Down-Weighting The Gear 29May17

With age comes reduced power and a lighter pack is valuable. Further, bike-packing requires lesser weight and volume in gear I carry. So, I set out to reduce the big five constants in the gear I carry: cook kit, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, tent, and water filtration. In the cook kit realm I did evaluate the titanium stuff but stuck with cheaper stainless and continued to value nesting (for volume) in addition to weight. I went from 2#13oz to just 1#2oz in cook kit with fuel! I even added a scrubber, a towel, a spork and a silicon cup in the process!

Cook Kit Volume Compare

Large - Gas/Big Pot/Whisperlite/Heat Shield

Small - Canister/Small Pot/BRS/Windshield

For water filtration I killed it with Sawyer vs MSR pump system. Sawyer kit is 2.4oz vs the pump at 1#4.5oz. Carry volume is 20% as well. Tradeoff is time to filtered water but readily made, I hope.

MSR Pump vs Sawyer Squeeze/Flow

For the sleeping pad I shed about a pound in going from old Thermorest to new Sea-To-Summit. I increase R factor in the process of going from 2#8oz to 1#10.3oz. Volume was also saved significantly.

Classic Thermorest vs Sea-To-Summit ThermoLite

For sleeping bags I'll be trading off my awesome Marmot Plasma waterproof 15° bag for a Enlightened Equipment Revelation 30° weather resistent quilt. In so doing I'll go from 2#2oz to just 1#. But, I've never slept using a quilt so we'll see. The Revelation will be here in a month as it's being built custom. Volume will be just >50% compression stuffed. If cold weather is possible I will still be toting the Plasma.

Marmot Plasma

EE Revelation

The EE quilt arrived... awesome. I did have to acquire a smaller stuff sack than came stock with the quilt, an XXS from Sea-To-Summit - I likely reduced volume by 2x in so doing. Compared to my Marmot volume the new gear is likely 1/3 the size and importantly will fit in my seat pack well.

Bag Volume... Marmot Plasma vs EE Revelation

Sleeping pillows are almost a wash as to weight but I'm moving from "stuff a sac" to air filled and doubling weight from 2oz to 4oz.

Pillows... Sea-To-Summit ThermoAir vs Velour Sac

Finally, the tent is a biggie. My backpack go to has been a Black Diamond single wall Skylight 3man @ 4#2oz while my new Nemo Hornet 2P UL is double wall 2man but only 2#3oz. Awesome.

Tent Volume Compare

BD Skylight Single Wall

Nemo Hornet 2P UL Double Wall

If you've been scoring - that's seven pounds of weight savings on these "capital" items needed every time. That should drop my pack from ~32-35# to ~25-28# and the volume and weight all in make solo bikepacking possible. The downside is that I have reduced supported capacity in this gear from 2 comfortably  to 1+ comfortably - if I'm sharing weight I can always swap back something bigger (but heavier).