It’s been awhile since I’ve done a “Show & Tell” or “science fair” display but it seemed appropriate for the UL talk for the San Juan Mountain Association talk I gave with my mentor Will Rietveld last week.  Six years ago I attended one of his annual seminars on Ultralight backpacking, swallowing more Kool-Aide than anyone else.

When I joined Don Ahlert on the Southern Tier for a self-supported ride to Florida from Austin his recommendations influenced my first purchases of ultralight gear: a 30° MontBell SS 3 at 18oz and a NeoAir pad weighing 8oz. This gave me half the essentials for Utralight backpacking and over the next couple of years hiking with Will I’ve converted entirely to that UL sect.

One of the “props” used in the presentation was the 5 Gallon Bucket Rule: showing folks that all your gear, your base weight, should fit into a 5 gallon bucket.  So as Will pulled gear out of a conventional 40-pound pack and a Lightweight 20-pound pack, I pulled gear out of the bucket.

We didn’t expect everyone, or even anyone, to rise up and join the 10-pound Base Weight clan, but there were a few that showed interest in adopting the maximum threshold weights on basic gear for their next purchase.

This talk followed one the week before on GaiaGPS which was given to a similar crowd of Wilderness Information Specialists.  That app for a smartphone was an easier idea to “sell” since comes in at a far lower cost.  I’ll post a review of that GPS tracking software once I complete the draft.

Right now we’re in Portland working on Daniel’s house.