Camping & Hiking Gear Checklist
Pick the trip and the season, tick what you are taking, and watch the pack weight add up — base weight and consumables kept apart, the way anyone who cares about it thinks.
Weights are typical figures for mid-range gear, not measurements of your gear. Put your own kit on a kitchen scale once and you will find it is 10–20% away from these in both directions.
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Base weight, consumables, total — and why the split matters
Three numbers describe a loaded pack, and mixing them up is how gear conversations go wrong.
- Base weight is everything in the pack that comes home with you: shelter, sleep system, cooking kit, spare clothes, the pack itself. It is the only number you can improve by buying things, which is why it is the one everybody quotes.
- Consumables are food, water and fuel — the weight that shrinks as you walk. Water is a kilo a litre and food is roughly 700 g a day, so a five-day trip starts about 6 kg heavier than it ends.
- Total is what your hips actually carry at the trailhead, and it is the only figure your knees respond to.
Worn clothing and boots are conventionally counted separately again, because they are not in the pack. This tool leaves them out of all three figures rather than pretending a jacket you are wearing is cargo.
The 20% rule, and what it is worth
The common guidance is that a loaded pack should sit at or under 20% of your body weight, with 25–30% treated as the ceiling for a fit walker on a well-graded path. It is a rough heuristic, not a medical threshold: fitness, terrain, how well the pack transfers load to your hips, and whether you are 25 or 65 all move it. Treat a flag here as a prompt to look at the heaviest four items, not as a verdict on the trip. The figures in this tool are a judgement call and should be read that way.
The ten essentials, kept honest
Navigation, headlamp, sun protection, first aid, a knife and repair kit, a way to make fire, emergency shelter, extra food, extra water, extra insulation. The list is old — it dates to the 1930s and the modern version is organised as systems rather than objects — and it survives because every item on it is what you reach for when the plan stops working. A phone with an offline map is a fine primary navigation tool and a poor only one; it is the thing most likely to be flat, wet or broken at the moment you need it. The paper map weighs 40 grams.
Where the weight actually is
Four items are usually more than half of a base weight: pack, shelter, sleeping bag, sleeping mat. Walkers spend a lot of money shaving grams off a stove while carrying a two-kilo tent. If the total here is higher than you want, sort the list by weight in your head and look only at the top four — everything below them is noise by comparison. The second-biggest win is not gear at all: carry less water and drink at the sources you have already checked are there.
Winter is a different sport
The winter setting adds an insulated mat, a warmer bag, more insulation and traction, and it should: below freezing, the sleep system is the safety equipment. It does not add an ice axe and crampons with any confidence, because whether you need them depends on the ground and on whether you know how to use them. If the answer to the second part is no, the honest gear list is a different route.
The rest of the set
If the trip starts with a flight, the luggage size checker tells you whose cabin allowance your pack fits, the packing list generator covers the non-camping half of the trip, and the suitcase volume calculator is there for when the gear has to go in a case rather than on your back.
Questions people ask
What is a good base weight for backpacking?
Around 9–11 kg is a comfortable three-season base for most people using mid-range gear. Under 4.5 kg is what the ultralight crowd calls ultralight, and getting there costs money and margin. The figure only means something next to a season and a trip length — a 7 kg winter base weight is not a boast, it is a hypothermia risk.
How much should my pack weigh compared to my body weight?
The usual guidance is 20% of body weight for a loaded pack, with 25–30% as an upper limit for a fit walker on reasonable ground. It is a heuristic with no clean evidence base — terrain, fitness, pack fit and age all move it — so use it to decide whether to look harder at your four heaviest items, not as a pass or fail.
Are the gear weights accurate?
They are typical figures for mid-range gear, compiled in September 2026, and they are there so the totals are in the right neighbourhood before you buy anything. Real items vary by 10–20% in both directions. Weigh your own kit once on a kitchen scale and you will have better numbers than any list on the internet.
Does the list include what I am wearing?
No. Boots, trousers and the layers on your back are counted separately by convention, and this tool leaves them out of base weight, consumables and total. It measures the pack, not you.
Is this enough to plan a wild camp?
No, and it would be a bad tool if it claimed to be. It tells you what the pack weighs. It knows nothing about the route, the weather window, the water sources, the ground conditions, whether wild camping is legal where you are going, or what you do if the weather turns. Those decide whether the trip is sensible; the gear list only decides whether it is comfortable.
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