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At the risk of exposing myself to public ridicule, below is my packing list for my ride from St. Joseph to Salt Lake City. I know: the list is absurdly long. And for what it’s worth, it will be considerably shorter when I ride the rougher half of the route in the fall (Salt Lake to Sacramento).

What makes this particularly embarrassing is that while researching the Pony Express, I read quite a few books and articles about the emigration from the States to Oregon and California. One of the phenomena every diarist and subsequent writer comments on is the amount of superfluous equipment emigrants packed—stoves, anvils, grandfather clocks, plows, etc.—and how most of the items ended up littering the side of the road from Ft. Laramie west. Even in 2015, Rinker Buck, a modern-day wagoneer recreating the emigrant experience in a mule-drawn covered wagon, found he had packed too far more gear than he needed. (Rather than cast it off the side of the trail, however, he donated it to a thrift store.) So if nothing else, overpacking is a venerable tradition on the Oregon Trail (which is the same as the Pony Express trail east of South Pass).

I’ll be interested to see which items I would better have done without at the end of the trip. I did pare the list down some: the items in brackets are things I considered bringing, or took on my scouting trips, and have decided I do not need on this one. I have left them here (and on my private list) as a way of knowing I have considered the item the rejected it, and that it hasn’t been omitted due to inattention.

In case the list is helpful to anyone else, here is a PDF version.