While most of us agonise over shaving grams off our pack weight, Regan Bridge is going the other way. The 54-year-old log truck driver from New Zealand regularly hauls up to 220 pounds (100kg) of gear on day hikes — toolboxes stacked on his pack, a ladder strapped on for getting the load on and off his back, duplicate equipment and multiple pairs of footwear purely to add weight. No sponsors, no social media, no money. He just likes it.
Bridge's path into ultraheavy hiking started with conservation work: he volunteered to carry predator traps for a New Zealand pest-control project, where workers were normally limited to two at a time. He asked for the rule to be waived, then cleared all 15 traps in two trips. That experience rewired his sense of what his body could handle, and the weights have crept up ever since. Once his pack passes 110 pounds, he can't lift it off the ground alone — hence the ladder. On climbs he carries water bottles in the toolboxes and empties them at the summit, roughly halving the load for the trip down. These days he prefers steep, demanding day hikes over multiday trips; the climb, he says, is what clears his head, usually to a soundtrack of AC/DC and '90s dance music.
His most memorable outing took him to Slovakia's Tatra Mountains, inspired by a documentary about the nosiči — the legendary mountain porters who ferry supplies to remote huts. Most tourists are invited to carry 44 pounds (20kg) between huts in exchange for a coffee. Bridge carried double that on day one, earning coffee and rum, then climbed the chain section of a route — via the descent path, after failing to get his 132-pound army pack up the ladders — in full view of the porters. Impressed, they let him carry their traditional frame loaded with 110 pounds. Among the nosiči, he says, he wasn't a curiosity at all — just one of the crew.
Not everyone gets it. Fellow hikers tell him it's pointless or warn about his knees. His answer: hiking itself is pointless by the same logic, and if he needs a knee replacement at 60, he'll get one. Next on his list is hauling 100kg up the 2,200 steps of the Sealy Tarns Track in Aoraki National Park — wind permitting, since his tall, balanced setup turns exposed ridges into what he calls 'diabolical' conditions.
There's also something quietly likeable about the man himself. He prints out interview questions, checks every figure, and refuses to let translation inflate his feats — he doesn't want credit for a single kilo he hasn't carried. He trains six days a week and has no fixed end goal, just a vague future morning when he'll wake up and decide he's done.
Why does this matter to travellers? Beyond being a great story, it's a window into two hiking cultures worth experiencing yourself: New Zealand's demanding backcountry day hikes, and Slovakia's Tatra hut-to-hut porter tradition — which, unusually, lets visitors try carrying supplies themselves. You might want to start well below 100 kilos.
