The Quest for a Completely Synthetic-Free Ultralight Backpacking Kit: A Designer’s Bold Experiment

In the realm of backcountry adventure, synthetic materials have long reigned supreme, offering an enviable blend of waterproofing, rapid drying capabilities, lightness, and rugged durability. Yet, these modern marvels carry a significant environmental burden: their genesis lies in petroleum, a finite resource with a profound impact on global warming. As the effects of climate change increasingly shorten the traditional trail season and microplastic contamination becomes a stark reality in even the most remote freshwater sources, a compelling question emerges: is it possible to equip oneself for ultralight backpacking without a single petrochemical-derived component? Tom Bonamici, an accomplished designer and an educator at the University of Oregon, embarked on this very challenge, driven by a deep-seated curiosity and a commitment to sustainability. His ambitious endeavor resulted in the creation of a comprehensive ultralight backpacking kit, meticulously crafted from entirely natural materials, ranging from a tarp fashioned from oiled silk to footwear utilizing natural rubber and trekking poles made from the resilient Calcutta bamboo.

Bonamici, who teaches product design to both undergraduate and master’s students at the University of Oregon, with a particular focus on sports product design, has dedicated his research to the intricacies of lightweight backcountry travel. His passion for backpacking, a pursuit he has cherished since childhood, is intrinsically linked to his role as an Oregonian deeply concerned with ecological issues. "As we all know, backpacking is just rife with synthetic materials, and they’re really awesome," Bonamici explains. "They’re super lightweight and waterproof and strong and badass, and they’re also made out of petrochemicals, which, you know, on the in end is a problem, on the out end it’s a problem." This duality – the undeniable performance benefits of synthetics juxtaposed with their environmental drawbacks – served as the catalyst for his groundbreaking project.

His exploration was driven by a desire to understand the true implications of shedding petrochemicals entirely from a backpacking setup. "I was just curious to explore academically what it would mean to use a full backpacking kit without any petrochemicals at all, not to say that everyone should, but just to explore what compromises we’d make if we did that," he states. While he anticipated potential trade-offs in weight, performance, and durability, the prospect of creating a collection of gear that could ultimately compost held immense appeal. "And going in, I kind of anticipated it was going to be heavier, it was going to not perform as well, it might be weaker, but how cool to make a collection that could actually completely compost," Bonamici muses. "I thought that would just be an interesting experiment and exploration."

The cornerstone of any backpacking ensemble is, of course, the backpack. Bonamici approached the design of his pack with a familiar ultralight philosophy, adapting existing principles to exclusively natural materials. The result is a frameless, minimalist pack, designed to be exceptionally lightweight. The sleeping pad cleverly doubles as the back panel, providing essential rigidity when the pack is fully loaded. Standard features like generous side pockets and a capacious back pocket are present, alongside robust shoulder straps. Bonamici, accustomed to keeping his pack weight manageable, found that he rarely required a hip belt, but acknowledged its potential inclusion.

The true innovation lies in the materials. The main body of the pack is constructed from Ventile, a remarkably strong and densely woven cotton fabric, reinforced with a ripstop weave for added durability. The side pockets utilize a lighter weight version of Ventile, while cotton cordage forms the drawstring closures, complemented by aluminum toggles and a metal spring – a completely plastic-free solution. The back pocket is fashioned from a stretchable, 100% Merino jersey, secured by metal hardware, including a metal hook for the top closure. The shoulder straps feature Ventile on the exterior and a Merino jersey lining, with cotton webbing. The padding is a thick Merino felt, which, while initially a bit stiff, is expected to conform and soften with use, a characteristic inherent to felt materials.

A significant challenge in constructing any durable gear, and particularly a backpack, is the thread. Bonamici opted for 100% cotton thread, a heavy-duty variety typically used for sewing buttons on formal wear. He acknowledges that this choice represents a compromise in strength compared to the polyester threads commonly found in synthetic packs, which he cannot break. "The thread I think is pretty strong, but it’s, you know, I can break it if I really yank on it, this very heavy-duty thread," he admits. "And that’s not a great sign because with a synthetic, you know, typically backpacking packs are sewn with polyester thread, and I can’t break that, you know, like a Tex 80, Tex 100 thread." To compensate for the reduced tensile strength, he employed multiple stitching passes on seams, carefully balancing reinforcement with the risk of over-perforating the fabric, which could lead to tearing. Despite these considerations, Bonamici expresses considerable excitement about the pack, emphasizing that the design itself remained conventional, with the material choices being the revolutionary aspect.

For sleeping comfort, Bonamici created a sleeping quilt, a design he has previously executed with synthetic materials to achieve exceptional lightness and comfort. His homemade quilt is a testament to this design’s efficacy. The quilt features a subtly tapered rectangular shape that forms a footbox, which can be cinched closed with ties. Instead of a zipper, he opted for ties, a choice informed by his experience with both zippered and snapped footboxes, finding both to be perfectly functional for summer backpacking conditions where extreme insulation is not paramount.

The shell of the quilt is a silk-cotton blend, a material typically found as lining for formal suits, further highlighting the overlap between his project and traditional tailoring. Cotton tape and cotton cord are used for the ties and drawcord, and the stitching is entirely cotton. The interior insulation is made from Lavalan, a puffy wool batting. Bonamici describes this material as highly cleaned wool, spun and matted into a lightweight, fluffy form. He utilized a layer and a half of Lavalan, opting for their heaviest weight, supplemented with a very lightweight Merino quilt batting. He notes that while this wool-based insulation is heavier than its synthetic counterparts, it offers excellent warmth and a pleasing tactile quality. The quilt weighs just under two pounds, a noticeable increase from his one-pound synthetic version, but he anticipates it will provide ample warmth. A potential drawback is its bulk, but he observes that it compresses well when packed, and this fullness can be beneficial when using a frameless pack, preventing shifting and maintaining the pack’s structure.

The decision not to use down, a natural material, stemmed from the requirement for downproof fabrics. These fabrics are typically very lightweight synthetics that undergo calendering – a process of passing them through heated rollers. This process compresses the yarn, closing the gaps in the weave and preventing the delicate stems of down clusters from escaping. While Ventile materials are dense enough to be functionally downproof, and some heavy cotton upholstery fabrics exist for this purpose, they would significantly increase the weight and bulk of the quilt, rendering them unsuitable for his ultralight objective.

One of the most significant challenges in the entire collection was the sleeping pad. Bonamici acknowledges that both the sleeping pad and footwear presented formidable hurdles. His creation is a narrow, full-length pad, designed primarily as a thermal break rather than for plush comfort. "This is just a punishing sleeping pad," he admits. "It’s super narrow. It is full length, and I’m 6’2”, so it’s nice to have, you know, enough length. And it’s so flat. It’s not providing any cushion at all. This is just a thermal break." The pad serves a dual purpose, functioning as the back panel for his frameless backpack while providing essential insulation from the cold ground, a critical factor that becomes apparent when an inflatable pad deflates overnight.

Constructed from lightweight Ventile material, the pad incorporates a thin layer of cork, a material Bonamici recognizes as having limited long-term durability due to its tendency to crumble. This cork layer is sandwiched with Melton wool, a dense, almost felted, woven wool material. The edges are bound with cotton twill tape, and the entire assembly is stitched with cotton thread. Channels are sewn across the pad to help secure the cork in place. Bonamici views this as a significant compromise in comfort, starkly contrasting with the luxurious comfort of his Big Agnes pad. Furthermore, it is heavier than conventional closed-cell foam pads, weighing just under two pounds, more than double that of a Z Lite pad. However, the Z Lite is made from petrochemicals, making it unsuitable for his project. "So, the the collection was about exploring compromises, and I’ve definitely found some compromise area with the sleeping pad. And that’s okay," he concludes.

He did explore the feasibility of natural inflatable pads and thicker wool felt options. Kapok, a material derived from tree seed pods, historically used for insulation and flotation, was considered. While natural latex rubber could theoretically be used to create an inflatable pad, his calculations suggested it would be significantly heavier, potentially weighing between five to eight pounds for the pad alone. He references early 20th-century catalogs that advertised inflatable pads weighing ten to fifteen pounds, suitable perhaps for horse packing but not for his ultralight aims.

Trekking poles were deemed essential for Bonamici’s forty-year-old knees and for setting up his tarp. While he considered aluminum poles, the desire to avoid plastic adjusters and the complexity of creating adjustable, all-metal components led him to Calcutta bamboo. This species of bamboo is renowned for its exceptional strength, finding use in contemporary ski poles and fishing gaffs. Its flexural strength surpasses that of aluminum, and its thick walls contribute to its robustness. For the tips, he sourced aluminum ferrules with carbide tips from a specialized supplier in Slovenia, ensuring durability for ground contact.

The grips are made of suede, and he crafted an adjustable wrist strap with an aluminum buckle, lined with Merino wool and featuring a Ventile outer shell. A brass threaded insert and a high-quality bolt secure the components at the top of the poles. Bonamici believes these poles are likely the physically strongest element of his collection, potentially exceeding the durability of his broken carbon fiber poles. He notes that the primary compromise is the lack of height adjustability, although he can set them to his ideal height. To maintain a non-"hippy-dippy" aesthetic, he coated the bamboo with Sumi calligraphy ink after sanding off the natural waxy finish. This application proved effective, providing a durable, non-rubbing finish. He anticipates these poles will outperform their aluminum and carbon fiber counterparts.

For shelter, Bonamici opted for a tarp, a choice informed by his preference for sleeping under tarps during backpacking trips, particularly in the Western United States where predictable weather patterns and fewer insects make them a practical option. His tarp design is a lightweight, 9-foot-long structure with catenary-cut curves, ensuring even tension distribution across seams and guy lines when set up with his trekking poles. The unique aspect of this tarp is its construction from oiled silk, a material rarely encountered in modern gear. He found historical references to oiled silk in literature over a century old, but minimal contemporary use, likely due to the superior strength and predictable waterproofing of modern synthetics.

Despite this, the oiled silk proved sufficiently waterproof for his needs. While he has not performed a formal hydrostatic head test, he has demonstrated its water resistance by filling an embroidery frame with water and observing no leakage over 24 hours, and it effectively beads water from a garden hose. Oiled silk is a silk taffeta, a very lightweight material akin to that used in ballgowns, which he soaked in a blend of linseed oil and natural turpentine. Turpentine, derived from distilled pine tar or pine sap, is used by artists to thin paints and, in this application, to reduce the viscosity of the linseed oil, allowing it to penetrate the fabric more easily and facilitating easier wringing and drying. Achieving the correct balance is crucial to avoid a sticky residue.

The oiled silk has begun to yellow, a natural process of oxidation, a phenomenon also observed in traditional oilskins worn by fishermen centuries ago, which contributes to the characteristic yellow hue of traditional raincoats like Paddington Bear’s. Bonamici’s tarp, initially off-white, has already started to yellow within a few months of creation. Reinforcements at critical attachment points are made from Ventile patches or self-fabric patches, and cotton tape is used for further reinforcement. He employed repetitive straight stitching, carefully spaced to avoid perforating the fabric. While not as robust as synthetic materials, the oiled silk tarp is lighter than its synthetic counterparts, weighing in at a mere 440 grams (just under a pound), aligning with the expected weight range for ultralight shelters.