By Marcus Hale, Lead Pack Research Editor · Published September 14, 2026, 6:03 PM ET
Direct Answer
Base weight is the total weight of your backpack and everything inside it, excluding consumables — food, water, and fuel — and excluding items worn or carried outside the pack, like clothing on your body or trekking poles in hand. It's the standard number hikers use to compare gear lists and track weight-cutting progress over time.
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In plain English
Base weight is a way to compare hiking gear fairly. You weigh your backpack with everything in it, but you leave out the things you eat, drink or burn: food, water and stove fuel. Those change from trip to trip, so leaving them out gives a steady number.
Think of it like weighing a car without passengers or gas. The empty weight tells you about the car itself, and it stays the same whether you drive to the store or across the country. Base weight tells you about your gear in the same way.
Hikers use the number to see where they can lighten their load. A lighter base weight means a lighter pack every day of every trip. The heaviest things are usually the backpack, the tent and the sleeping bag, so those are where most people start when they want to carry less.
Base weight is the total weight of your backpack and everything inside it, excluding consumables and worn or carried items. Hikers use it because food, water, and fuel weight changes daily and trip to trip, while clothing choices depend on weather, so neither number reflects your actual gear kit consistently. Base weight isolates the one number that stays constant regardless of trip length or conditions: what's actually in the pack.
What counts toward base weight?
Base weight includes the backpack itself, shelter, sleep system, cook system, clothing carried but not worn, first aid and repair items, and any electronics or accessories packed rather than worn. It excludes food, water, fuel, and anything worn on your body or held in your hands — boots, the clothes you're hiking in, trekking poles, and a phone in your pocket typically don't count.
Why does base weight exclude consumables and worn items?
Consumables vary too much trip to trip to serve as a useful comparison point — a six-day resupply carries far more food than a weekend trip, even with identical gear. Worn items are excluded for a similar reason: what you wear depends on weather and personal preference more than on your gear choices, and including them would make base-weight numbers harder to compare between hikers or between your own trips.
How does base weight compare across backpacking styles?
Style
Typical base weight
Traditional backpacking
20–30+ lb
Lightweight backpacking
10–20 lb
Ultralight backpacking
Under 10 lb
These ranges are community conventions, not official standards, so gear lists near a boundary get labeled inconsistently between hikers.
How do you calculate your own base weight?
Weigh every item that goes in your pack — not food, water, or fuel — on a kitchen or postal scale, since manufacturer specs can be off by an ounce or more per item. Log each item and its weight in a spreadsheet or a tool like LighterPack, then total the list. Tracking base weight this way also shows exactly which categories, usually the "big three" of pack, shelter, and sleep system, offer the biggest opportunities to cut weight.
Who defines base weight, and where they differ
There is no official standard for base weight. The common definitions come from trail and gear organizations. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy defines it as pack weight with all gear, minus consumables such as food, water and fuel.1 Gossamer Gear and Zpacks, both pack makers, use essentially the same wording.2,3
The page also excludes worn clothing and items carried in the hand, such as trekking poles. That is how many hikers count, but none of those three definitions spells it out, so two gear lists can differ just by method. Tiers vary slightly too: Gossamer Gear defines ultralight as under 10 pounds,2 while Zpacks says ultralight is generally agreed to mean 10 pounds or less.3 The page's traditional band of 20 to 30-plus pounds is a community convention with no published source.
Why excluded items still cost energy
Leaving worn items out of base weight makes comparison easier, but the body still carries them. A military review of load carriage found weight on the feet costs far more energy than weight on the back: each kilogram added at the foot raised energy use by 7 to 10%, and each kilogram on the thigh by about 4%.4 Heavy boots never appear in a base-weight total, yet they can cost more effort than the same weight in the pack.
For weight in the pack, a walking study found metabolic energy use rose by about 7.6 watts for each extra kilogram carried.5 Cutting a kilogram of base weight lowers the cost of every mile on every trip.
Base weight versus what you actually carry
Consumables can outweigh the gear. Water weighs about one kilogram per liter,6 and Guadalupe Mountains National Park advises carrying a gallon per person per day, about 24 pounds of water for a three-day, two-night trip.7 Bear canisters raise another counting question: Glacier Bay's loaner weighs 2.8 pounds,8 and hikers differ on whether a required canister belongs in base weight.
Load ratings and comfort depend on total weight, not base weight. A study of Appalachian Trail backpackers found full packs averaged 25.0% of body weight for men and 27.9% for women.9 A low base weight is the starting point for a lighter total, not the whole picture.
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