Goliath Traverse kit

Hello! I remember when Vitaliy first released his ultralight traversing kit on here it being extremely helpful for myself and others. I wanted to share my own kit from the recent traverse in an attempt to pay it forward for others who might be getting into the same "fast and light multi day" scene. I spent the better part of the last year trial and erroring this kit and think the current setup we just used is about as good as I could land on, however I am open to any suggestions for adjustments still if you've got em! This was my entire loadout for the Goliath traverse so this was specifically built for an 8 day ridge traverse where temps will hover around/just below freezing at night and where bivy locations can range dramatically. I am not being paid for any of these recommendations or reviews, although we did get some of this gear given to us as support for this objective but I promise I would tell you if it sucked regardless. I understand some of this stuff is pretty expensive as well and you can get away with a much cheaper setup, this is just what worked for us. Enjoy!

My full loadout - 20.7lb stepping off with food and 1L of water

Bag- Hyperlite Aero 28

I absolutely love this bag. This was actually the third bag I have tried to run in the past year for these type of objectives and is a significant front runner for my personal preferences. I like the vest style front quite a lot as it lets me run 2 x 500ml soft flasks which is huge because for me if my water is in the bag I just simply wont drink all day because I am too lazy to stop and take it off. We comfortably packed everything needed in this bag with our 60m rope nicely secured and saddle bagged on the outside out of the way. This bag has a nice pouch on the bottom I havent seen before which we both used to keep our daily moving snacks in where we could reach them on the move. The only bad wear and tear we both experienced on this bag was on the side pockets because we each ran a 1.5L smart water bottle in each pocket and the stiff bottom of the bottle rubbed holes through the fabric as we scraped them on the rock but it never affected us in any way. I plan to keep using this big for everything I can until something better shows up.

Sleep System - In our heads the sleep system was the most important aspect for this traverse. Over 9 days if you're getting bad sleep every night that will add up to catastrophe at some point so we really wanted to try to not compromise on comfort here. You could do without a few things I am sure (and have myself) on shorter traverses but for this good sleep seemed like a top priority for the longevity of the mission so this is what we brought which worked great.

Tent - Hyperlite UltaMid 2

This tent might have been the MVP of the traverse. We brought just this tarp without the insert and it was really really nice to have on some of the windy nights as well as on a big rainy evening halfway through. This thing weighs only 1.1lbs stripped down and we were able to pitch it every night except 1 where we chose to open bivy on a small ledge system. We used our trekking poles to prop the center with no issues at all. It feels enormous for a 2 person tent with lots of extra room around 2 ground pads and served its purpose perfectly.

Ground Cloth - We brought the Hyperlite ground cloth to have a "floor" and some protection against rocks for our pads. It weighs 3.7oz and can easily pack into your pocket nearly the size of a cigarette box. I have been bringing this ground cloth out cragging and stuff as well last spring to be able to stand on snow to belay and its been a nice portable floor for a lot of various applications. The cloth doesn't fill up the entire UltaMid floor but provided enough coverage for us to be able to generally stay out of the dirt. 

Quilt - Hyperlite 20 degree

This is going on my third year with this quilt and it's still working great. Very durable and I found myself sleeping in just shorts most nights because the bag was so warm, especially inside the tent. The quilt weighs 18oz and you can pack it down to the size of a Nalgene if you get a nice small 3 ish liter stuff sack.

Pillow - Sea to Summit Aeros ultralight inflatable pillow

I don't even know when I got this but I've had it for years and it's still going strong. Weighs 2oz and is very comfortable when a bit under inflated. 

Ground Pad - Sea to Summit ultralight inflatable ground pad

I got an XS ground pad from STS that I was excited about. It covered down to about my knees and only weighed 12oz which seemed sweet, and it worked really great the first two nights. However at some point early on the third night it developed a slow leak that i never found and became useless only staying inflated for about an hour tops. Good theory, poor durability, would not recommend.

Clothing - Temps got down into the high 20's a few nights for reference

Sun hoody from Florence and Marine. I love the Sun Pro max UPF because it breathes really well and has a built in balaclava with a big hood to go over a helmet. This has been my favorite and go to sun hoody this year.

 Pants - La Sportiva Machina Tech pants. Again these have been my go to pants all year, theyre super light and durable with stretchy fabric in all the right places. They also have a zippered thigh pocket for the phone and a zippered back pocket as well. Highly recommend.

Insulation - La Sportiva Lumina 300. This jacket is insanely warm, honestly too warm to move in without overheating immediately. It has 1000 fill goose down and is by far the most durable puffy I own with only a single small patch so far after a full year of use. It packs down smaller than a Nalgene as well and weighs around 300 grams. I believe this will be publicly available this coming fall and highly recommend it, I've got a history of absolutely destroying puff jackets quickly and this one has held up far better than the rest. 

(Jacket on the left)

Rain shell - La Sportiva Aequillibrium lite jacket. This bad boy packs into its chest pocket and weights 190 grams. Feels good, looks good, weighs nothing, recommend for sure.

Shoes - La Sportiva TX4 Evo ST. Switched to these from the TX3 this year and haven't looked back. I prefer the mesh over leather because my feet sweat and I hate soup shoes when it heats up. These climb exceptionally well and held up great for 1000 pitches of alpine granite I think, definitely recommend if you're on the fence and Sportiva fits your feet well. I also always put in these cheap kevlar laces from Amazon and haven't had any abrasion issues in the years since.

Gear - We did not bring any protection to lead with, just some various rappel anchor options

Rope - Edelrid rap line 6mm 60m. We brought this specifically to be able to simul through any sketchy sections if needed because it has a dynamic reserve but we wound up never doing that. The rope was fine but got absolutely destroyed over the course of only a dozen or so rappels. I think some of that wear and tear came from it being saddle bagged on the outside of my bag as well but I was surprised at how chewed up it was at the end of the trip without using it a ton. In hindsight we should have just brought a skinny cord and committed to the solo to save some weight.

Helmet - Black Diamond Vapor. Worked great didn't die

Rappel device - Edelrid Mago 8. This thing was awesome, weighs only 38 grams and is specifically made for rappeling on skinny ropes. Will likely stay my standard device for traverses moving forward.

Rappel Anchor options - We brought 5 nuts, about 30ft of cord, and 2 old booty cams. We used all of this, mostly on the Palisade crest or around Disappointment Peak. We had to take another 20ft or so of cord from our cache halfway because we ran out and wound up using that as well on the last technical section after Lamarck summit.

Water - 2 x 1.5L Smart water bottles and 2 x 500ml chest flasks. Neither of us wanted to risk a bladder popping which would be catastrophic, I also liked being able to store my water bottles in the exterior pockets and tried to keep the fill levels on the bottles somewhat even to help out with balance while climbing. 4L capacity seemed perfect for our conditions and the water availability. 

Cook System - 1L MSR titanium pot

Desert and Fox ultralight mini camp stove - This was a killer amazon find for only $11 and worked awesome. Weighs 45 grams and puts out 2600 watts of heat, will stay in my ridge kit for sure.

Fuel - MSR small can - Our first can lasted to the cache at day 5 easily even with having to melt snow several times. We picked up our second small can at the cache and had a lot left over at the end 

Power Bank - VRURC 20,000 Ah portable charger. Another cheap Amazon find, a bit heavy at 300 grams but we had some extra camera stuff we needed to charge along with our phones and it lasted 5 days easily. This battery has 3 different cables built into it as well which is nice to not have to bring your own or worry about losing them.

Knife - Trango Piranha same knife ive been carrying in the mountains for years, 20 grams and still cuts sharp as ever.

Headlamp - Nightcore NU20 and another cheap Amazon find thats lasted forever. Weighs nothing and the charge lasts shockingly long. This stays in my alpine load out as well and will moving forward.

Food - The goal was around 3000 calories a day which seemed like the best balance between recovery and being too heavy

Breakfast - A mix of protein oats, oatmeal, protein powder and some fruit and nuts totaling around 850 calories each morning

Lunch/Snacks - A snack bag of beef jerky, trail mix, dried sweet potato, a bar or two and a protein bar totaling around 1000 calories we could eat while moving

Dinner - One Peak Refuel freeze dried meal and 2 hi chew candy sticks. We picked the highest calorie meals we could find around 1100 calories each

Miscellaneous -

• chapstick
• superglue 
• Titanium Spork
• NSAIDS, melatonin, caffeine pills
• headphones
• small puffy/ground pad patch kit
• butt wipes (not enough)
• half a toothbrush

Tanner, how much weight have you lost on this traverse?

I lost about 15lbs by the end of it

I also forgot to add the BD couloir harness and the BD carbon trekking poles!

Thanks for writing this up, I really appreciate these lists. And, of course, congrats on this epic accomplishment!

Awesome information, thank you so much for taking the time to post this. And CONGRATULATIONS 

Great write up and an impressive achievement. 

I'm surprised by the trekking poles - did you end up using them much?

Drew Twrote:

Great write up and an impressive achievement. 

I'm surprised by the trekking poles - did you end up using them much?

I didn’t use mine nearly as much as I expected but Mike used his nearly every step we weren’t climbing. His rule was either a helmet or poles at all times. There’s a few sections of long steep slogging on the traverse where they were nice through talus or scree

I have never quite understood the theory behind quilts vs sleeping bags. It just seems really easy to get drafts/heat loss through the semi-open back and collar and they also don't provide insulation over your head which seems pretty key. Makes sense to save a few ounces for this sort of thing but would you switch over to a bag if it was getting much colder?

Tanner Jameswrote:

Helmet - Black Diamond Vapor. Worked great didn't die

My favorite part of the post right here. If that's not a ringing endorsement, idk what is haha

Good stuff dude, thanks for taking the time to share all of this and the why behind these choices. I recently did something absolutely miniscule compared to you guys (The Hulk C2C and then Charlotte Dome a couple weeks later) and definitely overpacked. It's helpful to see the rationale and approach to packing you guys took so that I can tweak my approach for next time.

Bug Boywrote:

I have never quite understood the theory behind quilts vs sleeping bags. It just seems really easy to get drafts/heat loss through the semi-open back and collar and they also don't provide insulation over your head which seems pretty key. Makes sense to save a few ounces for this sort of thing but would you switch over to a bag if it was getting much colder?

Yea I wouldn’t go much colder than 20° with this quilt but since we were going light on this one it was an obvious choice. I also had the strong puff jacket I could wear to sleep to augment but never had to do that here

Solid gear report, read every word. I still have some thru hiker/biker in my blood so this post was nerdily gratifying.

Mad respect for committing to the pain on your ultralight heavymetal adventure!

One of the details that most impressed me here: that a cheap Amazon headlamp was good. I'm so tired of buying and replacing expensive headlamps - going to give one of the cheapies a try.

So the two things you'd do differently:

- Just a skinny for rapping, commit to soloing w no half measures on rope

- More wipes

Anything else? How about your food plan, any changes?

What would you call out as the high and low points of the trip? (or did you write up a TR somewhere? I'd read it!)

Thanks for sharing, good stuff

Siriuswrote:

One of the details that most impressed me here: that a cheap Amazon headlamp was good. I'm so tired of buying and replacing expensive headlamps - going to give one of the cheapies a try.

So the two things you'd do differently:

- Just a skinny for rapping, commit to soloing w no half measures on rope

- More wipes

Anything else? How about your food plan, any changes?

What would you call out as the high and low points of the trip? (or did you write up a TR somewhere? I'd read it!)

Thanks for sharing, good stuff

Yea dude I’ve been a fan of the Amazon finds for the alpine, even the most expensive “durable” stuff just won’t last long if you’re really putting it through the heavy stuff often so I started treating a few specific things like consumables. This is the first ground pad I’ve paid over $30 for in several years and it popped 2 days in so that just confirmed my theory.

I don’t think we’d make any food changes. It felt pretty heavy stepping off with 4 full days although I could have definitely eaten more each night which I’m sure would only help recovery more although I think what we had did pretty well. A caveat being we delusionally tried to do the entire full Monty (16 miles of crest between Taboose and bishop pass which has only been successfully done once ever) in 4 days which in hindsight was never going to happen. So we had 4 days and 3 nights of food which left us without any food the last night and following half day to bishop pass, so we would have brought an extra dinner and a few snacks.

We had some profoundly low points on day 3 and day 7 which both were 2 of the most dangerous sections on the traverse. The low points were mostly oriented around “wtf are we doing here we’re going to die on this ridge” and were a result of poor mental management that I think we could have done better if we had recognized the vibe decline as it was happening but we were scared. High points were day 4 doing the palisade crest (from Nazgûl peak) to Thunderbolt which was an outstanding day and day 8 when we made it to Wallace and the evo traverse which told us we were likely going to succeed on the whole Goliath.

I’ll be sharing a thoroughly detailed trip report in my newsletter which is free and just big trip reports to get really into the weeds on the days, gear, and tactics in the next week or two 

Tanner, where can we sign up for your newsletter?

Thanks for sharing - I learned a lot! Especially the kevlar shoelaces ... breakage is a constant source of trouble for me.

For the abuse that you put on your gear an inflatable pad just won't work. Z-Lite is lighter (but bulkier) & cannot break. As I get older, I sure do like the comfort of an inflatable though, but I must be mindful of the objective.

I was surprised by your choice of a tarp shelter. For myself, I've done well with a 30 oz mylar E-bivy + additional suffering.

I'm a big quilt fan. My 20 year old Go-Lite Ultra is my favorite piece of gear. However, this shows as it is more duct tape than down at this point in its life. I'll take a good hard look at the hyperlight as a potential successor.

*** Edited to add:

Congratulations on surviving such a mega adventure!!! I was following along with great interest and horror. 

Terry Ewrote:

Tanner, where can we sign up for your newsletter?

https://mailchi.mp/4e6f39b6512d/the-alpine-approach-subscriber-station

What's your hat? I'm searching for a good visor.

Andrew Bwrote:

What's your hat? I'm searching for a good visor.

This is a Coros visor! You can find it on their website. It’s actually a lot nicer than others I’ve worn its got mesh and holds up well 

Badass! But I mean if I had $3000 to spend on hyper lite gear I totally could have done this.

Not sure how practical a solid foam pad would be, perhaps stored as an open cylinder inside the pack with all your gear inside it? Folded in half a Z lite is super comfy and double insulatory for the core, and legs can go on the empty pack. 

Tony Danzawrote:

Badass! But I mean if I had $3000 to spend on hyper lite gear I totally could have done this.

Not sure how practical a solid foam pad would be, perhaps stored as an open cylinder inside the pack with all your gear inside it? Folded in half a Z lite is super comfy and double insulatory for the core, and legs can go on the empty pack. 

With the 28L packs I don’t think a foam pad would have worked at all. We were concerned not only with weight but also volume. It’s nice to have a slim low profile pack with all the technical climbing. That’s the main reason we went with the fastpacking/running style packs.

Such a sick trip! Was following on instagram. Thanks so much for the gear report! Definitely super insightful. Where can I sign up for your news letter