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 notably efficient for gear shakedowns in teams the place individuals can evaluate the quantity and area that their gear requires with different individuals’s backpack contents.
Instructions
To take part on this problem, put all the gear you carry inside your backpack, within the exterior pockets, or lashed to the skin, right into a 5-gallon bucket. Go away 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 burden of the gear within the bucket, however whether or not the gear suits within the bucket. Gear that’s extremely compressible and requires much less quantity is nearly all the time lighter, if solely since you want a smaller quantity and a lighter backpack to hold it.
Should you can’t get all your backpacking gear right into a five-gallon bucket, there are some widespread gear swaps or removals that you need to use to scale back the quantity 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 carry additional garments gained’t be capable of get as a lot gear into the bucket, which gives a possibility to undergo their pack and remove pointless objects.
Enjoyable the 5 Gallon Problem
Should you’re attempting the 5 Gallon Problem with a gaggle, and it’s clear nobody goes to have the ability to match all of their gear into the bucket, you may calm down the principles a bit by letting members miss a shared merchandise like a tent or a cumbersome merchandise like a sleeping bag. Going by way of the train will nonetheless have benefit as a result of members will see the influence that bringing additional garments, cumbersome cooking gear, or a big sleeping pad can have on the quantity of their gear.
Credit
I didn’t invent the 5 Gallon Problem. I realized about it from two mates named Ken “DripDry” Holder and Lee “RevLee” Fields. They use it to show Boy Scouts and their dad and mom about the advantages of bringing much less pointless gear on backpacking journeys.
I believe the 5 Gallon Problem is an excellent concept 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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