[pct-l] Base weight criteria, AND..

[Diane Soini]

I believe base weight means the weight of your stuff not counting  
food and water or other "consumables". A reasonable target weight is  
anywhere between 10 and 22lbs + or -. It depends on how strong you  
are and other things like how much you want to spend and whether you  
can accept gear that requires certain environmental conditions to  
work (i.e. adequate site selection for your tent and sleeping gear to  
work, that sort of thing.)

The thing that makes hiking the PCT different from other backpack  
trips is that it's not a camping trip. It's a hiking trip. You only  
need gear for hiking, eating and sleeping and nothing else because  
you don't do anything else. You don't fish. You don't sit around in  
camp in chairs getting cold. You don't cook elaborate meals. You  
don't take off your shoes to walk across creeks. You don't even  
change your clothes.

I managed over the duration of my two hikes to trade out and reduce  
my stuff to the point where I had about 12lbs of stuff. Perhaps a  
little more as time went on and I decided it was worth it to carry  
town clothes and a book to read. My food weighed at least 10lbs  
leaving town and in the desert I'd carry up to 3 or 4 liters of water  
so that added a lot more weight to that 12lbs, meaning that having my  
base weight as low as possible was a real benefit for someone as  
relatively weak as me.

A good resource is Ray Jardine's Thru-hiker Handbook which you might  
be able to find in a library or used bookstore. It's out of print,  
replaced by Beyond Backpacking, which might also be out of print and/ 
or replaced by something else. There's new gear now since that book  
was written, but it's a good start for understanding a systems  
approach to gear and reliance on your own skills to solve problems.

On Nov 9, 2013, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:

> From: "Paint Your Wagon" <n801yz at hotmail.com>
> Subject: [pct-l] Base weight criteria, AND...
> To: <pct-l at backcountry.net>
> Message-ID: <BAY172-DS76225F71D2634C17A759F9BF20 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="utf-8"
>
> What?s the general consensus (items to be included) for defining  
> one?s base weight,
> AND...
> what is a reasonable target weight for a US Mexico to US Canada  
> border hike,
> with somewhat lightweight gear expectations?
>
> In the past two attempts, I carried anywhere from 40 lbs. to 80 lbs.
>
> Thanks,
> Paint.