Preparations for this journey started months ago. Now it is time to start choosing what we really need to bring. Sometimes these are easy decisions, sometimes hard. As a Scout, ‘Be Prepared’ is our motto. But what do we really need to be prepared for? And what can we leave at home.
When we went to New Zealand, we carefully weighed every item we brought, and used www.lighterpack.com to organise our gearlist. This really gave us insight in how to lighten our packs. In the end, we took 7kg of our original packweight!
And while we hope that we can save a bit more, we found out that we did a thorough job last time. So I’m afraid that we are lucky if we can get to the same weight as we had then 😅.
We are aiming for a bag of maximum 10kg, since we also will need to pack our food and water, which weighs 1kg of food per day per person, and max 3kg of water per person. So if we carry 7 days worth of food (that is the amount you can see on one of the pictures), the pack will be 20kg.
Last time we discovered that a lot of weight can be spared when we are ‘well prepared’ in stead of ‘over prepared’. It also helps to really weigh EVERYTHING that goes in the bag. I am known for throwing in some final things because ‘there is still space’. No. Only things that we really need.
Since it is a different journey, with different climate and amenities, we will need to adjust the gearlist. We also have destroyed quite some of the ultralight gear that we brought to New Zealand, so we had to replace it, and not always with gear of the same weight. So now we walk around the house with scales, and look at very item we can think of whether or not it needs to come.
It means we would like items to be used in more ways than 1. Our buff is a piece of clothing, but is also our pillow wrapping, rain pants are also convenient as overpants when it is windy, etc. Or, it needs to be convenient and weigh almost nothing, like the tap-to-waterfilter adapter Mark made on TA.
Yet some items have special value. Like a scoutscarf. It’s our identity as scouts, and we hope to meet quite a few of them along the way. Is it worth the extra 83 grams? For now, the scoutscarf is still debatable.
Luckily, sometimes choices are a bit easier. We got a very lovely gift; a foldable BBQ. Very small to bring. It would easily fit into the backpack. Great for picnics! A little bit on the heavy side though. So the question “are we going to bring a foldable BBQ that weighs 3500 gr?” was not that hard to answer. It will stay at home 😅.
For now, the struggle to get the packs under 10 kg will continue for a few more weeks. Then it really is time to go!
Let me find a foldable BBQ with light weight next time, I believe “China Made” can make that.
No worries Fabienne, were happy with the BBQ and already found someone to bring it at some point! So we’ll even be able to use it!