31 Days- New and Old Gear

For the CDT this year I will only have three items in my pack that have been with me all the way from Maine in 2009:  my cook pot, my long handle spoon, a stuff sack, and the head lamp that joined me in Pennsylvania.  Everything else is new since that hike, and a lot of my CDT gear is new since the PCT.

Most of the new purchases were made to replace gear that really didn't work for me.  My North Face pack was just too heavy to justify after wearing Portrait’s homemade cuben fiber pack and my GoLight Jam pack was simply uncomfortable.  They both gave me pack rash as well.  The original plan was to make a pack like Portrait’s, but that turned out to be a little too ambitious for my sewing skills…and my patience.  Last week I bought a ZPacks Arc Blast weighing in at 13.5 oz and costing $259.00.  I haven’t gotten my hands on it yet, but ZPacks assured me it will arrive in plenty of time.

My new sleeping bag

I replaced my tired North Face 15 degree sleeping bag with a Western Mountaineering UltraLite 20 degree bag for a weight savings of 15.21 ounces.  The new bag ended up costing me $246.05 which feels like a steal.  The bag retails in the mid $400’s.  I bought mine from MooseJaw on Black Friday for $435.00 and they gave me five times the normal MooseJaw points.  I used the points to buy a MontBell Men's U.L. Down Parka worth $188.95, and I didn’t even have to take out my credit card to make the purchase.  I have a measly 1,000 points left which will earn me just about nothing.

My little homemade tarp tent will be staying behind this year.  It is replaced by a new ZPacks Hexamid Twin Tent w/ Screen for a 7.7 ounce weight savings and hopefully less bugs in the tent.

Portrait sewing his food bag

There have been a number of small, less spendy changes.  There are new gloves, food bag, tent stakes, camp dress, sleeping bag stuff sack and sleeping pad.  I was hoping when I started making all these changes to have a less than 10 pound base weight.  As I was making the changes I changed my goal to an 8 pound base.  Right now my pack should weigh in at 8.5 pounds without food or water.  I’ll reduce it if I can, for the sake of my Achilles tendons, but the real task will be not letting the weight creep up on me.