Backpacking Kit
Editors’ Picks
Unfiltered favorites from the Better Trail team.
You’ve landed on a fun page. Throughout our extensive gear coverage on Better Trail, we are constantly balancing factors such as potential use cases, value, build quality, and the internal opinions of our testers and editors. But this kit has the goods. It’s the gear that, after all the dust settles and the hundreds of hours of testing are done, our editors fight over, keep in their closets, and depend on for their personal mountain missions. Simply put, it’s the crème de la crème of backpacking gear. Bon appétit.
Big Agnes Copper Spur UL2 ($600)
ULA Equipment Circuit ($300)
Sea to Summit Spark 15 ($549)
Nemo Tensor All-Season ($220)
La Sportiva Prodigio Max ($185)
Arc'teryx Gamma SL ($160)
Rab Mythic G ($550)
Patagonia Granite Crest ($289)
Black Diamond Distance Carbon Z ($220)
Jetboil MiniMo Cooking System ($180)
HydraPak 42mm Filter Cap ($40)
Nemo Moonlite Elite ($180)
Our favorite do-it-all backpacking tent, the Copper Spur balances a lightweight and packable design with uncompromised livability and convenience. The design and materials exude premium quality.
Interior Space
Weight & Packed Size
Weather Protection
Durability
Ease of Use
Sustainability
The Circuit is one of the best ultralight and thru-hiking packs, period. It's available in a wide range of sizes and offers impressive load carrying for its weight. While it lacks the Dyneema construction found in many other ultralight packs, the Robic nylon is impressively hardwearing.
Comfort
Organization
Weight
Durability
Water Resistance
Sustainability
The Spark is all about simple design and premium materials, and this light, warm mummy bag is packable enough for any backpacking trip. It lacks the bells and whistles of some other bags, but that’s just fine with us.
Warmth / Weight
Comfort
Features
Durability
Water Resistance
Sustainability
We think the Nemo Tensor All-Season is the best all-around backpacking pad on the market. You can shave a tiny bit of weight with other models, but we like the balance of weight, cushion, and warmth here.
Comfort
Warmth / Weight
Packed Size
Durability
Ease of Use
Sustainability
The endurance champ of the Prodigio series, the Max is built for all-day (or multi-day) comfort and durability. Designed as a long-distance trail runner, it also makes for an excellent hiking shoe for long days, fast pushes, on- and off-trail terrain.
Comfort
Support and Stability
Traction
Durability
Foot Protection
Sustainability
The lightest pant in the Gamma series, the SL blends the stretchy, weather-resistant performance of a softshell with a streamlined build tuned for mild mountain conditions. It’s an excellent choice for high-alpine travel in summer, but can feel overkill for warm, below-treeline outings.
Comfort & Mobility
Durability
Breathability
Weather Resistance
Features
Sustainability
We can’t believe Rab managed to pack this much warmth into such a lightweight jacket. You’ll pay a pretty penny for it, and it's unsurprisingly fragile, but the Mythic G is the only sub-10-ounce jacket we know of that can handle freezing temperatures.
Warmth
Weight & Packability
Comfort
Durability
Weather Resistance
Sustainability
The Granite Crest is a breathable, comfortable, and highly mobile rain jacket with a full suite of performance-oriented features, including a helmet-compatible hood and watertight zippers.
Weather Protection
Comfort
Breathability
Weight & Packability
Durability
Sustainability
For the best combination of lightweight and packable, the Distance Carbon Z is the pole to get. Our testers swear by this ultralight offering for moving fast in the mountains with minimal weight—despite its high price, middling durability, and lack of adjustability.
Comfort
Durability
Weight
Packed Size
Features
Sustainability
There may be faster and more powerful stoves, but the MiniMo does everything well, from boiling water to simmering noodles. With an included pot and compact packed size, it’s our stove of choice for most backcountry adventures.
One of the most refined bottle filters on the market, the HydraPak Filter Cap threads onto any bottle with a 42-millimeter opening—the standard size for HydraPak soft flasks—and lets you filter water straight into your mouth or another vessel. It’s compact, lightweight, and refreshingly easy to clean.
User Friendliness
Filtering Speed
Weight & Packed Size
Durability
Maintenance
Sustainability
With reclining capabilities and a quality build, the Moonilte Elite is one of the top backpacking chairs on the market. At a total weight of just 1 pound 2 ounces (without the carrying bag), you’d be hard-pressed to find as much bang for buck in terms of backcountry comfort.
About Our Editor’s Picks Backpacking Kit
At Better Trail, we think you can go too ultralight—unless you are a thru-hiker or hardcore ounce-counting is your thing. Nowadays, some incredible gear offerings balance low weight, decent comfort, and quality materials that should last.
Our Editor’s Picks do exactly that: the core “Big Three” items of tent, backpack, and sleeping bag and pad weigh in at just 6 pounds 14.3 total ounces for the lot (with a 2-person tent, we might add), yet they are downright luxurious for a backcountry set-up. You can cut more weight with a shelter instead of a proper tent, or a quilt instead of a mummy bag. Heck, you use half a foam pad for your torso and put your pack under your legs if you so please. But we appreciate balance, and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve here.
On the insulation front, down jackets for the backcountry are fairly straightforward: it's all about maximum warmth for the weight. There are several excellent 850-fill jackets to choose from (the Mountain Hardwear Ghost Whisperer, Arc’teryx Cerium, and more), but the 1,000-fill-power Rab Mythic G lives up to its name at just 9.8 ounces. While many of the popular lightweight jackets perform great until the temps dip down toward freezing, the Mythic G can handle cold better than the rest. We still grab our Ghost Whisperer for milder outings, but the Rab wins in the alpine.
On the shell front, the Patagonia Granite Crest is a really nice option for backpacking. The flexible and relatively thin shell is comfortable, quiet, and easy to move in. And we appreciate the performance-oriented features, including a helmet-compatible hood, watertight zippers, and hipbelt-compatible pockets. You can trim ounces with a hardshell like the Arc’teryx Beta SL, but that will set you back another $220 and has a more crinkly feel.
Hiking footwear is deeply personal. The right choice depends on the terrain you are tackling and fit, among other factors, but we do have our favorites. To start with a little background: Hoka brought max cushioning to trail footwear about a decade ago, and it changed the game. Around the same period, more people began looking beyond traditional hiking boots in favor of lighter-weight hiking shoes or trail runners (“one pound on your feet equals five pounds on your back”). Many folks, and especially Gen Z and those adjacent, keep it light and fast.
We still like our Hokas (although we do yearn for Speedgoats of versions past), but European brand La Sportiva has quietly upped the ante. In the Prodigio line, the Max is the best model for backpacking, offering a nice dose of stability to help with the weight of your backpack. We put ours through the ringer during a rather rough trip in Colorado’s Weminuche wilderness—through a variety of terrain and in temperatures from 20 to 80 degrees—and they couldn’t have performed better. Not only were they more comfortable and grippy than our Hokas, they were much better for the wear. And for trail runners, the La Sportiva Prodigio Pro offers even more springiness.
Like footwear, food and hydration preferences can run the gamut, and it’s largely up to you how much you want to carry. On the water filtration front, bottle filters have been a total game-changer and are all that we carry these days. If you have an existing soft flask, HydraPak's nifty 42mm Filter Cap is an easy add on, or you can buy the HydraPak Flux+ 1.5L ($60) for an all-in-one setup. With these handy filters, you can drink on the go or squeeze filtered water into a separate vessel for later. Once you are at camp, they are a bit more effort than gravity filters, but smaller and cheaper too. Once you go with a bottle filter, you never go back.
Cooking and food are a bit more complicated. Dehydrated meals have come a long way, to the point where they taste pretty darn decent and can even border on healthy (we even recognize most of the ingredients). We try to do as follows: bring as much fresh food as you can and are willing to carry on the first day. Refrigeration should not be an issue yet, and cured meats and cheeses can last for a while in the mountains in your bag when temperatures aren’t too high (don’t take our word for this—your food safety decisions are yours and yours only). From there, dehydrated meals are so convenient that we’ll tolerate them for the following nights, along with a chocolate treat or something small and fresh for morale.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention an ultralight backpacking chair. This is an oft-debated subject at trailheads around the country, but we can say one thing with certainty: When you get to that beautiful high country campsite after a long day on the trail, the people without the chair feel like suckers while the chair carriers think that one extra pound was worth its weight in gold. You make the call, but we like the Nemo Moonlite Elite if you’re asking.
Is the Editors’ Picks Backpacking Kit for You?
You can’t go wrong with any of the gear in our Editors’ Kit—from your tent and backpack to your hiking shoes and shell jacket—it’s some of the best equipment on the market and has our full stamp of approval after seasons (and in some cases, years) of use. But if you already have a sense of your backpacking style, one of our other kits might suit you even better.
For those who like traveling light and moving quickly, check out our Ultralight Backpacking Kit.
If you want to lighten up but aren’t ready to take the full plunge, we’ve created a fun Ultralight Curious Backpacking Kit.
For those seeking maximum comfort in the backcountry, we’ve put together a Comfort Backpacking Kit.
For casual folks who don’t want to spend an arm and a leg on gear, we’ve built a great Beginner / Budget Backpacking Kit.
