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Backpacking weight question mainly about clothing weight

July 19th, 2011

I weigh ~150 pounds. I’m a 5’10″ female in pretty good shape. Definitely not a starting varsity athlete, but I’d be sitting on the bench as first or second backup. I’m going backpacking for the first time and have only gone camping three times. I’m going to be carrying some community gear as well, but I was wondering what a decent weight for me to carry would be, and how much of that should be clothes. Beyond my clothing, the only weight I am adding to this family is one pound of fuel, a 6oz water filter, and about 4-8 pounds of food. They won’t ask me to carry anything more than that unless I’m under their pack weight by a lot, but I do want to carry some. Right now I am at about 10 pounds of personal stuff, including toothbrush/hair brush/deoderant/toothpaste/retainer case/sunglasses/first aid/pocketknife and clothes: Raincoat, rain pants, spare shorts, sandals, sleepware, shirts, socks, underwear, and sweater. My question is this : for the amount of clothing that I have brought (which is weather appropriate, and honestly as light as I can make it without buying new stuff, I even figured out a way to layer a few ultra-light tanks with one light shirt to give me clean clothes daily, but it still weighs less than what one spare shirt would weigh. I’d also be wearing a shirt, pair of shorts, and hiking boots.) does it sound like a decent weight? I know that some people don’t take any extras, but as this is a one day hike in, then two days relaxing, then one day hiking out, I wanted some extras. I also know some people can make that whole thing a lot lighter by buying lighter materials, but if I don’t have to, I don’t want to. So yeah, how much total weight should I carry, and is this an ok amount of clothing?
Oh yeah, sleeping bag/pad weighs about 5 pounds. There are five of us going on the trip, and with the tents they would have taken for the four of them, I’m adding at most a pound to shelter because of the quality of the tents they have. I’ll probably carry about 10 oz of water, as the hike is about 3 miles, and I don’t drink much. To the person who asked about sleepwear, yes, I do, as it’s co-ed sleeping, and none of the clothes I’m taking could be worn as sleepware. Clean clothes: I measured it out, I have three days there, and the clothes I’m taking in a pack are two ultralight camis. Their combined weight is that of a pair of underwear. I could take those and have clean clothes everyday, or I could take one shirt, not have clean clothes, and have more weight.

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