Beyond Backpacking: Ray Jardine's Guide to Lightweight Hiking
Quote from the author: "ll too often the term "backpacking" conjures images of plodding along the trail with a crushing load on one's back, and with a pair of large, awkward boots encumbering the feet. For decades this "Standard Backpacking Method" was the norm. The deep fatigue, the pain in the knees, and the blisters on the feet-these were accepted, albeit regrettably, as part of the experience.
I started breaking away from this style in the early 1970's, looking for ways of facilitating the hiking without sacrificing the comfort and safety. For nearly thirty years I have devoted my energies mainly to adventuring, and this has given me plenty of opportunity to apply my aerospace engineering approach to the design and construction of my own lightweight outdoor gear and clothing, and to refine my hiking and camping techniques accordingly. From 1987 to 1994 my wife Jenny and I logged over 15,000 miles of hiking, including five summer-long journeys each in excess of 2,000 miles. All the while I examined and reexamined our hiking equipment and methods with an eye to refinement. In effect, each journey became something of a multi-month field test, as we put our ideas into practice. These ideas had to work because we depended on them. But sometimes they did not work very well, and we always seemed to return home with new ideas for the next trip. The process has been evolutionary, and it has led to a new approach, a lightweight system of gear and philosophy-tried, tested, modified, and tested again."