Independent buying guides
For hikers and weekend campers choosing a tent, pack and sleep system in order. Each guide answers one question, cites manufacturer and park-service figures with check dates, and shows the arithmetic in the pack-weight calculator.
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How to choose
Buy the sleep system first, the shelter second and the pack last. The order decides whether a $750 kit costs $7.50 a night or $25.00.
Photo: nikhil more · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Budget and prices
An itemised two-night trip for two: park pass, site, gear per night, fuel, food and driving. About $226, and the levers that move it.
Photo: Sipher · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Packing and load
Where the weight in a 27 lb load actually sits, which pounds are free to lose, and what the rest cost per pound once the free ones are gone.
Photo: Jotpe · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Each calculator shows its formula, units and assumptions. Nothing is estimated for you in secret.
Adds up a kit list against a weight target and a body-weight guideline.
total = base weight + consumables (water litres x 1 kg + food days x food per day); share of body weight = total / body weight x 100
What a cross-border order really costs once shipping, duty and tax are added.
landed cost = (item price + shipping) + duty + tax, where duty = item price x duty rate, and tax = (item price + shipping + duty) x tax rate
Turns a price into a cost per use, so a dear item used often can be compared with a cheap one used rarely.
cost per use = (price + consumables over the whole life) / (uses per week x 52 x years)
The decisions that actually change what you end up with.
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Photo: Sipher · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Weight, volume and what gets left behind.
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Photo: ALAN SCHMIERER · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Temperature, weather and terrain, with real numbers.
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Photo: User:James086 · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
What the total comes to once everything is counted.
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Photo: Claus Ableiter · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Intervals, parts and what they cost.
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Photo: Jotpe · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Standards, warnings and the checks worth doing.
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Photo: nikhil more · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Every figure in a guide is taken from a named source, with the date it was checked. Where a number is an assumption or an example, it says so in the same sentence.
We do not run paid product tests, we do not publish reader reviews, and we do not claim to have handled every product mentioned. Where a claim needs a lab or a long-term test we do not have, the guide says that plainly.
Photographs are free-licence images from Wikimedia Commons or Openverse, credited to the photographer with the licence named. Charts are drawn from the figures printed in the same guide.
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