After 10 grunting miles, we dropped our loads at the campsite, and dayhiked 5 miles more to the Paria Canyon Confluence. The difference was immediate and astounding. We moved quickly, noticed the scenery and were, well...downright chipper. I vowed right then to never trudge under a traditional burden again.
I learned a lot on that trip. For one, we should have been caching our water for the return leg, something I'd always done at the Grand Canyon but never applied elsewhere. In the Southwest, the heaviest - and most necessary - weight comes from water. That said, there are other, more innovative (and sometimes downright obvious) ways to pack fast and light.
There's a lot to discover in this brand-new world. I began by checking in with Mitch Lopez, gear-gonzo employee and ultralight convert at Flagstaff's Babbitt's Backcountry Outfitters. "It's all about the ounces," he said. "That's what it comes down to."
He added, "More and people are coming in, asking how much something weighs, especially backpacks, which is a great place to start when you're paring down."
A precision scale dominates the alpine town's expansive store floor, courtesy of ultralight product king GoLite. Lopez said gearheads come in and weigh anything they want before a trip, and even test ounce differential between their own gear and potential product purchases.
Lopez said, "GoLite is really out-of-the-box in their designs. Their gear is phenomenal and gaining a lot of name recognition. Some of their stuff still has room for improvement, though. They are really working on their sleep systems. The Breeze pack is pretty extreme, a pack with no frame and barely a hipbelt. I'm dying to see how it works in the field."
Lopez's hottest shaved-down faves: GoLite's Flow rain jacket, Osprey's Aether line hands-down for rugged, lightweight fastpacks, the North Face Soloist for their 'classic' Gore-Tex two person poled bivy, and the slimmed-down yet superwarm Ultralite sleeping bag offered by Western Mountaineering.
