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The very first thing to learn about Jac “Top Shelf” Mitchell is that—regardless of having hiked over 11,000 miles over 14 totally different thru-hikes—she doesn’t have a proper gear record.
“I stopped doing packing lists or kit spreadsheets a while ago,” Mitchell says. “Now I take what I need and only what I need and I trust that that’s ultralight to lightweight. I’m not a gram junkie.”
I initially met Top Shelf again when she did have a gear record—all of us did—on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2014. For many people, it was our first thru-hike, and placing collectively a gear record was a ceremony of passage—a approach to each discover weight to chop out of our kits and to visualise the hike itself, to see how each bit of drugs would match into our life on the path. (Lots of that turned out to be fantastical pondering, however that’s a unique story.)
Since that first hike, Top Shelf went skilled—thru-hiker parlance for committing to a life-style of climbing, supported by occasional seasonal work, and residing in a van when she isn’t on the path to maintain prices down. Her travels have included all the things from the well-known 3,028-mile Continental Divide Trail to the extra obscure 770-mile Grand Enchantment Trail.
We caught up as she was about to begin on a 700-mile part of the southern PCT and spoke about how her now huge expertise modified how she balances worth, consolation, and weight in her gear selections, and what she seems to be for when placing collectively an ultralight backpacking package.
The Big Three
You gained’t discover lots of Top Shelf’s Big Three objects—backpack, shelter, sleep system—in REI. Six Moons Designs and Katabatic Gear are each so-called cottage gear firms, who design light-weight and ultralightweight gear for lengthy trails. For extra conventional backpackers, this type of gear is sort of blasphemous—tents that use climbing poles to remain up, backpacks with no inside body, and quilts which can be open on the underside. Top Shelf had eliminated the inner body in her Six Moons Design pack for the part of the PCT she was heading out on, regardless that there have been sections the place she’d want to hold sufficient water for 20 miles or extra.
“It’s so much softer and more flexible without it,” she stated. That’s partly due to its working vest-style shoulders straps—an uncommon function even for an ultralightweight pack. “The straps are thinner, unpadded, and wider, covering more of your chest with plenty of pockets and storage options,” she stated. “It fits you like a shirt or a vest—it really hugs you, which is some people’s nightmare. There’s definitely a learning curve in figuring out how to adjust the pack to get it to ride well. I wasn’t sure it was for me when I first started using it, because I had to get used to adjusting it, and my body had to get used to carrying the weight differently.”
Like numerous long-distance backpackers, Top Shelf makes use of a quilt, which has no backside, slightly than a conventional sleeping bag, even on a shoulder season hike. To guarantee she stays heat when nights dip beneath freezing, she pairs her quilt with the Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XTherm, which, with an R-value of 6.9, gives among the finest insulation from the chilly of the bottom of any of the inflatable sleeping pads at present in the marketplace. “I don’t use a pillow,” she famous. “Well, I use a backpacking pillow in my van, but I don’t use one on the trail.”
Her shelter—the Lunar Solo—can be a Six Moons Design. “I’m not sponsored by Six Moons, it’s just what worked out right now,” Top Shelf stated. “It’s actually the first non-DCF shelter that I’ve used.” DCF stands for Dyneema Composite Fabric, as soon as referred to as cuben fiber, a cloth that’s in style in long-distance climbing circles because of its low weight and power. But it’s not as sturdy as different supplies (for years a well-liked DCF backpack marketed itself as solely being good for a single thru-hike) and usually is available in at a considerably greater worth level than the silnylon that Top Shelf’s Lunar Solo is made out of. “The Lunar Solo shelter that I have is $250 and the Zpacks Duplex that a lot of people use—which is a similar footprint, even though it’s two person versus one person, and is made out of DCF—is over $700.”
“I’m Not Jeff Bezos”
At one level in our chat, I observed that Top Shelf hadn’t included a puffer jacket on her gear record, regardless that it was a shoulder season hike.
“Oh yeah,” she stated. “I do have a synthetic Enlightened Equipment one.”
Like Katabatic Gear, Enlightened Equipment is a cottage gear firm specializing in light-weight quilts, however they’ve additionally expanded in recent times to incorporate some attire, together with rain gear, wind shirts, and puffer jackets.
“It’s OK,” stated Top Shelf. “It’s warm enough. It’s compressible enough, but it just doesn’t fit particularly well, the fabric of the shell doesn’t have the greatest feel. For me, all that really adds up when you don’t have a closet full of jackets where you can just pick another one.”
Currently, her solely down jacket is from Uniqlo, a Japanese life-style model that thru-hikers have lengthy seemed to for price range puffers and base layers. But their clothes is primarily geared towards city style—it’s barely practical for alpine situations not to mention shoulder season ones. “For years and years, I had a Feathered Friends ultralight down jacket and I just wore it till it fell apart,” she advised me. “I want it so bad, but I need to be working again to get it.”
There’s a saying in thru-hiking that “pounds are cheap, but ounces are expensive.” When you begin reducing weight out of your package—swapping out your previous four-pound tent for a two-pound one, upgrading from an artificial sleeping bag to down—you will get a variety of bang to your buck. But when you’ve upgraded the largest objects in your pack, it turns into dearer to chop weight, as you begin to tinker with the smaller odds and ends or change to dear supplies like DCF or 900fp down. This all goes double for any gear that you simply put on in your bodily physique, which can inevitably have to get replaced, generally a number of occasions on the identical hike. For instance, even best-in-class path runners usually solely final between 500 and 700 miles—it’s widespread for PCT thru-hikers to undergo 4 or extra pairs in a single hike—so Top Shelf wears New Balance, which may normally be discovered on sale. “I’ll give a little disclaimer that if there’s a piece of gear you ask about and I’m like, ‘well I’m not selling this as the best for me or the best for this particular route or conditions’,” she stated. “But it’s what I have right now because I’m not Jeff Bezos.”
One instance of that’s her selection of REI-branded rain gear over different lighter—and dearer—fashions. In her expertise, ultralight rain gear—just like the Outdoor Research Helium, is inappropriate for severe rain situations, as the fabric wets out in something greater than sprinkles. “In the shoulder season, carrying heavier gear that actually is wind and waterproof is more than worth the extra weight because it keeps me from becoming hypothermic,” she stated. “But the reason it’s REI brand is it’s the most affordable GORE-TEX that I found that also is somewhat light. It’d be great if I could afford Arc’teryx GORE-TEX but that’s $600 compared to $300 for the REI two piece.”
She advised me that her largest expense, by far, wasn’t any single piece of drugs: It was meals. “I avoid restaurants as much as possible and really lean into grocery stores but, with inflation, food right now is more expensive than it’s ever been in my lifetime.” Thru-hikes usually result in excessive weight reduction—earlier than and after images might be harking back to a fad weight loss plan commercial—just because it’s virtually unimaginable to hold and eat as a lot as you want whereas on the path. “I’ve looked a bit into how many calories I need a day, and it’s around 5,000,” stated Top Shelf, “but I eat about two to three thousand. I’m usually running at a couple thousand calorie deficit every day.”
Of course, one of the simplest ways to maintain prices down is to decide on gear that’s each light-weight and might stand as much as the trials of 10,000 miles—however even cottage firm gear designed for long-distance backpackers usually can’t do this. “I’ve used my Six Moons Design backpack on several hikes and I just this week sewed a bunch of holes in the pockets, which are always the first spots to go,” she advised me. “I could at least keep using it for the rest of the PCT this year.”
But there are two objects which were in Top Shelf’s pack for the reason that starting: the MSR Pocketrocket and an Ibex 250-weight merino baselayer. She couldn’t inform me what the mannequin of the Ibex was, nevertheless it turned out to probably not matter: Since she bought that piece, Ibex shuttered, was opened below new administration, and moved its manufacturing abroad. “Their stuff just isn’t as quality as it used to be,” she stated. “But this piece doesn’t have any holes in it, it’s as thick as ever. It’s the best piece of clothing that I’ve ever purchased or owned.”
The MSR Pocketrocket is an isobutane range that’s identified for its simplicity, sturdiness, and reliability (I additionally nonetheless have my authentic Pocketrocket). While MSR has since upgraded the design of the Pocketrocket to a barely lighter model, Top Shelf advised me that she is “obsessed with the original. The only reason I haven’t used it on every thru-hike is that sometimes I’m cold soaking.”
Why Ultralight Is Too Reductive
But Top Shelf doesn’t suppose that different backpackers ought to exit of their approach to monitor down an authentic MSR Pocketrocket for his or her gear package. “The MSR Pocketrocket is a great stove, but if you don’t enjoy it—like if you love using a Jetboil and you’re settling for a Pocketrocket, your experience is going to be poorer over time. Your morale is going to be lower over time,” she says. “So just looking at grams and ounces and ultralight is much too reductive.”
Top Shelf has quite a few standards for what she places in her pack past its weight. First and foremost, it must perform. “I feel like there’s a lot of manufactured strife on the trail because it’s dramatic and interesting,” she stated, “where someone could have avoided being out of water for the last twelve miles by carrying an extra Platypus bladder.” She sees this as an issue that even skilled hikers have, both as a result of they underestimate the extent to which their wants are altering, or as a result of they’re “creating drama for drama’s sake.”
But she additionally thinks that nice gear ought to fulfill our emotional wants: “What if the down jacket that fits and feels good on my body and makes me happier is two ounces heavier? To me, that’s a no-brainer. Mental and emotional health and morale really adds up over the course of weeks and months. And we’re talking about an endurance activity that depletes and demands so much. You need to refill your cup in any way possible.”
“I’ve heard people in eating disorder recovery talk about how food isn’t just to fuel your physical body, it’s also to fuel your emotional body and your heart and soul and spirit. So this idea that diet culture has fed us, that emotional cheating is bad, period, is untrue. Nobody needs to eat a Christmas sugar cookie, but can a Christmas sugar cookie feel good? Can it add to a social experience or interaction? Can it make your heart feel full or help you bond with someone while you’re making them? Yes, and that has value. It’s not just calories in, calories out. So that’s an analogy for how I think about ultralight.”
For Top Shelf, long-distance climbing as a sustainable lifestyle is about extra than simply good monetary selections in what gear she chooses. When situations are lower than splendid, having the correct gear for her—gear that she each trusts and loves—makes all of the distinction, and it’s what provides her the psychological and emotional house to cycle by way of thru-hike after thru-hike. While Top Shelf hasn’t stored a pack record available in years, she threw collectively an up to date one for me upfront of our dialog.
Shelter and Sleep System
Six Moons Designs Minimalist Backpack
Trash compactor bag (pack liner)
Six Moons Designs Lunar Solo Tent
Polycryo groundsheet
MSR Mini Groundhog tent stakes (6)
Katabatic Flex 15 quilt
Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XTherm
Apparel and Outerwear
New Balance path runners
Darn Tough socks
Brooks working shorts
Patagonia underwear
Patagonia sports activities bra
Vuori T-shirt
Buff
Trucker hat
Ibex merino base layer high
REI merino base layer pants
REI GORE-TEX rain shell
REI GORE-TEX rain pants
Beanie
Smartwool merino gloves
Kitchen and Bathroom
Evernew Ti U.L. Pot 900
Humangear Titanium Uno
MSR Pocketrocket
Fuel canister
Food bag
SmartWater water bottles
Victorinox mini pocket knife
Sawyer Squeeze water filter
Iodine tablets
First assist package
Petzl Zipka 200-lumen headlamp
Toiletries (toothbrush and toothpaste, Q-tips, chapstick)
Poop package (child wipes, Ziploc bag, Deuce of Spades trowel)
Real World Items
Wallet (ID, playing cards, money)
Phone, USB-C twine, Anker wall plug
Anker 20,000mAh exterior battery
The laborious half, she says, about long-distance climbing isn’t the strolling (“it starts to take care of itself”): It’s the psychological sport. She is aware of that if she doesn’t are likely to that, she gained’t end the hike. “Little things really add up, like a luxury item that means something to you. Or a down jacket that feels good on your body and creates a sense of happiness when you put it on,” she says. “That creates a sense of holistic continuity where there’s not another life; a life in the real world and then a trail life. It’s like Jac and Top Shelf and trail life and frontcountry life are all one … This adds up to not only finishing a thru-hike, but finishing a lot of hikes.”
Thoughts on Going Ultralight
Top Shelf advised me that understanding your private fashion and desires is important to choosing the proper gear. Not that that’s a static factor. “Of course we’re all lifelong learners—we’re always adjusting and our needs are always changing and evolving.” She doesn’t have an ideal gear package that she’s working towards (besides possibly that Feathered Friends puffer jacket). When I requested her what she would change out if cash was no object, she advised me that she would experiment extra. “I would switch gear out more often and try more combinations,” she says, “instead of wearing every single thing into the ground because I’m trying to get every penny out of it.” Top Shelf thinks that folks ought to put much less strain on themselves to succeed in a sure objective weight of their pack, and focus as an alternative on how their particular person fashion interprets into the sorts of routes and trails they wish to hike. “It’s a continuum,” she says. “You don’t begin with the package that you simply’ll finish with. It’s at all times in flux. Do as a lot analysis and speak to as many skilled hikers as you may abdomen after which simply make your finest educated purchases. And then work your weight down from there.