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Backpacking charts and reference tables

The numbers, without the article wrapped around them. Every chart here is built to be read in ten seconds, quoted in a forum reply, and checked against your own scale. Water weighs 2.2 lb per litre, food runs about 1.5 lb per day, and a 20 degree bag is comfortable nearer 30 to 35 degrees. Those three facts settle more gear arguments than any review does.

Figures are published manufacturer specifications and standard physical constants. We do not test gear in person.

How to use these charts

Base weight is everything in and on your pack except food, water and fuel, and the pack itself counts toward it. Almost every chart on this page exists to answer one of two questions about that number: what should it be, and what is making it bigger than it should be. The base weight tiers chart answers the first. The rest answer the second, one category at a time.

Read them alongside your own scale rather than instead of it. Published weights are the manufacturer's figure for one specific size and configuration, and they run optimistic often enough to matter, sometimes by an ounce or two per item. Tent specifications are the worst offender: minimum weight, trail weight and packaged weight are three different numbers for the same tent, and the gap between the first and the last is routinely half a pound of stakes, guyline and stuff sacks. The tent weight chart takes that apart.

Two of these charts carry a safety warning rather than a shopping recommendation, and they are the two worth reading before anything else. Sleeping bag and quilt temperature ratings published to EN 13537 or ISO 23537 are survival ratings, not comfort ratings. The limit figure describes the temperature at which an average sleeper gets through the night curled up and shivering, the comfort rating typically sits 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, and the extreme rating is a survival-with-injury figure that must never be used for planning. The temperature rating chart explains the whole test protocol. The layering chart covers the other one: hypothermia does not require winter, only wet, wind and a hiker who has stopped moving.

Pair the charts with the calculators, which run the same arithmetic against your own inputs, the gear list builder, which totals a full kit, and the complete buildouts, which show what the numbers look like assembled into a kit you could actually carry. The head to head comparisons take the same data and turn it into a decision.

Going ultralight must never mean going unprepared. Nothing in these tables is a licence to leave behind shelter, insulation, rain protection, navigation, water treatment or a way to call for help. You are responsible for carrying gear adequate to the conditions you will actually meet, not the conditions in the forecast, and no chart on this site knows what the weather is doing where you are going. Check current conditions, permits and food storage regulations with the managing agency before every trip.

The figures worth memorising

Everything below appears somewhere in the charts above, but these are the ones that come up constantly and that settle arguments on their own. They are physical constants and widely published conventions rather than opinions, which is why they do not change with the season or the brand.

Quantity Figure Why it matters
Water, per litre 2.2046 lb, 35.27 oz, 1,000 g Usually the heaviest single thing in the pack
Water, per US gallon 8.34 lb Cache and resupply planning in US units
One ounce 28.3495 g Converting cottage gear specs, which are often metric
One pound 453.592 g, 16 oz The unit base weight is quoted in
Food, three season About 1.5 lb per day Five days is 7 lb 8 oz on day one
Food, winter About 2 lb per day Staying warm overnight burns reserves summer never touches
Calorie density target 100 to 125 cal per oz About 110 is realistic for a mixed resupply
110 g isobutane canister About 7.8 oz full, 3.9 oz of gas Roughly a dozen two cup boils
Ultralight base weight Under 10 lb, under 4,536 g The band the whole hobby organises itself around
Lightweight base weight Under 20 lb, under 9,072 g Where the returns stop being obvious
Big Three share of base About 55 percent at every level The ratio does not improve as you get lighter
Pad R value, three season About R 3 R 4 to 5 shoulder season, R 5 and up on snow
Comfort versus limit rating gap 10 to 15 F The published limit is a survival figure
Frameless pack ceiling About 25 lb total, badly past 30 lb Total includes food, water and fuel
Loaded pack guidance About 20 percent of body weight Base weight about 10 percent
Trail shoe life 400 to 500 miles Replace when the midsole dies, not when the upper tears

Two of those rows deserve more than a line. The water figure reorders almost every ultralight priority list once you take it seriously: a decision to carry four litres instead of two costs 4.4 lb, which is more than most people save by replacing an entire shelter, and no purchase on this site competes with carrying one litre less. That cuts both ways, and the water weight chart says so plainly: under-carrying in the desert is a safety failure, not a weight win.

The comfort versus limit gap is the other one, and it is the specification most likely to hurt someone. A 20 degree bag is comfortable nearer 30 to 35 degrees for most people, and the extreme rating printed alongside it describes surviving six hours with a real risk of frostbite. Nobody plans a trip against an extreme rating on purpose; people do it by accident, by reading the largest number on the tag.

Why we publish charts rather than only reviews

A review answers one question for one reader. A chart answers the same question for everyone, including the reader who is comparing two products we have never covered, and it keeps answering it after the specific models on it have been discontinued. That is why every site in this format gets six to ten of them, and why these are deliberately the densest pages here.

It also makes the reasoning auditable. When a page tells you a trekking pole shelter saves about two and a half pounds against a freestanding tent, the tent weight chart shows the rows that claim comes from and states which of the three published tent weights it is using. When a page says a kit is nine pounds, the buildouts list every line that adds up to it. Numbers that cannot be checked are just adjectives with digits in them.

If you want to use these figures against your own gear rather than read them, the gear list builder totals a full kit line by line and the calculators run the same arithmetic on your inputs. Both are free, both run in your browser, and neither asks for an email address.