Hey folks!

I've been away from the forums for quite a while, so I apologize if this has been discussed already.

In looking at some of the new gear being designed and/or discontinued, it seems like companies are moving away from the SUL type gear. A few examples: MLD doesn't have any pack on their site lighter than 10.5 oz, GG's lightest pack shown on their site is 7.5 oz, Golite's new line-up has increased in weight, BPL's newer trekking poles are heavier than the older models, etc.

Maybe some of this has to do with the spinnaker shortage (not sure if that is still going on). Some of you might remember the article I wrote last summer about the lightweight market and it's trends, so this is of particular interest to me. Does anyone think that maybe the industry is going through a similar phase that some of us have gone through - i.e., get the absolute lightest gear possible, think we're awesome, then slowly move toward a little heavier gear for the sake of practicality and functionality?

Any thoughts? Or are these few examples I gave not really representative of the market as a whole?

The GoLite Pinnacle and the Jam2 are also bulking up for the next year.

That said, Zpacks still exists and sells sub 4 oz packs. Take this what you will, but in Backpacker mag's last gear guide, they observed a trend in moving away from tarps toward lightweight (they said UL) shelters because of the advances in designs and styles.

To piggy-pack on what Brian says below, the trend toward light and durable is shown by MLD moving to Dyneema packs instead of what they used before. This follows ULA and GoLite's use of the bombproof fabric.

Edited by citystuckhiker on 01/08/2009 13:41:00 MST.

I think that those SUL materials have been around long enough for people to get an idea about how long they last and their limitations. Therefore I think there has been a trend towards more durable gear for the reasons you stated.
Also I wonder if like me people are prioritizing were and when you should go light and fragile and what gear is better suited to be more durable. i.e. I prefer a "tough pack" cause thats a piece of gear that can be expected to see a lot of abuse compared to say a stuff sack or even a tarp. Also the expense of the relatively fragile materials isnt attractive.
I hope that gear manufactures will continue to offer SUL gear but Im excited that the trend is towards designing light and durable gear. We know how low you can go but there is still some room for nailing that perfect balance of price, weight, durability.

The durability thing is a real issue. When the GG G6 (or maybe G5?) was first released, the product description went WAY out if it's way to explain that a majority of the backpacking population will not find it durable enough. So yes, the pendulum may be settling to a compromise position. It might also be driven by having too many durability related customer service calls to service.

But there's always folks like Zpacks' Joe stepping in to fill the void.

In addition to a possible trend towards durability, "feature creep" is a phenomenon detectable in many industries. I think that is also happening here. Even ZPacks offers options ... but they remain options that can be chosen or not.

Edited by jcolten on 01/08/2009 13:45:35 MST.

I think this rough economy is hitting everyone. For the consumer, durable gear is an investment more than a consumable. For the OEM's durable gear provides less warranty headaches. I certainly know I have steered away from SUL gear in favor of stuff that will last longer with the kind of abuse I tend to throw at my stuff. That being said even with my "durable" kit my average base is still less than 8lbs.

I hesitated to mention price in my original post, because it seems that us "hardcore" folks will pay whatever it takes to drop an ounce here and there. But... The current situation is causing me to cut back on my spending, and I'm sure other people are in similar situations. The cost of a product is now a higher priority for me than the weight.

"Feature creeping" is definitely what's gong on with Golite's new packs. When I saw them at the OR show last summer, I just about cried. More zippers, more pockets, more padding... I think a bell and a whistle now comes standard on all their packs! :)

Has the '09 Ion had any changes announced? I have only seen info on the Jam2 and the Pinnacle here at BPL. It would be ugly if that pack was started to have feature creep.

It's refreshing to see that Joe is now the one-man representative of the real UL pack industry ;-)

Price and feature creeping is definitely there.
There might be another issue - maybe the cottage industry that is supplying this SUL gear is consolidating and maturing. Some floks die out and some get slightly bigger (and the credit crunch is bound to accentuate that)
Why do you think the US had SUL gear to start with? do you think its ray jardine? smarter people? nicer weather - none of these!!! It was FedEx, paypal and the demographics. SUL gear started as a garage thing and the shear scope of the US population and the fact that domestic payments and shipping are so cheap that enabled people to live off that. If you look elswhere in the western world there is no real SUL - mostly because a living cannot be had from it (Japan might be different). Only so many people per 1000 are willing to buy a 250$ cuben fiber tarp!
But now what happens - the guys who are good get bigger and more known (maybe thanks to the likes of BPL) and then they need to decide if they are going to stay garage, sew sleeping bags all day and make a small living OR get some people working there, get a wider product range and push marketing to get more $$ so that they can support their families and workers or even one day get merged into a bigeer company. Read Glen Van penski's CV on the GG site (not that i am saying he is sellig out or whatever - just to show how hard he worked before he scaled up a bit and brought grant in and such)
And now that they are bigger and GG, MLD, BMW and Nunatak are a household name all over the world (literally - people buy this stuff in Japan, EU and latin america!!) can they afford to mess up with gear that is too skimpy? what would be the ramifications of discontent customers who mistreated their SUL gear, but blame you nontheless?
Or if you were Ron from MLD (just to make the point) would you decide to make a 500$ cuben fiber bottom - 0.8 pertex DWR top that is light as moth's wings but probabaly almost as delicate....or a new line of DWR wind clothing that widens your appeal and ties your customers in stronger (and will sell more)
Hard to say!

Lightweight makes a lot of sense: you scale down the big three or four components and make good decisions and you can enjoy safe hiking with sane weights. But SUL doesnt make sense economically - the marginal gain is small there and the price is very high (both in comfort, safety and $$) so maybe what is happening is just the market forces putting pressure on the cottage industry to put out procust that have a slightly wider appeal and preceived value.

Or not ;)
Mike

It strikes me that there's probably just less money in manufacturing SUL goods.

If you're a small company I assume you can't afford to get stuck with products that appeal primarily to the "fringe".
To top it off, many of the dedicated SUL "fringe" that I've met are also serious MYOGers. How does a company make much money catering to this aesthetic?

This site constitutes one of the lightest backpacking communities I've seen online- yet the majority us are hardly in the SUL category. I'd wager that if you averaged every member's REAL pack weight on an AVERAGE journey (not some hypothetical spreadsheet trip), this site would border on lightweight, not even UL.

i agree with some of the points about high costs (e.g. cuben shelter), but in lots of ways the UL movement is about LOW costs, instead of high. carrying and using less stuff, buying simpler items with fewer features made by cottage manufacturers. i know that my golite ion is lots cheaper than my old $400 backpack! and a silnylon tarp is too. the SUL/UL movement is a funny combination of simple gear + not much gear + super high-tech materials/gear. this equation means there's room for obsessiveness in a few directions (i.e. monastically doing without, buying the craszy-expensive newest and lightest, being cold and going hungry, etc.)

i think there is some feature creep here and there, but in lots of cases i'd welcome it. for example, i find the Golite Ion a bit lacking (i.e. that's why i added a bungee system like lots of other people), but i think i'll find my new MLD pack EXACTLY on point (with roll top, side water bottle pockets, bungee system). it's not much more weight, but MUCH more useful. so maybe it's "right-sizing" in some cases - just taking that reasonable step up from complete barebones to a minimal feature set that WORKS.

let's remember, BPL people mostly ARE the lunatic fringe, those who WANT to be the lunatic fringe, or folks who want to LEARN from the lunatic fringe. it's not normal backpacking folks!

My 3 season base weight runs between 6-8lbs depending on the weather and other considerations. I don't feel or view myself as "extreme". I feel completely safe and comfortable within this range but mainstream backpackers may view me as fringe, maybe being on this site for so long has made me feel 'normal".
But, its easy to go SUL. All I would have to do is swap out some gear for more expensive and less durable replacements and leave a hand full stuff out of my toiletries and first aid.
But what do I get in return?
A marginal almost imperceptible difference in the amount of weight I feel Im carrying?
A narrower range of comfort and safty in ever narrower conditions?
And now I have to babysit my gear more?
Not a good trade off IMHO
Its been said before, now gear makers are listing.

"BPL people mostly ARE the lunatic fringe."

I resemble that remark.

Well said Dave T.
I like the direction of MLD, and others, in making UL gear that is durable, function and yet still lite. Maybe this is creating a new gear category of RULE, Reasonably UltraLite Equipment. But whatever category this gear falls under I feel that the direction is a positive one. The SUL suppliers (and consumers) will clearly benefit from this more defined differance in gear design philosophy IMO.

At some point, the cost of going from sub 10 to sub 5 increases significantly over weight gains. This is the upswing on a parabola on a graph with cost on the y axis and weight on the x axis. Simiarly, it is much cheaper to go from from a sub 15 to a sub 5. The reason is high-tech fabrics. There was just a recent discussion about this earlier.

Merely a guess, but having pushed the envelope and sold the absolute SUL gear to the lunatic fringe the gear manufacturers are making slightly sturdier but still light weight gear to appeal to the mere gram weenie fringe.

:^)

Pam

I think the "Market" is in lighter weight, but definitely not UL or SUL. SUL is just too niche to really make a living at due to fragile materials and the MYOG attitude many of us display. But most people (the main market) would like something that is lightER than what they've got if they don't have to sacrifice too much durability or money. I think that may be where the trend is heading-lighter overall but using stronger materials and construction methods. Kinda like the trend went from stainless steel pots to aluminum to titanium. You know it's become mainstream when you can buy titanium pots at REI! I doubt you will see much cuben at REI.

Other improvements in materials without scarificing durability include higher fill power down. Used to be 550 fp was standard, now it's hard to sell it to anyone who's not a boyscout.

If you look at the history of gear it goes in cycles. There have been lightweight phases before and what always seems to happen is that designers add bells and whistles and extra durability and weights start to creep up.

By the way, I bought a titanium pot at REI in 1992!

I am not sure if this is ture (please tell me what you think) but it would seem that SUL/UL hiking is well suited to the long trails in the US where hikers can hone their kit specifically to what they are doing. So if you are planning a PCT thruhike you will read up, consult and then decide what gear to take for that specific hike. You will also have the resupply easily planned out. I have seen people do it with one pair of socks and 0.5L of water with no filtration/chemicals and a ponchotarp. They also bought 3 pairs of trail runners and extra stuff that waited for them in resupply points coordinated by their spouse/brother/dad....now you might think that this is the "simple pure close to nature" hiking but in reality its quite high end from a techno-logistical standpoint.
on the other hand if you were to go aborad to some place you do not know that well (say like my 3 month trek in southwestern china near tibet) you would definitely take more rugged stuff and just more stuff in general (cause you cant trust the resupply that much...believe me!)
So it might be that as US population opens up to the world and more and more people go hiking in new and less well charted places they also demand more of their gear and are willing to sacrifice SOME weight to gain a robust system??

btw - isnt zpack also a gregory pack? how come joe puts a TM on the Zpack...???

Mike

Feature or benefit creep ?
The difficult part I think is to determine when an extra feature is beneficial enough to justify the extra weight. Take the recent question from Henry Shires about adding a mesh door to the Sublite Tyvek. Some (most) thought that the extra two ounces were more than justified, others wanted to keep the low weight sacrificing the possible benefits of added ventilation and bug protected view.
I very much agree with Craigs comment about most of us being closer to LW rather then SUL or UL.
This creates another problem whereby ( I suspect...) some comments here have more to do with what is expected than reality.
For example some of the SUL solutions that are touted in the MYO Gear forum are very practical for one use in the basement or the backyard but hardly the stuff that gets used in the bush. So , yes I can make a 10oz "backpack" , but would/could I use it ?
* #%&! English measurements
Make that 5 oz, I have used a 10oz pack several times...
Franco

Edited by Franco on 01/09/2009 20:30:27 MST.