The 5 Gallon Problem illustrates the advantages of carrying much less backpacking gear and extra compressible gear in a extra visible means than is feasible with a gear checklist. It’s significantly efficient for gear shakedowns in teams the place individuals can examine the amount and area that their gear requires with different individuals’s backpack contents.
Instructions
To take part on this problem, put the entire gear you carry inside your backpack, within the exterior pockets, or lashed to the skin, right into a 5-gallon bucket. Depart your backpack out, along with meals, water, water bottles, and gas.
Emphasis on Gear Quantity, Not Weight
The necessary factor to emphasise within the 5 Gallon Problem isn’t the load of the gear within the bucket, however whether or not the gear matches within the bucket. Gear that’s extremely compressible and requires much less quantity is sort of at all times lighter, if solely since you want a smaller quantity and a lighter backpack to hold it.
In case you can’t get all your backpacking gear right into a five-gallon bucket, there are some frequent gear swaps or removals that you should use to cut back the amount that your gear requires:
- Quilts require much less quantity than bulkier sleeping luggage
- Down sleeping insulation is extra compressible than artificial sleeping insulation
- Trekking pole tents require much less quantity than ones that require separate tent poles
- Siliconized polyester or siliconized nylon tents require much less quantity than tents made with Dyneema DCF.
- Single-wall tents, tarps, or mids require much less quantity than double-wall tents
- Stoves and gas that may be packed inside prepare dinner pots require much less quantity
- Carrying fewer garments reduces the required quantity
- and so forth.
Extra conventional backpackers who use bulkier gear or who deliver additional garments gained’t be capable to get as a lot gear into the bucket, which supplies a chance to undergo their pack and remove pointless objects.
Enjoyable the 5 Gallon Problem
In case you’re attempting the 5 Gallon Problem with a bunch, and it’s clear nobody goes to have the ability to match all of their gear into the bucket, you may chill out the foundations a bit by letting members omit a shared merchandise like a tent or a cumbersome merchandise like a sleeping bag. Going by the train will nonetheless have advantage as a result of members will see the affect that bringing additional garments, cumbersome cooking gear, or a big sleeping pad can have on the amount of their gear.
Credit
I didn’t invent the 5 Gallon Problem. I discovered about it from two associates named Ken “DripDry” Holder and Lee “RevLee” Fields. They use it to show Boy Scouts and their mother and father about the advantages of bringing much less pointless gear on backpacking journeys.
I feel the 5 Gallon Problem is an excellent thought and one which resonates with individuals who aren’t as number-oriented, however are extra visible. An overflowing bucket does make for a memorable picture.
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