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See Hawk's complete packing list.

OTHER GEAR  I packed a 4-ounce aluminum flashlight, but a 2-ounce headlamp is really the way to go, Hawk says. Julie packed two headlamps, one with a lower power for reading. Hawk’s advice to her: buy a single headlamp with variable light strength.

This was probably our most interesting category, as I didn’t bring nearly enough gear–no Moleskin for blisters, no stuff sacks or rope to hoist my food out of the reach of animals, no boot gaiters to keep out dirt. Julie was clearly a smart packer, using trial-size bottles and incorporating homemade solutions, like using a cheap piece of spare plastic for her tent footprint. She forgot nothing that was essential, but…she also packed too much.

A bivy sack for medical emergencies? Hawk asks. Extra batteries? When packing light, you need to improvise, he stressed. For instance, Julie used a huge carabiner as a weight when throwing rope over a branch to hang her food. A more efficient idea, Hawk says, would be to tie the rope to a sack with a rock in it.

“Bring what you know you’re going to need,” he says. “Take a two-day wilderness first-aid course, which is big on making do with what you have when you have to help someone, rather than the giant first-aid kit and the bivy sack. It’s a case where knowledge, skills, and experience can substitute for pounds.”

TOILETRIES Hawk told Julie to dump her deodorant. She argued that it was just a trial size, but to no avail.

Hawk had similar disdain for my leave-in hair conditioner–“You’re not going to be showering”–my mouthwash, and my electric toothbrush. He tossed aside one of my two rolls of toilet paper and removed the cardboard from the remaining one. “That’s a half an ounce right there,” he says, proudly. Total weight savings: about a pound.

Hawk also threw aside my magazine and told Julie, a diplomatic way, that her hardcover hiking journal was excessive. But it was the one item, she says, that was worth its weight. “I make those myself, and I can only make them so small. It’s not just a journal about that one hike, but a journal about the whole season.”

FOOD You need food, so Hawk was most lenient in this area. On average a hiker consumes two pounds a day, so any decent mix of protein and carbohydrates will do, he says. (No surprises here: oatmeal for breakfast, peanut butter or almond butter sandwiches for lunch, some type of rice dish or macaroni and cheese for dinner.) If you like to snack on energy bars, pack two per day. Hawk liked my plastic peanut butter jar (lighter than glass) and praised any dehydrated food, be it meat, fruit, vegetable, or sauces. “You can dehydrate all kinds of stuff. You add water to it and it’s close to what it was in the jar.”

Julie’s tip? Panini sandwiches. “They’re pressed, so you don’t have to worry about your bread getting smushed,” she says. And my big, fat hazelnut chocolate bar? Bring it, Hawk says. “By bringing your base weight down, it allows you to bring more foods you like, or that extra something that is going to give you some extra energy on that last day.”

Hey, with all my newfound pack space, I’ll take two.

-Peter DeMarco is a freelance writer living in Somerville, Mass.

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