Ultralight backpacking

Ultralight backpacking is the art of camping with the bare minimum of equipment, starting with your backpack, and affecting everything from your clothing to your shelter, bedding and eating gear. Everything gets hand-built, modified or cut down to save you every possible ounce of weight.

Experienced Ultralight campers take pride in trimming everything they can from their backpacking equipment. Many won't even use a tent, but will make do with a tarpaulin or a bivy bag — perhaps one bought ready-made, or one they created themselves from two plastic garbage bags taped together.

The most light weight sleeping bags you can buy are down sleeping bags, filled with the fluffy under-feathers that keep geese warm, even from the Arctic winter. Naturally, down bags are expensive... particularly the ones made of Eider down, which is collected by hand from the bird nesting sites on a small remote island someplace in the middle of the ocean.

Woolen blankets are out of the question when you're Ultralight backpacking, but people have been known to make do with aluminum Space Blankets or even the lighter and more fragile emergency first aid /survival aluminium blankets which were designed to keep a trauma (casualty) patient warm while transporting them to hospital or as a lifesaver for probable one-time use. The survival foil blankets are not strong enough to be used multiple times without tearing, but they might keep you alive over a weekend excursion — if used with your survival bivy bag (bivvy?) and a sensible set of warm clothes. Some people make a survival bag out of two garbage bags held together with duck tape.

Cooking gear can be minimized or even done away with under some circumstances. Yes, you could go a few days without a cooked or a hot meal, but in cold or wet weather, a hot drink and a hot meal are wonderful morale boosters. Many light weight and Ultralight campers make do with just a large tin mug or a single ex-army mess tin to heat their meals in and to eat and drink out of. Forks can be dispensed with, and cutting food can be done with your pocket knife. A small camping stove can be carried, such as a folding solid-fuel job. Some people just carry the solid fuel tablets themselves, and will make-do with small rocks to make a windshield or a support for the cooking pot or mug.

Yes, Ultralight backpacking equipment can be very challenging experience, both for the old hand and the uninitiated alike.