This is nearly my entire gear setup for the Te Araroa, the details can be found here on my Lighterpack page, which I won’t change after the hike, instead I will set up a new one when I’m finished to detail what I did and didn’t keep. I’m missing water bottles, I’m planning on using smartwater bottles or similar, which I’ll pick up when I get there. The picture doesn’t show my camp pillow, long johns or camp socks because they are in my hammock pocket and I didn’t realize until I packed up, or my shoes which I shipped to my friend Kathleen in San Francisco (which is where I fly out of the USA from). I’ll only carry 2 of the three shirts at a time and I might ditch the hammock for a tent after the north Island and I don’t anticipate using liner socks, however I’ve seen so many people highly recommend them that I’m taking them in case I need them.
The big item to the far right is my hammock, sleeping bag and underquilt (looks big uncompressed) all bundled up on top of the Zpacks airplane bag which I’ll use as a dry bag on the hike, my HMG 3400 backpack is supposed to be water proof, so if I’m feeling like I don’t need that it might end up in my bounce box. You can see the purple spoon next to my bamboo spoon, my nephew Sam gave it to me right before I left and told me “take this to remember me by”, so of course I am. The bag next to my backpack and above my hat has my wool cap, wool gloves, rain kilt, rain pants and rain gloves in it.
In total it’s a 20 lb base weight (not counting my clothes, shoes, water and food) and then almost 6 lbs of camera gear, so basically 14 lbs of actual hiking gear, and I’m happy with that. I considered a lot of other camera options which wouldn’t have been as heavy, and the zoom lens is more of a cheap and light option than a quality option, but ultimately decided that it was worth it to capture this trip the way I’d really want to, particularly for landscapes.