This one time, in my last year of high school we went on our end of year camping trip.
I hadn’t been on a camp before where you had to carry all your stuff on your back rather than just pack it into a car. I had no idea what to pack. I borrowed a huge backpack from a family friend and stuffed it full. For the 3 night trip I packed 3 pairs of jeans, 4 towels, 3 pairs of shoes, 5 pairs of undies etc etc. It was damn heavy. We climbed a mountain – Mount Tongariro in the Tongariro National Park, New Zealand.
The hours dragged on, it started to rain, my pack got heavier. We got to the first hut in the dark, we were one of the last teams to arrive.
There was only a freezing mountain stream so I didn’t even wash, so I didn’t use any of my towels during our stay. I didn’t get changed once. I lugged all that crap up a mountain and didn’t even use it! I learnt my lesson and now I have a reputation for packing very very lean.
(Not as bad as my auntie who walked the Milford track carrying one of those hair drying machines that you sit under in a case, when there wasn’t any sockets to plug it into anyway!)