Packing list
A list that weighs itself. Add the big four from the catalogue and their real weights come with them — everything else you can type, or leave unweighed until you have put it on the scales.
- Consumables
- 0 g
- Worn
- 0 g
- Total
- 0 g
Nothing on the list yet
Add gear from the catalogue and its weight comes with it. Anything else — a headtorch, a spare pair of socks — you can type in, with or without a weight.
Or start from a list
Typical weights — correct them as you put your own on the scales.
The tent, bag, mat and pack are left for you to choose.
What base weight means
Base weight is everything you carry that you do not eat, drink or burn: the pack and its contents, minus food, water and fuel, and minus whatever you have on as you walk. It is the number worth tracking because it is the only one that is the same on the last morning as it was on the first.
Food and water are heavy and they move. Three days of food is roughly 2 kg, and a litre of water is exactly 1 kg by definition — so a total weight measured at the trailhead says as much about how far the next stream is as it does about your kit. Strip those out and what is left is the part you chose.
Where your number sits
- Ultralight< 4.50 kg
- Reached by giving something up. Decide what, before you order it.
- Lightweight4.50 kg – 9.00 kg
- Reached by choosing carefully rather than by buying anything exotic.
- Traditional> 9.00 kg
- Where most people start, usually without ever having put the pack on a scale.
These are conventions, not rules, and the thresholds come from the round numbers in pounds the words were coined around. Nobody is safer for hitting one.
Four things are half the weight
On almost every list the tent, the sleeping bag, the sleeping mat and the pack itself come to more than half the base weight. A 2 kg tent and a 2 kg pack is 4 kg before a single sock is inside.
That is why this page keeps those four separate and leaves them empty until you fill them: they are where a kilogram is actually available, and they are the four worth deciding properly rather than defaulting into.
What a three-season weekend needs
Shelter, something to sleep in, something to sleep on, and something to carry it. Then a stove, a pot, fuel and a way to eat; a litre or two of water and a way to make more drinkable; a warm layer and a waterproof one; a head torch; a map and a compass that work when the phone does not; a small first aid kit with something for blisters in it.
The rest is personal and mostly light. What sinks a list is not the forgotten item, it is the four heavy ones chosen without thinking and the six small ones packed out of habit.
A reminder is worth as much as a thing: booking the shuttle, telling somebody the route, charging the power bank. Those rows carry no weight here and still belong on the list.