How much gear is too much?

So a bunch of us are planning a trip for next week that means four nights of camping, and it also involves hauling a lot of heavy gear on top of two small cars. It occurred to us that everything we need to take, including two inflatable rafts, probably won’t fit inside the cars, so we started to discuss loading the gear on top of the cars.

(istock)

It seems to me that the things we’re loading have a strong potential to scratch the vehicles’ roofs – neither car has a roof rack or side rails – and in Utah, our destination, it’s possible it’s illegal for us to simply strap the gear onto the roof the way we’re proposing. So I found a site that sells inflatable racks that use the roof to stabilize the load. 

But that triggered a heated conversation about spending money versus making do with what we have. Which is something that comes up a lot lately, in the face of downsizing and layoffs and a rough economy.

I was raised to take care of the things I already own, which is why I was mentioning that we might be thinking about damaging the rooftops of the cars we’re taking. But some in the group were less worried about damage than spending more money on a trip that’s already starting to be costly because of money we’d spent for more gear.

Of course, to the people who make the gear, the fact that we’re all spending less on it these days is a concern, too.

But there’s also definitely a question of, how much is too much gear? Long ago I remember reading the story of Paul Petzoldt’s first ascent of the Grand Teton, which he did not only without oxygen but also in cowboy boots. It’s true, he later founded the National Outdoor Leadership School in 1965, which stressed preparedness, but it certainly didn’t say you had to buy $5,000 worth of stuff to get anywhere.

Let’s face it, too: There’s a lot of stuff being made out there that’s not only unnecessary, but poorly made and overpriced. As we get older, we want more convenience and we’re willing to pay for it, and there are plenty of companies out there willing to exploit it. (Exhibit A: air-conditioned clothing. Seriously) 

Look in your garage right now, though, and share with the class how many items are in it that seemed perfect at the time – you had to have it! you couldn’t live without it! – and are now collecting dust. Fitness equipment seems to be the all-time leader in things-we-buy-and-use-once, but camping gear often winds up in the top five.

This car rack discussion led us all to do a quick perusal of our own garages and basements to see what was lying around, and we were all a bit chagrined to find quite a bit of gear that had been bought, used once or twice and then never used again. I have two camp stoves that never quite fit the types of backpacking I was doing and thus never got used, along with a water filtration system and two oddly sized coolers that were too small to make sense. Also: ski carriers for the backcountry, an enormous but cool-looking lantern that sucks battery juice and more backpacks that were used once and tossed in a pile than I care to admit.

The take-away, I guess, is that going forward, I’m going to be more judicious about what I spend money on. 

And we decided against the inflatable car rack. We’ll see how it goes! 

What do you think about this? And what do you have lurking in your garage or basement that you haven't used in a long time, or never?

The roadtripster is the handle of a longtime Coloradan who travels the country by any means possible, sometimes in an RV, sometimes car camping or in the backcountry, with kids and without.