I am not sure we have mentioned this on the blog yet. Hannah and I are going to attempt to thru hike the Pacific Crest Trail next summer, beginning sometime in the second week of May when she graduates. We already have a spot on the website for it but there really isn’t content there yet.
Hannah and I started officially planning our thru hike today on our drive home. We have been talking over the larger points for a few months but we got down to details today. Aside from the timing, money and logistics of the whole thing we naturally turned to one of our favorite subjects: gear. We both love backpacking and we love backpacking gear even more.
I came home and started putting together a gear list in Microsoft Excel, basing my gear choices off my Appalachian Trail gear. After a while we came up with a nice, color coded spreadsheet that will serve as a start for all of our gear decisions over the next 6 months. I pasted my entire beautiful spreadsheet into Google Documents, which promptly ruined most of the formatting I had done, and I want to make it available on here so I can get some feedback on our gear choices. We love to hear others’ opinions about gear. The spreadsheet is at the bottom of the post but I will explain how I laid it out and some of our choices first.
The spreadsheet is separated by who is carrying what with a big column for each of us. Within that big column you can find what the gear is (brand and model), the weight in ounces and I have color coded which portions of the trail we will carry it. I also colored gear we still have to purchase in tan. These are the items we are most interested in people’s opinions of, but we would like to hear any comments about any of the gear as well as the entire system. If there is anything we obviously forgot please let us know. When viewed on this page the whole thing is a bit ungainly so if you want to view it in it’s own window you can click HERE.
The base weight of our packs will change through out the hike as we need more or less gear. In the desert we don’t anticipate needing our rain gear and when we enter the High Sierra we will need things like a bear canister and ice axes. Speaking of rain gear, we decided that rather than actual rain jackets we would just use DWR (durable water repellent) coated wind jackets in an attempt to save some weight. Any opinions on this? My pack weighs more than Hannah’s by about the same proportion that I weigh more than her so any questions as to why she gets to carry the light pack should be answered. My pack ranges from about 13 pounds base weight in the desert to just over 18 pounds in the Sierra. Hannah’s goes from about 8 lbs to 13 lbs. I also included total weight which includes not only our packs but the cloths we are wearing, shoes, trekking poles, etc.
If for some reason the spreadsheet below doesn’t work you can access it HERE.
Like I said, we really want feedback on all of this so if you have any oppinion at all please leave us a comment. Even if you think we idiots. We want our gear to work as well as possible and knowledge is power. Thanks in advance.
