To Do, Lessons Learned & Things to Consider
To do
Lessons Learned
- Bring DEET only in a screw-top bottle.
- Wrapping DEET in a standard ziplock only adds to the melted mess. We need
need something resistant.
- Even so, do not store DEET near other important gear. E.g., rain gear,
waterproof bags, etc.
- Cut cheese into servings and wrap each separately in something like snack
bags. We’re trying to reduce how much we handle the goo that comes off cheese
in warm weather.
- Royce says he should pack less fishing gear
- Magic sandals with GoreTex socks work well enough that spare boots are
unnecessary.
- Charging cables are light and do fail. Carry two.
- Kodiak brand oatmeal is notably better than Quaker.
- Carry old-fashioned ballpoint pens (e.g., Bic) to write on Fisher maps.
- Before the trip, mark the paper maps with waypoints from the GPS.
- Guide pack got too heavy.
- Leslie baked the Leslie bars in two cookie sheets. This made them chewier,
and gave them a bit of a caramel flavor. They were better.
To Consider
How to waterproof clothes, sleeping bags, etc
- One large bag waterproof bag, like now?
- A smaller rubber pack for each person? The ones with hip belts look easier
to carry.
- Use the food barrel for the key gear (e.g., sleeping bags) and put overflow
into waterproof bags that fit into a blue canvas pack. This would only work
for a shorter trips in warm weather.
Saw
Consider not carrying the saw on warm weather trips as we don’t typically want a
fire then. On the other hand, maybe its weight and hassle are worth in case we
need to do emergency trail clearing. And, not all summer trips are so warm.
Hatchet
The new hatchet is light but cannot be used to pound stakes. We never used it.
- Stop carrying a hatchet?
- Keep carrying it for emergencies?
- Carry a hatchet that can be used to pound stakes?
- Carry only on trip in cooler weather? We used to carry a “boys’ axe” on fall
trips.
Stoves
Does it make sense to carry a separate stove, fuel, and pot for coffee? It is
easier to start an iso-butane stove but iirc, we only used it twice in 14 days:
on one of the first morning, because we had it, and again after our nap after
the Horse Portage. Most mornings, I used the WisperLite.
We carried out nearly a liter of white gas.
Guide Pack load
I bought The Guide Pack to organize “hand things”, like water
bottles, and to carry things that we did not want to open other packs to access
(e.g., snacks, rain gear, toilet kit). Soon, some emergency gear (e.g., first
aid, hatchet) went into it. On day trips, it was often the the only pack.
This trip, its weight seemed excessive, particularly as we lightened the gear
and personal packs by moving things to the food barrels.
I loaded it with:
- Up to ~5 liters or ~10 pounds of water
- Lunch in whatever form it was packaged. Some days that was a block of cheese
(2 pounds?) and a ten pack of flour tortillas.
- A few bars and meat sticks as snacks
- Waterproof bag
- Rain gear
- First aid kit
- Toilet kit
- Spare batteries for GPS, sometimes more than a few.
Can we drop it? I want a place to put water bottles and toilet kit, but, in
principle, everything else could go into other packs.
Reducing the weight
Carrying less water is the obvious point. However, we did run out more than a
few times.
- Carry less filtered water and come up with some way to quickly get more
potable water (e.g., scoop water mid-lake and use a Steripen).
- Move some filtered water into another pack. (We did this one one liter but
we could do more.)
- Move some gear, like first aid, to personal packs or gear packs.
- Load only enough food for one lunch.
- Load no lunch and open the food barrels at lunch?
- Decide that the weight is worth it.