In the fall of 2005 I was at REI buying hiking shoes and the guy helping me asked if I was going to the presentation. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I wandered into their meeting room based on his promise that I would like it. I was in for a real treat. Andrew Skurka had just finished hiking 7700 miles from Maine to Oregon, and he gave a great 2 hour talk about his experiences and passed around the gear he used.
Unbelievably, Skurka averaged 23 miles per day over his 339 day trip. He obviously travels light. In fact, he wears running shoes (Montrails Highline or Masai) rather than hiking boots, and his winter pack only weighs 12 pounds without food and water. After he assembled his pack, he cut out 40% of the weight by obsessively examining every item for things to remove. Here’s what’s was left:
- GoLite Jam Pack with some of the straps removed to save weight (1 pound)
- Sleeping bag rated to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (-7 degrees Celcius)
- Pyramid Design one-person winter tent
- Alcohol stove made from aluminum cans
- Titanium pot with handles removed (3.4-ounces)
- Rain jacket
- Insulated down jacket
- Glove liners
- Waterproof mitts
- Winter hat
- Digital SLR camera (heaviest item at 2 pounds 6 ounces)
- Swiss army knife with red plastic sides removed
- Toiletries and a journal
Skurka’s mom was his supply chain. About every 10 days she mailed boxes of food, clean clothes, and stove fuel to post offices along his route. At the post office he would fill his pack, change clothes, put his dirty clothes back in the box, and mail them back to her to wash. In total, she sent him 15 pairs of new shoes to replace the ones he’d worn out.
He just started his next long hike: a 6800 mile loop around the western United States. He’ll encounter extreme winter and summer conditions, and he has comprehensive gear lists for each on his website. He’s also got good information on diet and preparations, and I really like his lightweight philosophy:
Early on my efforts to “go light” were aimed solely at my backpack, but nowadays the lightweight philosophy extends into all other areas of my life as well. There are two reasons for this: (1) my quality of life is better, and (2) even more important, my impact on something I care about deeply, the environment, is much less.
