I have also received a lot of ques­tions about why I like cer­tain things over oth­er things. Here is my thought process for that.

Backpack

Depend­ing on where I am hik­ing and dur­ing what sea­son I am hik­ing I want a back­pack that car­ries some­where between 20–45 lbs com­fort­ably. I like a light­weight back­pack, but it is very impor­tant to me that it is com­fort­able and it is padded in the nec­es­sary places. It is not worth cut­ting out weight on your back­pack and sac­ri­fic­ing com­fort. It is more impor­tant to car­ry a pack that is com­fort­able and then if you want to go lighter, shave weight from the gear inside your pack. The Gran­ite Gear packs are ide­al for me because they are extreme­ly light­weight for their sizes and they have all of the right com­fort fea­tures, with­out adding much weight. I switch between packs with the vapor frame sheet and the nim­bus frame sheet depend­ing on when and where I am hik­ing. The vapor frame sheet is per­fect for me up to 35 lbs. Any­thing above that weight I want a pack with the Nim­bus frame sheet. I have seen many peo­ple on the trail that try to car­ry a pack that is too light for them and not func­tion­al because it doesn’t have the nec­es­sary sup­port and com­fort. Some of these peo­ple end up duct tap­ing foam onto the straps on their packs because they need to make up for the com­fort that the man­u­fac­tur­er did not pro­vide because they were try­ing to shave ounces on the pack.

Sleeping system

There are a lot of options here and again I vary depend­ing on the hike. I used to use a closed cell foam Ridger­est sleep­ing pad all of the time because it was light, con­ve­nient, and prob­lem-free. Recent­ly I have used the Big Agnes Clearview, Mont­bell sleep­ing sys­tem, Ther­marest Pro­lite. I always use a ½ length pad and use my pack as low­er half of my sleep­ing pad, this helps cut some weight and also I like to keep my food and some oth­er items in my pack so that it ele­vates my feet while I sleep. I believe that after a day of walk­ing your feet would nat­u­ral­ly swell a lit­tle because of grav­i­ty, so this helps pre­vent swelling and then main­tains the same size of your feet so that your shoes don’t cause any problems.
There are now a fair amount of options out there at 9 ounces. If it is a long trip and I am away from easy mail access then I am tempt­ed to keep using the closed cell foam pad so that I won’t have any prob­lems. On the Appalachi­an Trail with wood sleep­ing plat­forms an inflat­able pad is a nice comfort.
For a sleep­ing bag, I real­ly like the Mont­bell U.L. Super Stretch bags. They are as light as any bag on the mar­ket and I find them warm beyond there rat­ing. I do sleep warm and I also roll around a lot in my sleep. So I do not like the pad to be attached to my bag. I got used to the Super Stretch bags and didn’t real­ize how much I actu­al­ly used the stretch sys­tem until one night I slept in a reg­u­lar sleep­ing bag and felt con­fined. The elas­tic stretch baf­fles can make the bag look under filled, but that is only a per­cep­tion because the bag needs to have a lit­tle extra mate­r­i­al so that the mate­r­i­al can expand with the elas­tic. The bags def­i­nite­ly are not under filled.

Shelters

My shel­ter of choice also depends on the trip and the con­di­tions that I will be fac­ing. For most sit­u­a­tions I pre­fer a tarp because of its ver­sa­til­i­ty, weight sav­ings, open­ness, and lack of con­den­sa­tion. I have used the Gran­ite Gear tarp sys­tem with the dodgers through the win­ter also and the Gran­ite Haven with my tarp too. I real­ly like this whole ver­sa­tile sys­tem to go along with the inher­ent ver­sa­til­i­ty of a tarp. On the oth­er hand, when I am going to be going some­where that doesn’t have many trees and I can be bar­raged by wind then I like the Big Agnes Fly Creek tent because it is real­ly light­weight, yet functional.

Clothing

I like a wool shirt to wear on the trips because they repel odor and are warmer than polypro when they are wet. A light rain will also bead up on the wool for a lit­tle while before it starts to soaks in. For all oth­er lay­ers I like the Mont­bell prod­ucts because they last a long time and are some of the light­est weight lay­ers on the market.