Can you carry your bug-out-bag (BOB)? If your vehicle breaks down or the roads are impassable can you carry on your back the BOB that was intended to be carried in your vehicle? Just having shoulder straps on your car BOB doesn’t do it. The BOB in your vehicle is not optimized for carrying on your back. This article will introduce you to some of the techniques ultra-light back packers use, techniques that you can use to create ultra-light BOBs for you and your family members if you need to travel by foot. These will be subsets of your vehicle BOBs.
We are not talking about how much you can carry. We are talking about how little you can carry and still meet all of your needs. What if small children need to be carried? What if one of your party were injured? Could you help them or carry them and your BOB? Is it light enough your spouse or older children can carry it? If your BOBs are well planned they will be light enough that members of your party can carry their gear and yours too, freeing you up to do what needs to be done. The lighter your load the greater your ability is to respond to the unexpected. Give yourself every advantage.
A light load will enable you to move faster and go farther. In an emergency, reaching your family or retreat as quickly as possible is critical. Speedy travel will limit your exposure to the dangers of the road and reduce your food and water requirements. Being nimble on your feet versus burdened with a heavy load also has tactical benefits.
Adopting ultra-light backpacking techniques will lighten your BOB. Ultra-light backpacking techniques don’t lighten the load by leaving critical items out. Instead, you just make sure that the items you do carry are the lightest possible that will do the job. Carrying a lot of heavy gear requires a substantial pack to support the weight. If you choose lighter gear your backpack doesn’t have to be as heavily built. A lighter pack and lighter gear means that your footwear doesn’t have to be as substantial to support your feet, so you can get by with running shoes. Everything ends up being lighter.
With typical backpacking gear you might have:
5 lbs. pack
3 lbs. sleeping bag
5 lbs. tent
2 lbs. stove, fuel and pot
1 lb sleeping pad
The five heaviest items adds up to 16 lbs.
My ultra-light gear:
16 oz. pack
21 oz. down top bag (sleeping bag without bottom)
8 oz. silnylon 8×10 tarp
7 oz. electric draft wood burning stove*
4 oz. aluminum pot and lid
9 oz. Ridgerest sleeping pad
* This is a custom made item. Alcohol or Trioxane stoves are more readily available.
The same items add up to 4 lbs.,1 oz.
This is less than the weight of a typical empty backpack. With ultra light gear it is relatively easy to keep your pack weight, minus food and water, less than 10 lbs. With a total pack weight less than 20 lbs it is possible to walk briskly for long periods of time.
Do you regularly travel with 30 to 40 lbs on your back? Add any weapons to your pack and the weight goes up dramatically. A difficult situation is not the time to practice being a beast of burden. In addition, a heavy load will have an impact on your ability to respond to confrontations or emergencies.
You should include an ultra-light BOB in your vehicle kit.
Packs
There are a number of choices for commercially made ultra light backpacks (packs under 2 lbs.). This is a pricey way to go and most of the commercially made packs are still heavier than they need to be. In Beyond Backpacking: Ray Jardine’s Guide to Lightweight Hiking the author describes a basic design for an ultra light backpack you can make yourself. It will be lighter, under 1lb., considerably cheaper and will have just the features you want. While you are at it you can make one for each member of your family.
Pack Specifications
An ultra-light backpack should have an interior volume of about 2500 cubic inches. It shouldn’t be much bigger than this because it is not designed to weigh more than 20 lbs fully loaded. For additional features I like a couple of water bottle pockets on either side that will take the tall 1.5 liter water bottles from the supermarket. I also like a waist strap.
The typical backpack has a hip belt and a rigid structure to transfer the weight of the pack to your hips rather than hanging it off your shoulders. Ray Jardine does away with the hip belt to save weight and keeps the pack light enough that it can hang from the shoulders.
I also suggest designing your pack so that your sleeping pad (I use a head-to-hip length Ridge Rest) folded in fourths can be fastened in place with two vertical straps inside your pack against the back. This provides structure and padding to protect your back from any hard items in the pack. If the pack is properly loaded it is stiff enough to ride on the top of your butt when pulled into the small of your back by the waist strap. If you arch your back the shoulder straps will stand free of your shoulders. In normal use the shoulder straps bear against the front of your shoulder to keep the pack from falling over backwards.
To load the pack, stuff your sleeping bag directly into the pack instead of using a stuff sack. Stuff your other things into the pack pushing the sleeping bag down as necessary. This technique ensures that your pack will always maintains its proper shape no matter how much or how little you put into it.
Plans for a 13.5 oz pack can be found on http://www.gossamergear.com/cgi-bin/gossamergear/myog.html
Sleeping Bag
Many ultra-lighters have moved away from conventional sleeping bags. They are not as efficient as a quilt or top bag. The material and insulation on the bottom just adds weight and expense without doing much to keep you warm. The sleeping pad will provide underneath insulation. Ray Jardine uses a purpose built quilt. I use a down top bag.
My basic design for a top bag is 38” wide at the foot by 48” wide at the top by as long as it needs to be to accommodate your height. I included a short zipper to create a pocket for my legs from the knees down. It would be lighter without the zipper but the zipper allows it to be opened up for use as a quilt. There is a drawstring at the top with Velcro tabs at the top corners. I also attached 10” wide “wings” to the sides of the bag from the top down to the zipper. I tuck these pieces of fabric under myself when I lie down. Some of the commercial top bags use straps that run underneath you and join the two sides together
When I crawl into my bag I zip up the foot and put my legs into it while sitting up. I adjust the drawstring to fit around my neck. I fasten the Velcro tabs behind my neck. I lie down and roll from side to side so I can tuck the “wings” under me. I cover my head with a jacket or wear a down hood to bed.
Plans and materials for a 17 oz. down quilt can be found on http://www.thru-hiker.com
Shelter
A Silnylon tarp is a very popular shelter solution for the ultra-light hiking crowd. It will provide the same advantages for you in your ultra-light BOB.
Silnylon is lightweight rip stop nylon that has been saturated with silicone based water proofing compound. It increases the weight and strength of the fabric slightly and makes it waterproof. The waterproofing can’t peel off and since the fabric is completely impregnated with waterproofing the uncoated side can’t become saturated with water like typical coated fabrics. It is the lightest and strongest waterproof fabric reasonably available and makes an excellent lightweight tarp. I also made a very satisfactory pack with this material.
Fabric, completed tarps and setup instructions can be found on http://www.thru-hiker.com and http://www.ultralighttarps.com.
I use a 5’x8’ ft. flat tarp weighing about 8 oz. as a single person shelter. An 8’x10’ ft. tarp provides better protection for two people than if you each have you own 5’x8’ tarp.
Stoves
The most popular stoves for ultra-light hikers are homemade alcohol stoves and tablet stoves that burn commercial (Esbit) tablets or military heat tablets [Hexamine “heat tabs”, or Trioxane.] The commercial backpacking cartridge stoves are the next lightest option but they cost considerably more to buy and operate and they weigh more.
I would recommend a solid fuel stove for your BOB. The alcohol is at greater risk of being lost through leakage or damage to the container than are solid fuel tablets. Coghlan’s (http://www.coghlans.com/) sells a stove and tablet combo pack for about $5.
Other Items
I have covered the heaviest items above. The other things you need should be examined just as carefully for their balance of weight versus utility.
Clothes – Merino wool top, socks and underwear; down vest or jacket
Shoes – comfortable lightweight trail runners
Wind Shell/Rain Gear – Provent or Frog Toggs are light weight, inexpensive, waterproof and breathable
Pot – Walmart aluminum grease pot is light and cheap
Ground sheet – Silnylon
Water Purification – Aqua Mira
Implementing these ultra-light backpacking techniques provide not only the lightest solutions but also oftentimes the least expensive solution.
Don’t imagine that you can walk any distance carrying your BOB unless you have actually prepared to carry it. The techniques I have outlined will enable you to create an ultra light BOB that you can easily carry, leaving you fast and agile for emergencies in your travels.
The Ultra Light Bug-Out-Bag By “Springmtnd”
