Opinion – É Logo Ali: Take that weight off your shoulders

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When, in 2015, I left Brazil to do the 450km planned for 20 days of the Camino de Santiago, in Spain, the backpack weighed 11kg. In it were clothes to visit the family and, at the end of the day, wander around Barcelona for a few days. After the first social leg of the trip, I dispatched 4gk of items to the remaining post office in Barcelona. I started the walk, like this, with 7kg, backpack weight included.


Before continuing, a parenthesis. The option I chose, leaving my family’s city, was not exclusively the most famous trail, the French Way, which leaves the Pyrenees, with 800km in total. I didn’t have time to do all of this at the pace I knew I could, and some of my colleagues only had three weeks’ vacation. We then opted for an alternative route, one of the many available, the Southeast Way. Probably the worst choice in a summer with temperatures above 40 degrees. It’s a long stretch with virtually no trees, with lots of dust, sunflowers, wheat, more dust, and hours on end without coming across a living being — there was a day when we only found one rabbit in 27km. Stolen from amateurs who only intercepted the French Way after three interminable days. But let’s go.



In the first stage, 26 km after leaving the small town of Medina del Campo and arriving in Tordesillas (yes, the one in the treaty that in 1494 divided the world into two large estates for Spain and Portugal), I decided that 7kg would be too much for my then nearly sixty back. From there, I already dispatched another 2 kg of superfluous items, which, I guarantee, I didn’t miss any until the end of the trip.


What’s left, anyway?

Reducing the clutter to a minimum, there were two trail t-shirts, two panties, two tops, two pairs of socks, flip-flops and shorts to air out the body at the end of each day. In the toiletry bag, body and face moisturizer, sunscreen, shampoo and deodorant, all out of the original packaging, made of stiffer and heavier materials, and packed in little tubes bought at 1.99, the lightest I found.

Not all products would last the entire journey, of course, but it paid me more to buy a new shampoo in the middle of the trip than to carry the original packaging. Every vertebra in my spine was grateful, even paying for the waste in euros. And for times when the body was revolted by the excessive journey, on daily journeys of up to 31km, the basic pharmacy contained analgesics, antiallergic, blister dressings, antiseptic spray and intestinal flora replenishers. Nobody wants piriri in the middle of the woods, do they?

Other than that, a few heavier items: the 680g summer sleeping bag, because you never know which bed you’re going to throw your exhausted body into; the drizzle, a kind of waterproof poncho with a hood that covers the person and their backpack, resulting in a version of something that resembles a rubber camel and weighs 450g; and two half-liter water bottles. These items alone, plus the 40-liter backpack which, when empty, weighs just under 1kg, added up to 3.13kg, or 65% of the total. On the body, in addition to hiking pants (avoid jeans, which when wet take forever to dry!) ​​and waterproof boots (despite the heat, they protect the ankles from sprains better than the tempting papetes), poles (I use two, some people like to use just one, but for me, every extra help is a blessing), a fanny pack (ignore your fashion consultant, please!) containing cell phone, charger, documents, money, and some jellybeans to entertain your mouth between destinations. Cap, glasses and courage completed the pilgrim allegory.

Well, if so far we have been talking about a walk that, despite being long and sometimes heavy, has bars and guaranteed landings every few kilometers for the most part, this is not the rule of trails on the planet — and in Brazil, much less. Most require greater planning of the provisions and equipment that will be needed to complete the project. And that’s where people who have experience in traveling light and saving the loin come in. Hold your breath, because they know what they’re talking about.

What does someone who understands the subject say?

The idea of ​​environmental engineer Maurício D. Melati, 34, to create a YouTube channel to help make life easier for hikers was born when he found, in the heart of Patagonia, a hiker who was carrying an 80-liter backpack “up to the stalk of junk” , and a second smaller backpack on the chest. Faced with the suffering of the creature, and after convincing him to “abandon five cans of vegetable selection” and redistribute the weight in a more rational way, he decided to share the knowledge acquired over decades of learning and perrengues in videos that are easy to understand for lay people. or not so much.

Thus, the Congelado Graxaím was born, a name inspired by a graxaím (dog-of-the-forest common in the south of the country) found, of course, frozen standing in Aparados da Serra, a region in Rio Grande do Sul that Melati says is one of the ones he likes to visit the most. . After all, he well knew what it was like to have a frostbite principle in your fingertips (called a frostnip by the insiders) because of inadequate equipment for a venture on Aconcagua.

For Melati, it is important to keep in mind that risks will always be inherent to the activity. And he cites a study carried out in 2018 by a group of researchers from the University of California and Louisiana, with more than 700 people on the 354 km that form the John Muir Trail, in California (USA). In the survey, the weight of the backpack, which is more relevant than the age or weight of the interviewee, ranks among the highest risk factors for getting injured, getting sick or having to be evacuated.

Before that, in 2009, another group of researchers from the Harvard Medical School and important hospitals in Boston, in the United States, had published the results of a survey carried out to assess the impacts of footwear and the weight of backpacks on the body of long-distance hikers. distance. The main conclusion was that, more than the chosen footwear, although it made some difference, the biggest cause of problems was the excess weight on the back.

“Thinking smart about light walking equipment helps with safety and risk reduction, but it’s important to consider planning, physical and psychological preparation” before tackling a long walk, such as the one cited in the study. “But in my experience, not overloading the backpack helps at all these points,” he adds.

For psychiatrist, hebiatra and experienced hiker Rodrigo Rodriguez, 47, there is a confusion between going light and going without comfort and in an insecure way. “By itself, going light immediately translates into safety and comfort. Going light means you experience less wear and tear and fatigue, which is reflected in fewer injuries and less risk of falls and other accidents, and comfort while walking is much greater.” explains, corroborating the studies cited.

Don’t take your fears for a ride

But Rodriguez warns: “The big thing is to go light without being stupidly light. Carrying enough water or food for the allotted time, for example, is essential. Emergency and safety equipment should never be underestimated or left behind.” remember. And about comfort, he points out that it’s important to consider “what gives real comfort and what gives psychological or derisory comfort.” As an example, he cites the choice between gas stoves and alcohol spirits. “Stoves are faster, you’ll have your dinner earlier, but it’s 5-8 minutes apart. Is that real comfort? Or will the 500 grams less from a lighter kitchen kit be better?”

And if traveling light is the consumer dream of most mortals who have already put a backpack on their backs, Rodriguez points out that the acquisition of equipment must occur in an organized manner. “Two ideas encapsulate this aspect,” he says. “First, don’t carry your fears, don’t carry equipment that psychologically mitigates these fears if they have little foundation”, he lists.

“Second, change equipment for techniques. It is common for hikers to put everything in several separate bags and necessaires, but if you add the weight of all this, you easily go to 1kg, which can be eliminated by arranging the backpack in a technical and adequate way”, continues —to the face of this interviewer, who usually does just that, filling her backpack with bags, bags and the like. There!

Melati agrees that “comfort is very subjective”, but points out that in the current stage of supply and equipment technology, a radical choice is not necessary. For many, traveling light is to distort the “root” side of sports and there are those who argue that that extra portion of guava paste cannot be missing from the luggage. However, for Melati, “in the current stage of equipment supply and technology, it is not necessary to give up comfort to walk light”. OK, how about offsetting the weight of the guava with a less clunky backpack?

Melati also rejects the common image that lighter equipment is necessarily more expensive, as it is mostly imported. “Many people end up accumulating a lot of average equipment at home and, in the end, the sum of this would be enough to buy a single good equipment, and we already have some good national products”, he guarantees.

The key to avoiding filling your closet with junk that will never be used again, according to Rodriguez, is analyzing the intended script. “Brazilians think that research, study and science are uninteresting, but there is an infinity of good quality texts on the internet to learn before going out shopping for equipment and escaping from holes”. Melati, in turn, suggests creating a spreadsheet of basic items, with their weights, and the demand that a good survey among more experienced people on that specific trail can help to identify. In some places, carrying a few extra liters of water can be essential — and water is heavy. Maybe it’s time to leave the guava fruit aside again.

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