Where the grams actually are and how makers count them

Build the list before you weigh anything

Open a spreadsheet and put every item you intend to take on its own row: shelter, mat, bag, cook system, water system, light, hardware, repairs. Add three columns — the weight the maker publishes, which weight that is, and the weight your own scales give.

The third column is not a challenge to the maker. It is the only way to get every item onto one basis, because the published figures are not on one basis and cannot be made to be.

The first column is the one that lies: read which weight it is

Shelters are published with two figures and frequently shown with one.

Packed weight counts everything in the bag: pegs, guylines, repair sleeve, stuff sack. Trail weight counts only what is needed to stand the shelter up. The gap runs to several hundred grams, which is more than most of the upgrades people agonise over.

Tarps are worse, because many are sold without guylines, pegs or poles at all, and several are designed to be pitched on trekking poles rather than with poles of their own. A tarp listed at its bare canopy weight is not being weighed the same way as one listed complete. Hammocks are the same story from the other end: they are usually listed bare, and the suspension — straps and carabiners — is often the heavier half.

Write, next to every shelter figure on your list, which of the two it is. If the maker does not say, treat it as the trail weight and add the pegs yourself.

The four items that carry most of it

For a carried kit, the shelter, the bag, the mat and the cook system are where the mass is, and everything else is rounding. Work on those four before you optimise anything else.

On the sleeping bag, the figure that describes the insulation is fill weight — the grams actually in the bag — not fill power, which describes the volume a fixed mass lofts to. A high fill power with a modest fill weight is a light bag, and a high fill power on its own tells you nothing. Synthetic insulation is heavier and bulkier for the same stated rating, keeps more loft when damp and costs less; that is a trade rather than a mistake.

On the mat, weight, packed size and R-value pull against each other, and closed-cell foam is the version that never punctures, never packs small and weighs what it weighs. R-values add up, so a thin foam mat under an inflatable one buys warmth for a known, printed number of grams.

On the cook system, an integrated pot-and-burner publishes shorter boil times and locks you into its pot. Titanium is the lightest cookware and the thinnest, heats fast and unevenly and scorches anything not simply boiled; hard-anodised aluminium spreads heat better and weighs more; stainless steel is heaviest and takes abuse.

Gross and net: the canister that is half steel

Gas canisters are published by net gas weight — commonly 100, 230 and 450 g — and that is the gas. The steel shell travels with it, empty and full, and it is on your list whether you write it down or not. Weigh a full canister and an empty one of the same size once, and you will know the shell for every trip after that.

This is also where fuel planning stops being about weight and starts being about resupply. A stove you cannot refuel on the route is a stove you carry cold, so check the EN 417 threaded valve, the bayonet fitting or the pierceable type against what the shops on your route actually stock before optimising a single gram.

The heaviest thing you carry is on no specification sheet

Water is roughly a kilogram per litre. Two litres outweighs most sleeping mats. It is also the only item on the list whose weight you choose hour by hour, which makes it the most powerful lever you have and the one nobody writes down.

Plan the carry against where you can refill rather than against the capacity of the container. A hydration bladder is shopped on litres and lived with on whether it dries; the litres decide only how much weight is available to carry, not how much you should.

The same logic covers the camp. A gravity bag or a camp shower full of water is heavy at the same rate, and a branch that holds an empty bag proves nothing about a full one.

Hardware is where the surprises hide

Small items are individually trivial and collectively not.

• Pegs: makers publish a stated weight per peg. Multiply it by the number you actually carry — that is the real figure, and it is why carrying two peg types rather than eighteen of one is a weight decision as much as a ground one.
• Poles and sections: a spare pole section, a splint, a spare ferrule and a length of shock cord are grams each, and they are the difference between a bent pole and a trip that ends.
• Repair tape: matched to your flysheet coating, silicone or polyurethane, or it peels off and you have carried it for nothing.
• Cutlery: a long-handled spoon of roughly 20 cm exists because a standard 16 cm one puts your knuckles into a foil pouch. That is comfort bought for a few grams.
• Cord: type III paracord, roughly 4 mm with seven inner strands, weighs little and does a great deal. Its published breaking strength is a manufacturer figure for new, undamaged cord rather than a working load, and it is not made to the standards covering climbing equipment.

What is worth carrying twice

A short list, and it is short deliberately: a second peg type for the corners, a pole splint sized to the outer diameter you actually own, repair tape for your coating, and a spare cartridge or canister where resupply is uncertain. Everything on that list is there because the thing it replaces ends the trip when it fails.

Everything else that gets carried twice — the second lamp, the third dry bag, the pot nobody uses — should come off the list at the next stage.

Take one thing out, then check the whole list once more

When the spreadsheet totals, sort it descending and look at the top five rows. That is where a change is worth making, and it is almost never where people look first.

Then take one item out. Not the lightest, and not the one you are fondest of: the one you did not use last time. That single habit does more over a season than any specification comparison, and it costs nothing.