In these next few days I’ll be building a more complete gear list spreadsheet and making gear assessments based on my experience. Here is a snapshot of what hikers call “the big three”: sleep system, shelter system, and pack.
Tent: ZPacks Hexamid Solo w/ screen
This is cutting edge backpacking equipment. Less than one pound for everything: tent body, pole, stakes, ropes, and ground cloth. Very good ultralight tent, does what it needs to do. Not surprisingly, it is expensive. It’s not quite enough for heavy rains, but fine for moderate or less rain.
Sleeping Pad: Thermarest Women’s NeoAir XLite Regular
I splurged on a NeoAir that fit me perfectly (about 5’6″). It’s very nice to have a full length sleeping pad, particularly when the ground is potentially very wet. Since I only used it in Washington, I can’t attest to its durability. I can say that the 10+ year old ProLite that I was using before was very durable, but the NeoAir was way more comfortable.
Sleeping Bag: Western Mountaineering UltraLite (20°F)
If I were only bringing one bag, this would be it, for sure. This bag is light, warm, comfortable, with a very good hood. I like that WM bags have smaller sizes, so you don’t have to carry extra bag length that you’re not using. I got the 5’6″ version.
Sleeping Bag: Marmot Hydrogen (30°)
This is the first generation Hydrogen. They don’t make them this well anymore. Perfect for summer-like conditions, very light, but is only reasonable for the warmest portion of the trip (for mid-summer I was in Northern California).
Pack protection that doubles as ground cloth: white trash compactor bags
During the parts of the trip where there was rain or chance of rain, I put these bags to line the inside main compartment of the pack to keep everything dry. These are very heavy plastic bags that I replaced about every 1000 miles or so. After I lost my Polycryo ground cloth in Sierra City, I started laying out 2 plastic bags end-to-end as ground cloth inside my tent. That ended up being a good pack liner and a good ground cloth.
Pack: Gossamer Gear Gorilla (earlier version, pre-2012)
For most of this trip I used my girlfriend’s Gossamer Gear Gorilla pack, which was nice and light and distributed the weight quite well. (It does have a tiny metallic internal frame.) Better than my GoLite Jam. However, in parts of the trail I was challenged due to it’s limited capacity. (About 39L in the main compartment with a max recommended capacity of 35 lbs.) At my heaviest I was probably 33lbs leaving Kennedy Meadows (9 days of food in the Sierra with a bear canister.) It’s a reasonable sized pack, but I had to be careful not to carry too much stuff. The limited volume was a challenge. Fine for lightweight backpacking. Don’t have too big of a pack, because somehow miraculously it gets filled up.