Ultralight: The Gear Tracking App I’m Leaving LighterPack For
BY ASH CZARNOTA
When every gram counts, ultralight backpackers often rely on crowdsourced gear databases, expert blogs, and online communities to optimize their base weight. Among these UL resources, a website called LighterPack has established itself as the preferred tool for tracking and visualizing pack weight.
The site allows users to create and manage packing lists tailored to different trips as well as organize their gear by category. It also displays useful metrics like total, consumable, worn, and base pack weight, along with the ability to share a link to your list with other hikers. The latter is what’s made LighterPack such a fixture in the UL community. Many ultralight enthusiasts enjoy perusing other hikers’ gear lists to glean insights and ideas about how to lighten their own load. But for all of LighterPack’s usefulness, its clunky mobile interface and absence of a dedicated app have long been a sore spot for users.
Does a better alternative exist? Combing through the app store, it was slim pickings for pack weight trackers that could hold their own against LighterPack. But one app did manage to stand out. PackLight offers the comprehensive functionality of LighterPack in a user-friendly application for iOS (sorry Android users).
Similar to its competitor, PackLight allows you to build out a gear repository, group your gear into categories, create unique packing lists for each adventure, and visualize your pack weight distribution based on category. You can also import your existing LighterPack lists into the app for convenient data migration. Best of all, PackLight lets you convert your gear list into a packing checklist to ensure nothing gets left behind (it’s always an extra pair of socks for me). PackLight is a completely free-to-use app that doesn't burden its users with obnoxious and intrusive mobile game or casino slots ads.
My only gripe is that the app exports gear lists as TXT files, which aren’t supported on sites like Reddit where many UL-ers turn to for pack shakedowns. If you’re keen on sharing your pack list with others for feedback or some good old-fashioned UL peacocking, LighterPack is still probably your best bet. But PackLight has you covered with everything else.
