Finally, a Dyneema trekking pole shelter even LeBron James can stretch out in.

From: Backpacking Light Sep-15-2024 11:22:am

June 19, 2022 | Unsubscribe

Trim the Fat

My "favorite" complaint from internet trolls who complain about Those of us Who Pay Attention to the Weight of our Gear is this:

Whatever, you have no idea what it's like to suffer through a serious storm.

🙄

This is where they start belly-achin' about Dyneema, trekking pole tents, 10 denier fabrics, and BRS stoves.

They think we're all gonna starve, freeze, press the inReach SOS button. They think our minimalist trail running shoes are gonna fall apart. They think our packs are gonna shred the next time we walk through a patch of kinnikinick.

My goodness! Calm down! We're not dummies.

Here's the thing.

Carrying extraneous equipment and supplies that don’t serve your primary objectives of hiking and camping on a wilderness trip can rapidly balloon your pack weights unnecessarily.

Go ahead - make the argument to carry as much weight as necessary to be 'safe' "just in case" to a parent carrying most of the family's gear, or a search-and-rescue professional on a hasty team trying to get to victim as fast as possible, or a thru-hiker who needs to reach the Canadian border before the winter snows come.

The formula isn't complicated:

1. Get your pack weight down.
2. Increase your fitness (injury resilience).
3. Develop and practice skills.

I talked about this in a vintage episode of The 60-Second Backpacker, where you’ll learn why packing only the essentials, replacing equipment with skills, and limiting nonessential items to only those things that compliment your trip goals are critical for maintaining a low pack weight.

- Ryan Jordan, owner/founder

PS: That photo up there ⬆️ that's a group of 14-17 year-old kids who we taught how to plan and execute their own 70-mile traverse of the Wind River Crest without resupply. Mostly off-trail. Lots of glacier travel. Ropes, harnesses, ice axes, crevasse rescue gear. Thunderstorms. Snow. An ascent of Gannett Peak (the Wyoming High Point) en route. It wasn't easy-peasy but it was made much safer by careful attention paid to saving every ounce possible and training our butts off so we could carry the weight we needed to across steep mountain terrain. (UL Haters 👋)

PSS: Would you like us to continue developing the 60-second Backpacker video series? I'm seriously tempted to develop 365 of these short videos as a way to introduce new backpackers to the benefits and joy of lightweight backpacking. Reply to this email and let me know a topic that would be cool to address in one to three minutes! And yes, this would be a legacy project as a contribution back to the backpacking community - I really want to make it FREE to the world!

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