--- title: "Your pack is four kilos heavier than you think" author: "Mel Farrow (@switchback)" date: 2026-05-10T08:33:38.256Z updated: 2026-05-10T08:33:38.256Z canonical: "https://jot.place/@switchback/your-pack-is-four-kilos-heavier-than-you-think" description: "How to weigh a pack honestly, bin bag and wet tent included, and the point where cutting grams stops buying you speed and starts costing you sleep." tags: - "gear" - "hiking" - "measurement" - "scotland" --- # Your pack is four kilos heavier than you think Weigh the bin bag. That is the whole method, really. People post their kit lists with a base weight at the bottom and the number is always lovely and it is always a lie, not because they are lying but because the list only contains things they think of as gear. The bin bag that lines the pack is not gear. The four stuff sacks are not gear. The half used gas canister is not gear, it is fuel, and fuel apparently weighs nothing. Water is not gear either. Neither is the 500 g of water living in your tent fabric from day three of a wet trip onwards, or the food you carry for eleven days and eat for nine. Add all of that up and you get about four kilos that never appear on anybody's spreadsheet, before a drop of water goes in a bottle. Tomas made the same argument about his own back garden and light pollution, which is that you have to measure the thing in front of you rather than accept the number on the box: @dust/my-sky-is-not-dark-and-i-have-the-numbers. :::info Two sets of scales. A cheap 0.5 g jewellery scale for anything under 500 g, and a luggage scale with a hook for the whole loaded pack. Total cost under twenty quid. Do not use kitchen scales for the pack, you will bend them and then you will have no kitchen scales. ::: ## The actual list This is my west Highland summer setup, weighed in April before an eleven day walk. Named products are at the manufacturer's stated weight. Everything unbranded is what my scales said about my particular tatty example, which is usually heavier than the shop version. | Item | g | Again? | |---|---|---| | Alpkit Orion 45 pack | 900 | yes | | Alpkit Soloist tent | 1200 | yes | | Alpkit Pipedream 400, regular | 865 | yes | | Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XLite NXT, regular | 354 | yes | | foam sit mat | 58 | yes, absurdly | | inflatable pillow | 62 | no, a stuff sack of clothes is fine | | hardshell jacket | 415 | yes | | waterproof overtrousers | 205 | yes | | synthetic insulated jacket | 340 | yes | | fleece hat | 42 | yes | | gloves, two pairs | 96 | should have been three | | spare socks, two pairs | 118 | yes | | spare base layer | 168 | yes | | Alpkit Kraku stove | 45 | yes | | TOAKS 750 ml titanium pot and lid | 103 | yes | | titanium spoon | 17 | yes | | lighter plus spare | 22 | yes | | Sawyer Squeeze filter | 85 | yes | | soft bottles, 2 x 1 L | 78 | yes | | Petzl Bindi headtorch | 35 | yes | | phone | 204 | yes | | 10,000 mAh battery pack | 212 | yes | | cables | 46 | one cable, not two | | paper maps and compass | 165 | yes, always | | guidebook pages, torn out | 48 | yes | | first aid, tape, blister kit | 186 | yes | | repair kit: pole splint, cord, needle | 64 | yes | | washkit, suncream, small horrors | 132 | yes | | trowel | 44 | yes | | earplugs | 4 | yes, bothies snore | | midge headnet | 26 | yes, non negotiable | | repellent, 75 ml, part used | 78 | yes | | stuff sacks, four | 71 | two would do | | compactor bag pack liner | 38 | yes | | Alpkit Hunka bivvy bag | 330 | no, carried it, never used it | Base weight: 6856 g. Just under seven kilos, and if I posted that number on a forum nobody would blink. ## Now the four kilos | Thing that is not on anybody's list | g | |---|---| | food, four days at 780 g | 3120 | | gas canister, full (98 g of that is the tin) | 198 | | water living in the wet tent, measured at Kinlochewe | 510 | | peat on the pack, gaiters and boots | 180 | | **subtotal** | **4008** | Four kilos and eight grams, which is a coincidence I enjoyed more than I should have. Then a litre of water on top, because you do not leave a good burn with empty bottles when the next four hours are on a ridge. Leaving Shenavall on a wet morning that came to 11.9 kg on the hook. Not 6.9. The difference is not a rounding error, it is a small child. I weigh 63 kg, so the fraction I was actually carrying is $$f = \frac{11.9}{63} = 0.189$$ which is just under nineteen per cent of me. That is the number that matters on day six, not the one in my spreadsheet.
What the 3120 g of food actually was Four days, 780 g a day. Two dehydrated dinners and two bags of couscous with a stock cube and olive oil, eight oatcakes a day, 400 g of cheddar for the whole stretch, four packets of instant porridge, a bag of peanuts, twelve squares of Tunnock's for morale, four sachets of coffee, and 260 g of jelly sweets. I came into Inchnadamph with one dinner and six oatcakes uneaten, which is 340 g I carried 120 km for no reason. Weigh what you bring home. It is the only honest audit of your appetite.
## Where ultralight stops paying I am not against cutting weight. Going from the 14 kg I carried at twenty three to about 10 kg changed what I could do in a day by a genuinely large amount, and going from 10 to 8.5 was worth every penny. Going from 8.5 to 7.6 I cannot feel. I have tried. I have walked the same three day loop out of Fort William with both and the only difference was in my head. Here is the cost side, which the forums are shy about. My sleeping bag is £274.99 for 865 g, so 32 pence per gram of kit. The lighter bags I looked at to replace it work out at between £1.20 and £2.60 for each gram I would save. At that rate the last kilo off my back costs more than my van did, and it buys a bag with less down in it, which on this coast means being cold at four in the morning at the exact point in the trip when sleep is the only thing keeping the schedule alive. Same argument with the mat. Swapping a 354 g air mat with an R-value of 4.5 for a 120 g foam pad saves 234 g and costs me perhaps an hour of proper sleep a night on cold wet ground. An hour of sleep is worth more than 234 g. It is not close. And the 45 g titanium stove that cost £25.99 is a genuine bargain, whereas a stoveless setup saves 148 g and means eating cold couscous in the rain on day six, which is the decision that makes people go home. The three cuts that actually paid, in my experience: stop carrying a second pot, stop carrying a book you will not read, and stop carrying spare batteries for things that charge off the pack you are already carrying. That is roughly 400 g for zero pounds and zero comfort. ## Pre-trip weigh in Do this on the kitchen table two weeks out, not the night before. - [ ] Empty the pack completely, including the pockets you forgot about. - [ ] Weigh every single item and write it down. Every one. The trowel too. - [ ] Weigh the stuff sacks, the bin liner and the empty bottles separately. - [ ] Weigh the gas canister you are actually taking, not a fresh one. - [ ] Weigh your food per day, then weigh what you bring home afterwards and correct next time. - [ ] Put the tent under the shower for five minutes and weigh it wet. That is your real tent weight for a Scottish trip. - [ ] Load the whole thing with a litre of water in it and hang it off the luggage scale. Write that number at the top of the list, not the bottom. - [ ] Mark every item you did not touch on your last trip. Those are your candidates, not the ones you can replace with money. The Hunka has been in my pack for four trips and I have used it once, in 2019, in a doorway. That is 330 g of superstition and I still cannot make myself leave it at home.