Tips for Reducing Pack Weight on Multi-Day Treks - Emmanuel Katto Uganda

emmanuelkatto · 8. August

Hi everyone, I am Emmanuel Katto.

I'm planning a multi-day trek and I'm looking to lighten my load as much as possible without sacrificing essential gear and safety. I would love to get some advice from experienced ultralight trekkers on how to reduce pack weight effectively.

Here are a few specific questions I have:

What are the must-have items that you always bring, even when trying to go ultralight?
Are there any common gear substitutions or multi-use items that help cut down weight?
How do you manage food and water supplies efficiently on a multi-day trek?
Any specific packing strategies or tips for organizing gear to minimize weight and bulk?

Any other tips or personal experiences you can share would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!

Best,

Emmanuel Katto

khyal · 8. August

Hi Emmanuel,

that´s exactly the theme of the forum, it´s make no sense, that we translate the complete forum to you :mrgreen: , today it´s quite easy to translate even long texts with the tools you find in the internet (in my job I often have to translate english texts to german and compared to 10 years ago, it works good, of course some grammar faults and some technical terms are missing, but the sense is understandable.
So I propose that you start with the sub-forum "Ausrüstung" and "Einsteiger"

Your questions are a lot to generel :

"What are the must-have items that you always bring, even when trying to go ultralight? "
It depends on the tour, in which way you travel (trekking, paddeling, biking) time of the year, personal preferences / requirements. It´s like you ask, what car somebody can recommend, without telling, if you need to carry a lot of things, drive fast long distances, or you live somewhere, where you need a 4-wheel drive with a lot of chassis clearence

"Are there any common gear substitutions or multi-use items that help cut down weight? "
It depends on the tour, convenience etc
A good advice is to really brainstorm (shut off auto-censor that might be lurking in your head :mrgreen: ) about the gear, you have and not only outdoor gear, how this could be used on tours to reduce weight,
UL gear is the lightest gear, which is doing the job on your tour, in the way you want it.

Maybe you should read Ray Jardine´s book "trail life", it´s excellent to get an impression about "UL thinking", more than 30 years old it´s in some parts outdated e.g. in these times where you can get tents which weight about 400g, it makes not so much sense to use a tarp, like in the old times > 25 years ago, when I cut down the weight 1,2 kg with using a tarp & UL-hammock instead of my lightest tent and of course there is some thinking I don´t share e.g. that you should go in the warm time of the year, to reduce weight, my thinking is, i let not my gear decide, when, where I go on tour, my gear must fit to my tours, but it would be boring, if we all would have the same opinions... 8-)

"Any specific packing strategies or tips for organizing gear to minimize weight and bulk? "
First buy a good digital scale, weight all things, you consider to take with you on tour, take the lightest onces
everybody will coincide that you can save a lot of weight with a light, tent, sleeping bag, backpack, a lot of weight hides in other stuff
e.g. I have a lot of "outdoor cloth" because I wear them the whole year, scaling them all, taking the lightest on tour, saved me another 1/2 kg.
Food - take the food with most kcal / g and buy it loose or repack it in good deep freezer bags, good ones you can use many times, they weigt a fraction and you can store food for several days in one because their are really reclosable.
Just to give you an impression of the thinking, it makes no sense to list here hundreds of tips, how to save weight, be creative and the digital scale is your friend

"How do you manage food and water supplies efficiently on a multi-day trek? "
That´s a point where, from my point of view, many people have an auto-censor lurking in the head, you need no special trekking food (which mostly is packed in very heavy packing and has not more kcal than selected stuff in the supermarket) and you can´t re-supply, when you are traveling of the beaten track, you need for planing / buying food just to know, in how many days you´ll arrive at the next food shop, look what this shop has, be happy, every time new surprises :mrgreen:
water - with a good filter (I recommand the Sawyer Squeeze - e.g. also tested/used by many special forces combined with Evernew Water Carry 2 l) you need not to carry water so long distances, you take your water out of rivers, springs...
I always try to stay overnight near to water, drink in the morning, then I need not so much water during the day, but also you can nearly always (ok in some deserts, steppe not) find some water during the day and at the next evening at the next overnight stay I can drink again, as much as I want, but that´s not the way for everybody

Don´t pack your fears and on the opposite don´t pack stupid light