ultralight

The point is for you to develop your skillset so you can rely on those instead of having a bunch of extraneous shit to carry around. Your brain counts as worn weight.

“Shaving all the excess weight off your kit” is a good starting point, but it seems like a lot of people use that as an excuse to go shopping. If you’ve got the money to drop on all that super expensive ultralight gear from Big Agnes, Toaks, and whoever else, more power to you, but spending a bunch of money is not and should not be the point.

My backpacking tent weighs almost 6 pounds. I don’t give a shit. It’s a 2 man tent that I’ve had for over 20 years and it’s still in great shape, and I can set it up blindfolded in about 90 seconds. I know that tent like the back of my hand and I have spent hundreds of nights sleeping comfortably inside if. I actually bought a fancy UL tent and tried it out, and it just fucked my whole system up lol. Tried it for a few trips and ultimately saving 2 pounds on my tent was not worth the hassle of rearranging my entire setup and consciously monitoring my every move near the thing due to being paranoid about ripping a hole in a $500 tent with fabric thinner than Donald Trump’s skin. Just an example of how agonizing over every ounce and making sure you have the absolute most cutting-edge gear is not everything it’s cracked up to be.

The real goal is to know yourself, your skills, your itinerary, and the environment you will be in well enough that you do not bring anything with you that you don’t actually need, and to develop your skills so that you can do more with less. If a bottle of wine and some cheese takes your hike from a 3-star experience to a 5-star experience, you need it. If someone on the internet says it’s too heavy, fuck ‘em.