Ultralight Hiking Gear Recommendations

Recommended resource: r/Ultralight’s DeputySean ultracheap ultralight list—some of these recommendations are out of date, links no longer work, etc, but this has the same ish posture as my recommendations, with a lot of overlap.

Honorable mention: Trail Life by Ray Jardine, and Ultralight Backpackin’ Tips by Mike Clelland

Lots of people are variously opinionated about this stuff, this is my opinionated take, and in ~every case basically lighter and cheaper than what you’ll find if you just ask for stuff at REI, and generally on the lightest side of reasonable for “ultralight” gear.

Please don’t buy stuff at REI unless you’ve already picked it and it happens to be available there, etc. (Nothing particularly against the company, mostly just against their gear selection. I’ve been an REI member since I was a teenager.)

Generally here there are tradeoffs on 3 axes: price, capability, and weight. Capability here means “how extreme of conditions can it manage”, for the kinds of gear we’re concerned with this is mostly one axis, obviously in the real world there are lots of different conditions re weather, local geology, whether above treeline, and a wide range of climates, but I’m assuming here that you’re going to be in the mountains in the lower 48, for 3 season camping. (Four season camping means something like, your gear needs to be resilient to intense wind and potentially high snowfall, I don’t know much about this, and gear here is usually more specialized. Note also 3 season could still actually be in the winter, esp. in CA, just not in the proper mountains in the winter.)

Note we left out durability. This is a consideration sort of, but often hikers choose very fragile equipment on purpose in order to save weight, eg. using clear plastic window insulation for a groundsheet. A lot of gear on the market is way more durable than is helpful or necessary, eg. you don’t need a backpack that’s designed for crazy scrambles, or which can survive a 30 ft fall, or is meant for soldiers. Often “fragile” backpacks might not survive two thru hikes, meaning ~5k miles and ~300 nights on trail. You’re very likely simply not going to hike that many miles with whatever gear you buy, and if you do become a full-time backpacker, you’ll be glad enough for the weight savings to be fine replacing a backpack once every year or two.

The tradeoffs at the frontier work basically how you would expect. Lower weight, for a given type of design will be more expensive, and greater capability at a given weight means higher price. In general I’m going to give a few categories here: a. cheapest I can possibly recommend, b. cheapest that’s pretty good, (sometimes) c. intermediate, better, d. balls-to-the-wall psycho gear. For a. you can get a full loadout for <$500, for d. you can spend as much as $3-4,000. I don’t recommend the latter, and I don’t necessarily recommend the former but it’s definitely usable. In some cases there are designs for gear which are lighter and cheaper, but eg. for a shelter require more conscious site selection or require more skill to pitch, or for a backpack only are practical if you’re already carrying very little weight.

Here is an example gear list, pretty close to what I actually use, but optimized more for price and moderate comfort than weight, 8.5lbs, ~$500 before tax etc.

Why does weight matter? Who are these ultralight psychos?

Every ounce you pack is an ounce you have to carry. Furthermore, backpacks are sort of inherently unergonomic, and weight carried on the back is much more fatiguing than equivalent bodyweight, even if one has a strong core. In some respects there are steep tradeoffs for carrying less, or lighter equipment, but in many cases the tradeoff with respect to discomfort or inconvenience is relatively shallow, compared to “traditional” backpacking equipment.

Ultimately, backpacking is a very different pattern of living from our usual desks and screens and cars and four walls, and living with only what’s on your back is extremely constrained, no matter how much weight you try to carry. Eg., there are backpacking chairs, some of them impressively light, but they’re never going to be that comfortable, or you could carry some full size camping chair, which might be bigger than your whole pack. The same goes for every piece of gear: even if you were willing to carry 50+ lbs in an 80 liter pack, almost everything is going to be small and awkward anyway, compared to equipment you are used to at home, or which you might use for car camping.

This exaggerates the tradeoffs, tbc. You can totally have a 20lb pack and be a fair bit more comfortable at camp, and ultimately it’s your hike. This page is opinionated, the goal here is to achieve an experience of a comfortable stroll in the woods—the more weight you carry the more it’s one long sufferfest. Being less encumbered means you can hike faster, or for longer, or just enjoy your whole time more and with less fatigue, even if you’re not doing a ton of miles.

Base weight

Base weight refers to the total weight of your pack, besides food, water, and fuel. This generally includes unworn layers, and usually includes the weight of empty water bottles or fuel canisters, but not trekking poles (mostly held in your hands) or a phone (often in a shorts pocket… but often also in a front shoulder strap pocket, or a hipbelt pocket.)

(The phone thing is kind of a weird holdover, and sort of arbitrary, but if you’re checking your base weight against people on the internet, lists people post won’t include the weight of a phone, which almost everyone carries.)

“Ultralight” generally is understood to mean base weight <= 10 lbs. Since materials have gotten lighter, and there’s been a fair bit of innovation in design, some people shoot for “super-ultralight”, this means <= 5 lbs. This is generally reserved for proper psychos, but it’s 100% doable if you’re very disciplined, and to some extent willing to spend money.

All-in weights will be substantially higher, depending on the frequency of water sources and the distance between food resupplies. Most hikers plan around ~3 days between resupplies, but 5 or 7 days is certainly possible, and practical under some circumstances. The rule of thumb for (what hikers consider) “normal” mileage trips (~20-25 mi/day) is 4,000 calories per day, which with relatively weight efficient food means ~2lbs of food per day; see more below on food weight optimization. This means minimum ~8lbs between resupplies, assuming you’re carrying 1L of water at a time. Some areas might have 20 mile water carries, and some desert hikes require carrying 10-15 liters of water from the beginning.

Don’t pack it!

The cheapest and simplest way to save weight is just not to pack stuff. I’m so fucking serious, if you don’t actually need it, just don’t bring it. “Need” gets subtle here, often things we think we need are really things we want in order to be entertained, or more comfortable.

In general the posture I would recommend is to learn what the actual floor looks like for clothing, shelter, and food, and then to add things back on later trips, and see what’s actually helpful. One of the valuable lessons from backpacking is to learn that you need extremely little, and can often feel healthier and more vibrant without all of the comforts of town and home.

One thing to keep in mind here also is that base weight tends to be very cumulative: it’s very easy for each item to be an ounce or two or five heavier than it could be (gosh, this is so small, how can you even feel the difference…), and suddenly your base weight has gone up by two lbs or five. One helpful tool here for tracking small differences is Lighterpack, obv you can do the same thing with just a spreadsheet.

Common items to leave at home or ignore altogether: pyjamas, soap, deodorant, games, cameras (you will very likely be bringing a phone, which likely has a great camera), knives (my god, people love to fetishize knives, these are almost entirely irrelevant for backpacking), almost all kinds of cooking equipment, etc.

Carrying too little

However, one can carry too little! In general you should have adequate food, water, and shelter to survive a reasonable range of weather where you’re going.

The prescription here is generally to have your sleeping bag or quilt be somewhat overkill for warmth, if only just to be nice and cozy most of the time.

I think it’s fine to plan for -3s cases to be like “it’s miserable and I get no sleep.” -2s should be more like “it’s uncomfortable but I’m fine.” -4-5s might reasonably be “This only happens if I majorly fucked up planning and checking weather, this is very bad and I either call a rescue or risk frostbite (or etc.)” -5-6s is getting into “the world involves risk, and going into the wilderness really does involve more risk than sitting inside a house, up to and including death.” I don’t plan for -5s weather events (literally < 1 in a million) and am not resilient to them. I’m much more likely to die in a car crash, let alone of cancer or heart disease, than a freak weather event while hiking. None of this however is to say what your risk tolerance should be.

Misc.

Retailers

Especially if you’re price sensitive, often the best sources for gear are Amazon and Aliexpress. Keep in mind Aliexpress often has long shipping (2 weeks or more), which is fine if you’re trying to carefully munchkin prices, but is completely not viable if you need to buy gear for a trip next week. Big outdoor stores are perfectly fine for a given piece of gear, eg. if there’s a sleeping pad you’ve already chosen then go for it, but their selections are often poor for most UL gear.

Most real UL companies are direct-to-consumer only and are not on any other retailers, with the singular exception of Garage Grown Gear. Note that GGG definitely doesn’t have every cottage gear company, and GGG often has only some products from a given company.

Also worth mentioning Litesmith, their selection is smaller and overlaps a lot with GGG now, but they have many of the very lightest of a given piece of equipment, and a lot of stuff like tiny bottles in many sizes, pouches, pack liners, etc.

Bears

There are three species of bears in North America: black bears, brown bears (grizzlies), and polar bears. Let’s assume we aren’t concerned with polar bears.

Brown bears are only¹ extant in the lower 48 in MT, and a small corner of WY and ID; they’re very prevalent in AK. Brown bears are much more aggressive, and IIRC have occasionally eaten people, but these were only after defending themselves when threatened, and my understanding is they don’t hunt people as prey. In any case, we don’t need to worry about them if we’re not in their current range.

Black bears on the other hand are goddam scaredy-cats. I lived in the country in VT for a couple years, and besides one mother with a cub, every time I saw a black bear it was running away from me. The claim I’ve seen is that 99% of the time when a black bear sees a human it will run away. However, black bears are still dangerous, huge, and can totally kill you if spooked.

The prescriptions for bear safety are more about safety in areas with lots of bears and lots of human traffic, and human food and trash, like major national parks. The pattern here is that bears learn where humans camp, learn to steal their food, and become progressively habituated to human presence. At this point they might charge people to try to steal a backpack, or just the same behave erratically and attack because they’ve gotten spooked, even if they’re much less scared of humans.

Sometimes bears will tear into tents looking for food, and certainly break into unattended cars, but base rates for attacks from bears due to human food are low. Eg., saliently, what I’ve been told is that on the PCT, except for the sections where bear cans are required, almost everyone sleeps with their food, and I’ve not heard of bear attacks because of this, so at worst they happen very seldom. Keep in mind this is on trails which are swarming with people for at least a few months of the year, and still relatively active for >6 months, where surely bears would learn if they can just steal food from hikers’ tents…

The general prescription re bear safety is to use a bear can (basically a big plastic jar which is difficult to open or break), an ursack (a kevlar sack, just tied to a tree), or do a bear hang (hanging food from a cord on a branch). My sense is that the wilder the bears the less this matters, and again that much of this is to prevent bears from getting habituated to humans, rather than for one’s personal safety. I don’t have a narrow prescription here but I’m less wary than I used to be, especially in low traffic areas.

Relatedly, in some areas people will carry bear spray, which is effectively just very strong pepper spray. My understanding is this is mostly relevant if one encounters a bear on a trail or bushwkacking, and it gets spooked enough to try to charge or attack. Again my understanding is that bears mostly feel threatened by humans, and will sometimes (though very seldom, especially with black bears) attack, but that they do not hunt down humans. The standard prescription if one encounters a bear and it doesn’t immediately run away, is to talk to it gently, not make sudden movements, and slowly walk backwards to substantial distance.

I don’t have strong claims about if one should carry bear spray, my sense is “in the lower 48, probably not needed, base rates are very low.”

The loadout

Backpack

On the assumption that your base weight is UL, your pack itself can be lighter and more minimal. Below are some packs I recommend, at various price points and weights/amounts of support. Heavier loads require more structure and padding, so even the heavier bags on this list I would recommend against ever using with full loads of 30lbs or higher.

Note that these aren’t the only bags that are good, these are just good choices for someone who might be using this list.

Generally it’s recommended to buy your bag last, or at least with respect to the rest of your equipment. If you’re doing this all from scratch, I would want to have a real number on base weight minus the bag, and a real number on volume. You can estimate volume just by packing your gear in a bag whose capacity you know, or in a trash bag with an explicit volume. Note that sleeping bags will by default expand to take up a lot of spaec, but can be punched down pretty small when packing your bag.

If you’re even remotely following this list you should not need >50 liters, but I’m a little hesitant to outright recommend very small bags, especially if you’re partially using an older set of bulkier gear. Reasonably, 40L should be totally doable using this list, I fit in ~30L with food but currently use a much bigger bag. 25L is possible but is getting into “pointlessly overfit” territory, and any smaller requires extreme sacrifices.

This is also where gear choices are loosely interlocking: very light and/or low volume backpacks limit how much food you can carry, and so imply some assumptions about what routes are viable, at what daily mileage. Backpacks will generally list a “maximum load”, I don’t find these overwhelmingly meaningful. Without testing a bag yourself on real trips, you should assume these numbers are 5-10lbs higher than will actually be comfortable.

• Top end, heavy(er)

  These are the heaviest bags I would recommend, if for some reason these don’t work, and if you need to buy in person, I would say really try to get something <3lbs and ~50 liters.

  • Gossamer Gear Gorilla 50/Mariposa 60 - ~$280-315

    These are almost identical, I think the Mariposa has some extra pockets and is slightly heavier. These are great bags, ~2lbs depending on torso height, and (from my few anecdotes) seem to carry the weight very well.

    (2026-06-12 the yellow ones in med and large are on sale for $205, I think they’re no longer being made.)

  • Osprey Exos/Eja 58 - $280

    These are very popular, generally good bags. ~>2.5lbs if you remove the brain, but ime less comfortable than the GG Gorilla. Honestly I think the only advantage to this pack is if you have a membership at some outdoor gear store, and either get a reward on the price or are concerned about being able to return it after serious miles. In comparison, Gossamer Gear is basically direct to consumer only and presumably doesn’t have as good of a return policy as REI, Sports Basement, etc.

    (Exos is the “men’s” cut and Eja the “women’s” cut, the difference here isn’t huge but is generally meaningful to on average better accomodate breasts and hips.)

  • REI Flash 55 - $230

    These are… fine. ~2.5-2.75lbs, if you remove the brain. I would say only get this if you really care about being able to return it to REI, or can aggresively munchkin an REI sale, and are price sensitive. Still, in that situation, I would prefer one of the cheap ones below.

  • Horseshit

    There are very expensive bags, basically none of which I recommend to anyone who is going to try to use this advice. Not all of them are necessarily terrible and some are good but I didn’t want on this list.

    I don’t recommend Hyperlite Mountain Gear, these are “ultralight” branded bags which are now often at mainstream outdoor gear stores, but imo they made weird choices and are both uncomfortable and not worth the price.

• Frameless UL

  These don’t have an internal solid frame, which the above do, which means they are more uncomfortable when carrying heavier loads, and may have a minimal hipbelt or no hipbelt. Imo not appropriate unless your base weight with this pack would be <~7.5lbs. You probably shouldn’t get these for your first pack unless you’re weirdly confident.

  • Pa’lante V2 - $240

    Basically a meme bag, ~18oz, 37L for the large. I’ve heard nothing bad about it from anyone who owns one, and a fair bit of raving, but this requires a low base weight, and is on the far end of “reasonable.”

  • Gossamer Gear G4-20 - $205

    ~22oz, 40L. I haven’t tried this one but IIRC it’s well regarded for this type of bag, and is cheaper and probably easier to buy or return than a Palante.

• Cheap

  These are on the cheap end verging on very cheap. Most of these again I would not recommend unless your base weight (with the bag) is <~8lbs, once you’re getting down there the bag matters less.

  • Granite gear (various, $100-150, one $75)

    Generally well regarded, I haven’t actually used these. I think some of the current prices are because they can’t ship to CA or NY bc of laws restricting PFAS, and they’re manufacturing a new line? Note that some of these are small, you likely don’t want one <40L unless your gear is pretty tightly optimized.

  • Naturehike, 3F UL (a few models I think, ~$60-125)

    These two brands are in a large category of Chinese made clones of UL equipment, they tend to be heavier and less well designed than their equivalents from western brands, but often somewhere between “tolerable” and “actually kinda decent, really good for the price.” These are on Amazon as well as Aliexpress, I’ve seen them often as low as $60 if you pick through listings.

  • Walmart (Ozark Trail) (various, $35-60)

    Again, probably “viable”, especially with low base weights. Several of these models are actually surprisingly light for the size and the price, ~2-3 lbs.

  • Random cheapo bags (various ~$15-30)

    If your base weight is down to ~4lbs minus the bag, you can often find very lightweight 25-40L backpacks on Amazon or etc., bringing your total base weight to ~5lbs. This is really only a good idea if you absolutely cannot afford anything else, or maybe as a joke.

    (People really do hike with some aggressively minimal bags, so one of the more influential niche UL influencers makes a 12.4oz 22L bag which is designed to look like a Jansport, and the original Ray Jardine bags are 9.5oz and ~35L.)

You will want to get a bag which is sized correctly for your back, you can look up videos of how to measure spine length for backpacks correctly on youtube etc. This only requires measuring tape and maybe a friend to help. Different manufacturers have different thresholds for “small” vs “medium” vs “large”, usually with some overlap, and many bags have further height adjustment on the harness. Cheaper and lighter bags will have less adjustment and come in fewer sizes, the lighter the load the less this matters.

In general, if you can it’s good to try the bag on with weight, this is always a tension if you’re buying online, depends on the return policy, etc. The lighter your load, and lighter the bag, the less any of this matters unless the design is particularly weird. You might also benefit from watching reviews on youtube, especially from people with similar bodytypes to you, though this is not definitive.

Generally I would recommend not worrying about a bag being waterproof, very few meaningfully are and those come with serious tradeoffs. The standard strat here is a pack liner, there are a variety of options, but the two standard meme options here are nylofume (a surprisingly strong clear plastic) or more historically trash compactor bags. Regular trash bags are usually too thin and fragile, potentially you could use a contractor bag if eg. you were stuck in a random small town and needed a new one. If you are at all careful these can last months on trail, and people generally don’t pack backups.

One interesting option, especially if you’re price sensitive but still uncertain, would be to buy a Walmart backpack as a first pack, and then experiment from there. The ~$40 ones are perfectly viable if your base weight minus pack would be <~7 lbs, which should be fairly easy to hit with gear I recommend here, and then you might decide you want to be able to do longer food caries, or that you want to go lighter, and only buy a more expensive pack then.

Shelter

It’s important to keep in mind that tents in general (at least for any kind of camping) are just not that strong, and ultimately never truly waterproof. The flipside of this is that rainworthyness is in decent part a function of your skill in site selection and pitching, and in choosing a shelter appropriate to the weather you expect to encounter.

Furthermore, many tents go to a lot of trouble trying to feel like a real permanent shelter, as though they were just a tiny cabin… made of nylon. This is cute but is generally a waste of weight and doesn’t gain you much in what a shelter actually needs to do: keep you dry, cut the wind, and (actually, optionally) keep bugs out.

For UL shelters, there are three main criteria which have a big influence on what you should buy:

1. How much you dislike bugs
   • The very lighest shelters are a thin tarp which sheds rain, and a thin groundsheet to prevent water from coming up from the ground, and nothing else. There are several categories between this (minimal tarp shelters) and what’s called a “double wall tent”, this is the kind of tent you’re probably familiar with, with a bathtub floor, an inner mesh netting and an outer fly.
2. How bad the rain will be
   • Some shelters are fine in modest rain, but questionable in intense downpours. Often these are more in the category of “fine for a night if the rain gets bad, but you don’t want to bring them if it’s likely to be raining the whole time.”—the main example here being the Gatewood Cape.
3. Whether you will be carrying a trekking pole or poles
   • The very lightest shelters are built around rigid vertical poles rather than flexible tent poles, these are usually what are called “trekking pole tents”, or “tarp shelters” (~all tarp shelters use vertical poles for structure, whether fallen branches or trekking poles). This means the poles do double duty, saving weight. Trekking poles are generally not counted in base weight, because they’re usually being carried in your hands rather than in your pack, and if you actually use them they’re going to be net positive for fatigue.
     • I thought trekking poles were silly until I actually tried them and went “wow, ok, this is actually very helpful.” Still I think no trekking poles is perfectly fine, but it shifts exactly what shelters are optimal.
   • Some people opt for a single trekking pole, and many tarp shelters are pyramid-shaped, and only use a single central pole.
   • You can buy dedicated rigid carbon fiber vertical poles, of fixed length (eg. full-height, so ~51“, for only 2oz, and ~30“ for 1oz), or adjustable length (lightest are 3-3.5oz). Sometimes people will combine a fixed length dedicated tent pole with a single trekking pole, for shelters that need 2 poles.
   • Trekking pole tents, especially those with two poles, using dedicated vertical poles rather than trekking poles, are basically competitive with the lightest “free-standing” (~non trekking pole) tents. UL free-standing tents (the normal tents you’re familiar with) are the most expensive, and I think not really worth it, they also generally disincentivize you from moving into tarp camping, which many trekking pole tents can also do.

Poles

• Trekking poles

  • Cheap

    The very cheapest trekking poles are as low as $15, usually made of aluminum, with EVA handles. I might avoid the very bottom end, or trawl Aliexpress for a model which is normally retails for more like $25-40 to catch them on sale. These are often completely cromulent and just heavy, often >10oz per pole. This matters much less because they’re being carried in the hands, but still matters some.

    Note that often listings for very cheap poles are actually for one pole and not two, this might be fine depending on what shelter you have etc.

    • Generic aluminum, adjustable - $15-40

      (See above)

    • Cheap fixed length (various) - $20-45

      There are often fixed length carbon fiber trekking poles on Aliexpress for pretty cheap, and some of these are extremely light (as low as ~4oz). These aren’t even necessarily bad, but there are tradeoffs re usability for being fixed length. These might be a good choice if you’re on the fence about getting a trekking pole vs fixed length, in the best case these add only ~2oz each. I would recommend looking for specific models with reviews online.

  • Mid

    • Naturehike + 3F UL (several models, carbon fiber) - $60

      I have a Naturehike pole, but slightly talking out of my ass here, my vague sense of these two companies is that their poles are “probably fine.” You should check reviews. Lightest ~6oz for a 3 section pole, this is a very good price for that weight. Some are more like 8oz or more, I think they’ve had many different models over the years and listings on Aliexpress are very anarchic. Amazon listings will be slightly more expensive but have much faster shipping.

      • Again you can also often buy just one pole for ~$30-40.

    • Cascade Mountain Tech - ~$65-75

      They have a few models, these are the lightest, 5.6 oz, but only 2 section so min height is ~30“, this is fine/irrelevant for many shelters but not all. Other models are ~8 oz, I think these are generally regarded as “totally fine.”

  • High end

    • There are several manufacturers here that have very similar products, the top end among UL people seems to be the Durston Iceline poles, and the Gossamer Gear LT5 poles. These are both $200 for a pair, and ~5oz. These are the “go all out” ones and maybe not really worth it.
      • Apparently the 2024 Durston trekking poles had problems, but this was fixed in the 2025 version.
    • Zpacks has a 3 section adjustable pole for a similar weight, for ~$130 for a pair, (and sold as single poles) but I haven’t heard of almost anyone using these so I don’t know what’s up. (Zpacks is generally otherwise well-regarded.)
    • There are some other very expensive pretty light carbon fiber trekking poles, eg. from Black Diamond. Naively I expect these to be slightly more robust than the maximum UL poles, which are likely overfit for weight here.

• Dedicated vertical poles (~$25-50)

  These are in general going to be the lightest. There are a whole bunch of these with different tradeoffs, I don’t have any real claims among them. I had Claude make a big table which you can reference if you want to choose one of these.

  I use a 1oz 32“ pole for the shorter back end of my tarp, combined with a single normal 3-section trekking pole.

Shelter itself

One distinction here: single vs double wall. Single-wall shelters have either just a rainfly, or a rainfly + nylon floor + bug netting filling in the gaps. Double-wall tents have a rainfly and a separate inner mesh or mesh + solid nylon/polyester walls separating the inner area from the fly.

All tents form condensation on the inside from moisture in your breath and temperature differential with outside air. Double-wall tents mostly serve to separate you from the outer layer and prevent you from touching it, because it likely has condensation on it.

Tarp shelters have better ventilation and so somewhat less condensation, the walls are also often further away from the person inside. (Tarps or trekking pole tents with single pole pyramid designs are somewhat worse here because of shallow walls, this more relevant if you’re taller.)

The most minimal tarp shelter setups use a piece of plastic window insulation called Polycro as a groundsheet, besides the tarp itself and stakes. This adds 1.5-2oz, compared to usually ~4-12 oz for either a more extensive nylon tub floor or full inner tent.

The more minimal setups use a flat tarp, in the list below I only recommend shaped mostly-enclosed tarps. Flat tarps require more skill in site selection and predicting weather, and I don’t recommend these unless you’re already pretty into tarp camping.

One thing also to note when looking at small differences in weight, is that some shelters report the weight of stakes where others don’t, or eg. tarp shelters often only report the tarp itself, sometimes not even guy lines, besides also needing a footprint. (Even if footprints are very light, if you see a 5.5oz shelter, note that it’s not that light all-in.)

Tarp-only shelters, with no bug netting, obviously expose one to more bugs! This can be a practice in noticing that (at least in the lower 48, afaik with very few exceptions) bugs are just fine. Where mosquitos are a big problem, people will combine these with a headnet (this doesn’t work overwhelmingly well), and just staying inside their quilt at night. There are other configurations possible with partial bug nets or canopies, for a bit more weight.

One more note, all of these except for the X-Mid need to be seam sealed, this means applying a silicone solution to seams besides hems, so mainly at the ridgeline. The most popular sealer is Seam Grip + SIL, for ~$10, there’s various instructions on the internet, eg. here. This is I suppose a meaningful difference in price at the very bottom end.

• Yama Mountain Gear Cirriform (modular, normal min ~$185, max ~$265, special $125, see below)

  This and the Deschutes tarp are really the best and most flexible options, and among the cheapest. I slightly prefer the Cirriform, a. because the matching inner is lighter, and b. it’s shaped basically like a simple a-frame with a capped front and back end, and for taller people (I’m 6’), it has steep walls on the front and back end, so is better for not rubbing up against condensation.

  • 13.6 oz (but see next note)
  • (This is including guy lines and stuff sack, the main listing gives 11.7 oz which is not very meaningful)
  • Requires two poles, but the back pole can be a short fixed length pole, eg. as low as 1oz.
  • Can purchase either matching inner tent (they call it a “bug shelter”) or bivy, these have a relatively narrow bathtub floor (what you’re used to in normal tents), with a bug net top section. The “bug shelter” is larger and has more headroom, the bivy is smaller and doesn’t have room to sit up inside, so you have to unzip it to sit up.
    • With the full “bug shelter” this comes to 25oz and costs $265. This is on par with the lightest double-wall shelters, but has some disadvantages. In particular it’s maybe low on headroom if you’re 6’ ish or taller. The big advantage is that you can optionally remove the inner (unhooking a few cords) on trips where it’s not needed, for a much lighter shelter, so there’s optionality for much lighter setups here.
    • With the matching bivy it’s yet lighter, and with the Borah bivy (see below) even lighter, while still being fully protected from bugs.
  • There are a few variants: one with a mesh skirt, and one cheaper.
    • The mesh skirt is just a strip of mesh which is sewn in and hangs from the edge, this adds ~2 oz and ~$40. This is meant to protect reasonably well against moderate amounts of mosquitos but not crawling bugs.
    • Closeout: currently (2026-06-13) there are some Cirriforms which were made ~1.5oz too heavy, these are actually slightly better than the normal ones, but sell for $125 because they’re too heavy.

• Six Moon Designs Deschutes Tarp ($190)

  This is all told very very similar to the Cirriform, the main difference is the geometry. Pyramid tents are generally regarded as somewhat worse if you are likely to move around and have your sleeping bag touch condensation on the sides. (This isn’t a problem for everyone, and is also less of a problem if you’re shorter.)

  • 13oz, single pole pyramid with a door
  • Also comes in a bug skirt version, +3oz.
  • Also can buy a matching bug net inner, which is a bit heavier than the Cirriform inners, but also looks nicer and more spacious.
  • The small disadvantage to the Deschutes tarp is afaict it doesn’t have attachment points which would work for the Borah bivy, because it’s a pyramid shelter, and its matching inner attaches at the top. Perhaps you could sew these in by hand… The worst case here would be using the Borah bivy with the mesh just sitting loose, which it’s still designed to be able to do reasonably.

• Aricxi shaped tarp (~$50)

  This is the very cheapest nearly full coverage shaped tarp I would endorse. This is similar to the Cirriform but a bit lighter, ~10.5-11oz, but the front has a beak rather than being closed to the ground, and has no door, plus it’s made from silnylon rather than poly (so is a bit worse.) I think it’s basically a clone of the MLD patrol shelter, which is discontinued. This is designed to go with the Aricxi bivy, but also works fine with tarp only. This does require better site selection in serious rain or wind, so that rain isn’t blown in the front. This also requires two poles, though they could be fixed poles.

  • “Old” version on Amazon, Aliexpress 1, Aliexpress 2, “new” version on Aliexpress.
    • This goes on sale on Aliexpress sometimes, I got mine for $28. Apparently the new version is regarded as worse, and ~1oz heavier, so any of the other listings are preferred.
  • Aricxi at one time made a single pole pyramid shelter for ~14.5oz, I see listings for these very occasionally on Aliexpress, usually for ~$90, I’ve never used one or even found a review online, likely it’s decent. I also actually sometimes see listings for a different chinesium pyramid shelter in the same genre with different geometry, etc etc, I can’t specifically recommend.

• Six Moon Designs Gatewood Cape ($155)

  This is one of these wackier outliers among UL gear, it’s both a tarp shelter and a poncho for 11oz. There are certain tradeoffs there: a. nylon rather than polyester, poly being preferred now for tarp shelters, b. sometimes too large for shorter people when used as a poncho, c. sometimes too small for taller people when used as a tarp, people sometimes say “it always feels like you’re going to get rained on, but you never actually do.”

  • Also compatible with the same inner as the Deschutes Tarp, and still an interesting point on that tradeoff curve.
  • I’ve also heard that it maybe doesn’t perform fabulously as raingear in really heavy rain for >3hrs straight, but maybe it’s not disastrous? I only saw this in one Reddit comment, and mostly haven’t heard people complain about this.
  • This is one contributor to people achieving really low base weights (<5lbs). That said I’ve heard form one SUL guy who is a big fan, that it’s probably not recommended in really wet climates where it’s raining every day.

• Durston X-mid ($270)

  This is one of the most popular trekking pole tents, especially among thru-hikers. 26.5oz not counting poles or stakes, also supports removing the inner tent as a transitional tarp shelter. Generally regarded as very spacious and comfortable inside, and very easy to pitch. This is on the very top heavy end for UL shelters, and if you would otherwise not bring poles may not be worth it. In any case I would not really recommend it if you’re gung ho about weight savings, but it’s somewhat cheaper than normal “free-standing” tents at this weight.

  • Side-note: Tarptent ProTrek ($250)

    This is in a very similar category to the X-mid, but has different geometry and is smaller and lighter. 24.5oz without poles or stakes, and sort of a “partial single-wall” tent, also doesn’t allow the inner to be removed. This is actually the smallest shelter on this list in terms of footprint, which is sometimes a distint advantage.

  • Also: Sierra Designs High Route ($190)

    Directly inspired by the X-mid, with different tradeoffs, also ~4oz heavier, but $80 cheaper. Perhaps worth it for some people.

Bug bivies as inner tents

Besides the matching inners that I mentioned from Yama and Six Moon Designs, you can separately buy dedicated bug bivies to use as an inner. Yama’s bivy is comparable with these but heavier and a bit more expensive than Borah’s, however with a much taller bathtub floor.

Note these two are more designed for two-pole tarp shelters, and will be harder to fully pitch inside of a pyramid shelter. That said these work fine not pitched, so just laying slack on your body, but likely have worse protection from mosquitos.

• Borah Gear bug bivy ($85-109)

  Borah Gear is a direct to consumer, handmade-in-America, made to order, cottage gear manufacturer in MT. They have the very lightest bug bivies you can buy (~4.4 lowest nylon, 6.8 for the heaviest, with some lighter but more expensive models), are generally regarded as excellent, and are cheaper than the inners you can buy for the Cirriform or the Deschutes Tarp. The only real disadvantage is that the lead times are often obscene, (2026-07-14) currently 9 weeks! If you have time to wait this is the best option.

• Cheapest bivy: Hikeburger/Aricxi ($35-50)

  These are pretty similar to Yama’s bivy, and to the Borah bivies, but are cheaper (often as low as $25-35 on Aliexpress, sometimes on sale for <$20, currently on Amazon for $43) and heavier (9oz). I expect they perform worse, I haven’t tested them, but these seem like decent options

  • (On Aliexpress, and on Amazon—I’m talking about the one that’s entirely mesh on top, rather than mostly solid nylon.)

Small notes

Especially cheaper Chinese shelters tend to come with cheaper and heavier stakes. There are a variety of different kinds of stakes, most good tents ship with DAC J aluminum stakes or similar, there are a variety of more expensive titanium stakes. This is hardly necessary, but many people will munchkin exactly which stakes they buy, often combining lighter and weaker (lower holding power) stakes for holding less vital/lower stress points, with stronger ones for holding structural tie-outs, with one or two backups.

I don’t think it’s necessary to get stakes from any particular brand, and there’s regularly decent looking chinesium stakes for <$1 per stake on Aliexpress and Amazon. Generally at least for structural stakes you’ll want V or Y shaped, made of Aluminum or Titanium. I’ve seen some carbon fiber stakes recently, these are more expensive and I also know less about them.

Similarly, cheaper Chinese tents tend to come with heavier guy lines. I’ve never heard of these being unsafe, just heavier than they need to be, so if you can find eg. 1.5mm Dyneema (or generic UHMWPE) cord on sale to replace the stock guy lines, this can be an improvement, or just lighter nylon cord. Note for finer cord you may also need to replace tensioners, this is a bit of a rabbit hole, see this thread as well as these on Amazon.

Sleep system

There are a number of variations possible for sleep systems, and modern ultralight hikers use in some respects different gear from everyone else. Commonly UL sleeping gear will remove as much material and structure as possible:

• Cutting sleeping pads to shorter lengths, even including inflatable pads
• Backpacking quilts, which generally look like a sleeping bag with the bottom 1/3 or 1/4 removed and open to the pad. (The schtick here is that fluffy insulation which is crushed by your bodyweight isn’t actually insulating, so can just be removed from the design.)
  • These usually use extremely thin fabric, and eg. often look like a crumpled trash bag, even when the filling is fully poofed up.
• Often no pillow, or a food bag as a pillow, or a puffy jacket stuffed into a bag, used as a pillow

Sleeping pad

Sleeping pads are an important part of insulation, especially at temps <~40F. In particular, in cold temps a lot of heat is lost to the ground, and so the insulating power of the sleeping pad matters more. I’ve slept on a pad with an r-value of 2 below freezing, and was fine, but I tend to run warm, and had on extra layers.

Generally r-value ~2 means “light, maybe shoulder season.” I haven’t had nights hiking below ~25F, if you’re planning a hike lower than that you should look up recommended r-values for those temperatures. There are pads on the market up to an r-value of ~8.5.

UL people will often use shorter pads than their body length, eg. just shoulder to butt, often cutting foam pads or even cutting and re-sealing inflatable pads.

• CCF

  Closed-cell foam (CCF) pads were historically the lightest options, and at the far extremes still are, though mostly this advantage has evened out. In general CCF pads are cheaper, max ~$60, cheapest ones ~$15-20, more flexible (as in, easier to cut to size), and much more durable since most kinds of damage don’t really matter. In exchange they’re bulkier, less comfortable for most people, and less warm.

  • Various ($15~60)

    There are too many here to mention, I had Claude compile a list. This is not that nuanced of a category, the only numbers to look at besides dimensions (and they can be cut smaller) are weight and r-value. Rolled pads tend to be bulkier but are otherwise comparable. There are small differences in comfort, and generally the most expensive ones are most comfortable, but tbh none of these are all that comfortable, and I say this having mostly used a folding ccf pad.

  • Special mention: Gossamer Gear 1/8“ and 3/8“ pads ($22, $33)

    Gossamer Gear sells a 1/8“ pad and 3/8“ pad, the latter only torso length, both ~3oz. These are both basically the absolute extreme of sleeping pads possible, almost no one uses them but it’s possible to get this low and some people are able to do just fine with them, eg. one ultralight influencer used just the 1/8“ pad for the whole PCT.

• Inflatable

  Inflatable pads are generally more comfortable for side sleepers, and have much better warmth to weight for high r-value pads than CCF, but are significantly more expensive (bottom end ~$150 for good ones, often more like $200-250), more inconvenient to set up for sleep and to store when packing, and are much more fragile.

  They generally will come with a patch kit and are straightforward to patch while camping, and if you treat them carefully are usually fine, but this is what turned me off of them after I got a tiny leak I couldn’t find while camping. (This was mostly a skill issue on my part, there are ways to find pinhole leaks that I didn’t know about.)

  Inflatable pads also take you high off the ground (often ~3“), which means you’ll feel like you’re falling if you slide off, unlike CCF pads which are much lower to the ground; some people like this and others find it generally a pain.

  • I don’t have strong opinions among these, again there are small differences but the main distinctions are price, weight, and r-value. Almost all models come in a variety of dimensions, often UL hikers will buy the short versions or even mod them shorter, there are also eg. mummy shaped pads which are in general lighter than rectangular pads. In this case outdoor gear stores usually do just carry the best ones among these and will have floor models you can lie on etc.
  • The classic here is the Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XLite (now XLite NXT, don’t ask me). The Nemo Tensor series is very popular and covers a range of warmths et., and I’ve heard good things about Big Agnes pads.
  • Special mention: the Nemo Tensor Elite came out recently and is very impressively light, 8.5oz for the regular size mummy. These are about as expensive as the rest (~$200-260 depending on size), and presumably more fragile, though so few people have had them that I’m not sure yet.
  • Cheap: I basically don’t recommend any chinesium inflatable pads. Some of these are likely fine, and if you find one that has good reviews then go for it, but I’m not specifically familiar and for a vital piece of gear which is also fragile I wouldn’t be willing to go with something sketchy.

• Open cell

  Most glamping pads are made from open cell foam, these are generally much plusher and heavier. I’ve seen one UL guy recommend a very specific open cell pad… which is no longer made. I would advise against these unless you find CCF or normal inflatable pads to just not be viable for you to sleep on.

Quilt/sleeping bag

For the last ~15 years (but really going back to Ray Jardine in the 90’s) quilts have basically completely displaced sleeping bags for UL. These are constructed largely like a sleeping bag but are basically missing the “bottom,” the part you would be lying on. Some of them unravel to something like a blanket, and then optionally sinch at the end; many have a closed footbox at the end like a normal sleeping bag, but then are open at the top, or can snap together. The idea here is that sleeping bag insulation does almost nothing when it’s crushed by your bodyweight, so you might as well just do without it where it would be crushed.

The biggest disadvantage here tends to be drafts, if you move around in the night, this can pull cold air into the space under the quilt, or just leave a gap open, so the quilt doesn’t do much. This is often helped by strapping the quilt to the pad, this helps some but often quilts end up with an effective warmth sort of hampered by drafts, note I still use a quilt. One solution to this is what’s called a “false bottom”, this is a thin layer of fabric covering the bottom to prevent drafts, with no insulation inside.

(I actually thought of this independently, and found out later that it seems to be made only by one manufacturer, Timmermade, which is a one-man operation, with purposefully limited supply. You have to pass a quiz about down loft formulas once a month on his website, just for a 10% chance to be allowed to buy his products. He’s regarded by many as making the best UL quilts, period, but uh, you probably can’t buy one…

Most big-name sleeping bags, besides not being quilts, tend to use heavier fabrics than needed. UL quilts tend to look like a battered trash bag, this is because they use the absolute thinnest fabrics possible, which really is optimal.

In general the lightest quilts and bags are filled with down, besides this there are different grades of down called “fill power”, this represents ratio of the volume the down expands to when uncompressed, to its weight. Lower fill powers require more weight and volume in one’s pack for the same warmth at night, in general here insulation power is a function of height (as in, thickness) of the insulation when uncompressed. Cheaper UL quilts use 800 FP, any lower is probably not worth buying, and more expensive will use 850 or 950.

In some cases you can save money by buying synthetic insulation, note that not all synthetic insulation is the same and all else equal you probably still want to buy from a UL brand. Synthetic is heavier (~30-50% heavier for the best synthetic quilts) and bulkier, but also lasts longer (down degrades with use, higher fill power down especially) and performs better when wet.

Synthetic is also likely a good option for strict vegans or vegetarians, quilts are the main piece of gear that usually uses animal products, besides maybe wool socks. Worth mentioning: my understanding is that ducklings and goslings lose their down naturally and it’s collected afterward, but down still generally comes from animals being raised for meat. I’m confused exactly how the ethics work out, I think on the margin buying down products should lower the price of meat, if goose and duck farming is generally being pushed to commodity pricing, so that should increase consumption, etc. etc., if this stuff matters for you.

Temperature ratings

Unfortunately temperature listings on quilts and bags are somewhat inconsistent, a “30°” quilt could mean a few different things under different methodologies. Most expensive quilt/sleeping bag companies now agree on the approximate methodology, and usually use the “comfort” rating for the main temperature rating of their quilts. Companies making cheaper equipment, especially Chinese clones, use more helter skelter labeling so you need to squint a bit more carefully. Note also some temperature ratings are in C or F and not necessarily marked clearly.

Generally there are three temperature ratings, namely “comfort”, “lower limit”, and “extreme.” The first means largely what it sounds like, that you will likely be comfortable down to that temperature, but different companies use somewhat different methodologies, and different people run warmer or colder, eg. women in general run ~5° F colder, at least at night. “Lower limit” means something like “you will be uncomfortable and probably won’t sleep much but you’ll be fine”, and “extreme” means something like “you probably won’t die at this temp.” Eg., mine is rated for 32°F comfort, and -8°F extreme.

The main consideration re cheaper brands is to check if they’re conflating lower limit for comfort in the main product listing, generally they won’t bs about the three ratings when they list them explicitly in the product description.

It’s generally recommended to get a very safely warm quilt for the temperature range you’re expecting, my heuristic here is that I’m fine if my quilt covers 3rd percentile (so -2s) lows for the area, hence I’ll likely be completely fine, and I’ll be fine but maybe miserable if I hit a really bad cold snap. You can also budget for warmth including layers, eg. even a thin rain shell can add 5-10° of warmth.

For each of these I’m referring to the weight of their closest to a ~30° quilt, but read my notes. Warmer quilts of course have more filling and so are heavier, regardless of the quality.

• Aegismax (~$160-250)

  These are basically reasonable for cheap Chinese quilts, these are afaict very similar to the EE Enigma (see below), this is what I own. Lower fill power so relatively heavier for the warmth. Chinesium gear always has weird and confusing branding, mine was listed as “Aegismax Wind Hard”, but on the quilt itself it says “Just for Fans” (lol), I have no idea what mess of companies are involved in manufacturing or relisting this bag.

  • The 30° quilt comes to 16.5oz on my longer model, this is only 1-2oz heavier than the EE quilt.
  • Mine came smelling like a wet dog, this is apparently just a thing that happens to down when stored in humid environments, and I had to wash it with Nikwax down wash, this effectively increases the price ~$10.
    • (Washing down is a whole process and takes all day in a home washing machine, be warned. Also, I chose to run it with their waterproofing at the same time, no idea if this really made a difference.)
  • Here’s a cheap listing on Aliexpress from right as I’m writing, probably the cheapest listing will have changed, here’s on Amazon for $20 more.
  • Note that for the last ~5 years there’s always tended to be some chinesium 30° quilt available for ~$160, and then once it gets popular the price will go up and some other brand will step in, so it’s not unlikely that the Aegismax quilts will be displaced for the bottom end by the time you’re reading this.
  • I believe they have a 10° model besides the 30° one I link here, you’ll have to look around.

• Hang Tight Hotfoot (~$100-150, see notes)

  I haven’t used these but I’ve seen them recommended for the bottom end by a UL influencer who seems reasonable. They’re somewhat heavier for the warmth but not by that much, and otherwise look completely fine.

  • This brand is mainly for hammock top quilts but these can be purchased with some extra hardware for normal tent camping, the prices here are with that hardware.
  • The 40° quilt is all-in ~$100-120, and the 20° quilt ~$150.

• Enlightened Equipment (~$240-600, see notes)

  These are the standard quilts which most UL people use. There are better and more specialized ones, which are yet more expensive, like Western Mountaineering, or are unobtainium but actually cheapish, like the Timmermade quilts. These are slightly lighter and probably a bit better made than the Aegismax quilts, but if you’re at all price sensitive are probably not worth it imo.

  • The $240 model is the 30° synthetic, their cheaper down 30° quilt is $350.
  • They have a handful of designs with different tradeoffs, the standard (and simplest) one is the Enigma.
  • These are the main UL brand that I know of which has good synthetic quilts if you need synthetic for animal ethics reasons. There likely are other brands but I’m not specifically aware.

For down quilts/bags, they will generally come with a loose mesh bag for storage, and often come with a stuff sack. Long-term, being compressed degrades the quilt, and they should be stored “lofted”, meaning just loosely taking up as much volume as they want. The storage bag is helpful for this but not required.

Stuff sacks end up sort of cumbersome to use when hiking but are perfectly fine and certainly do allow you to compress the quilt more than otherwise! Generaly UL hikers will just shove their quilts at the bottom of their pack, and then punch them down as they stuff other equipment in their pack.

Pillows?

Standard practice (which I don’t do) is to use either a stuff-sack with extra clothes as a pillow, or to use your food bag as a pillow. I don’t find these usable at all and I’m particular about pillows even at home. I use an inflatable pillow, there’s a bunch of cheap ones on Amazon for ~4-6oz, there are various companies which sell UL pillows, eg. Sea to Summit and Zpacks, I don’t have opinions among these.

Unfortunately, at least for me, I’ve yet to find a pillow that really works, and this is often the biggest struggle on trail. I’ve sometimes combined them on top of my backpack (like, still under my head etc.), sometimes slept on my belly without one, etc. I’ve also found that longer into a trip I seem to adapt to my pillow better but I never feel like I sleep all that well.

Special mention: hammocks

Backpacking hammocks are different from the kind of hammocks people have at home, there are a variety of designs but the most common one forms a sort of sinched chrysalis shape, and you sleep at a slight angle to the long axis. I’ve not actually hiked with one of these but I tried a friend’s once and it was very comfy, some people are really dedicated to their hammocks.

Most hammock setups are going to be somewhat heavier than tent setups, but the very lighest ones are close to competitive with all but the lighest UL tents, though less with UL tarp shelters. The main disadvantage is that they require either two trees to set up (no problem on eg. the Appalachian trail, but not viable in many places) or special hammock poles which are pretty heavy.

Food + water

Water filtration/treament

My understanding is that in the lower 48, eg. mountain water sources are overwhelmingly actually safe ulfiltered, but that you never know, and many beautiful mountain streams might have exposure upstream from ungulates, beavers, or other people, so almost everyone always filters or treats water. It’s more common not to treat spring water, many water sources in the mountains are from springs you can see coming out from rock, still I’ve always filtered this kind of water anyway.

• Filters

  Almost everyone uses hollow fiber filters, you screw a water bladder or bottle onto one end and clean water comes out the other. If you remember the Lifestraw from the early aughts, this is using the same technology (Lifestraw still exists but I’ve never seen hikers use them.) Most models filter silt and bacteria/protozoa but not viruses, some also filter viruses, and almost none will filter dissolved hydrocarbons/heavy metals/etc.—note that neither viruses nor hydrocarbons etc. are really an issue in American backcountry with the exception of Norovirus. (There are some models with activated carbon, these models are much heavier and bulkier, I’m also not sure which chemical contaminants they catch or how well etc.)

  Re Noro in particular, it’s generally not deadly in the first world, just unpleasant, and is mostly a risk from contact in close quarters, direct fecal exposure, etc., but it is possible to catch from contaminated water sources. I don’t really have a model re base rates here, I have seen people fretting about noro re eg. shelters on the AT, but not re water sources.

  There are a bunch of brands but the two most popular models I would recommend are the Sawyer Squeeze (I’ve heard the mini is annoying enough that it’s not worth the weight savings) and the Platypus Quickdraw. These are on net comparable, both ~2.5-3oz, the Squeeze has better flow rate but is harder to backflush, and I’ve heard they’re much worse with very muddy sources, which the Quickdraw is very good at handling. (Still a pain, but “yup that totally worked” even with totally opaque water, rather than a tiny trickle or being completely screwed.)

• Chemical treatment

  Chemical treatment is usually much lighter (though we’re only talking ~2oz), but requires more planning and/or resupply, usually affects the taste, and takes longer to act, usually you need to wait ~30 mins to treat the water. I think this also means you’re substantially increasing your actual median carried weight, even if your base weight is lower, since on average you’re carrying more water that you’re waiting to finish treating, for a given frequency of water sources and a given rate of consumption, so I don’t think this is ever worth it just on the grounds of weight savings. You also at least sometimes have to filter water through a shirt or hankerchief to remove silt.

  Common brands here are Potable Aqua (which you can often find at Walmart, so is a big advantage in trail towns), Aqua Mira, and Aquatabs. Some UL psychos will also just use bleach drops, the one person I’ve heard who does this only uses them on visibly bad water sources and otherwise doesn’t treat water. I carry ~4 days worth of aquatabs as backup to a normal hollow fiber filter, this costs a few grams.

Water storage

Almost everyone uses disposable plastic water bottles, some people will use heavier HDPE bottles like the “ultralite” Nalgene and some recent lighter ones. The standard meme here is literally a smart water bottle, go with whatever you like.

Platypus and IIRC Sawyer filters both come with collapsible 1L squeeze bottles, Platypus also makes the lightest (I think?) collapsible 2L bottle. Many people use larger bladders, these are very similar but usually have a big sealable opening at the top, eg. the Cnoc, these are easier to fill in eg. shallow pools, and come in 2L and 3L. I’ll note I have a Cnoc clone and I felt like it took much more force to filter with than my previous Platypus bladder, and when I used someone’s Cnoc it felt the same also.

Both Platypus Quickdraw and the Sawyer Squeeze accept 28mm² thread for the “dirty” side, this and variations are standard on ~all water bottles and soda bottles, most bladders have male 28mm also. Note that some brands’ bottles’ thread is larger, eg. Evian, so if you’re expecting to use it as a backup if your bladder dies you should check that they match, eg. literally just line them up visually.

How much water you need to carry depends on the climate and frequency of water sources, the standard heuristic here is 4L/day, I’ve definitely used way less than this when it was cold and I wasn’t sweating much, and I could easily believe more in the desert etc. People generally have however much capacity they need using some combination of normal bottles and/or a bladder, the bladder might be used both as a squeeze bag for filtering, and as storage (storing unfiltered water) for longer water carries.

If water is plentiful or predictable, it’s often fine to plan to run out of water—imo a lot of people have weird neuroses about thirst that don’t make sense, your body is fairly resilient to small amounts of dehydration. I’ve certainly gone eg. an hour or two with 1000’ of elevation gain, having run out of water, and been thirsty on the other end but completely fine, meanwhile I have friends who are horrified at this idea. I would recommend not suffering needlessly, and being conscientious and checking water resource maps, but if you’re consistently arriving at a water source with say >=1L of water, that’s probably just wasted weight.

Food

There are a variety of dimensions on which food can be optimized, I’ll talk about the main considerations.

Food choices

Freeze-dried rehydrated meals are usually regarded as surprisingly tasty and with decent macros, but kind of unreasonably expensive for this purpose. Most serious hikers will either prepare rehydratable meals from off-the-shelf ingredients at normal grocery stores, or just eat food that doesn’t need to be cooked at all. This means that they’re eating mostly processed food, presumably with poor micros, and often with poor macros. For short trips (<2 weeks) I think this doesn’t matter much at all, for longer trips this often evens out some by eating a bunch of salad and fresh fruit in town, but I expect thru hikers are meaningfully using up micronutrient stores.

Common foods on trail are couscous/instant rice/oats/instant mashed potatoes/ramen, olive oil, granola, dehydrated beans, cheese (even softer cheeses like cheap Jack etc. last much longer at room temp than most people are afraid of), jerky/summer sausage, trail mix/various nuts/dried fruit etc., and candy. This is kind of surprising compared to the crunchy-granola stereotype of hikers, but is often what’s practical for resupply in small towns in the middle of nowhere.

Some people make a point to prepare and mail themselves home-cooked dehydrated meals, this is lovely if you have the time but etc. Shorter trips are of course easier to be mostly hand-crafted.

Note that the priority here is generally for very low water content, and either not needing to be cooked or only needing to be rehydrated, this means both lower fuel needs (or none! see below), and high calorie/weight ratio. My heuristic is generally to target 2k calories/lb, you’re generally going to achieve this by eating more fat than you would usually, so very commonly adding a fair bit of olive oil to a pot of instant rice + rehydrated beans, not to the point that it’s gross but just more than you would otherwise. In the current set of nutrition theory fads this amount of fat consumption is fine, my understanding is we may now have actually meaningful data that this is fine.

The common exception to calorie density is to pack out a sandwich or fruit for the first day or so on trail.

(You’ll of course find lots of people not following this pattern, I’m sympathetic with food but these people also tend to have worse and much heavier gear, so I kind of see them as bozos…)

Some other common examples on the margin here are fast-cooking stuff, like Knorr sides, macaroni and cheese, or parboiled rice. You’ll also see a lot of people with flour tortillas, these are relatively low water content but imo imo not really worth it.

Quantity

The usual heuristic is 4k calories/day for 20+ mile days, this is obviously not accounting for variation in BMR, varying energy costs by bodyweight, elevation change, etc. My recommendation if you’re new to backpacking is to shoot for this number, and then calibrate if you’re consistently eating less or feeling hungry etc.

(There are madlads who recommend running a caloric deficit on trail and making up for it during resupplies in town. I think this is sort of fine for trips shorter than a week, which most people are going to lose weight on anyway, but this is idiotic advice for longer trips.)

Most thru-hikers plan to resupply every ~3 days or so, but eg. the PCT and CDT both have sections where people often need to carry 7 days or more worth of food. Time to resupply obviously depends both on miles and terrain. Many UL hikers try to maintain discipline in not over-packing food, it’s very easy by default to buy food purely on vibes, or to overpack out of fear. I’ll mention here that I think it’s helpful to build resilience for fasting, not in order to plan to fast, but to know that’s a safe and not particularly unpleasant outcome if things don’t go as planned.

You might choose a larger and heavier bag, in order to more comfortably handle longer food carries, even if the rest of your kit is extremely lightweight.

Cooking equipment

For UL (if cooking), the goal here is generally to just boil water, add stuff to be rehydrated (or sometimes reverse order), and wait. Generally people have a single pot, usually shaped like a mug with tiny folding handles, made of titanium or aluminum, and a “stove” which is either a small folding widget which screws onto a propane canister, or a tiny cup which holds alcohol while it burns.

Holy cow please don’t bring 1lb propane canisters. My understanding is that the smallest bell-shaped isobutane + propane canisters usually last 4-7 days, and the medium size ~10. I don’t use a gas stove, so probably look up more specific recommendations elsewhere for how much to bring, though quickly enough you’ll learn how many boils you tend to get out of a gas stove.

The other option is cold soaking, this literally means just leaving your meal to soak for 15-60 mins in ambient-temp water. The meme option here is to use a Talenti ice cream jar, some people use small peanut butter jars, there are also some HDPE jars which are slightly lighter from Litesmith. This sounds a lot worse than it is really, and is mostly equivalent for “instant” dried grains like couscous, instant rice, etc. I’ve often cold soaked if I’m tired and don’t feel like dealing with boiling water, and many people will choose just to cold soak for weight savings.

(Note I think cold soaking probably has a higher median carried weight which the base weight doesn’t reflect, and might even be slightly net negative on average. Often people will cook a meal right after gathering water, as opposed to having to carry that extra water around in their pack while it soaks, and cold soakers often do many smaller meals throughout the day. Obviously yes, you’re going to eat it, so you’re carrying it in your body afterwards anyway, but carried weight is much more fatiguing than bodyweight.)

• Pots

  All of the UL people these days seems to go with Toaks, I have no real opinion, I have some chinesium 700ml pot which was a few dollars cheaper and a few grams heavier than the Toaks equivalent. There are some very similar pots with silicone on the handles and lid, this adds a tiny amount of weight and is probably reasonable but proper UL people never seem to use them.

  I’ve seen some people use aluminum pots/mugs, I don’t really know why these are less popular but they seem to be much less common. I’ve also heard that aluminum is slightly toxic, I have no take here. The absolute meme psycho option here are these ~2.5oz aluminum bacon grease containers. I basically just don’t recommend these but I have to mention them.

• Stoves

  For gas, the popular UL option is the BRS-3000T, these are 1oz and ~$17. There are a variety of much heavier but crappy stoves at almost the same price, I sort of don’t get why anyone use these. The BRS has some disadvantages in heavier wind, there are some mods to make it better, and people will sometimes combine it with a titanium windscreen, or even aluminum just made from foil. Slightly heavier models I’ve heard good things about are the Soto Windmaster and the MSR PocketRocket, I haven’t used any of these personally.

  For alcohol, I use the absolute meme option which is the catfood can stove, mine is 6g, this depends on which variation, and how big/heavy the original can was. There are heavier and nicer ones made out of titanium, eg. ones by Toaks, Trangia, and Vargo, I think there’s some chinesium clones as well. 6g is kind of misleading, since these require a windscreen, lighter, and extra fuel bottle (usually a small soda bottle). Alcohol is also somewhat less energy dense than isobutane/propane, even with the weight of the gas canister itself, so on average you end up carrying more weight in fuel.

  Afaict alcohol stoves are kind of a wash for weight savings compared to gas, the advantage is that alcohol is easier to find in the middle of nowhere, and often cheaper. Usually you’ll use “denatured alcohol” (ethanol + methanol mix, at varying ratios) from hardware stores, or HEET (pure methanol), from hardware stores/auto supply stores/some gas stations. Note also in CA in particular denatured alcohol is effectively banned, so HEET is usually the only real option. Pure or 95% ethanol is hard to find but preferable, and isopropyl is more energy dense but leaves soot, 70% ethanol rubbing alcohol is also easy to find but also tends to leave soot and is much less efficient because of the water content, and often burns effectively much cooler.

  Methanol is toxic, and I always feel a little antsy when preparing my stove, and afraid that I might accidentally mistake the bottle for water if I’m tired or distracted. I also try to sit upwind while it’s burning and usually keep it outside of my shelter at night.

Clothing

Rain gear

I’m not necessarily going to say you should buy a new raincoat to replace what you have at home, but often normal raincoats are very heavy. The meme option here is the Frogg Toggs Ultra-Lite Rain Jacket, usually $22 on Amazon and similar at Walmart, with or without the matching rain pants. (The Walmart part is important, these are basically at the pareto frontier for UL rain gear, and are available at any Walmart in the States.)

The Frogg Toggs³ is 5.5 oz, and… sucks. Rain jackets sort of in general suck when you’re doing real exercise, and especially with a pack, but that said the Frogg Toggs tends to literally come apart at the seams in normal use, has no brim or pockets, and is made of fairly fragile material. I often say you need to count the base weight plus the weight of duct tape you’ll add as you go along. Still this ends up feeling like a practical option, especially for hikes in drier places, like the summer in CA, where it’s a bit more like “emergency” rain gear, rather than in constant use.

Andy Skurka says that basically all rain gear will wet out if it’s above freezing (even below, if you don’t manage temperature well) and you’re actually getting warm and sweating inside. I will say that ponchos are relatively breezy and much much more comfortable in sustained rain, but have a variety of disadvantages. Frogg Toggs actually also makes a poncho out of the same material as their UL rain jacket, I used this in sustained rain on the AT and liked it much more, but don’t have strong opinions, and I haven’t mostly seen UL people on the internet recommend it.

At similar weights you literally have to spend 10x as much, so the two options I hear about here are from Montbell for ~$280 (and a heavier one for ~$135), and the EE Visp for $250. I think these are kind of outrageous but I do hear nice things about them.

Warm Layers

Again, if you’re starting out I maybe especially don’t recommend blowing a bunch of money on expensive outerwear. Mostly I would recommend a normal cheap fleece, and whatever rain jacket you’re already bringing—a raincoat is a meaningful warm layer, both during the day and at night, often adding 10°F or more. (This is the disadvantage of a poncho because it keeps warmth in much less.)

The psycho UL move is to just say “it’s fine, you don’t need warmth if you keep moving.” At the extremes I don’t recommend this, but this is a legitimate move, especially on more serious hikes: you can increase the functional temperature range of a given set of outerwear by 10-15°F, by being willing to either keep hiking on colder evenings, or to just go to bed early, rather than sitting around at camp in the cold.

For fancy fleeces, the popular thing used to be a Melly or its clones, Mellies used to be unobtainium but are now just usually out of stock. I can’t remember which clones are supposed to be good.

What’s popular now is Alpha Direct, these are extremely light for their warmth, with the disadvantage that they’re a. pretty fragile, b. pill aggressively if worn as an outer layer, and c. need to be used with a shell to actually keep warmth in, as they’re designed to be extremely breathable when worn as an outer layer. They’re also pretty expensive (~$100 for a reasonable fleece).

Peripherally here, I’ve used a very light windbreaker as a limited warm layer, for some hikes this plus a rain jacket is sufficient. This chinesium one is $20 for 3oz, Montbell used to make a comparable one that’s 2.5oz for like $150.

For a puffy⁴, I’ve used a cheapo Amazon Basics synthetic one, but this was only when I was expecting sustained temps below freezing, and I was way too cheap to buy a fancy UL one. I’ve vaguely heard good things about the Zpacks Down Jacket, ~7oz for unfortunately $375. EE has a synthetic puffy that’s ~3oz heavier for $200. I’ve seen some chinesium down puffies for $30-70, these are plausibly fine but listings for these often use Chinese sizing which runs 1-2 sizes smaller, and for taller men it may be hard to find sleeve lengths long enough.

Some combination of a really good fleece + puffy + rain jacket is probably adequate down to ~20°F, but I haven’t done real winter hiking, so you should do your own research here.

I generally run warm, and I’ve used at most very thin summer hiking pants below freezing, I don’t really have opinions about pants if you run colder. Sometimes people here will recommend wearing a thin layer over shorts, either rain pants (eg. the ones that come with the Frogg Toggs suit), lightweight tights, or nylon dance pants (these are basically cheap “wind pants”, which you can also search for.)

Socks

Very popular here are just normal nice wool socks, so eg. Darn Tough, Smartwool, or Bombas. Wool is supposed to be protective for blisters, though people get blisters in wool just the same, but maybe this is true on the margin. I’ve also heard of people hiking in nylon dress socks, though this seems to be less common more recently.

My slightly psycho recommendation is nylon ankle-length pantyhose, which I’ve never seen recommended anywhere but works great for me. The advantage here is that these are very very thin, so keep your feet cooler, and mostly just serve to prevent chafing against the inside of your shoe. The main disadvantage is that they wear out after 3-7 days on trail, but a pack of 10 pairs is $10 and weighs less than a normal pair of wool socks. If it’s going to be meaningfully cold then I’ll usually also carry a pair of wool socks for sleeping, there are also Alpha Direct socks, though I haven’t tried these. Note that because they’re so thin, you have to size shoes with these as opposed to normal socks, for me ~1/2 size US smaller.

If you are using normal socks, for trips longer than a few days, the pattern which Andy Skurka recommends is to bring one extra pair, and then 1. switch into the “clean” pair at night, keeping your “dirty” pair somewhere in your pack, 2. wash yesterday’s dirty pair in a stream at some point during the day (this means rinse them aggressively in just water), 3. dry them during the day on the outside of your pack, or in a shorts pocket, and 4. repeat, with these as the new “clean” pair that night. Socks will get crusty if worn day in day out, unlike eg. underwear (which many thru-hikers only replace when it dies), and can be a risk to your feet.

As an experiment at home I tried only washing a pair of wool socks quickly in running water and never in the laundry, but doing this every time, and I found it worked surprisngly well and they never smelled, for several months of hiking in them a few times a week.

Sun gear

My impression is that basically no one worries about sun gear for legs, I don’t exactly understand why this isn’t a problem if eg. the lower back can certainly get a sunburn?

For head + torso, the most common combination is either a sun hoodie (similar design to a normal hoodie but lightweight UPF material) + a normal hat, or a longsleeve UPF shirt + a hat with a cape. There are so many of each of these that I have no recommendation in particular, though I prefer a UPF shirt personally. The only thing to add is that if not using a sun hoodie you likely want a hat with a cape that covers your entire neck like this one, rather than just the back like this one. There are perfectly good chinesium versions of all of these.

Apparently, especially eg. on the PCT, using trekking poles has a meaningful risk of sunburn, so some people will use sun gloves, like these. I’ve never used these but seems fine?

My vague sense is that you get most of the protective effect from using a good hat that you would get from sunscreen, and I both can’t be bothered to put on sunscreen all day and don’t want to sacrifice the weight. I’ve not gotten burned while hiking, but that doesn’t mean I’m not getting skin damage that I could avoid. Some people will use small solid sunscreen sticks, again no opinion here.

One side note which is interesting: my impression is that in very very sunny places like the Sahara, the very dark idigenous populations still use sun protection, and IIRC indeed with sufficient exposure, sub saharan Africans can still burn or develop skin cancer.

Misc.

Ditty bag

There are a variety of small items required, but realistically fewer and more carefully chosen than you think. There are countless stupid gadgets which are a waste of money and weight, the practice here is of asking “what do I actually need, not just want?”—and many UL people have quite a bit less stuff than me!

Here are the contents of my ditty bag:

(I store toothbrush/toothpaste/floss with food.)

To say a bit about a few of these things:

• CuloClean: This is a small molded piece of plastic and silicone, which plugs into the top of a water bottle, and functions as portable bidet (no, you don’t get poop on the water bottle, but you can just use a separate bottle for it if need be). This totally works in lieu of toilet paper, though I don’t prefer it alone. Nicer with soap, but not necessary.
• Hairbrush: I have long hair, so self-explanatory, but I’ll note that there’s a much nicer one for 1oz with a folding mirror. I’m unreasonably proud of my 6g brush but it’s a pretty crappy brush, and between this and the mirror I’m only saving 0.5 oz.
• Scissors, also knife: there is a certain type of guy who loves to fetishize knives, especially in the outdoors. You almost certainly don’t need a knife, and if you do, things have gone very wrong. Scissors are necessary for occasionally cutting leukotape, duct tape, or thread, and potentially gear patches (which I don’t even carry). If you really want a knife, here’s a tiny scalpel with sewing kit for 2.7g.
  • Also, there is a lighter pair of scissors!
• Tweezers: mostly for removing ticks, though I’ve actually often found them as they’re crawing on my leg, and removed them just with fingertips before they really grabbed on. I could maybe save weight with a dedicated plastic tick removal tool…
• Leukotape: this is maybe my favorite piece of gear. Leukotape is sort like if you took the adhesive backed tape on band-aids, made it as sturdy and sticky as you could, and sold it in a big roll. Very popular for preventing blisters, usually you apply it right when you feel a blister coming on, very often it’ll stay on for a whole week. I transfer it to parchment paper and then fold up a bunch of that, but you can also buy tiny rolls on GGG and Litesmith.

It’s very common to use a lot of little ziploc bags for small pieces like this, they’re very light, very cheap, transparent, and can be found anywhere. People will also use a gallon ziploc for the ditty bag itself, I personally dislike this but it’s also often practical.

(The worst part about ziplocs is having to buy a pack of 25 and throw away almost all of them. On big established trails there are often free boxes for hikers, but in the proper middle of nowhere there’s no good solution :(. Again, despite the crunchy-granola association with hiking and wilderness adventures, lightweight disposable equipment is often preferred, though generally used way past its intended disposable lifetime.)

First aid

I generally think that backpacking first aid kits are useless, the injuries which can be treated with the small kits people bring largely don’t need to be before you can get to town, and hikers never bring the kind of equipment that would be necessary to deal with eg. large gashes etc., though you can splint a bone with a trekking pole.

Some items in my ditty bag (or elsewhere in my pack) are still meaningful first aid, so eg. Leukotape is unironically a very good bandage, and I’ll have alcohol for hand sanitizer. Even alcohol is actually often no longer recommended IIRC for treating small wounds, as it kills healthy cells as well as foreign cells.

The only pieces I might add (which still aren’t in my kit, usually) are anti-diarrheals and painkillers.

Bugs

Besides bug protection as part of your shelter, there are a few things to track, some more important than others.

Permethrin is a chemical treatment, usually applied in solution in water as a spray to clothing, and is toxic to ~all insects. Permethrin (on clothing, or the small amount exposed when treating clothes) is generally safe for humans, and is used as a treatment for lice etc., though it’s toxic for cats. Unfortunately treatments on clothes need to be reupped, the usual prescription is every 6 weeks. You can buy a spray bottle for ~$20 with enough for maybe 3-4 full clothing treatments.

Permethrin is not actually necessary but makes tick safety substantially safer—though even with permethrin it’s still necessary to check exposed skin on legs. Tick safety is the main reason to use permethrin, and it’s largely irrelevant for mosquitos

Picaridin is an insect repellant, it’s generally very safe for humans, and is available in a variety of formulations including spray, lotion, etc. I’ve never been in conditions where mosquitos were bad enough that this felt necessary, and in the lower 48 disease risk from mosquitos is rather low, so many hikers don’t mosquito protection besides their tent and are fine. I’ve seen picaridin for sale in random Walmarts, Big Five, etc.

For during the day, if mosquitos are really bad, a lighter option is a bug headnet usually in combination with a hat.

Pooping, cleanliness

I’m not going to explain pooping in the woods. Just a few bits about gear here:

My favorite trowel is the BoglerCo, and I’ve used most of the popular ones⁵, the main selling point is the back end has a butt of plastic on it, which means it doesn’t cut into your hand like most single sheet titanium trowels do. I do wish it were made out of titanium but it’s strong enough and I haven’t had problems. The only trowel which might be better is the Tark, which I haven’t gotten to try and haven’t even seen in person, and which costs $38….

I tried using just a CuloClean, I found this was too cumbersome to be the main tool here, and also meant you had to always carry enough water for washing, so I still just carry toilet paper. It’s not that heavy and is really just the simplest option.

I use a little plastic spray bottle with rubbing alcohol in lieu of normal hand sanitizer, I feel like I have to use much less volume of liquid to get enough coverage, both than gel hand sanitizer or than a bottle with a small flip cap where you pour it out.

Electronics

The most common config here is of course a phone, a small rechargeable headlamp, a power bank, a small power adapter, and often earbuds. Obviously there are countless gadgets, I generally want to avoid relying on electronics for basic safety, but a battery powered headlamp and a phone for maps are pretty hard to avoid, and the power bank and power adapter are just basic to support those.

• Headlamp

  Most popular here is the Nitecore NU20, $25 for 1.3oz, I have the slightly older NU25. There are lots of other models but they’re generally both heavier and more expensive, or they require disposable batteries, which I would avoid like the plague. If you’re price sensitive there are other options which are fairly light, I’m less familiar, refer to DeputySean’s list.

• Power bank

  In this case I feel less strongly, I have a crappy 10k mAh battery I got from Walmart for $13 in a tiny town in GA, which weighs 6.6oz. Previously the most popular brand here with UL people has been Nitecore, they have a bunch of different models with varying tradeoffs and I don’t have any real opinions. The newer brand is Flextail, these are supposed to be more reliable. Both the Flextail and Nitecore have 5k and 10k mAh models, and around the same prices and weights, namely $40 and ~3.2oz and ~$60 and ~5oz respectively. Nitecore has some weirder 10k models and two 20k models as well.

  The main thing you want to pay attention to is maximum wattage for charging, usually 20w, but some models are max 10w or 5w which will be significantly slower. Nitecore has a more expensive 10k model with 30w charging which is a meaningful upgrade. Note if you’re only doing short trips, or plan on spending overnight in hotels or car camping between legs, then this is mostly irrelevant.

  The question of how large is going to be a matter of your model of phone and your usage patterns, and how long you’re going between resupplies. Along with the rest of the UL aesthetic, you can ask “what do I actually need here”, if you have your phone on airplane mode and the highest power saving mode, and are mostly using it for maps, often you can get 4+ days out of a single charge, and a 10k battery is ~2 charges.

  For some reason, the ~bottom end Android phones have huge batteries and sometimes have extremely good battery life on power saving mode, eg. the Samsung A1* models (currently on A17). I’ve had these draw down only ~50% over 10 days with very minimal usage. I don’t necessarily recommend buying a new phone just for hiking (though you could get an older model of these for ~$100), but if you’re planning eg. a thru hike this might be a good idea.

  (I’ll also mention here that some people on thru-hikes will use dumbphones combined with paper guides, and for smaller hikes on established trails a local map might be totally fine. People of course historically did just fine with paper map + compass, and, my fucking god, actual navigation skill.)

  Please don’t try using portable solar chargers, these are a pain and provide a puny amount of power considering the weight added, on net you’d be much better just bringing a second power bank or a larger one.

• Power adapter

  This is much simpler and I care much less, in general you want something as small and light as will max out the input wattage of your battery, usually 20w. I’m kind of doubtful that brand names matter here, I’ve literally just gone with whatever was cheapest and smallest at the time. If you expect to be impatient and have completely killed both your phone and power bank, you might go with a 45W charger with two ports etc.

  Just for context, generally on longer hikes, people will either hide a charger at an empty outlet at a Walmart or gas station, or will find an excuse to sit around a cheap restaurant or cafe until their stuff charges. I’ve also charged stuff at eg. a library in a small town.

• Bag

  Generally you’ll want a waterproof bag for electronics, above and beyond whatever protection your pack liner offers. I personally don’t trust fabric “dry bags” because one failed on me, but this might have been my fault and is maybe not reasonable. Anyway I and some of the more extreme UL people generally use a ziploc bag, I actually use two, ““just in case”“.

  Note that nicer power banks are also fairly waterproof (usually IPx6 or higher), though I’m not sure if this protection applies if you try plugging it in to charge when wet?

Satellite Communicator/Personal Locator Beacon

There are two related categories, both are small electronic devices which can broadcast to a satellite network to call emergency rescue to one’s location, this is usually called an “SOS button.” Satellite communicators have a rechargeable battery, can pull down weather data, and can send texts within their network; PLB’s generally only have an SOS button and have a single-use battery.

On the cheap + light end, satellite communicators are cheaper than PLB’s but require a subscription where PLB’s do not. Cheaper satellite communicators go for ~$200, eg. the Bivy Stick, which is 3.4oz; the cheapest device, the Zoleo, is $150 and 5.3oz, both it and the Bivy Stick have more expensive plans ($20/m) and nickel and dime you further. Garmin makes a couple models for $4-500 with more features, at ~4oz. their subscription is currently $8/m in the US. You can often find last gen Garmin models for somewhat cheaper as well. I don’t have strong opinions among these, and if you get one you might want to look at data on reliability; in any case the most popular option is the Garmin models by a fair margin.

Most satellite communicators also have bluetooth and some attached phone app for texting, they’ll usually also have some miserable little onscreen keyboard on the device, operated by 2 buttons etc. Note that texting from satellite communicators generally doesn’t support SMS, so if trying to reach a friend or partner they will need to have the relevant app on their phone.

The lightest PLB’s are ~4oz and ~$400, there’s a cheaper model for $250 at 5.4oz. PLB’s have batteries which are designed to stay dormant for usually at least 5 years, and then transmit your location for 24-72hrs depending on ambient temperatures.

The various satellite communicator services usually also sell emergency rescue insurance, these will be $50-100/y, where a rescue might cost >$12k. I imagine there’s similar insurance you can get also if you’re using a PLB, or agnostic of what device you use, but I know less about this. (Note that rescue insurance, like any insurance, is almost certainly narrowly negative EV, but depending on your financial situation certainly might make you feel better.)

Some of the higher end smartphones now have limited satellite communicator functionality, so this includes iPhones >= 14, Pixel >9 besides 9a, and Galaxy S26, among others. The details are complicated and depend on which device you have or are considering buying, part of the consideration here is that eg. Starlink, which T-Mobile’s smartphone satellite communicator service uses, has inconsistent reliability depending on weather, and even whatever network Apple uses might have similar vulnerabilities; note also that the radios in smartphones are generally weaker than dedicated satellite devices, so depending on the details these aren’t necessarily equivalent to an inReach etc. I’m not recommending anxiety here but I do recommend doing your research if you intend to rely on one of these.

(If I were relying on one of these, I would be less excited about relying on a phone anyway, eg. if I had taken a fall, my phone might have gotten broken in the process etc.)

The networks which dedicated satellite devices use generally support almost everywhere on Earth besides maybe the poles, I think some have gaps in southern Africa? In general coverage is almost certainly not going to be a problem for you, but you should check etc.

I don’t carry an SOS device, and I haven’t been motivated to buy a newer phone which has satellite support. SOS devices certainly do save people’s lives, even on well established trails, but also most serious UL people don’t seem to use them, I’ve discussed them here for completeness.