The camping gear checklist, weighed before you buy it
Camping gear is bought once and carried for years. Plan the kit as a board with the weight, the season rating and the packed size on each piece, so the trade is visible before the card comes out.
The short version
Camping gear is chosen on three numbers that are never on the same page as the price: packed weight, season rating and packed size. Put all three on the item before you buy. The tent, bag and pack are two thirds of the weight you will carry, so decide those first and let the rest follow.
A sample board
First proper trip
Three nights, carried in. Weight is the budget that actually hurts.
- Items
- 6
- Owned
- 1 of 6
- Total
- $760
- Budget
- $90 left of $850
Open any item for its details.
$240To buyStore · FellsideWeight · 2.1 kgSeason · 3
$210ConsideringStore · NorrlandWeight · 890 gFill · 650 down
$165OwnedStore · FellsideWeight · 1.4 kgVolume · 50L
$45ConsideringStore · OaklineWeight · 78 gBoil · 3 min
$32ConsideringStore · Fielder HomeWeight · 190 gRuntime · 40 h
$68ConsideringStore · FellsideWeight · 820 gPacked · 35 cm
Board photos from Unsplash, by Josh Hild, Felix M. Dorn, Josiah Weiss, Sage Friedman, Jordan Davis and Brigitta Schneiter.
Who it's for
Anyone assembling a kit for a first multi-day trip, or replacing a piece at a time and trying not to end up with two of everything.
What people use today
LighterPack owns gram counting outright and deserves to: free, shareable, and the fixture of the ultralight community. It will even hold a link and a photo per item. What it has no concept of is money, because it is built around the pack you are carrying rather than the four tents you are choosing between. There is no price on an item and no budget on a list, which is exactly the month before a trip that nobody has a tool for.
What a board tracks here
Fields you name yourself, on the item they belong to. These are the ones that decide a purchase and have nowhere else to live.
- Packed weight
- The one number that decides it, and the one retailers bury under the marketing copy.
- Season rating
- A three-season bag in October is a cold, expensive lesson.
- Packed size
- Weight is not volume. A bag that weighs nothing can still fill half the pack.
- Who carries it
- Shared kit only saves weight if somebody has agreed to take it.
Start one of your own.
Paste a link from any store and Vurra reads the page for a title, price and image. Free while Vurra is in early access.