I’m new to the community and thought a little activity on the community couldn’t hurt!
I am a pretty large guy (6’2", 240lbs) who’s also pushing 50. As much as I’d like to do ultralight, I struggle to keep my base weight around 20lbs because I need large gear and sleeping on the ground is not that sexy for me. Plus… I have a chair because sitting on the ground is about as unsexy as sleeping on the ground is. I started off with a 50+lb pack and have gotten better gear as I’ve gotten more into backpacking.
I’ve done the CA section of PCT and now I do section hikes on the AT as I live on the east coast now. My trail name is JoePaca, and if you’ve seen me at a camp, I’m pretty easy to remember.
I’m happy to give honest opinions on any of the gear in my list, but I’m pretty happy with all of it.
I keep most of my cooking and personal care stuff in the bear can, and the shadowlight has a nice thick pad, so I put my sleep system in the trash bag on the bottom, try to center the can as much as possible while upright, tent on one side with ground cloth wrapped around the poles on the other and mostly just try to cram anything else around either side just to keep it stable.
I put my water bottle in luxury because my filter holds water, the headlamp because I have a phone with a light in my pocket, historically I’ve cleaned stuff off with my shirt then stream washed my shirt, and I have dug cat holes with sticks. All that stuff just makes the trip easier, but I could survive without them.
Those are all good points. I would still disagree with the nalgene because I consider having a spare water container a just-in-case necessity (I just roll up a spare one liter soft bottle into a side pocket).
I carry my gear quite similarly, with some of the differences being that I pack my tent sideways on top of my bag/quilt, and spread the footprint out on top of that. My bear can fit sideways in my pack, so that gets placed at the top of the stack and the rolltop lid closes nicely over the whole thing.