PACKING A LIGHTER PUNCH MARKET FLUSH WITH OPTIONS TO CARRY LESS ON HIKES.

Byline: Bill Becher Special to the Daily News

I have fond memories of long backpacking trips in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks - watching a deer drink from a stream at dawn, seeing alpenglow paint mountain peaks at dusk and dining on a freshly caught rainbow trout.

I also remember having more water in the blisters on my feet than in my canteen. I recall agonizing backaches from toting a 55-pound pack up endless switchbacks.

As with childbirth, backpacking always meant suffering, but the gain was supposed to be worth the pain.

That has changed.

A revolution in gear design over the past decade means you can explore the backcountry while carrying a much lighter load. A lot of the credit for this change goes to ``thru-hikers'' who traverse the Pacific Crest and Appalachian trails in a single multimonth epic trek.

Former aerospace engineer and outdoor gear inventor Ray Jardine has hiked the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail three times. The first time he did the trail his base ``packweight'' (everything carried minus food and water) was 25 pounds. Dissatisfied by the weight of the gear he was carrying Jardine started making his own. By the third time he hiked the trail his packweight was nine pounds.

Jardine's 1992 book on ultralight backpacking sowed the seeds of a revolution. In ``The Pacific Crest Trail Hiker's Handbook'' Jardine advocated stripping loads to the absolute minimum. Because commercial backpacking gear at the time was built for comfort and durability, not lightweight, those following the ``Ray-Way'' of ultralight backpacking had to construct their own tents, packs and sleeping gear.

The advantages of stripping down include less stress on the body, making the trip more fun. When lugging less weight you expend less effort and burn fewer calories, which means you can carry less food. Instead of heavy hiking boots you can backpack in running shoes, resulting in less effort, fewer blisters and more miles covered in a day.

Because not all hikers want to sew their own gear, Jardine worked with GoLite, a five-year-old outdoor gear maker headquartered in Salt Lake City, to provide Ray-Way inspired lightweight equipment. Other companies have jumped on the bandwagon, and most traditional backpacking gear makers are offering lightweight product lines.

Co-founder and president of GoLite, Demetri Coupounas, has carried on the field-testing tradition. This summer he completed the 218-mile John Muir Trail in 10 days without resupply.

``The whole premise that you can make a heavy load comfortable is wrong,'' Coupounas said.

His company builds lighter gear through simpler design, leaving off unneeded frills and using state-of-the art materials. Not just for thru-hikers, GoLite sells clothing, packs, tents and sleeping bags to adventure racers as well as military special operations forces and the casual backpacker looking for a more comfortable experience.

Built from Dyneema Gridstop, a man-made fiber twice as strong as Kevlar (the stuff in bulletproof vests) GoLite packs have been refined since the original Jardine designs.

Coupounas says you don't have to go broke to go light.

``People spend exorbitantly to save grams but won't spend less to save pounds,'' said Coupounas. ``More weight can be saved on pack choice alone than anywhere else.'' GoLite's packs typically cost half as much as the old style heavy-duty models.

Going light isn't just about the gear you buy. ``The cheapest thing is leave stuff home,'' Coupounas said. ``That's free.''

But leaving gear behind can kill. Ultra light hikers have died when caught in unexpected bad weather without sufficient shelter or clothing. Common sense needs to be applied.

Backpacking guru Karen Berger says in her book ``Hiking Light Handbook'' that substituting lightweight gear for heavier is actually safer as you can move quickly to get out of danger. But Berger adds that lightweight hikers need to be more willing to change plans if conditions deteriorate, and that going light is not appropriate in all climates.

There are lots of options. A search on ``fast and light'' at outdoor retailer REI's Web site at rei.com pulls up 11 pages of items from tents, tarps, stoves, LED headlamps and titanium cook sets. Clothing has gone lightweight too, with single-layer outerwear like the new REI Groove soft- shell jacket, which combines a breathable, stretchy water-resistant outer layer with a velour inner fleece layer for warmth.

You can substitute a MSR Miox water purifier for a heavier pump and filter to treat drinking water. The 3.5-ounce device, about the size of a cigar, was originally developed for the U.S. military. It uses salt and internal camera batteries to create a powerful oxidant that kills bacteria, viruses and water-born parasites.

After suffering under a conventional pack on Mt. Shasta, I decided to see how light I could go. Because gear seems to gain weight from the time the advertising copy is written and the product reaches the consumer, I used a fish scale to compare actual, not ``marketing'' weights.

Plushly upholstered like a Lincoln Navigator, my old pack weighed 6.5 pounds. A GoLite Trek pack, a VW Rabbit by comparison, weighed two pounds, and at $139, is about half the cost of the old pack. My original self-inflating sleeping pad weighed two pounds; a newer, shorter, thinner (and less comfortable) version weighed a pound.

My ancient, but spacious, tent was a hefty eight pounds; a new REI Quarter Dome UL tent will still fit two people and weighs about four pounds. My old stove, fuel and pots tip the scale at four pounds; a new ``Pocket Rocket'' stove from MSR with a single pot and fuel canister totals 1.5 pounds. My old sleeping bag was 4.5 pounds, a newer, but less-well insulated bag is two pounds.

The bottom line was I cut my packweight from 24 pounds to 13 pounds. Adding two pounds of food per day and a couple of quarts of water, a five-day trip would now mean toting a 25-pound pack instead of 38 pounds. Experts say your full backpack should weigh no more than 25 percent of your body weight, even on a long trip.

Some of the new lightweight products seem a bit silly. You can buy a backpacker's titanium ``spork'' - a combination spoon and fork that weighs about a half ounce, but costs nine bucks.

Fortunately, you can find lightweight gear for about the same, and sometimes less money than old-style heavyweights.

And, of course, you can always saw the handle off your toothbrush.

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(1 -- 3) GoLite backpacks weigh about two pounds, one-third the weight of other packs, and cost about half as much. For those not concerned with price, the titanium "spork", top, can be yours for about $9.

Bill Becher/Special to the Daily News