Bushwalk Australia

What's the dumbest thing you've left behind in order to save a few grams?

I'm constantly surprised at the stupid decisions I make! Like frequently choosing to only take 2 tea bags instead of a handful and then sitting round the fire that night wondering what on earth I was thinking!

Shortening the handle of a toothbrush would be it for me.

Flash.
Never. Again.

tasadam wrote:Shortening the handle of a toothbrush would be it for me.

Hee! I shorten my toothbrush, but its nothing to do with weight, its so it fits in my small pouch.

Stupidest thing to save weight, was to take an untested light pack. Ugghhh, sore shoulders and back, worse than at 5kg heavier!

Thinking I would only need a bivy bag rather than a tent for a week-long trip in summer.

Julies wrote:

tasadam wrote:Shortening the handle of a toothbrush would be it for me.

Hee! I shorten my toothbrush, but its nothing to do with weight, its so it fits in my small pouch.

You could save weight by not taking the pouch!

Petzl Tikka (80g) in favour of a button battery LED torch (18g). Difficult to cook with it in the dark as it was either between my teeth or between beanie and forehead for quite a while. Also, traded out a Victorinox Pocket knife (60g) in favour of a saftey razor blade (5g). Easier to bite off chunks of salami than slice it off.

Tent pegs. Took titanium skewers when I really needed a stake with better holding power. Ended up using sticks which worked out OK but a bit of a pain with a non-freestanding tent. I now always take 4 x V or Y stakes and a few skewers for mid point tie outs or to create a starting hole for the bigger stakes in harder ground...

Not taking my mini light my fire flint relying instead solely on a mini bic light.
Heavy rain for 12 hrs and haphazard bic usage (ie dropped in puddle) equalled cold dinner.

forest wrote:Not taking my mini light my fire flint relying instead solely on a mini bic light.
Heavy rain for 12 hrs and haphazard bic usage (ie dropped in puddle) equalled cold dinner.

That would suck! I carry 2 lighters, and a quantity of waterproof matches with striker board inside a film canister.

Gippsmick wrote:Petzl Tikka (80g) in favour of a button battery LED torch (18g). Difficult to cook with it in the dark as it was either between my teeth or between beanie and forehead for quite a while. Also, traded out a Victorinox Pocket knife (60g) in favour of a saftey razor blade (5g). Easier to bite off chunks of salami than slice it off.

Those button battery LED torch things, I hate them with a capital H. Wish they where never invented. I've had the unfortunate circumstances I had to use them for 3 weeks every-night at Heron Island. As a volunteer Turtle Researcher for the QLD Government, at Heron Island for almost 4 weeks, I had to use those stupid thumb press torch for my research. It was like walking in a maze with hundreds of turtles wanting to try to bite you. Never forget that experience. I'm happy to report I never got bitten, The green turtles did try hard to bite me. I can assure you of that. But I still love the creatures.

Shortened my spork so it would fit in my Trangia pot! Which wasn't actually a lightening exercise, come to think of it.

Leaving out a topo map for a section of a walk I assumed I had committed to memory...I hadn't.

when i was young, i almost left my raincoat behind because i didnt think i'd need it, i decided to keep it, was possibly a life saver in the end, i was wearing it for three days and was pretty cold and wet a lot of the time...
times like that you realise some items just shouldnt be left behind, in reality any windbreaker would have done the job, i go swept down a river and was saturated anyway, but with the absence of a windbreaker the cold and wet could have killed me...

Drilling holes in one of those orange plastic trowels. It saved me less than 5 grams and weakened the trowel significantly.

Snowzone wrote:Drilling holes in one of those orange plastic trowels. It saved me less than 5 grams and weakened the trowel significantly.

Classic!

Im carrying way to much extra padding myself to bother worrying about what i bring in my bag.

Travis.

I can relate! No use in me whinging about the weight being lugged on my back, which I can't do much about, when my front verandah seems to get an extension each year and that's a problem I CAN do something about.

tasadam wrote:.......... inside a film canister.

These will soon be valuable museum pieces.

I was trying to think of some item I'd swapped out for lighter, or left behind, but couldn't. My thread topic would have to be "Stupid heavy things you brought, 'just in case' "
Like one time realising we'd brought three rolls of loo paper for an overnighter. Or the time I packed a full set of thermals, spare woolly socks , a windjacket, waterproof pants and jacket and a down puffy for a mild autumn trip. All unused at the end, but it seemed like a good idea at the time....Or the spare battery pack, then forgot my phone.

And yeah, agree with the above two posters - I'd benefit most from losing another 10 kg of home made insulation more than any spoon-cutting-in-half exercise!

As above my problem is always overpacking on stuff I dont need, but then forgetting something I do. Last trip I forgot toilet paper, luckily though it wasnt required

No book, no music, cold meals and hard grounds are all easily dealt with. The hardest choice for me is the selection of lenses to carry. Leaving behind the long telephoto (3 digit grams in weight) have often left me regretting when presented with scenes that just calls for it. Oh well...

On one trip, I bought myself an EXTREMELY thin foam roll mat to save on weight.
Worst idea ever! It was essentially the same as sleeping on the ground. It was also very fragile and the edges tore apart from packing it in and out of my pack!
I've since learnt that the comfort of a good night's sleep is much more valuable than the comfort of a negligibly lighter load

Also, to save weight I once packed a breakfast of weet bix with no milk! It was very dry and difficult to eat breakfast on that trip!

Onestepmore wrote:

tasadam wrote:.......... inside a film canister.

These will soon be valuable museum pieces.

Not quite soon. Some of us still shoot a lot of film

I once witnessed a father & son team eating dinner from the same pot, one with a shortened spoon, the other with a shortened fork. I'm not sure they appreciated the weight savings!

Clusterpod wrote:I once witnessed a father & son team eating dinner from the same pot, one with a shortened spoon, the other with a shortened fork. I'm not sure they appreciated the weight savings!

I think they were frustrated by the cheap supermarket plastic utensils they brought. Repeated breakages forced them into what you saw.

Left my spare socks to save wieght only to slip in a creek crossing in winter had cold feet all night . I like to have dry seperate clothes to sleep in ,helps keep my bag smelling nice n cleen.Darrin...

davidm wrote:What's the dumbest thing you've left behind in order to save a few grams?

I'm constantly surprised at the stupid decisions I make! Like frequently choosing to only take 2 tea bags instead of a handful and then sitting round the fire that night wondering what on earth I was thinking!

My Girlfriend?

I left my JetOz 46 behind.