and bag is a lot of weight so instead I'm using a different mechanism or to treat my water something that's a lot more lightweight I'm dropping down into some flatter train so I'm curious to see how fast I can move today and then tomorrow normally with a 20 to 30 pound pack I'm averaging about three to three and a half kilometers an hour but I'm curious to see if I can get up to four four and a half kilometers an hour with this super lightweight pack something I've realized with this pack when I'm wearing it properly up high the water bottle pockets are too high I can't reach my water bottles so I have to drop the shoulder straps down then I can reach back and grab my water bottle I think it's just a factor of this being an ultralight pack it just doesn't have the length to be able to put those water bottle Pockets a little bit lower with easy access I'm almost out of water so luckily came across a little stream here it's flowing a little bit which is better than I expected I thought everything was going to be like this kind of stagnant pool here which would not be the best for the system that I'm gonna be using these are little tabs that you add into your water bottle once you fill it with water and then it treats water the unfortunate thing with these is you have to wait 30 minutes after using them so if you're really thirsty you're gonna have to wait but they're super lightweight this entire pack weighs less than 10 grams easily and it has 10 10 little tabs in it I was in over 20 kilometer Day 26 kilometers and I feel pretty good I'm always a little bit sore after 20 kilometers but I think the the lighter pack definitely helped but now it's time to get my tent tent and sleep system sit up those of you who follow the channel and have seen some of my ultra Comfort gearless videos you'll probably find the gear that I brought for shelter as well as sleeping to be to be pretty comical it's it's kind of ridiculous I think so the to the 10th that I'm using is the zpax hex mid it weighs 172 grams so it's super lightweight it's about half the weight of a tent that would have mesh walls as well as a floor so I'm cutting out the walls in the floor which is kind of a gamble I feel like the floor provides some good protection from Pokey things and then the mesh is good for keeping it with bugs I'm camped right near water so the bugs might get a little bit bad we're gonna have to see tomorrow morning how well all of that kind of shakes out and when wind can just kind of go right underneath this tent hopefully I'm in enough of a protected area here for my sleeping pad I've never used this pad in the wild before this is the therm-rest Uber light it weighs 250 grams it's super lightweight the lightest sleeping pad on the market that you can buy it has an R value of two so it's not a warm sleeping pad but I'm in the desert I'm on warm ground right now so it should be fine the issue with this is durability there's been a lot of issues that people have had out there with holes and leaks so hopefully setting up on Sand and having cleared away all the sticks keeps it keeps it safe I'll probably put my pack underneath me in order to kind of protect it a little bit the pack that I used was the z-packs sub Nero it's a 265 gram pack it uses Ultra 100 fabric which is a cool very cool fabric the pack was pretty good it did it did pretty well throughout the day I definitely found the water bottle issue to be a bit annoying I think in the future if I was going to use that pack for a trip like this I'd bring the one bottle system which basically turns any water bottle like a smart water bottle into a hydration bladder so for like an ounce you can just run a hose into your water bottle and then over your shoulder and you can take sips of water really easily I did bring a pillow as well to trekology 2.0 so I'm gonna have a little bit of comfort and as far as the rest of my sleep system like my insulation the quilt that I'm using very cool quilt very high tech super lightweight but I'll talk about that tomorrow morning I'm gonna start getting dinner going I did bring a cook system so I'm not cold soaking or anything like that that would have saved probably another half a pound if I did that but I'm really excited for the meal that I have tonight I'll share with you my ultralight cook system in a second here for my cook kit everything fits in this super tiny 500 milliliter tox titanium light pot so if you open up the elastic here I have a BRS 3000 stove this thing only weighs 25 grams the pot weighs 72 grams so all in all it weighs under 100 grams then I have a little mini big lighter and then my fuel canister in order to get everything to fit you have to take the little cap off the fuel canister for my meal I'm having a freeze-dried meal I love freeze-dried meals they're so much better than cold silky I could have saved some weight by Cold soaking but it wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable and then I'm using my pink titanium spoon in order to eat my freeze-dried meal as well as my breakfast in order to stay warm in addition to my sleeping pad and my quilt I have just two items and that's a Patagonia Ultra Alpine down quilt this only weighs 150 grams super lightweight and then I have a Merino wool tube I think with this system I could probably get down to close to freezing and still be warm and that's because I also wear my clothing that I hike in while I'm sleeping a lot of time I'll bring a pair of long johns as well as a sleep shirt I find that the hiking shirts that I normally wear they stink after a very short period of time and they're not super comfortable to sleep in but on this trip I'm using an alpaca wool shirt so this has been four days of wearing it now doesn't really stink at all and it's warm but also keeps me cool while I'm hiking so it has a lot of good features going for it so I don't need to be bringing a whole bunch of extra clothes and then I can use the hood as well to add a little bit of extra warmth this is my first time going this minimal on a trip so you're gonna have to wait until morning to see whether my sleep system and my clothing was warm enough and weather this pretty minimal shelter was able to protect me enough from wind bugs and any sort of weather that might roll in good morning last night was an adventure we'll start with talking about the the tent tarp here I don't know what to call it but it surprised me I didn't think that I'd be protected from the wind as much as I was there was a little bit of wind last night but something that I learned from Ryan Jordan over at backpacking light is that wind is stronger the higher off you get from the ground so at ground level the wind is pretty light so this tent was able to protect me at those higher spots and only let in that light wind at the bottom so even though it was windy I didn't feel like the wind was sucking the heat out of me the other issue which I mentioned last night were bugs there were mosquitoes out last night I got two bites but for the most part the mosquitoes weren't coming in Under the Tent I don't know if that's just the way they they just can't fly that way very well but only two mosquitoes got me and I think part of that was due to the quilt covering up most of my body as well if it was too warm for a quilt I probably would have gotten a few more bites talking about the quilt temperatures last night got down to about freezing and I was warm enough in this quilt along with my down sweater the quilt is the Enlightened Equipment Revelation 40 degree quilt I went with a 40 degree quilt because I figured I wouldn't be using a super ultralight system like this in anything but really warm temperatures so that's what I went with that and like I said I was able to keep me warm enough with the down sweater it only weighs 395 grams so it's the lightest quilt that I have by far and part of that is due to the 40 degree rating they just don't need as much down in it but as well the shell material is seven denier and then the power of the fill inside of it is 950 so those are basically the two lightest types of materials that you can get and it'd be hard to beat this cool as far as weight goes unless you go to a warmer quilt I did not have big expectations for the sleeping pad the thermarest Uber light down there I I honestly thought it was gonna pop it didn't pop it didn't leak on this trip so far we'll see how it does over the course of the year as I put more testing on it but it was more comfortable than an x-lite or an x-therm be because of the fact that it's a little bit softer with material so it kind of squished to my body shape a little bit more I would have liked a wide pad wide pads are just a lot more comfortable but in order to say weight I went with the regular width version overall my sleep was better than I expected if anything I could say that it was pretty good so that brings us to the question of whether you need to sacrifice comfort and protection and durability in order to have a super ultra light setup and get down to a five pound base weight and while I don't think you need to sacrifice any of those things you may need to compromise a bit and especially in bad weather I don't think this tent would have been nearly as fun a place to hang out if it was raining last night or as dealing with extreme wind but it did the job in moderate moderate conditions as well I could have had a way better sleep if I had a much more comfortable sleeping pad as far as the quilt goes I wouldn't say that was a compromise at all that was a very good solid quilt for me kept me warm and then the pack probably wasn't a compromise either it was super lightweight the water bottle pockets are a bit of an issue but I think I can solve that with the one bottle system and I do think I realized the benefits of being able to go longer distance faster the elevation gains were a lot easier yesterday I feel great this morning and the aspect of decreasing the likelihood of injuries is is probably a real one I was going through some pretty uneven terrain and I was able to stay late on my feet I was almost rolled my ankle at one point but I think partly because I had a lighter pack I was able to just recover from it really easily and that's something to keep in mind if you're especially if you're kind of on the older end like I'm I'm approaching I'm almost 40 now at this point as Steph would say but when you're getting older you want to be kind of watching out for your body and having a lighter pack is gonna really help you do that for some people out there this system won't be for them it will be a little bit too ultra light a little bit too finicky but for other people out there it's something to consider especially parts of it in order to lower your pack weight so I guess you could say I was wrong about super ultralight systems and if you want to see some other things that I was wrong about go check out this video right up here there's some things I was wrong about about sleeping pads quilts tents and not just that they are better than I expected but nuances about them that I think are really cool

Channel: Justin Outdoors

Views: 243,009

Keywords: Backpacking, Hiking, Camping, ultralight, backpacking gear, backpacking gear list, camping gear, hiking gear, ultralight gear, best backpacking gear, best hiking gear, Appalachian Trail, ultralight backpacking, hiking trails, gear review

Id: mSgcPTwdXTM

Length: 12min 3sec (723 seconds)

Published: Wed May 10 2023