Independent buying guides
For hikers and campers packing for Canadian shoulder seasons and cold nights. Each guide takes one buying question, cites the figures behind the answer with the date they were checked, and shows the formula inside every calculator.
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How to choose
Pick the bag from the coldest night, not the average one. What the label on a Canadian tent must carry, and why nothing that burns fuel goes inside it.
Photo: nikhil more · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Budget and prices
Price the four core items, add the tax the till adds, then divide by nights rather than years. The break-even against renting is a single division.
Photo: Jotpe · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Packing and load
Separate base weight from consumables, weigh everything once, and cut in order. On an 11.1 kg example load, food and water are 37% of what you carry.
Photo: Olympic National Park · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
The decisions that actually change what you end up with.
1
Photo: Sipher · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Weight, volume and what gets left behind.
1
Photo: ALAN SCHMIERER · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Temperature, weather and terrain, with real numbers.
0
Photo: User:James086 · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
What the total comes to once everything is counted.
1
Photo: Claus Ableiter · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Intervals, parts and what they cost.
0
Photo: Jotpe · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Standards, warnings and the checks worth doing.
0
Photo: nikhil more · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Each calculator shows its formula, units and assumptions. Nothing is estimated for you in secret.
Adds up a kit list against a weight target and a body-weight guideline.
total = base weight + consumables (water litres x 1 kg + food days x food per day); share of body weight = total / body weight x 100
What a cross-border order really costs once shipping, duty and tax are added.
landed cost = (item price + shipping) + duty + tax, where duty = item price x duty rate, and tax = (item price + shipping + duty) x tax rate
Turns a price into a cost per use, so a dear item used often can be compared with a cheap one used rarely.
cost per use = (price + consumables over the whole life) / (uses per week x 52 x years)
Every figure in a guide is taken from a named source, with the date it was checked. Where a number is an assumption or an example, it says so in the same sentence.
We do not run paid product tests, we do not publish reader reviews, and we do not claim to have handled every product mentioned. Where a claim needs a lab or a long-term test we do not have, the guide says that plainly.
Photographs are free-licence images from Wikimedia Commons or Openverse, credited to the photographer with the licence named. Charts are drawn from the figures printed in the same guide.
This site earns money from advertising and, where disclosed, from affiliate links. That does not change the order of a comparison or the conclusion of a guide.
Some links on this site can earn us a commission. That does not change which product a guide recommends, and it adds nothing to your price. Advertising is not enabled on this site yet. When it is, ads will be labelled and kept visually separate from the guides.