Comfortable and safe are vital! Anyone can go out into the mountains with a tiny amount of gear and suffer — you need to be warm, well-fed and ready to deal with safety issues. Ultralight camping should be delightful, not stressful. The challenge is to succeed with only the gear that’s absolutely needed.
The first-aid kit is a good metaphor for your lightweight camping mind-set. It would be foolish to travel without one, right? But what is truly required? What can you effectively improvise? There is a blurry line between TOO heavy and TOO light. You can still go out in the backcountry with a very light pack and be comfortable and safe (see tip 55).
Excerpt from Ultralight Backpackin’ Tips by Mike Clelland
As always Andrew Skurka has a well-researched and reasonable take on first aid kits, it’s the one thing he refuses to list a weight for.
Same here! I’ve given away leukotape, ibuprofen, ibuprofen PM, floss and needle and repair tape and gotten ibuprofen donated to me when I was suffering in the Sierra.
hmmmm. I should probably get some decent tweezers and scissors. I also need to replace my benadryl. It got wet and I never refilled it.
Thank you for posting this list. I’m comforted to know that I was already doing most of what was listed here, but worried that I left out a few essentials.