Introduction: Thru-Hiking Camper Packing Mistake
A thru-hike is a multiple days hiking. On many occasions one can decide to camp along the hike to save cost and be more flexible. You do not need to get to a certain point, you manage your day the way you want it, and you can sleep at the end of the day in a camping or on some occasion wild camp.
Base on the trail and the hike itself, you will be able to resupply food and water often or every day. But on some occasion, you won’t, and it will come down to a choice that will impact the weight you are carrying.
So, let’s see what you could do to avoid carrying too much if you are a Thru-Hiking Camper Packing Mistake
Table of Contents
Weight of your backpack
As a Thru-Hiking Camper, the maximum weight of you backpack should be 13 kg completely packed and with water/food. Over that, you are looking at becoming a donkey and losing lots of fun in the hike.
In addition, you will also need to be stronger and your knee may get injured as they will carrying a part of that weight.
We Overpacked
On our first trip to the Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB), we opted to camp as much as possible along the 170km trail. Before that we were mostly doing day-hikes, but it was our first 11-day one.
So, we packed everything we though we would need along and even packed gears that could be used only in emergency. In the end, we made the biggest Thru-Hiking Camper Packing Mistake and our packs were 17.5kg for mine and 13.9kg for Tina.
We had clothing, gears, waters, foods. Everything we would need and in good quantity. But as soon as we put the bag one, oh boy, that was heavy.
During the day, we were taking many breaks to relax our body and going up and down the mountains wasn’t an easy task. We were enjoying the views and the alps. Yet at the same time it felt like a hardcore training.
Most of the days we would walk from 8am to 5pm or so. As we were taking breaks, we were using more time on each section.
When we arrived at night at the camping, there wasn’t a single muscle we wouldn’t feel in our body. One thing sure is that you sleep like a baby.
We hiked for 4 days like that until ultimately my knee started hurting and we had to stop the TMB.
How we corrected this mistake
As we had to stop the TMB, we resume it 2 months later. This time our backpacks were 12kg for mine and 9kg for Tina. This time we were ready and avoided the Thru-Hiking Camper Packing Mistake
That was a game changer! No more struggle, it was easy going up and down, our body wasn’t sore at the end of day. And now we would walk from 7:30 to 2pm or so depending on the section.
If we would have packed like that at the beginning it would have been amazing. But we learnt our lesson and are glad for it.
How to avoid overpacking
In this article, we will not detail all the weight of each gear. Once back from our trip, I weight everything we had to know exactly where the weight was. We will be writing about all the weight details in another article.
But we will give you the guideline on how we decrease the weight of our backpacks and how to avoid the Camper packing mistake:
- Cooking Set: Be sure to check if your hike goes through towns/villages and if you have possibilities to resupply along it. You can save lots of weight if you don’t carry food and all the gear to cook it. You can buy food in supermarket and eat cold. (- 1kg)
- Water: On most of the thru hikes, you can easily refill your waters. So do not take 3L with you and stay between 1 to 1.5L and refill as soon as possible. (-1.5kg)
- Clothing: You do not need to have too many clothes. You can simply wear a t-shirt 2 to 3 days, or even more. If you have good quality t-shirt, they will not smell bad. We personally used merino ones and its amazing. (-400g)
- Useless stuff: Do not bring items that you may need and keep it to the essential. You don’t need your wallet, just a CB and ID is enough. You do not need a huge utility knife and a pocket one will do the job. (-500g to 1kg)
- Soaps: Avoid liquid soaps in plastic bottle and get dry one. Not only it is lighter, but it is also better for the environment. (-500g)
In addition, we are not bringing professional camera and only uses our phones. You will also need to consider that electronics are heavy. We only had a portable battery with us in case of emergency.
The Must to have gears.
There are many items where you can save money. You do not need professional gears for everything. Though ultralight gears are often more expensive. Yet the most important items are:
- Backpack: a good backpack can make the difference on the trail. As it increases comfort, balance the weight between you shoulder and hips and regulate your back sweating.
- Walking poles: There are one of the best thru-hiker gears. They don’t only allow you to balance, but they also help you on your weight up and down and help releasing the weight on your knees.
Final Note
As the TMB for example, we went from:
- Alex: 17.5kg to 12kg
- Tina: 13.9kg to 9kg
And it would be even possible to go lower then that. If we pushed it to the limits, including changing some of our gears (which we will not do right now), we could go down to:
- Alex: 10kg
- Tina: 7kg
Lower than that while camping wouldn’t be possible, I think. Or you wouldn’t be camping and would be staying only in refuges.
“To travel, to experience and learn: that is to live.” – Tenzing Norgay
