I Hiked the Larapinta Trail Solo With a 28kg Pack & Wouldn’t Change a Thing

Peppermint oil and fish sauce: not typical things you’d expect someone to pull out of their pack whilst hiking 230km across the desert. But Bree had them handy on the Larapinta Trail. Would she take them again? Absolutely.

We Are Explorers acknowledge that this adventure is located on the traditional Country of the Arrernte people who have occupied and cared for the lands, waters, and their inhabitants for thousands of years. We pay our respects to them as the Traditional Custodians and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.

What’s all the fuss about lightweight gear?

Delving into the world of lightweight hiking gear can quickly spiral into a deep (and expensive) rabbit hole. The more you read, the stronger the sentiment grows that hiking gear should be as light as possible.

In online forums and Facebook groups, people compare their base weights almost like fishermen comparing their best catch.

Hikers are always on the lookout for new gear and technology to shave off a few extra grams. Don’t even get me started on people drilling holes in their toothbrushes or omitting them all together.   

I’m well aware that hiking light carries its own benefits – less added strain on the body, reduced injury risk, ability to hike faster.

All of these things can equate to an easier and more enjoyable hike. But as I prepared for my 230km trek across Tjoritja/West MacDonnell Ranges, I asked myself – is it worth it?

Before I begin; I’m relatively young (28), injury-free, and have hiked with a heavy-ish pack before – albeit for a much shorter hike with other people.

I wouldn’t consider myself particularly fit, but I did eight months of strength and conditioning training prior to hiking the Larapinta Trail in preparation.

In hindsight, I should’ve actually hiked in preparation, because my feet were not prepared for 230km of rock with an added 28kg.

Read more: 10 Things You Need to Know Before Hiking The Larapinta Trail

All the gear and somewhat of an idea

Knowing myself, I knew there were a few things I couldn’t skimp on – mainly sleep and food. If I made sacrifices to these two parts of my pack, I knew I’d be miserable for the duration of my hike – and horrible company if I bumped into anyone along the way.

The gear I took for hiking the Larapinta Trail made me feel (somewhat) confident that I’d be prepared for anything, especially considering this was my first time hiking solo.

Sleep System

Ultralight hikers look away now (if you haven’t already)! Weighing in at just over 3kg, my sleep system included:

• Sleeping Bag | Klymit – KSB 0 Down Sleeping Bag (-18°C/0°F) | 1.8kg
• Sleeping Mat | Alton – Ultralight Sleeping Mat Not Insulated (R-Value 2.5) | 540g
• Mat Cover | Alton – Sleeping Mat – Fitted Sheet | 350g
• Liner | Cocoon –  Coolmax Travel Sheet | 305g
• Pillow | Sea to Summit – Aeros Ultralight Regular Pillow | 60g

Total weight of sleeping system: 3.055kg 

Sleeping Bag

I upgraded to this bag after alpine camping on Mt Stirling a couple of years ago with a deflated mat and an old synthetic bag. I’ve never been colder in my life – even my water bottle froze overnight. I vowed to never have a cold sleep again. Was this bag excessive for Larapinta? Probably. Was I too hot every night? Definitely.

Sleeping Bag Liner

This is a non-negotiable for me. Firstly, the feeling of sweaty skin directly on a sleeping bag – yuck. But also, when you’re not washing yourself properly or wearing clean clothes for the better part of two weeks, you’ll want something to contain your grossness and protect your sleeping bag.

Sleeping Mat and Mat Fitted Sheet

The greatest upgrade I made before hiking the Larapinta Trail was my sleeping mat and fitted sheet. I know, a fitted sheet for a sleeping mat is a bit boujee and some may say unnecessary.

But with my new sleep system in tow, I slept on 7.5cm of airy cushioned comfort and didn’t slide off my mat once – except for when I stupidly set up my tent on a slope at Standley Chasm. So is 350g for a boujee sleeping mat fitted sheet worth it? In my mind, yes.

Pillow

Not going to lie, I’ve never been a huge fan of this pillow – until now. Tucked into the little pillow flap at the top of my new fitted sheet, it didn’t move an inch.

All 28kg of my things enjoying the view

Tent & Pack

To round out my camping gear, I should add my tent, drop sheet, and the pack that I somehow managed to stuff everything into:

• Tent | Kathmandu – Northstar XT 2P Tent | 1.8kg
• Drop Sheet | MSR – Universal 2 Person Footprint | 200g
• Backpack | Berghaus – Wilderness 60+15L Backpack | 1.77kg

Total gear weight so far: 6.825kg

Tent

Is taking a two-person, four-season tent on a solo desert hike a bit excessive? In hindsight, yes.

I usually hike with my partner, who’s much fitter than me and normally carries this beast of a tent. Due to last-minute plan changes and my own stubbornness, I didn’t source a lighter one for just myself.

After trying to lighten my tent and doing a successful test run on night three of my modified setup, I left my fly and two (out of four) tent poles behind in my Standley Chasm food drop box.

This, along with ditching a paperback novel that I was never going to read, was a great decision and made me very thankful for gear retrieval (thanks LTTS crew). I just had to cross my fingers that it wouldn’t rain and that my DIY tent mods would withstand the high winds of Brinkley Bluff and Counts Point.

Hot Tip! Make sure you check your tent poles before you hike. They’re the one piece of gear I didn’t think to check and I discovered on night one that all of the elastic in my poles was overstretched. Safe to say duct tape came in very handy.

Drop Sheet

I’d never used a drop sheet before but after reading horror stories about spinifex and rocks puncturing tents and sleeping mats on the Larapinta Trail, this was a very worthy addition to my pack.

Backpack

This pack is a bit on the heavier side but it’s a workhorse and has thick padding on the shoulder straps and waistband, with side pockets for easy access snacks (very important). At 75L capacity, it’s always big enough to store all of my gear.

This may look like regret, but really I’m in a quiet moment of praising the Nutella lords

Kitchen, Food, & Hydration

Call me a food snob but I can’t stand instant hiking meals and knew that if I ate them for my two-week trek, I wouldn’t get very far. I made my own meals using dehydrated vegetables, curry pastes, freeze-dried meats, and instant coconut milk sachets.

I ate instant rice noodles and dehydrated pasta for carbs. I also carried freeze-dried lime powder and a bottle of fish sauce so I could season my laksa to perfection.

My fellow food snobs will agree on needing to kit out the kitchenware

Not to mention the lemon powder and olive oil bottle to season my pasta salad lunch. Like I said; food snob. Snacks were dried fruit, Powerade powder, and killer pythons. I weighed my dry bag full of food at the start of the hike and it was around 15kg (about 1kg per day, split across three food drops). My camp kitchen is pretty comprehensive and weighed in at 1.53kg.

Hydration

Given that water is trucked in by rangers and stored in tanks, I opted for sterilisation tablets. I met a couple using one Lifestraw to filter their drinking water (it took six minutes/ 500ml…it was painful to watch) and another couple that ran out of sterilization tablets so had to boil their drinking water…then they ran out of gas.

The boys from Wollongong that I met on the trail didn’t filter any water and my new friend Anna used a Katadyn AND a UV sterilizer – I guess you can’t be too careful. I had two 2L Camelbaks and two 1L water bottles, taking my maximum water capacity to 6L for Section 9 of the trail (29km without a water source and not a lot of shade along the way).

The most food and water I carried at once was five days’ worth (~5kg) and 5L of water (5.6kg).

This took my total thus far to 18.95kg. But why stop there?

The river crossing at Hugh Gorge is tricky with a hefty pack but very doable with two people

First Aid Kits, Clothes, & Miscellaneous Gear

In case you hadn’t yet realised, I’m the kind of person that likes to be prepared. This is especially the case when planning to hike the Larapinta Trail solo, which is why I took three different first aid kits plus an emergency kit;

First Aid #1

Blister management/basic wound management. Strapping table, alcohol wipes, and hikers wool that looks like it came straight from a sheep.

First Aid #2

Pills! Prescription medication, Nurofen (not enough), Panadol, magnesium, glucosamine, Gastro-Stop (thankfully not needed), Hydralyte (not enough), antihistamines.

These were in small reusable zip lock bags and always easily accessible in my pack.

First Aid #3

Emergency only. This is the kind of stuff that you take but hopefully never need to use. Think snake bite bandages, sling, compression bandages, wound dressing, hemorrhage pack, emergency blanket. This was vacuum sealed in a plastic bag and stuffed into the bottom of my pack. Just in case.

Emergency Kit

I hired a PLB to round out my emergency kit which also included a whistle, strobe, knife, paper maps, compass, spare buckle, spare shoelace, and a spare strap.

The emergency kit

Clothes

For a gal with a lot of gear, I did not have a lot of clothes. I wore one pair of socks for the whole trip and one set of walking clothes – which are now permanently stained from 14 days of sweat, sunscreen, and NT red dust. 

Miscellaneous

Apart from my fitness, the biggest hurdle I faced was my severe phobia of mice. Horror stories about the 2022 Larapinta mouse plague weighed heavy on my mind.

After desperately trawling the internet for advice, someone on a Facebook group mentioned that peppermint oil deters mice. I wasn’t sure if this was true but I was desperate and willing to try anything. I did everything I could – I was diligent about no food in my tent, and hung my backpack and food bag separately every night from a tree using rope and carabiners.

Each night as I precariously dropped tiny drops of peppermint oil around the perimeter of my tent and on my pack – I felt like I was participating in some kind of witchcraft ritual.

I wore earplugs to bed a few nights to drown out the noise of mice eating noodles and muesli that other hikers had regrettably left in the shelter cupboards. But the peppermint oil worked! My tent and gear remained rodent-free!

• 3 x First Aid Kits | 990g
• Emergency Kit | 597g
• Clothes | 4.75kg
  • 1x Hiking clothes (shorts and long sleeve)
  • 1x Camp clothes (thermal top & pants)
  • 1x ‘Clean’ clothes (shorts and long sleeve)
  • 6x Underwear
  • 1x Sports bra (+ a clean one in a food drop)
  • 2x Woolen army socks
  • 1x Polar fleece jumper
  • 1x Rain/wind/puffer jacket
  • Hiking boots (Columbia / Newton Ridge)
  • Camp sandals (Teva)
  • Hat
  • Sunglasses
• Miscellaneous | 2.6kg
  • Walking poles
  • Trowel
  • Carabiners and rope
  • Peppermint oil
  • Duct tape
  • Tech (phone, charger, headphones)
  • Camera + 3x film rolls
  • Pen & notebook
  • Printed itineraries
  • 2x Extra dry bags
  • Small towel
• Toiletries | 340g

Total weight: 28.23kg

Hike Your Own Hike

It’s important to remember to hike your own way and listen to your body. If you want to hike with a 6kg pack and the bare essentials, that’s fine. If you want to hike heavy, that’s also fine. 

I was so nervous in the lead up to hiking the Larapinta Trail, psyching myself out of it and doubting my own abilities because everyone I spoke to told me to make sure my pack was as light as possible – and NEVER more than 16-17kg. 16kg was my base weight.

But you know what? Even with a 28kg pack, I did it. Sure, I was a bit slower and there were times when I arrived at camp as the sun was going down that I questioned my packing choices – but I did it. 

It was worth enjoying scenes like this with extra comforts

Along the way I met many different people, each with their own idea of what gear qualified as essential. There was the German backpacker who only drank black coffee and ate nuts but didn’t bring first aid.

The boys from Wollongong, despite their heavy packs and luxury items like chairs and books, didn’t pack enough food and only a disposable plastic fork that obviously snapped in half – lucky I had a whole roll of duct tape. 

I also made a new friend – Anna from Sydney. Anna also hiked solo but struggled to pitch her 1P ultralight tent (which used hiking poles for its structural integrity) with all of the rock around, so ended up bunking in my tent from Brinkley Bluff onwards. 

That’s some hard, hard rock right there

So yes, I set out to hike 230km solo and I did, but I also didn’t because I was lucky enough to make friends along the way that helped me get through the long days and rocky climbs. 

Speaking of rocky climbs – Mt Sonder starts to tease you as you approach the end of the trail. From its first appearance in the distance on day 11, you feel as though you’ll never reach it in time. Pushing forward, chasing the daylight, Sonder grows bigger as you realise the end is near.

How it felt to finish the Larapinta Trail at the summit of Mt Sonder with Anna!

Regardless of what was in our packs, the feeling at the top of Mt Sonder, which marks the end of the trail, was one of pure joy and elation. It’s a certain feeling of self-pride that you don’t often get – when you’ve worked so hard to achieve something that you genuinely didn’t think you’d be able to accomplish.

Looking back across the horizon from the summit, you can’t help but reflect on how far you’ve come. And it was worth every step, and every gram.

Keep Reading About Hiking the Larapinta Trail

• Unpacking the Larapinta Trail and Why we Choose to Hike it
• Lucy Bartholomew on Running The Larapinta Trail in One Go
• 10 Things You Need to Know Before Hiking The Larapinta Trail
• Capturing the Landscapes of the Larapinta