Very good John :-)

Stupidwool?

First match your gear to where you're hiking and the conditions you expect to encounter. What is "Stupid Light" on Katadyn may be just fine for the Florida Trail.

Then factor in personal comfort issues and your own level of outdoors expertise. Then build your kit.

What is "Stupid Light" for me can be just fine for Andrew Skurka hiking the same area at the same time.

Don't let semantics an/ord an arbitrary targeted base weight number overcome your common sense.

"What is "Stupid Light" on Katadyn may be just fine for the Florida Trail."

Do you refer to the Katadyn water filter or the Katahdin mountain in Maine?

--B.G.--

a 6 pack of Bud.

a 6 pack of Bud.

No kidding. If you're gonna pack it in, at least make it Oskar Blues.

Glastenbury Wilderness fire tower route with a friend, a thru hiker, and twelve bottles of Magic Hat #9. Bliss.

A buddy of mine brought only shorts on a 15 day trip, then forgot to put sunscreen on his legs a couple days out and got a serious sunburn. He ended up borrowing my rain pants to protect his burn for a few days, until the burn mellowed out.

Haven't had Magic Hat in a while, but my friend used to work at the brewery during college and would bring home growlers from work all the time. Wasn't a big #9 fan though. Do they still make Heart of Darkness? That was good stuff!

>at least make it Oskar Blues

+12

One time I packed a .5 liter box of wine when a 1 liter box of wine was avail.

Stupid.

Never made that mistake again.

"stupid light" is something your find out after the fact ... when yr cold, tired, hungry, in the dark, and wet

Now that's just stupid.
You need to pack according to the weather.

I see a person hiking that sees me and asks what's in my pack.
Then they ask, well what about this or that?
I just say no.

So that person is thinking "stupid".
I am just thinking "light".

Then I look at there huge heavy pack and I think "stupid".

Stupid light is the point just before your pack gets slightly heavier. For me it was the addition of true rain gear for east coast hiking and a better mat for a better night sleep. I would also include the switch from a razor blade to small Swiss Army knife that can be used to trim toenails. All these we're an escape from stupid light IMHO.

Tired, burned, blistered, hungry, dark, wet. I can deal with these. In fact, being out of my "comfort" zone is a large part of why I hike.

But unlike Aaron S., cold is the one thing I can't deal with. Several times I've found myself heading down that dark hole and each time I tell myself to carry more warmth. So this season I've armed myself with a 14oz down MyoQuilt and a 12oz down jacket (thruhiker).

And if I find myself on the SHR with Aaron and I'm chilling, I'm going to borrow his windshirt 'cause I know he can take it.

Ha, I hate being cold.
But I don't bring a windshirt.
If you are going to be cold, you put on a jacket.
The outer shell material is the same as a windshirt, so why the redundancy?

Less gear is always better!

>One time I packed a .5 liter box of wine when a 1 liter box of wine was avail.

I was going on an overnight trip. I checked the weather and it was suppose to get down in the upper 50s. so i decided i was going to get my pack as light as i could. it all weighed in at 8 pounds with food and water. night fell and was amazingly cold. all i had with me was my fleece jacket and an emergency blanket to protect against the cold. well that night it got down to 40 degrees. i learned my lesson that night.

"Stupid Light is when you compromise something that is important to you just to save weight."

Nice definition. It includes the key point that a decision can only be designated as SL or not when considered in the context of the trips goals. Leaving a sleeping bag at home isn't fundamentally SL. It's not SL if you're hiking all night or a bushcrafter who's going to make your own. It is SL if you realize you undermined the goals of your trip (one of which is probably always safety) by shivering to exhaustion.

Ultimately we're all trying to make good weight conscious decisions to help us best achieve our objectives - whatever they are. Sometimes we fail to bring functionality that we need (stupid light) and other times we bring functionality we don't need (stupid heavy). Learning how to make these good decisions is part of the journey.

Edited by dandydan on 02/22/2013 06:04:52 MST.

Looking at my spreadsheet, there's plenty room in my list to go Ultra Stupid Light!

I was guessing USL was UnSafeLight