Gear Update 1

Running Total - $522 

Things we added: 

$65 Granite Gear Leopard VC 46 pack - 2 lb 7 oz (with no lid)

$17 BSR stove - 1 oz

$16 two Gearlight LED headlamps (we erm...lost the originals at the Zion train stop and they went up in price)

$0 owned base layers & gloves/hat, eye mask and ear plugs,and a cut down sponge. 

Things we dropped: Coleman stove (wooo!), travel towels (but kept the hand towels), useless pillow cases, travel bottle filled with dish soap. 

My pack is a men’s because I wasn’t going to pay the $165! pink tax for the women’s version. Also I felt when trying packs on at REI that a lot of the women waist belts for various brands, like Osprey, were too tight anyways. Trying on the Granite Gear weighted at home, I finagled the straps snug like the YouTube videos showed. But when actually hiking it felt like the shoulder straps were snug at my shoulder tops (the curve) but gaped quite a bit at the back of my shoulders. The fact that DH had sore shoulders at the end of the trip too made me feel better, since his looked like it fit flawlessly. Other downsides to my pack were how annoying all the buckles were to get inside, especially compared to DH’s SD Flex. I’m already scheming about cutting some parts off, but I want to wait in case I decide to sell and get something different. 

We also bought and returned two Kelty Cosmic 20 Down bags. (So we didn’t take them on the trip.) The idea was it would allow DH to zip his bag, get me disconnected from the pad, and save us both weight. This time we opened one bag and jumped in at home to test it out. It was way too constricting. Looking at the specs, it seems most higher end bags are just as tight fitting. No thank you. I begin to plot out a quilt upgrade but didn’t make a decision in time for this trip.