One thing you may want to consider to help lighten your backpacking load is to just leave the waders at home.
I'm assuming that the bulk of the hiking that you'll be doing will be during the spring / summer / fall fishing season, and from personal experience you can easily get by with a set of wet socks inside your boots and just wet-wade. I've seen some sets of wet socks at the fishing shops around town, however I personally just head to the paddling section of MEC and grab a set of wet socks from them (They're typically about 1/2 the price of the Simms branded ones which come up your shin a touch higher than the MEC ones do).
The best part is that it's super easy to find a set of them for under $20, and even if you think it's a bit too cold for wet wading during the early or late season, you'll still be able to significantly lighten your load during the summer months.
|