{"id":584,"date":"2006-08-04T10:26:38","date_gmt":"2006-08-04T15:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=584"},"modified":"2006-08-04T10:26:38","modified_gmt":"2006-08-04T15:26:38","slug":"lightbackpackingcom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2006\/08\/04\/lightbackpackingcom\/","title":{"rendered":"LightBackpacking.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cutter<\/a> linked to this blog yesterday: LightBackpacking.com.<\/a> Its author is Bruce Lewis, who lives up north of the Bay Area along the Pacific Coast. Here’s his explanation of why he went light.<\/p>\n

I grew up in the big suburb city of Long Beach in Southern California where were we hung out on beaches and surfed. I never met anyone who backpacked. The desire to backpack emerged from 10 years of summer car camps in the 1990’s near Red’s Meadow in the Eastern Sierra, meeting backpackers on their 212-mile trek along the John Muir Trail. My first backpack was just a few weeks shy of my 48th birthday, making me somewhat of a late backpack bloomer. Has my age colored my approach to backpacking? Sure. When you’re young and powerful, a thing like weight barely fazes you. Age, however, makes you aware of your weaknesses and forces you to compensate. If anything, however, age has fueled my love of the go-light philosophy. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More on how he got started:<\/p>\n

My quest to join the ranks of the backpacker started in 1997 with months of research, talking to dozens of so-called experts at REI and local independent outdoor stores. Ultimately, this expert advice led to all the wrong choices. The result: I was $1,500 lighter in the pocketbook and my pack was nearly 22 pounds before food, water and other basic gear. On my first six-mile test run on the hills of a local park, I carried 38 pounds for 3 miles, sat down exhausted, discouraged and sweating. I had serious thoughts about quitting. The strain got worse. By the end of my first summer on the trail, I was rich with sage advice from members of my hiking club and had added another seven pounds of goodies, such as a Thermarest chair, increasing my load to 45 pounds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds exactly like my first experiences. The first 2000-foot elevation gain w\/40 pounds in the pack convinced me of the merits of a lighter load.<\/p>\n

Bruce’s blog is a solid product — lots of reviews and first-hand experience, little of the how-low-can-you-go snobbery that bugs many hikers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cutter linked to this blog yesterday: LightBackpacking.com. Its author is Bruce Lewis, who lives up north of the Bay Area along the Pacific Coast. Here’s his explanation of why he went light. I grew up in the big suburb city…<\/p>\n

Read the whole thing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}