Ultralight backpacking skills, gear analysis, and education for hikers who want to pack less and experience more.
"Backpacking Light has become the de facto organ of [the ultralight backpacking] subculture." - The Sierra Club
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Deep skills, field-tested gear analysis, and practical backcountry knowledge for hikers, backpackers, and other backcountry users.
After a recent strenuous approach to an alpine area, headache, nausea, fatigue, and dizziness produced a Lake Louise AMS score consistent with moderate acute mountain sickness. Garmin data and a detailed reconstruction of food, fluid, workload, and sleep revealed a more complex event. This case study examines how altitude exposure interacted with carbohydrate depletion, dehydration, and accumulated fatigue - and why backcountry illness is often better understood as a convergence of physiological stressors.
Load lifters do more than pull the top of a backpack closer to your body. Backpack engineer Nenta Wako explains how they affect lumbar torque, shoulder and pelvic loading, pack stability, and carrying comfort - and how frame rigidity, attachment geometry, and proper adjustment determine whether they work.
The Durston Wapta 30 is a ~1 lb backpack made with Aluula fabric. In this review, we evaluated packbag stability, harness comfort, and usability in the context of its frameless design.
High winds increase risk and planning complexity for backpackers. Deadfall obstacles create delays and add effort. High winds can impact balance and stability while hiking off-trail in exposed terrain. Ultralight shelters are notorious for their tent-stake failures in storms, which require a different strategy for stakes and guylines. This dispatch frames these challenges in the context of the author's recent Colorado high-country overnight to identify three key lessons from the field about how to thrive in windy weather.
How to choose rain gear for mountain minimalism based on exposure, retreat options, wind, abrasion, and thermal margin.
We use a simple and repeatable shower test method to evaluate backpack water resistance that incorporates fabrics, closures, seepage, and material water absorption.
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