
My good friend and I decided to go for a hike and check out the wild life in the Virginia Blue Mountains these past Saturday. It was beautiful, but freezing cold.
High 31 - Low 16
Cloudy
Sunrise 7:17 AM - Sunset 4:53 PM
I had packed up my kit, and even went easy on what I wanted to bring. It basically consisted of:
1 MRE
3L Camelback
1 Bottle of Water
Bag of snacks
FAK
Folding Shovel
Hatchet
Folding Saw
Hand Sanitizer / Wet Wipes
Paracord & Buniges
Small tools (Sharpie, knife, compass, etc..)
All in all, it weighted 20lbs packed up.
Needless to say, this stuff saved my bacon out there:

All of this was dead weight I humped up and down the hill side:

The camelback was screwed. I left in in the truck bed on the 1 hour drive out, and the water in the tube froze in that time. I was hoping by midday that it would have thawed out... Nope, it was a fistfull of fail.
I didn't bother to crack open the MRE either, small snacks got me through the day.
The whole thing has got me re-thinking about how much crap is really needed for a day in the field.