Gear: What to Bring

As I'm analyzing what gear I have, I now need to delve into what gear I need to bring along.  Near the beginning of this blog, I addressed the need to maintain my gear list, and I've begun to flush it out with the items I have.  Now I have to get down to work creating my list and identifying those things that I need.  (Yay!  Shopping!) 

Lets start with some large categories: 

• Shelter - I figure this should cover the items that surround me while I'm not hiking.  
• Clothing - This would be the stuff that surrounds me while I'm hiking. 
• Food - This would be the stuff that gives me the energy to hike.
• Tools - This would be the general category of items I would use to manupulate the food, shelter or clothing.  One could make an argument that boots are tools, and that a backpack could be considered clothing, but I'll try this and see if I have to change my taxonomy later.  

You've already seen all the boring posts about what I have, in future posts, I'll look at each of these categories, agonize about what I need, what to buy, rent or borrow, and what I think would be fun to bring.  I'm sure it'll all be balanced against the mighty scale.