Backpacking Book: A Wildly Successful 200-Mile Hike

A couple of weeks ago here I mentioned briefly meeting Rick "Risk" Allnutt, the author of A Wildly Successful 200-Mile Hike and subsequently picking up his book.  If you're thinking of taking up backpacking beyond short day hikes, you really owe it to yourself to get and read this one.  The most important part of it all is the "why" of ultralight backpacking.  It's not about just having more spring in your step and to commune better with the wilderness, which is the usual way ultralight is presented.  Nor is it about some "my pack is lighter than your pack" competition.  (it happens; go look on youtube)  Rather, it is to head off debilitating, trip-ending injuries from hauling too much crap around on a set of half-century old knees.  Afterward the fun part of hiking is greatly enhanced by not going around sore, to be sure, but the important thing is to keep yourself in the game.

The book is in four main sections, first centering on the three main hike-enders and then on a great solution to tie it all together.  The trip enders are: blisters and chafing, knee pain, and losing the will to hike.  The solution, hinted at above, is to keep your pack weight down to about 15 pounds.  This includes food but not water, which is slightly different than the usual "base weight" so many backpackers quote.  Base weight, by the way, is everything in your pack but expendables such as food, water, and stove fuel.  The thinking here is that while the load of expendables will fluctuate, the base weight will remain constant.  Back to Allnuttl's total weight metric, it is a slightly different but realistic way of thinking about the problem, and at least as valid as the more common base weight figure.

So what's my take on this?  The guy's an M.D. and has more trail experience than I do, so I'm inclined to listen.  Face it, it's a hell of a lot cheaper to buy and haul around titanium bits in your pack than it is have titanium bits implanted to replace the knees you wore out hauling around cheap, heavy gear.  More fun too.  What's more, while Allnutt is specifically addressing the over-50 set in his book, it's never too early to stop needlessly tearing up your body.  We'll get to it in the next post, but ultralight gear doesn't have to be significantly more expensive than regular-grade lightweight backpacking gear, especially if you're starting from scratch.