Every year we test footwear, talk to gear makers, and watch the ultralight backpacking market reshuffle itself. This report is where we stop reviewing individual products and step back to map the bigger picture: where the money is going, what the makers are quietly betting on, and which of this year’s “must-have” features will look silly by next season.
It’s a market worth paying attention to. Ultralight gear has gone from a fringe obsession to one of the fastest-growing corners of the outdoor world, as long-distance hiking and ultralight backpacking go mainstream and remote work frees more people for multi-week trips. But the growth itself isn’t the interesting part. The interesting part is a quiet philosophical shift in how the best gear is being designed.
To get at that, we did three things. We pulled the latest thru-hiker survey data from the long trails. We tracked the fabric, footwear, and apparel pipelines heading into 2026. And we went straight to the source, putting the same set of pointed questions to gear manufacturers and publishing their answers on the record. The makers who took part in this edition include ULA Equipment, ZPacks, Durston Gear, Traverseon, NOMAD, and Burgeon Outdoor, names you’ll see quoted throughout. No brand paid to be included, and inclusion isn’t an endorsement; you can read how we approach gear coverage in how we test and review our gear.
This is the first edition of what will become an annual report. We’ll re-run it every year and track how the answers, and the market, move.
The Makers in This Edition
If there’s one thread running through every answer we collected, it’s this: the lightest possible gear and the best possible gear stopped being the same thing. You can see it most clearly in backpacks, so that’s where we’ll start, before following the same logic into water, apparel, and footwear.
Backpacks: The Retreat From “Stupid Light”
The backpack is the centerpiece of any ultralight backpacking kit, so it’s the right place to start. After a decade of chasing the lowest number on the scale, the makers we spoke to describe a market quietly walking some of that back. The four questions that follow, about frames, durability, fabrics, and the features they refuse to build, all circle the same idea from different angles.
The frameless retreat is real
The clearest signal in our reporting this year is that the race to the absolute lightest frameless pack has cooled, and hikers themselves are driving the shift back toward minimal frames.
The trail data tells the story first. In The Trek’s 2025 Appalachian Trail thru-hiker survey, the average base weight came in around 20 lbs9 kg at the start and 18 lbs8 kg at the finish. And while frameless packs ticked up in popularity, internal-frame packs still dominated the trail by a wide margin. The three most-carried brands were Osprey, Hyperlite Mountain Gear, and ULA: not a stripped-to-nothing frameless brand among them.
The makers we interviewed see the same thing from the workshop side. ZPacks was the most direct about it. The company’s founder thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail with frameless packs and 5–6 lb base weights, and looks back on those setups critically:
“Honestly, those packs were probably in the ‘stupid light’ category for those trips. An ultralight framed backpack like the Arc Haul is vastly more comfortable… The extra few ounces for a real frame were definitely worth it. Frameless backpacks have their enthusiasts, but I would never go back except on short, low mileage trips.”
ULA Equipment draws the line at a specific load: “I love frameless packs, but once you carry over 20 lbs of food, water and gear, the comfort provided by a frame, a real hipbelt and load lifters justifies the weight penalty.” In practice that’s roughly 20 lbs9 kg, almost exactly the average base weight the AT survey recorded before food and water even go in. ULA’s 2026 lineup is built around framed packs rated up to 40 lbs18 kg.
Traverseon reports the same migration from the customer side: “Over the past few years, we’ve seen a clear shift: a lot of long-distance hikers are moving back from fully frameless packs to minimal frame support. A few hundred grams isn’t worth all-day fatigue… So for 2026, our focus isn’t ‘lighter,’ it’s ‘lighter in a smarter way.'”
Durston Gear adds nuance: the line between ultralight and “stupid light” depends on the trip. “A frameless backpack can be a good choice for a 1–2 night trip but is ‘stupid light’ when someone will have a heavy load on a 7 day trip and a light frame would make for a much better overall experience.”
NOMAD, coming at the question from the hydration side, reframed it entirely: “If you trust your next water source, you stop carrying two or three liters of backup water. That weight reduction dwarfs anything you’d save by shaving grams off a bottle. The smarter move is trusting your gear enough to carry less, not engineering something so minimal it fails when you need it most.”
That may be the most useful summary of where ultralight thinking stands in 2026: the gram-counting has moved from the spec sheet to the system.
What 2,000 miles actually breaks
Lab tests don’t walk 2,000 miles3,200 km. So we asked the makers what actually fails when packs come back after a full thru-hike, and the answers were remarkably consistent across brands that compete head-to-head: it’s almost never the main fabric.
Durston Gear pointed at the physics of walking itself: “As someone walks millions of steps, those small movements add up so any vulnerability in the hipbelt and harness area will be exposed. If there is a little bump on the hipbelt it will be worn down, or if a hipbelt seam is weak then the millions of little tugs will pull it apart.” The brand moved its shoulder straps slightly higher after observing webbing rubbing against hipbelts on hikers with larger hips or a forward posture.
Traverseon’s repair bench tells the same story: “The first thing to fail is almost never the main fabric. It’s usually high-stress points: shoulder strap attachments, hipbelt connections, side pocket seams. And then: bottom panel abrasion, stretch mesh getting torn.” Its response has been targeted reinforcement rather than making everything heavier.
ZPacks described twenty years of exactly this feedback loop: “Mesh pockets get holes, laminates and waterproofing wear off, side pockets get abrasion and holes, and frame components break or wear through. My philosophy has always been to start with the lightest materials and simplest designs, then increase the durability as needed.” The result is visible on the scale: ZPacks’ original 60L framed pack weighed about 16 ounces450 gram in 2013; today’s equivalent weighs about 22 ounces620 gram with nearly identical features, every added ounce a response to a real-world failure.
ULA Equipment, notably, says its most common “failure” isn’t a failure at all: “The most common issue is misuse of the packs. Checking ultralight packs on airlines, sitting on your backpack, overloading your pack’s weight rating, etc. are never good ideas.”
The most surprising failure mode came from outside the pack category. NOMAD told us the number one killer of water filters isn’t wear, it’s frost: “A filter exposed to sub-zero temperatures can have its media cracked internally, and it will still look and feel completely fine until it stops working. It is the kind of thing that never shows up in lab testing but matters enormously on a January thru-hike.” It’s a well-documented failure mode: water trapped in a hollow-fiber filter expands as it freezes and can split the fibers from the inside, and only a couple of filters on the market (notably the MSR Guardian and Platypus QuickDraw) are engineered to survive a freeze-thaw cycle.
Safety note: A frozen filter can be compromised on the inside while looking perfectly normal on the outside, which means it may no longer remove what it’s supposed to remove from your drinking water. If your filter has been exposed to sub-zero temperatures and isn’t one of the few rated as freeze-proof, replace it rather than risk it. On cold nights, sleep with your filter inside your quilt or sleeping bag.
The contested materials ceiling
This is where 2026 gets genuinely contested. Woven UHMWPE fabrics like Ultra (Ultraweave) have swept the cottage industry since arriving in 2021, and it’s now the building block of ZPacks’ newest Arc Haul, having displaced Dyneema across entire competitors’ lineups. The incumbent isn’t standing still either: Dyneema is rolling out its new Woven Composites fabric to outside brands in 2026, a direct answer to the upstarts. So the obvious question is whether we’re reaching the limit of how strong and light a fabric can get. Here the makers genuinely disagree, and the disagreement is the most interesting finding in this report.
The “we’ve arrived” camp
ZPacks, which pioneered Dyneema Composite Fabric packs back when it was called Cuben Fiber, believes the limit is effectively here: “I think we are at the point now where our backpack fabric is about as light as it can be, while being able to withstand a thru-hike without significant damage. Lighter fabrics exist that some competitors are using, but we’ve tried them and they tear or develop holes before 2,000 miles.” Its current Ultra100X fabric is more than double the weight of the original Cuben Fiber, and vastly more durable.
Traverseon agrees the curve is flattening: “Beyond this point, gains get smaller, but costs go up fast. Shaving another 50 grams isn’t as meaningful as a pack that lasts another full season, or two.”
The “not so fast” camp
Durston Gear thinks there’s real headroom left: “Right now most laminate fabrics are still about 100–130 gsm, which isn’t much lighter than traditional nylon fabrics… Over time, I think we will see even better laminate fabrics that perform even better and thus enable even lighter pack fabrics in the 50–80 gsm range while still being durable enough.”
The historical view
ULA Equipment has heard the ceiling argument before: “People have been saying for 20 years.. I don’t know how they can make this any lighter or stronger and yet, it continues to happen. I’m sure several companies are working on some crazy material as we speak.”
Given that two major fabric platforms are launching or expanding into 2026, ULA’s skepticism looks like the safe bet. What every brand does agree on is that R&D attention is shifting from raw weight toward longevity and environmental impact. Traverseon and ULA both named durability-plus-sustainability as the new focus, and NOMAD made the systems argument: “When a single bottle replaces hundreds of disposable plastic bottles or chemical treatment packets over its lifetime, the environmental math shifts dramatically.”
The features they refuse to build
We also asked each brand which popular trend or frequently requested feature they’ve deliberately said no to. The answers read like a field guide to marketing claims worth questioning.
Waterproof thru-hiking packs (ULA Equipment)
“Waterproof thru-hiking backpacks are an overblown design feature. You should never trust your backpack to keep your gear dry and after long term use, I don’t trust the seals to remain intact. With a mostly sealed main body, there won’t be anywhere for the water to drain, leaving you with a bucket holding water.” A pack liner remains the boring, reliable answer.
Stretch-mesh bottom pockets (Durston Gear)
“These can be very convenient… but I am uncomfortable with how they use a less durable material in a high wear spot on the pack.” Durston’s alternative on the Wapta pack is a bottom pocket made from the same non-stretch fabric as the pack body, “much harder to build, but adds quite a bit of durability while actually being lighter.”
Chemical purification (NOMAD)
“Iodine, chlorine tablets, UV-only solutions… each one involves either adding something to your water or relying on a battery. We built the AtomX filter around electro-adsorptive media specifically because it adds nothing and requires nothing.”
The whole fad cycle (Traverseon)
Fully frameless packs marketed for heavy loads, ultra-thin fabrics chosen to hit a number, over-minimalized designs: “Our general rule is simple: if a design only works for the first 100 miles, we’re not interested.”
ZPacks offered the counterpoint that requests are usually worth investigating: “If more than a couple of people request the same feature… we always give it a look. We will only outright say no if we have already tested a lighter fabric or a specific feature and encountered issues.”
What impresses them across the fence
We also asked which competitor innovations genuinely impressed them, a question brands rarely answer on the record.
- NOMAD on GRAYL: “GRAYL’s press-purify mechanism is honest and clever. The physical act of pushing down creates immediate visual confirmation that the water has been treated, which matters psychologically on trail when you are already exhausted and second-guessing everything.”
- Durston Gear on sleep systems: the Nemo Tensor Elite as an example of sleeping pads getting “lighter than ever” while thicker, more comfortable pads carry only a small weight penalty, plus the ZenBivy bed as “likely to be the type of direction we see the sleeping bag market moving towards.”
- ULA Equipment on hammocks: Dutchware’s Hellbender, which integrates an underquilt into the hammock body with a spreader bar in the bug net, “an awesome advancement for us hammock nerds.”
Water: Trust the Filter, Carry Less
Water deserves its own section, because it’s the one place where shaving grams and carrying less finally meet. NOMAD’s argument, trust your filter and carry less water, isn’t a fringe position. It describes what’s already happening on the long trails.
Mechanical filtration has won
In Halfway Anywhere’s most recent PCT thru-hiker survey, 97.3% of hikers treated their water with a squeeze, gravity, or pump filter, leaving less than 3% for chemical and UV treatment combined. On the Appalachian Trail, The Trek’s 2025 thru-hiker survey found 93% of hikers using mid-size squeeze filters, and 87% saying they always filter their water. The Sawyer Squeeze threaded onto a soft bottle has been the long-trail default for more than a decade, so dominant that in 2025 Sawyer and Cnoc launched an official all-in-one kit pairing the filter with a purpose-built bladder.
Where the filter sits now
What’s changing is the location of the filter. Filtration is migrating into the drinking vessel itself. All-in-one filter bottles (soft flasks with the filter built into the cap, press-style purifier bottles like the GRAYL that NOMAD praised above, and insulated filter bottles such as NOMAD’s own SafeSip) have spread quickly among day hikers and trail runners, and are increasingly showing up on longer treks. The appeal is the same one driving every trend in this report: fewer parts, fewer steps. Collect, treat, carry, and drink collapse into a single object.
The knock-on effect: lighter packs
At roughly 2.2 lbs1 kg per liter, water is typically the heaviest single item a hiker carries. When treating it takes seconds and no extra steps, hikers tend to carry less of it, drinking well at the source and walking away with one bottle instead of hauling two or three liters of insurance between sources. That habit saves more weight than any fabric upgrade on the market, which is exactly the systems argument NOMAD made earlier.
Apparel: One Layer That Does More
Away from the backpack, the same instinct shows up in what people wear. The apparel story points the same way as packs, away from minimal-at-all-costs and toward versatility per gram. And it isn’t just one brand saying so. The standout trend on the long trails right now is the pairing of an “active insulation” midlayer, most often a Polartec Alpha Direct hoodie around 90 gsm, with a light wind shell, a combination The Trek has called a potential “next layering revolution” for thru-hiking. The appeal is that one breathable layer regulates across a wide range of conditions instead of being swapped in and out.
Burgeon Outdoor, which builds technical apparel in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, framed the same shift from the maker’s side, a move “from ‘lightweight’ to adaptive performance systems. It’s less about stripping gear down and more about creating pieces that can handle a wider range of conditions without needing to be swapped out. Materials like Polartec Alpha Direct allow a single layer to regulate heat and moisture dynamically, which reduces the need for multiple layers.”
Asked what thru-hikers consistently get wrong, Burgeon didn’t hesitate: redundant midlayers. “Hikers often carry multiple pieces to cover different scenarios when one well-designed layer can do the job. A more minimalist approach is to build around a single breathable midlayer paired with a versatile shell.” The trail data agrees with the maker: the Alpha-Direct-plus-windshirt system is exactly that idea going mainstream.
Footwear: The Trade-Off Reaches Your Feet
If there’s one category where we can speak from a year of our own testing rather than the questionnaire, it’s footwear. It wasn’t part of this year’s manufacturer survey, so treat what follows as our own editorial read on where the market is heading. Three developments stand out for 2026.
Plated “super shoes” reach the trail
The carbon-plate technology that transformed road racing is now in trail shoes from nearly every major brand. Nike’s ACG Ultrafly, which Caleb Olson wore in prototype form to win the 2025 Western States 100 and which reaches retail in 2026, sits alongside the Adidas Terrex Agravic Speed Ultra, Hoka Tecton X 3, and others, often with forked or “H”-shaped plates designed to flex with uneven terrain. These are racing tools first: expensive, and not built for 2,000-mile durability. But they mark the same trade-off the pack makers describe: performance per gram versus lifespan.
Race-day foams trickle down
The high-energy A-TPU and PEBA-based midsole foams once reserved for flagship racers are increasingly showing up in everyday trainers and, gradually, in hiking footwear across most price ranges. The practical effect for hikers is lighter shoes that cushion better. The catch, as with ultra-thin pack fabrics, is that the softest high-performance foams tend to wear out faster than traditional midsoles.
The trail-runner convergence
The long-running shift from heavy leather boots toward flexible, trail-runner-style builds continues, alongside more recycled and bio-based materials across the category. The market increasingly rewards exactly what the pack makers told us: durability relative to weight, not minimum weight at any cost. If you’re choosing along those lines, our guide to the best lightweight hiking boots ranks current options on that same trade-off.
Where the Makers Agree, and Where They Don’t
| Question | Consensus | Dissent |
|---|---|---|
| Frameless packs for long trails? | Past their peak; minimal frames are back (ULA, ZPacks, Traverseon, Durston; AT survey data agrees) | Fine for short, low-mileage trips (all) |
| First thing to fail? | Not the main fabric; stress points, mesh, hipbelt/harness (Durston, Traverseon, ZPacks) | ULA: user misuse beats material failure |
| Materials ceiling reached? | Close or arrived (ZPacks, Traverseon) | Durston: 50–80 gsm laminates are coming; ULA: “they’ve said that for 20 years”, and two fabric platforms launch in 2026 |
| R&D priority shifting to durability & sustainability? | Yes, unanimous | None |
| Follow trends/fads? | No; they refuse what fails after 100 miles (Traverseon, Durston, ULA, NOMAD) | ZPacks: investigate every repeated request first |
What It Means for Your 2026 Gear
- A minimal frame is back on the table. Above roughly 20 lbs9 kg of total load, about the average thru-hiker base weight, every pack maker we surveyed considers a frame worth its weight.
- Judge a pack by its stress points, not its fabric. Hipbelt attachments, strap seams, and stretch mesh fail long before the main body does.
- Be skeptical of “waterproof” packs and stretch-mesh bottom pockets. The makers themselves are.
- Never trust a filter that’s been frozen. Internal damage is invisible, so replace it (unless it’s rated freeze-proof), and sleep with your filter in cold weather.
- Buy for the full distance. The industry’s own rule of thumb, courtesy of Traverseon: if it only works for the first 100 miles, it’s not worth carrying.
Where This Report Goes Next
This is the first edition of an annual series. Each year, we’ll send a fresh round of questions to gear producers, refresh the market and survey data, and publish what we find here, tracking how the industry’s thinking shifts season over season: which predictions held up, which “refused features” eventually got built, and whether the materials ceiling turns out to be real.
We also plan to grow the panel with every edition. The ambition is to keep adding outdoor gear brands (shelters, sleep systems, stoves, electronics, and the small stuff in between) until this report covers everything you’d bring on an ultralight trekking trip.
Are you a gear manufacturer? We’d like to hear from you. Get in touch to take part in next year’s edition and share your view of where the industry is heading.
Methodology: this report combines three inputs, namely published thru-hiker survey data from the major long trails, our own tracking of the gear pipeline heading into 2026, and direct interviews with gear manufacturers conducted in spring 2026 via a HARO query and a questionnaire. Manufacturer quotes are lightly edited for length and clarity. No compensation was exchanged in either direction, and inclusion does not constitute endorsement.
