A ten dollar kitchen scale beats every spec sheet ever published. Here is how to get numbers you can trust, in about an hour.
When Tumpline suggests a weight, it shows it with a tilde — ~370 g — because it is the manufacturer's published figure, and published figures are approximations of somebody else's copy of the item. Your copy differs. Shoes are quoted for one reference size (often a men's US 9) and swing 10–15% across the size run. Clothing is quoted for size M. Sleeping bags come in regular and long. Tents are quoted as “minimum trail weight”, which quietly leaves out the stakes, the stuff sacks, and sometimes the guylines you will actually carry. And almost nothing is quoted the way you pack it — with the repair patch inside the pad's sack, the bag liner stuffed in with the bag, the case on the phone.
None of this makes the estimates useless — they are great for planning and comparing. But once you own the thing, weigh the thing. Your scale reports what your back will carry.
A basic digital kitchen scale is the right tool: 1 g resolution (0.1 g is unnecessary), capacity of 3–5 kg, flat platform. New, these run $15–25; thrift stores are full of them. For things too big or awkward for the platform — the loaded pack itself, a canoe barrel — a hanging luggage scale (10–50 kg range) covers the top end.
Two habits keep readings honest: let the scale zero on a hard, level surface (not carpet), and for light items use the tare trick — put a bowl on the scale, press tare to zero it out, then drop in the item. Small stuff like tent stakes or pills can be weighed several-at-a-time and divided.
The single most useful rule: weigh each item in its ready-to-pack state, as one unit. The sleeping bag in its stuff sack. The tent with the stakes, poles, and bags you actually bring — or weighed as separate line items if you split them between packs. The phone in its case. The headlamp with its batteries in. The first aid kit assembled, not as twenty tiny entries.
Type your measured weight straight over the estimate — the tilde disappears, and from then on the app treats it as ground truth. The weight box takes whatever your scale speaks: 370, 370 g, 0.37 kg, 13 oz, even 1 lb 5 oz. If your gear locker has the same item in other trips, one correction can update it everywhere.
Weighing session tip: do it once, ruthlessly, for everything you own that might ever go in a pack — not per trip. An hour with a scale and a table of gear turns every future packing list into a lookup instead of a project.
Tumpline splits your list three ways. Worn is what is on your body — boots, hat, trekking poles in hand — and stays out of every pack number. Base weight is the permanent gear in the pack: everything except consumables. Pack weight is base weight plus consumables at their start-of-day weight — what you actually lift.
| Class | Base weight |
|---|---|
| Superultralight (SUL) | under 2.3 kg / 5 lb |
| Ultralight (UL) | under 4.5 kg / 10 lb |
| Lightweight | under 9 kg / 20 lb |
| Traditional | over 9 kg / 20 lb |
Treat the classes as mile markers, not moral categories. The right pack is the lightest one that safely handles your conditions — and honest weights are how you find out where you truly stand before deciding what, if anything, to change.
When you do lean on published figures — for gear you have not bought yet — read them with these in mind. Trail weight vs packaged weight: tent makers publish both; trail (minimum) weight excludes stakes and sacks, packaged weight is everything in the box. Neither is exactly what you will carry. Pounds-and-ounces arithmetic: 2 lb 3 oz is 992 g, not 2.3 lb — a surprising number of websites (and people) fumble this conversion. Size and sex variants: a women's or small version can differ by 15% or more; check which variant the number describes. “As low as”: a quoted weight for the smallest size in the lightest configuration. Your scale settles all arguments.