Backpack With A Day Sac

We've never been lightweight zealots - a bottle of red wine and some hill top canapés are more our style - but we thought it'd be interesting to see if we could get a weekend's backpacking gear and food into a 35-litre day pack and take off across the Peak.

With a careful choice of kit, we managed it no problem. Not exactly with room to spare, but without undue suffering. The joke was that we could have gone even lighter and we'll tell you how. But here's what we did.

And the result? Like walking with a day sac, skippety skip, hop, hop. Light on your feet, fast across the hills, easy on your joints . If your idea of backpacking is slogging painfully across the hills with a 60-litre monster then maybe it's time for a reassessment.

We chose to take Macpac's adventure race-based 35 Amp. It's a 35-litre pack that, with the shedding of hip-belt and foam back sheet weighs a claimed 700 grammes. It uses light fabrics and webbing, but with the hip belt, which we kept, it's a deceptively comfortable carry.

The floating hip-belt weighs in at 167 grammes, but we reckon that was weight well spent for comfort and support, ditto the foam back pad.

Save more There are lighter packs out there, for example GoLite's new 41-litre Dawn weighs in at just 390 grammes, but we like the Amp's comfort and support.

Potential saving: 640 grammes.

We used a single-skin Outdoor Designs Race Raider weighing 1500 grammes. It uses Gore's latest vapour permeable membrane to make it useable in the UK and is actually a two-man design. More on how it works later this week. For two it would be insanely light at 750 grammes per person. For one it's roomy but still not massively heavy. We saved a little by forgetting pegs and scrounging them on arrival at the camp site...

Save more We could have used a bivvy bag but we chose luxury, we could also have used a tarp, but we felt happier with a full tent in UK late winter / early spring conditions. The other option we'd have been happy with would be an Outdoor Designs Solo Raider, the one-man version of our tent, at around 1200 grammes. If you're really hard you can go for a simply bivvy bag, but hey...

Potential saving: 300 grammes.

It's been sub-zero at night recently so to save a little weight we opted for Mountain Equipment's new Firewalker Integral sleeping bag. It's a neat idea which incorporates a sleeve in the base of the bag for a coffin-shaped mat. There's no insulation in the base of the bag, so you save weight there and on the corner-cutting mat as well. We have some misgivings about the way the bag actually works - more later this week.

Save More An ultralite Therm-a-Rest at 592 grammes for a full-length would have saved 175-odd grammes over even the cut-down Insulmat, but is more prone to punctures, a foam mat even more. ME's down Dewline has a similar warmth rating and weighs 730 grammes saving a potential 536 grammes. Both would cost considerably more. ME's Classic down Integral bag is a claimed 450 grammes cheaper if you're sold on the Integral concept.

Potential saving: 711 grammes

Camelbak's Omega 3-litre bladder is our fave hydration system, but fill it up and you're looking at 3 kgs of water - that's more than the tent, sleeping bag and mat combined. Of course it goes down as you drink it and hydration is crucial, but it's a prime weight saving area.

Save more A one litre Nalgene Bottle weighs in at 164 grammes, plus one kilo for the water, so you might as well simply underfill your hydration system if you can manage with less water. A more cunning approach would be to use a simple bottle-style filter device and replenish as you go. An Aquapure Traveller weighs only 99 grammes, but you need to be sure that there's water around.

Potential saving: 3117 grammes

3 x Wayfarer Meals - 2 x main, 1 x dessert: 874 grammes (we're lazy)
2 x sachets instant porridge: 86 grammes
2 x bananas: 306 grammes
1 packet fig rolls: 200 grammes
Assorted energy bars: 275 grammes (none eaten)
1 Banana Fruit Loaf: 300 grammes
1 x sachet instant hot chocolate: 33 grammes
3 x Nutrigrain Elevenses Bars: 138 grammes

Save more We could have cheated and gone to the pub but in the real world, the foil-packed Wayfarer wet meals were a heavy luxury at a total of 874 grammes, we could have saved half that or more by using dried pasta, soup and a small can of mackerel to add flavour plus a bar of chocolate instead of the dessert. We also realised how little we actually ate on the hill. We counted all the energy bars out and we counted them all back again.... None were eaten, so we might as well have left them behind. Chucking the bananas for energy bars would also have made sense, but tasted yuk. We also realised we eat cheap things first...

Potential saving: 900 grammes, possibly more.

Gosystem Mighty Atom Stove: 125 grammes
Gas Canister: 300 grammes
2 Tefal Pans and Grab in sac: 417 grammes
Titanium (yep) knife, fork spoon set: 51 grammes
Plastic insulated mug: 126 grammes

Save more Lots of potential here - one pan instead of two and dumping the mug and pan bag would save us 229 grammes in pans and 126 grammes for the mug. We could have saved 40 odd grammes by using a Pocket Rocket stove, plus 20 odd grammes for a lighter. An empty gas canister weighs just 130 grammes, so a part full one could have saved another, say, 50 grammes. Is it all worth it though? We'd have had to wash the pan out between courses and use it as a mug too.

Potential saving:425 grammes

We didn't carry much spare clothing, something we regretted in the middle of the night when ice was forming on the inside of the tent and all we had to put on was a Powershield softshell top...
Windstopper Beanie: 47 grammes
Mountain Equipment Firefly Paclite Jacket: 390 grammes (full length)
MHW Velocity Pant (we were walking in shorts): 380 grammes
Spare socks: 86 grammes

Save more If anything we went a little too light on the clothing, and while we could have saved say, 120 grammes on a waterproof jacket by using a Berghaus Paclite Smock instead of the ME Firefly, we'd have been better packing a lightweight fleece as well and some light gloves for the chill of the morning.

Potential saving: 0 grammes

All the bits and bobs. We deliberately forgot a first aid kit as we knew there'd be loads of people around (cynical but realistic) but here's the rest of what we were carrying:

Paperback novel (unopened) : 272 grammes
Silva Compass: 30 grammes
Petzl Tikka Headtorch: 70 grammes
Sun cream (loads of it): 198 grammes
2 maps: 170 grammes total
Swiss Army Knife: 63 grammes
Mobile phone 204 grammes
Notebook: 155 grammes

Save more Where do you start? There was no mobile reception anywhere on our route, so we might as well have dumped it, we didn't even open our novel but went to sleep instead, we could have taken a much smaller tube of sun cream. All that would have saved 600-odd grammes straight away and we hardly used the notebook, so you can add that to make 750 grammes just on sundries. Mad.

Potential saving: 750 grammes

According to our calculations, we started off carrying 13-odd kilos in a 35-litre day sac and, to be honest, it felt pretty manageable, particularly when you consider that some 3 kilos of that was water and another kilo wet food and bananas. We definitely noticed the difference on day two by the way.

The real shock though is just how much we could have saved by being a bit more anal. Okay, we didn't try particularly hard to save weight to start with, but if we'd followed all our own tips, we could have lost another 6.843 kilos. Admittedly 3 kilos of that would be water, but the other 3.8 kilos would all be real savings in weight. That would have given us - and admittedly spartan - pack weight of just over six kilos, which is bonkers.

We were shocked at quite how much unnecessary weight we'd been toting around, even though the pack still felt light enough that we were happy to wear lightweight Salomon Pro Sticky Mid boots to walk in and to move very fast.

The interesting bit is that while we could have saved, say, 100s of grammes with a really light pack, just leaving a few unnecessary items would actually have saved the same amount of weight, and cost nowt. Food and water were definite weak points for us and we could have saved 400-odd grammes just on cooking and eating hardware.

If there's a lesson there, it's that it's worth doing a pack audit before you go rather than after. It's too late for us, but maybe not for you...

And is it worth it? Well, you can't beat backpacking with a day pack on, it simply doesn't feel like backpacking any more. Less suffering, less pain. Give it a go.