When Ultra-Lite Is Too Lite

Each step of a journey alters the person who makes it.

Jane Hirshfield

The photo you see above was taken before I had even left the trailhead on the first day of a nine day trek through the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. Just as I was setting out on the trail I met some people who were impressed (or so I thought) by this small woman with the huge pack. They asked if they might take my picture, and of course I said yes, feeling strong and mighty and glad that someone had noticed

Many years later I look at that photo and wonder about those people, if what they were really thinking was how ridiculous that woman looked with her top heavy pack. I recall that it weighed about sixty pounds. The pack had been custom designed for me to fit my small frame, while allowing me to carry all that gear and food I thought I needed.

It turned out to be a difficult trip. The top heavy pack acted like a sail on the ridge tops when the wind blew, which was almost all of the time. There is a reason these mountains are called “the Winds.” Even eating lunch could be challenging, as it required anchoring my beef jerky and cheese with rocks when I set them down, so they did not blow away. On one precarious descent from a pass I thought I was either going to take off sailing like a glider or end up at the bottom of the hill in a crumpled heap, which seemed more likely.

Neither one of those catastrophic events occurred. I made it safely to Skull Lake, where I pitched my tent among the trees to get out of the wind as much a possible. The challenge did start me thinking about decreasing my pack weight, as I recognized there was real danger in carrying such a top heavy load, to say nothing of my aching back.

I began by gradually eliminating things I thought were not essential. This was an impossible task, since of course everything was essential. I removed the field guides, though it was not easy. I grieved over every item that went into the growing stack of things I could no longer carry with me on the trail.

Aging helped me with the task, for every extra pound seemed to add to the aches and pains that did not necessarily go away when I returned home from a trip. My pack weight dropped to forty pounds, which was a substantial improvement but still too heavy as I approached Medicare age.

After I retired I attempted to do some longer hikes, but such a trip is incompatible with ultra-lite hiking. Finally when I decided to section hike the Pacific Northwest Trail and figured out that I would need to do twenty mile days to make that happen, I got serious about reinventing my pack and my gear. I replaced every piece of gear I owned. I downsized my pack to forty-five liters, which not only weighed less but prevented me from packing extra gear since there simply was not room. I replaced my all-season sleeping bag with a quilt, further cutting down on what I considered to be unnecessary luxury. . as if staying warm is a luxury. I started the hike with twenty-eight pounds, light as air, feeling as though I might fly. It made the daily miles go more smoothly and with a lot less discomfort.

I further decreased my pack weight over the years since that hike, a seemingly never ending process for long distance hikers and one that is worthy of bragging rights when hikers sit around in camp together at the end of a long day. When I left on a hike in the Pasayten last week, I began the trip with a pack that weighed just twenty-three pounds. I felt like I had finally succeeded in getting “light enough,” though I was not at all sure what that meant.

When I arrived in camp that afternoon it was raining lightly. Though I managed to set my tent up quickly, it was nevertheless quite damp when I finally crawled into it and gathered my wet gear under the rain fly. I crawled under my sleeping quilt that night and knew at once that it was going to be a cold night. After putting on every single piece of clothing I had with me, I remained cold but was able to fall asleep. When I awoke the next morning I was shivering.

I made plans the next day to hike out a day early, but when I saw the sun come up in a cloudless sky I knew I could not do that Instead I went to sleep that night with my rain gear on, which kept me warm but caused me to sweat profusely. Every solution, it seems, creates a new set of problems.

I returned home with a new kind of resolve. Can it be that now at seventy-three I must start adding weight instead of decreasing it? I do not intend to spend another cold night in camp, so at the very least I plan to switch to a regular sleeping bag, one that raps me in warmth and that lulls me to sleep in a cloud of goose down. I admit that there is a part of me that feels like I am “giving in,” that I am just not tough enough. I am not sure how tough I need to be at this stage in my life. I think perhaps I am done being tough. Now I simply want to be warm.