Ozzy

Packing, most likely, and specifically the shape of the load. A frameless pack transfers weight through its contents, so if the load is soft and slumps there's no column to transfer through and everything lands on your shoulders.

Two changes. Build a virtual frame: foam pad folded flat against the back panel, or your mat rolled into a cylinder around the inside wall, then everything else packed inside that. It sounds fussy and it completely changes how the pack carries.

Then get the dense stuff high and against your back. Food bag and water in the top third, close to your spine, not at the bottom. Frameless packs want a high centre of gravity, which is the opposite of the advice for framed packs, and it's the thing most people get wrong when they switch.

Also, load lifters on a frameless pack do very little. Don't spend time on them.

Your big three are 4.4kg of an 8.4kg base and that's where the whole answer lives. Nothing you do with odds and ends competes with one change there.

In order of weight saved per pound spent:

• The pack. 1.4kg for a load that will never exceed about 12kg total is a heavy pack carrying nothing. A 900g lightly framed pack is comfortable at that weight.
• The tent. A one-person trekking pole shelter at 700-900g saves a full kilo, but only if you already walk with poles.
• The stove kit. 480g with a 1.2L pot for solo is at least 200g of pot. A 650ml titanium mug and a small canister stove is around 200g total.

That's 1.7kg without touching your sleep system, which at 1.1kg plus 550g is already reasonable. Also weigh the odds and ends individually and post the list, because that's where people find 400g they'd forgotten about.

Almost certainly the mat and the draughts rather than the quilt.

3.2 R-value is a summer mat. Ground conduction makes people cold at these temperatures far more often than top insulation does, and a mat that's fine at 10C pulls heat out of you steadily at 3C. R-4.5 or better is where most people stop being cold in the shoulder season, and the cheapest fix is a 3mm closed cell foam pad underneath, which adds about R-2 for 200g.

Second, quilts leak. Loose pad straps or a roller means a bellows effect every time you move, and 4am is when it shows up because your body temperature is at its lowest and you've been shifting for hours. Cinch the footbox, snug the straps, and use a neck baffle or a scarf across the top edge.

Third, ratings come from a lab with a defined setup and generally assume a full base layer on an appropriately warm mat. Cold sleepers routinely want 5-8C of margin. That isn't a defect in your quilt.

And once in wind if you can arrange it. Wind is what separates a pole shelter that's fine from one that flaps all night.

Short first days are also when you discover what you left at home, while you're still close enough to a shop to care.