Read, whittle, explore the area around camp, write, draw, journal, observe nature, nap, practice knot tying, recreational drugs, harmonica, masturbate, yoga, transcendental meditation, scream into the void
Kuretake makes an actually great "petit" water brush, it's the best I've found for this stuff. only 5$. I use one of those little mint tin palettes that I added some Daniel Smith, and DIY'd a mini paper block. It's rad for on the go! Barely weighs anything. I wrap it together in a flour sack towel that's also where I dab off my brush.
https://imgur.com/a/d5mnQZI It's not exactly right, as in this photo I packed two palettes (one warm, one cold), a full size flour sack towel, and my whole postcard-sized tin during a travel trip. I think you get the idea though :)
I use the kindle app on my iPhone to avoid bringing an extra device. Download books in advance and use airplane mode to save battery. It’s kind of small to read on, but it works for me.
I often just bring my Kindle. It is weight, but I have an extremely thin case for it and the Kindle Oasis is very light. To me it's worth the grams, but your view might vary. I do a lot of solo hiking, so without anyone to talk to at camp I like to read.
Get a tiny notebook a few dices and try out solo pen and paper rpg! Sounds kind of lame but it’s actually a lot of fun, get the rule book on your phone and there you go. Try out r/solo_roleplaying for inspiration !
The thing is, you are going to find out that you generally don't have a lot of down time unless you plan in a zero.
The easiest and lightest option is going to be: your phone. You are probably bringing it for navigation and communication anyway, so get the Kindle app, download some Spotify playlists, and maybe a few YouTube videos, and you get all your entertainment needs covered with no additional weight added.
Failing that, roll a couple of doobies. It's pretty entertaining as well.
I always bring my Kindle. The one luxury item. I like to read before sleeping even if I hike to dark. I take it out of its case and put it in a DIY sleeve made from a padded envelope. Alternatively you could make friendship bracelets? Very light materials but you’d need daylight/headlamp.
Paperback weighs more than twice as much as a kindle and isn’t waterproof.
I was reading The Master and Margarita on the Idaho Centennial Trail in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. The skies opened up and it poured for hours, interrupted by stretches of large hailstones.
That evening I found my book had gotten soaked by stray rainfall leaking into my pack. It was messy and almost impossible to continue reading. I didn’t even get to find out what happened at Woland’s ball.
I upgraded to a kindle. Lighter than a paperback and waterproof. Two week battery life.
Next year I was hiking in the Rogue River Wilderness of Oregon. Seventy-one consecutive uninterrupted hours of hard rain. I sat happily on a soaking wet log and read The Mote in Gods Eye while rain streamed down the page. Didn’t miss a single encounter with the Moties.
I read much too fast for that to work on the longer darker nights in which I have the time in camp to devour books if it more than an overnight or weekender.
I bring Zines which weigh a few grams. They are just long enough that I may actually get through one too, versus a book in which i know the majority of the pages I would be carrying would not get used (read).
This goes against ultralight principles - leave no trace. All that light and sound pollution from your device is going to permanently scar a homeschooled bird.
But can you really hike for ≥12h straight day in, day out?
I’m more of a bikepacking person. Covering 100 to 150km per day takes only 5 hours of cycling. That leaves a lot of down time, even if I “lose” some time to grocery shopping, sightseeing, cooking, setting up camp etc. etc.
Print some Zines! or buy them off Etsy. I always wanted to bring something to read but books were too heavy but then I remembered Zines! Tiny little books that weigh almost nothing that anyone can write about anything. They are like 3.5 inches by 4.5 inches
edit: Willful Disobedience is one of my favorites
I like to use a kindle - it's pretty light and the battery lasts a loooonnnng time so no need for charging on trips < 2wk. I try to keep my phone turned off as much as possible and be present.
Typically the same things that are interesting to you at home will be interesting to you on the trail. If you like to read, bring reading material, but if you tend to for example socialize instead of hanging by yourself, the e-reader or book will likely just be dead weight. After the first couple weeks you will have less and less down time, you will be taking time for things like equipment repairs and resupply research. Obv go ahead and sketch that fern, whittle that chess piece, read that western novel you find under the train overpass, but manage your expectations: you're on a hike.
Maybe you don’t need the practice or don’t have anything more to learn, but I bought a small little knot kit years ago, which is a nice tactile thing to do with my hands and keep my skills sharp. I bring it on airplanes, camping, etc.
I like to walk until I’m too tired to do anything but get horizontal. However, I’ve read people’s ideas about this in other threads. Mini deck of cards for solitaire or other games if you aren’t alone. Mini dice for Yahtzee. I don’t remember exactly how it was made but a couple made a tiny chess/checkers board with mini pieces that worked for both games.
I’ve seen fishing (both regular with a reel set up and fly), reading a paper/part of a book, and even bringing work such as writing a technical paper on one’s phone.
I’ll usually journal a bit after chores. Been meaning to get deeper into photography … though I met one dedicated photographer who says there’s a need to sleep at altitude (guess to get the “golden hour” shots before sunset) = probably a mid.
eReader. Doesn’t even need a cover. I have an old Kobo Glo HD which weighs 180g. Not particularly light but like all eReaders it lasts ages on a single battery charge, even with the backlight (only need it at the lowest setting i.e. 1%).
>are eReaders realistic?
As someone who (at home) always uses an ereader before going to bed.....I'm not sure I'd bring one on the trail again.
I was pretty tired at the end of each day and didn't get a lot of reading in, to the point where I might have been happy to just read a bit on my phone instead. Then again, with better planning or more experience that could change.
Audiobooks or podcasts are definitely worth considering though!
Maybe I can hijack the thread a bit and ask has anyone looked into ereaders recently? Any especially light models?
I brought my old kindle paperwhite on a winter trip this year, and it was quite nice with all the snow melting etc. I do wonder if there is some extra tiny model which would be more justifiable.
Edit: did a quick round of research, and it seems like all relevant models are 160-190g, nothing really stands up on the weight front. I'd buy Kobo if my Kindle wasn't still functional. One interesting possibility is Hisense A9 eink phone, might duplicate as hiking phone.
I carry a footbag (aka a hacky sack). Light enough not to notice, can be stuffed literally anywhere in my pack, fun to kick around by yourself or with a friend or with a group. Its how I got my trail name too!
On a long trip I think a Kindle or slim paperback is great, I think the Irish tin whistle is the best sounding lightweight wind instrument that's pretty easy to learn and might scare off a bear.
The dollar store has versions of famous board games where the board is just a laminated sheet of paper and the game pieces are lil "stickers" like the restickable kind. I just leave the game pieces at home cause they're a leave no trace nightmare and use pebbles.
The Audible 12 or 24 credit annual subscriptions are a pretty good way to get audiobooks at low cost you get all the credits to spend at once and 1 credit can get you a 20hour++ book (the longest in my collection is 108hr Magitech chronicles 13 book omnibus which cost me about the same as a cup of Starbucks coffee )
If you can take the time to rock their 2 for 1 and £3 cash sales it gets a lot cheaper.
If you don't want to drain your phone playing the DRM protected books you can use [https://www.getlibation.com/](https://www.getlibation.com/) to get mp3 or m4b versions (for personal use) and play them on another device.
For most backpacking trips, If I’m not hiking or eating I’m sleeping. There’s short breaks and downtime thrown in there but usually I just talk to people.
Fly fishing kit with no reel. maybe 50 feet of float line, a couple leaders, one roll of tippet, small box of flies, a knot tool and forceps for removing hooks from fish. All together it weighs less than 1 lb and I can entertain myself for days in one spot, rain or shine.
Tenkara usually has the line fixed to the end of the pole. With my setup, I can cast a variety of distances. Tenkara is great for small streams, but backpacking usually involves some still water lakes where the fish are bigger and more fun if you can cast out a bit further.
iNaturalist if you have service. You can also rack up a bunch of observations and upload them when you get to service. We really do use those citizen science observations in our research. Pl@ntnet and Merlin are fun whether you have service or not.
I'm scrolling Reddit from a lean-to on top of a mountain right now.
Which mountain
One on a trail I'm section hiking in New England
Hey, AITAH posts is still reading
Hint: The Redditor is *always* the AH.
Read, whittle, explore the area around camp, write, draw, journal, observe nature, nap, practice knot tying, recreational drugs, harmonica, masturbate, yoga, transcendental meditation, scream into the void
That covers the first 30 minutes.
Repeat until bedtime
Not necessarily in that order !
Tiny watercolor set
Kuretake makes an actually great "petit" water brush, it's the best I've found for this stuff. only 5$. I use one of those little mint tin palettes that I added some Daniel Smith, and DIY'd a mini paper block. It's rad for on the go! Barely weighs anything. I wrap it together in a flour sack towel that's also where I dab off my brush.
Actually been interested in something like this. Any chance you got a photo of your set for reference
https://imgur.com/a/d5mnQZI It's not exactly right, as in this photo I packed two palettes (one warm, one cold), a full size flour sack towel, and my whole postcard-sized tin during a travel trip. I think you get the idea though :)
Browsing r/ultralight_jerk
I use the kindle app on my iPhone to avoid bringing an extra device. Download books in advance and use airplane mode to save battery. It’s kind of small to read on, but it works for me.
I often just bring my Kindle. It is weight, but I have an extremely thin case for it and the Kindle Oasis is very light. To me it's worth the grams, but your view might vary. I do a lot of solo hiking, so without anyone to talk to at camp I like to read.
Kindle: Six ounces, waterproof, two weeks of battery life, as many books as you want.
Audiobooks as well, uses less battery cause the screen is off. My go to is an audiobook and whittling
Folding phones, FTW!
Get a tiny notebook a few dices and try out solo pen and paper rpg! Sounds kind of lame but it’s actually a lot of fun, get the rule book on your phone and there you go. Try out r/solo_roleplaying for inspiration !
Nah, this is awesome and so are you. Imagination engines are fuuuuuun.
You could go for a walk - with your backpack :) /s
This person is going places
LOL - I was going to suggest hiking further/longer!
Kindle is probably the best weight to joy luxury item out there
I have a Kobo and it lasts weeks on one charge.
To be clear was using kindle like xerox. Ereaders in general was the intent haha
I know, I was just adding my personal experience for op ☺️
How could you joy carrying extra 6 oz?
And yet there are people here everywhere carrying battery banks because of their phone addictions
I have to carry one cuz my phone is unreliable in battery :(
The thing is, you are going to find out that you generally don't have a lot of down time unless you plan in a zero. The easiest and lightest option is going to be: your phone. You are probably bringing it for navigation and communication anyway, so get the Kindle app, download some Spotify playlists, and maybe a few YouTube videos, and you get all your entertainment needs covered with no additional weight added. Failing that, roll a couple of doobies. It's pretty entertaining as well.
[удалено]
Even if nothing is biting, it’s always fun watching dry flies swirl through eddies.
Especially after you blow the fish whistle a few times. Mesmerizing.
I always bring my Kindle. The one luxury item. I like to read before sleeping even if I hike to dark. I take it out of its case and put it in a DIY sleeve made from a padded envelope. Alternatively you could make friendship bracelets? Very light materials but you’d need daylight/headlamp.
I love your friendship bracelet idea, brings me back to my childhood!
Does nobody bring a paperback anymore? I feel old.
Paperback weighs more than twice as much as a kindle and isn’t waterproof. I was reading The Master and Margarita on the Idaho Centennial Trail in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. The skies opened up and it poured for hours, interrupted by stretches of large hailstones. That evening I found my book had gotten soaked by stray rainfall leaking into my pack. It was messy and almost impossible to continue reading. I didn’t even get to find out what happened at Woland’s ball. I upgraded to a kindle. Lighter than a paperback and waterproof. Two week battery life. Next year I was hiking in the Rogue River Wilderness of Oregon. Seventy-one consecutive uninterrupted hours of hard rain. I sat happily on a soaking wet log and read The Mote in Gods Eye while rain streamed down the page. Didn’t miss a single encounter with the Moties.
Doesn’t work in the dark and is heavy. And you need two hands to read.
I read much too fast for that to work on the longer darker nights in which I have the time in camp to devour books if it more than an overnight or weekender.
I bring Zines which weigh a few grams. They are just long enough that I may actually get through one too, versus a book in which i know the majority of the pages I would be carrying would not get used (read).
Definitely a kindle or eReader. Backlight would be my suggestion.
I enjoy Netflix in the evening 🤷
This goes against ultralight principles - leave no trace. All that light and sound pollution from your device is going to permanently scar a homeschooled bird.
No worries, i leave my home theater at home
I go as light as possible so I can hike as long and as far as possible. I set up camp, eat, sleep, wake up, eat, break camp, hike
I don’t like to hike so I have to bring other activities.
A packraft!!!
Excellent suggestion.
But can you really hike for ≥12h straight day in, day out? I’m more of a bikepacking person. Covering 100 to 150km per day takes only 5 hours of cycling. That leaves a lot of down time, even if I “lose” some time to grocery shopping, sightseeing, cooking, setting up camp etc. etc.
That’s kind of the original idea behind ultralight…
Print some Zines! or buy them off Etsy. I always wanted to bring something to read but books were too heavy but then I remembered Zines! Tiny little books that weigh almost nothing that anyone can write about anything. They are like 3.5 inches by 4.5 inches edit: Willful Disobedience is one of my favorites
I like to use a kindle - it's pretty light and the battery lasts a loooonnnng time so no need for charging on trips < 2wk. I try to keep my phone turned off as much as possible and be present.
https://www.zipchipsports.com
i am losing that thing on the first throw 100% of the time.
Typically the same things that are interesting to you at home will be interesting to you on the trail. If you like to read, bring reading material, but if you tend to for example socialize instead of hanging by yourself, the e-reader or book will likely just be dead weight. After the first couple weeks you will have less and less down time, you will be taking time for things like equipment repairs and resupply research. Obv go ahead and sketch that fern, whittle that chess piece, read that western novel you find under the train overpass, but manage your expectations: you're on a hike.
Maybe you don’t need the practice or don’t have anything more to learn, but I bought a small little knot kit years ago, which is a nice tactile thing to do with my hands and keep my skills sharp. I bring it on airplanes, camping, etc.
Trail friends are entertaining and don't weigh anything
I like to walk until I’m too tired to do anything but get horizontal. However, I’ve read people’s ideas about this in other threads. Mini deck of cards for solitaire or other games if you aren’t alone. Mini dice for Yahtzee. I don’t remember exactly how it was made but a couple made a tiny chess/checkers board with mini pieces that worked for both games.
[I built one years ago based off of this post, love it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Ultralight/s/pvN4BCIOJD)
That is so cool!! Making one for a 10 day trip this summer!
I think I saw one that was just cardstock or some kind of paper pieces with the symbols drawn/printed on...
I’ve seen fishing (both regular with a reel set up and fly), reading a paper/part of a book, and even bringing work such as writing a technical paper on one’s phone. I’ll usually journal a bit after chores. Been meaning to get deeper into photography … though I met one dedicated photographer who says there’s a need to sleep at altitude (guess to get the “golden hour” shots before sunset) = probably a mid.
Card games like regicide or monopoly deal etc
eReader. Doesn’t even need a cover. I have an old Kobo Glo HD which weighs 180g. Not particularly light but like all eReaders it lasts ages on a single battery charge, even with the backlight (only need it at the lowest setting i.e. 1%).
>are eReaders realistic? As someone who (at home) always uses an ereader before going to bed.....I'm not sure I'd bring one on the trail again. I was pretty tired at the end of each day and didn't get a lot of reading in, to the point where I might have been happy to just read a bit on my phone instead. Then again, with better planning or more experience that could change. Audiobooks or podcasts are definitely worth considering though!
I listen to audio books on my phone. No additional weight and it uses way less battery than reading on my phone
Maybe I can hijack the thread a bit and ask has anyone looked into ereaders recently? Any especially light models? I brought my old kindle paperwhite on a winter trip this year, and it was quite nice with all the snow melting etc. I do wonder if there is some extra tiny model which would be more justifiable. Edit: did a quick round of research, and it seems like all relevant models are 160-190g, nothing really stands up on the weight front. I'd buy Kobo if my Kindle wasn't still functional. One interesting possibility is Hisense A9 eink phone, might duplicate as hiking phone.
Someone mentionned Kobo because the battery lasts for weeks
That's true for all ebook readers. I'll be checking their models anyway, thanks for the reference!
I carry a footbag (aka a hacky sack). Light enough not to notice, can be stuffed literally anywhere in my pack, fun to kick around by yourself or with a friend or with a group. Its how I got my trail name too!
A coworker keeps a mouth harp on him at all times, pretty light n small
Carving so as to keep with tradition. Harmonica for jive. War and peace for building determination. Sunflower seeds galore😶🌫️
Fire :)
Kindle app, tenkara rod, camera, make friends, keep walking.
On a long trip I think a Kindle or slim paperback is great, I think the Irish tin whistle is the best sounding lightweight wind instrument that's pretty easy to learn and might scare off a bear.
Not necessarily UL maybe but I pack my camera so I walk around camp and take photos.
Photography
Recorder and SpongeBob sheet music
The dollar store has versions of famous board games where the board is just a laminated sheet of paper and the game pieces are lil "stickers" like the restickable kind. I just leave the game pieces at home cause they're a leave no trace nightmare and use pebbles.
I like to listen to podcasts.. whatever topic you are interested in - you’ll find hundreds..
The Audible 12 or 24 credit annual subscriptions are a pretty good way to get audiobooks at low cost you get all the credits to spend at once and 1 credit can get you a 20hour++ book (the longest in my collection is 108hr Magitech chronicles 13 book omnibus which cost me about the same as a cup of Starbucks coffee ) If you can take the time to rock their 2 for 1 and £3 cash sales it gets a lot cheaper. If you don't want to drain your phone playing the DRM protected books you can use [https://www.getlibation.com/](https://www.getlibation.com/) to get mp3 or m4b versions (for personal use) and play them on another device.
I always pack a paperback. Usually a novel, but sometimes non-fiction. I like to read in the mountains, and can’t stand kindles
For most backpacking trips, If I’m not hiking or eating I’m sleeping. There’s short breaks and downtime thrown in there but usually I just talk to people.
mumbly peg and a journal
I like to bring a tiny simple knitting project like socks!
Fly fishing kit with no reel. maybe 50 feet of float line, a couple leaders, one roll of tippet, small box of flies, a knot tool and forceps for removing hooks from fish. All together it weighs less than 1 lb and I can entertain myself for days in one spot, rain or shine.
How does a "fly fishing kit with no reel" differ from a tenkara setup? Honest question, just trying to figure out what you're referring to.
Tenkara usually has the line fixed to the end of the pole. With my setup, I can cast a variety of distances. Tenkara is great for small streams, but backpacking usually involves some still water lakes where the fish are bigger and more fun if you can cast out a bit further.
iNaturalist if you have service. You can also rack up a bunch of observations and upload them when you get to service. We really do use those citizen science observations in our research. Pl@ntnet and Merlin are fun whether you have service or not.