Printable Backpacking Gear List and Base-Weight Calculator

A gear list is only useful once it has your numbers in it. This one is built to be printed, filled in with a kitchen scale, and then typed into the calculator below — which is the part that tells you something you did not already know: not what your kit weighs, but which category is costing you the most and what a light version of it weighs.

If you want the picks rather than the worksheet, the ultralight gear list names one value pick per category, and the $500 build is the whole thing costed as a kit.

Print it, or take the files

Three formats, same list. No email address, no account, no newsletter: the links are the files.

The PDF is the checklist on one page, branded and with this page's address on it so you can find your way back. The CSV opens in Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets or anything else: it has a row per category with the typical and light weights already filled in and an empty column for yours, so the total adds itself up.

The base-weight calculator

Base weight is everything you carry except what you eat, drink or burn. It is the number worth tracking, because it is the only part of your pack weight that does not change during the trip — the full definition is in what is base weight.

The checklist, by category

Print this. Typical is the published weight of the mainstream reference product this site measures that category against — roughly what you own if you have not shopped on weight. Light is the weight that earns full marks on our weight score. Neither is a number we made up; both are on how we rank, and the typical figures come from the makers' own spec pages.

Printable backpacking gear list — Ounce & Outlook — ounceandoutlook.com/builds/ultralight-backpacking-gear-list-printable

How to use it in four steps

1. Print the checklist, or take the PDF or the spreadsheet.
2. Weigh every item in grams, including the stuff sack if you carry it. Write it in the "your weight" column.
3. Type the numbers into the calculator. It adds your base weight, your big three, and the poles separately — poles are carried in hand, so by the usual convention they are not base weight.
4. Cut the biggest number first. The calculator ranks the three categories furthest from a light option. That ordering matters more than it sounds: most people upgrade the thing they most want to buy rather than the thing with the most grams on the table.

The big-three figure is there because shelter, sleep system and pack are usually over half a base weight. If yours is not, you have an unusual kit and the interesting weight is somewhere else — the big three explains why that is where almost everyone should start, and how to lower your base weight works through the order to do it in.

Where the target weights come from

Every number in the Typical column is a real, currently sold product's published weight: the reference product this site measures its whole category against. The 2-person tent column, for example, is the Kelty Late Start 2P at 1,900 g (4 lb 3.0 oz), read from Kelty's own spec page. The sleeping bag column is the Kelty Cosmic Synthetic 20 at 1,276 g (2 lb 13.0 oz).

Every number in the Light column is that category's full-marks weight — the figure a product has to beat to score 10 out of 10 on the weight metric. They are set once per category from the spread of real products in it, and the whole table of them is published on how we rank. A light 2-person tent is 550 g (1 lb 3.4 oz); a light pack is 450 g (15.9 oz).

That is deliberately not "the lightest thing on the market". A Dyneema shelter beats the tent figure comfortably and costs four times as much. The Light column is the weight at which you have stopped paying a weight penalty, which is a target most people can actually reach.

What a base weight leaves out

Food, water and fuel — the consumables. They are excluded by convention because they shrink as you walk, so including them would make your pack weight a different number every morning. They are still weight on your back, and for a long carry they are the biggest number of all: two liters of water is 2,000 g, which is more than most of the categories in the checklist above.

Worn clothing and anything in your hands are also out. That is why trekking poles sit in their own line in the calculator rather than in the base-weight total.

If you want the packing side rather than the weighing side, the backpacking checklist is the don't-forget-it list, and how to pack a backpack covers where each of these actually goes.