The lure of the ultralight

Caution: late-night web surfing can rock your world. At midnight, when I should be climbing into bed, I flip open my laptop to google “Camino de Santiago gear list.” The query catches the usual net of fish, some dead, some wriggling with life.

Backpack45 has a good site covering the Camino and other less urban backpacks. Drill down to their gear section and you see that they’re proponents of ultralight packs, packs that can weigh less than a pound! Check out Gossamer Gear or Golite if you want to have your structured pack world turned upside down. Gossamer's G5, pictured, weighs about 8 ounces. I’ve never seen packs like these—as unstructured as nightgowns, as light as airmail letters.

Well, not quite. But learning there are packs that weigh a fifth of the pack I’m taking along makes me question all my choices, just as unhappily marrieds might feel when they see that new billboard in Chicago, the one with buff unclad men and women and the message, “Life is short; get a divorce.”

I’m not convinced I want to divorce my Deva 60, but the Ultralights do lure me a little with their lovely insubstantiality. Again there’s that paradox of buying more so that you end up with less. More and more money for smaller and lighter gear—that’s what the computer world is all about, too.

I may look into those packs when I have more time, but I imagine what they lack is structure. The shoulder straps and waist belts (when they have the latter) are empty wisps of nylon that you can stuff with socks or spare clothes. Needless to say, there’s no internal frame, though supposedly you can use a sleeping pad to create some structure. For now this girl with back issues will stick with her well-structured Deva (see the well-padded waistband in the photo of a Deva 60). Maybe next time I’ll try ultralight.

And as wm commented on my last post, “Getting the weight you'll be carrying down to the bare minimum is symbolic of reducing excess mental baggage.” True enough. And in the end, the heaviest thing I’ll be carrying is most likely myself. I’m the lug I have to lug along, no matter how light my pack and gear.