Ten Pound Backpack

Lightweight Backpacking Gear List

Looking at other people's lightweight backpacking gear lists are a great way to get ideas about your own lightweight backpacking gear list. Sometimes they provide insights in to the ways other people manage to cut corners and save weight. You also get to see what equipment other people are buying, which can give you ideas on how to fill a hole in your own lightweight backpacking equipment. But it's always fun to see that your lightweight backpacking gear list is better than someone else's too.

Below I've provided a few sample gear lists of the essential items most lightweight backpackers would need for a summer camping trip. Further down the page I've also provided a few links to sample lightweight backpacking gear lists elsewhere on the web that you can probably learn something from.

Sample Lightweight Backpacking Gear List

Carried

Backpack: ULA Equipment CDT - weight: 481 g
Sleeping Bag: Western Mountaineering Highlite - weight: 455 g
Shelter: GoLite Poncho Tarp - weight: 210 g
Sleeping Pad: Klymit Inertia X Frame - weight: 257 g
Bivy Bag: Terra Nova Equipment Moonlite Bivi - weight: 180 g
Trekking Poles: Black Diamond Ultra Distance - weight: 270 g
Water Filter: SteriPen Adventurer Opti - weight: 103 g
Stove: Snow Peak LiteMax Titanium - weight: 53 g
First Aid: Adventure Medical Ultralight and Watertight .5 - weight: 113 g
Cooking Pot: Evernew Titanium Non-Stick Pot - weight: 170 g
Headlamp: Mammut X-Zoom Headlamp - weight: 140 g
Pocket Knife: Gerber Ez Out - weight: 85 g
Insulation: Mont Bell EX Light Down Jacket - weight: 161.5 g

Total Weight: 2678.5 g / 5.9 lb

Worn

Shoes: Inov8 x-Talon 212 Trail Runner - weight: 212 g
Shirt: GoLite Manitou Short Sleeve - weight: 139 g
Pants: GoLite Siskiyou Convertible Pants - weight: 245 g

Total Weight: 596 g / 1.3 lb

For a Grand Total of: 3274.5 g / 7.2 lb

It's not a complete list, you'd still have a few odds and ends to include like an eating utensil and water bottles for instance, but it covers all the heavy things and still manages to come in at a slim 3274.5 g / 7.2 lbs, which is a respectable lightweight backpacking gear list. And there are a few things, like the bivy bag for instance, that you could probably do without, depending on where you're going.

And you could go lighter. If you look at the lightweight sleeping bags list, for instance, you'll see that there are a whole bunch of sleeping bags that are even lighter than the Western Mountaineering Highlite that I used in the example above (Though the Highlite is a great bag). And the same can be said for many of the other pieces of gear I listed above.

Other Sample Gear Lists

There's no shortage of lightweight backpacking gear lists to study at on the internet. Here are a few places where you might take a look to get even more ideas on what kind of lightweight backpacking gear is out there.