OK, just how obsessive are you ultra lightweight and lightweight backpackers? I need to know.
On Friday I tool delivery of a new stove. Naturally I had to try it out. I brewed up some water and made a cup of coffee in a single-skin titanium mug. Fine so far. I got up on Saturday morning and went to put away some stuff that had been drying over night. This included the titanium mug.
As I lifted the mug I thought, wow that’s quite heavy. I compared it to the MSR kettle that I had also washed. Now, this is where the obsession come in. I thought, I’m sure I’d notice this if I added this to my pack (I don’t take a mug usually when hiking alone). Before I knew it my electric scales were out and I was weighing the thing. 50 grams dead on. The Kettle weighed about 100 grams. But the mug didn’t feel half the weight.
This troubled me a bit. But not as much as when I thought about what I was doing.
So, just how obsessive are you? Would you worry that your titanium mug was too heavy for the pack? I just known that Ibbotson would do such a thing. But what about the rest of you?
Confession time?
Oh Andy.
It’s starting.
Good luck.
I think you know the answer
everything I buy for backpacking goes across the scales and the result is recorded in a spreadsheet
Heh… there’s nothing obsessive about me.
Well not in gear terms, anyway. Food, on the other hand…
Andy…
No. I can’t. It would just be wrong. Wouldn’t it?
I’d be more worried about it burning my lips. Anyone bothered about the weight of a cup must surely be a sad case indeed!
I’m sad Martin…
I have a set of electronic scales in the kitchen… and another set in my gear cupboard…
i think you need to take a lie down in a dark room
What purpose does the mug serve? Will the added weight mean you can have both a hot drink (or whisky) and your meal at the same time? Or do you use it while the kettle sits empty? Weight of each item is of the utmost importance but the value and use of each item can trump the weight in my opinion as well.
Wow Andy, that is a light mug, weighing 1.74 grams less than mine!!!
Cheers,
Rob
A mug? What’s one of those then?
I don’t carry a mug when hikng alone! Too heavy – of course I own several!
I went down the mug route a while back, if you have to bring such luxuries stick to a polystyrene cup. I don’t even bring that any more, I’m sure I can feel it just sitting there in my pack…
I only carry 1 pot. But when there are two of us we do each have a titanium mug and a couple of those japanese folding plates. Still quite a load between two of us.
A titanium mug can be kept handy for drinking from highland streams throughout the day. Also, you can have a hot drink/wine/whisky at same time food/water is in titanium pot … lovely!
The Rev
A nice malt tastes just as good from a little nipper.
Never carried a mug for ages until buying the Kuksa, which you’ve seen. It’s heavy at about 120g, but once you drink from wood you wont go back.
Those 120g are too much, so searching for a suitable bit of birch to carve a new “lighter” Kuksa from.
Using a Kuksa and drinking from streams as you pass does save on water carried though, if in areas where there is water.
The Kuksa was great I thought. Things like these are quite common all over Scandinavia, I remember a Norwegian telling me once that he very rarely carried water with him.
Hi Andy,
Steve Horner commented:”It’s heavy at about 120g, but once you drink from wood you wont go back.”
“Those 120g are too much, so searching for a suitable bit of birch to carve a new “lighter†Kuksa from.”
Just my input – I’ve used Kuksa’s for 35 years and have accumulated half a dozen over the years that I have been visiting Finland.
My first one developed a minor crack this spring and has been retired. That Kuksa weighed 142 grams with a capacity of 250 ml. It’s replacement has the same capacity and is heavier at 191 grams, in part due to the Shamanistic inlaid reindeer antler in the handle.Another, with a capacity of 150 ml and weighs 115 grams.
120 grams is NOT too heavy – If you make your Kuksa too light (thin)_ or of the wrong type of birch then it will not last. A well made kuksa for your coffee, tea, any other hot drink, or the good Finnish Koskenkorva,will last you decades.
Cheers,
Rob
I’m with Colin. I must be sad, too. Yes, everything gets weighed. Just ask Lisa. For some reason, though, I wasn’t able to find a lighter version of the water that I carried when I joined up with Colin on part of the Arizona trail.
By no stretch of the imagination could my pack on that trip have been called ultralight!