No, I am not channeling my mother. My mother would start packing for a trip 2-3 months before the departure date and yes, while I am buying, trying, and figuring out what to take - it's all walk related; not all the other stuff I will take for my flight and visit with Elisa and Mike.
With the final choices made for the all the various kits it's is time to start make final selections on the small stuff, test putting stuff in the dry sacks and seeing how it all fits in the pack and to see what all of it weighs.
To calculate the total weight, in the past, you would weigh and write it all down, then sum it up.
With the development of computers, paper, pencil, and calculator gave way to spreadsheets.
Now there is a free website to assist and track your gear so you can reuse items from trip to trip. The website is LighterPack and despite a few things it doesn't do: sorting by name, category, weight; have a global database so you don't have to enter everything yourself vs. looking up something someone else entered; or searching for other peoples lists it's still pretty good and the graphing is excellent. Two other nice features are for items you are planning on wearing, you can mark them as such as this gives you an idea of total weight vs. carrying weight, on colder days I will be wearing the "other clothing" so it all works out in the end. Then for food, water, fuel it can be marked as consumable and that weight will become less as the trip progresses - but I am only carrying 1.5 day's worth so that really won't change much day to day.
So today I gathered my gear, my postal scale and started building my list!
First up was creating categories and after looking at lists by others, that I follow on YouTube, I came up with what you see in the picture below. Then I went through the pile(s) of stuff on the floor of the bedroom and started entering the items, weighing and adding pictures to the list.
I eventually stopped adding the pictures because it was just taking too much time. As I finished a category being entered I put items in the stuff/dry sack and put it in the pack.
Here is a link to my list, it is public. If you click on a category in the chart, the chart will change and display an outer doughnut and hovering over it tells you what the item is and the weight. This would allow you to find items that might weigh more than you want.
Some might think this is too much for a "day hike" but considering I will be in the wilds of Scotland and the weather will be cool or down right cold, I think it is very reasonable.
Now to do some test walks!
With the final choices made for the all the various kits it's is time to start make final selections on the small stuff, test putting stuff in the dry sacks and seeing how it all fits in the pack and to see what all of it weighs.
To calculate the total weight, in the past, you would weigh and write it all down, then sum it up.
With the development of computers, paper, pencil, and calculator gave way to spreadsheets.
Now there is a free website to assist and track your gear so you can reuse items from trip to trip. The website is LighterPack and despite a few things it doesn't do: sorting by name, category, weight; have a global database so you don't have to enter everything yourself vs. looking up something someone else entered; or searching for other peoples lists it's still pretty good and the graphing is excellent. Two other nice features are for items you are planning on wearing, you can mark them as such as this gives you an idea of total weight vs. carrying weight, on colder days I will be wearing the "other clothing" so it all works out in the end. Then for food, water, fuel it can be marked as consumable and that weight will become less as the trip progresses - but I am only carrying 1.5 day's worth so that really won't change much day to day.
So today I gathered my gear, my postal scale and started building my list!
First up was creating categories and after looking at lists by others, that I follow on YouTube, I came up with what you see in the picture below. Then I went through the pile(s) of stuff on the floor of the bedroom and started entering the items, weighing and adding pictures to the list.
I eventually stopped adding the pictures because it was just taking too much time. As I finished a category being entered I put items in the stuff/dry sack and put it in the pack.
Here is a link to my list, it is public. If you click on a category in the chart, the chart will change and display an outer doughnut and hovering over it tells you what the item is and the weight. This would allow you to find items that might weigh more than you want.
Some might think this is too much for a "day hike" but considering I will be in the wilds of Scotland and the weather will be cool or down right cold, I think it is very reasonable.
Now to do some test walks!
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