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davionics
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10/01/2017 02:21PM   (Thread Older Than 3 Years)
Hello all,
I posted my trip report My trip report "Brotherhood" and decided to post all of the things I learned on my trip here plus some added tips which may come in handy. I hope it helps.
Davionics

Good Decisions
inReach Explorer worked great. I didn’t sign up to track my movements, only to send a single message each day to family. This will become more important as I start taking solo trips because you just never know…

CC Pocket weather radio will be with me from here on. After hearing the weather alert for BWCA we were at least a little prepared. Afterward it was something we turned on twice a day.

Binoculars; this was a tough decision strictly due to the weight vs the potential use of them. I took Nikon Trail Blazer binoculars as a test to see if it was worth it and I found I used them more than anticipated either for eagle watching or searching for camp sites.

Collapsible tub; I used this to wash dishes, clothes and myself. For dishes I used filtered water since it was easy to do. I emptied one 32oz water bottle into the bucket and would wash one item and then rinse it off with water from the second water bottle. I would then wipe off the standing water with a towel and let it air dry before I packed it away. When I start going solo I plan to use lake water for washing and rinse off with filtered or boiled water. I think it would be perfectly fine to rinse with lake water but if you’ve ever had problems from drinking bad water before, you’ll agree that filtering water is an easy thing to do. When the water becomes really dirty and you can’t see the bottom, remember to do a good search in the bottom of the tub. This will prevent you from having to back into the woods looking for your missing spatula. For washing clothes and myself I used lake water for the tub and also filled up my cooking pot with it. The soap went into the tub, washed in the tub and used the pot water for rinsing. Everything was dumped back in the woods.

60L food barrel cover from CCS; I bought the cover because I figured I could use it for more than a carrying harness and I was right. We used the extra top pouch to store our map during portages plus we used the bag when collecting fire wood for the smaller pieces. It worked great for this. I think for summer months keeping the cover wet will aid in keeping everything inside at a cooler temperature as well.


Net anchor; I used a small net which comes with many of the camping items purchased throughout the years and filled it with rocks, attached a small carabiner between it and some paracord and it worked great as a lightweight anchor system while fishing. When done wind up the paracord and stuff it into the net.


Pillows; I tried the Sea to Summit Aeros pillow but it never was comfortable enough for me. It always seem like I was resting on a balloon which was resting on another balloon (sleeping pad). No matter how I adjusted the air pressure it wasn’t the answer for me. If you do like them, just deflate it and leave it in your sleeping bag; no need to pack it up separately. The pillow ended up using was the Thermarest compressible pillow. The very first night I slept like a rock and it continued to give me a great night’s sleep every time. It does take up more space than a baseball but it’s now my traveling pillow.

Peanut Butter & Jelly; I didn’t want to take a plastic bottle of jelly and end up with extra so I purchased the small jelly packs you see in hotels and restaurants from minimus.biz. These were cheap and it worked out great because we had each day’s meals in a separate ziplock bag and it made distributing the meals easier. I did bring a plastic jar of peanut butter and used most of it.

Fry bake pans; these are heavier than other pans out there but they’re pretty much indestructible and putting hot coals on the lid worked great for baking pizza etc. The biggest trick I learned was to not to cook while the fire is blazing, use the 6/6 rule. Put your hand about 6” above the grate and if you can hold it there for about 6 seconds it’s time to cook/bake. This prevents burning your foods. The pans are not non-stick so the 6/6 rule doesn’t burn your oils and then your food. You actually clean them using a metal spatula or sand and it’s better to put some water in the pan after cooking, heat it up and then clean it. The only issue is the weight but I will use the 10 ½”pan when traveling with others and the 8” pan for solo trips. The only issue I see with the small pan is getting pizza bread this small. I’ll tackle this issue later on.

Weight of food; for two people we filled up our 60L food barrel with a mix of Mountain House meals and ready to eat foods and other cooking foods such as rice, mashed potatoes, stuffing etc. The food barrel weighted about 50lbs and was a heavy beast starting out on our 10 day trip. I’m going to do some research into dehydrating foods and possibly barrow a food dehydrator before I put out the money buy one and find out it wasn’t worth it.

Footwear; this should be in a non-decision category because I still haven’t come to a conclusion. I have a pair of Chota Hippes and boots which I use when fishing in my kayak. I liked that I could pull down the top to stay cooler while canoeing and then pull them back up before stepped into deep water. I never had any traction problems while in the water or actually on portages. They were very comfortable humping the packs and canoes but I did have to remove the boot insert because it would start to fold under my feet as I walked. But here are the things why I didn’t like them…
Once they were saturated with water they weighted as much if not more than mountaineering boots. Granted this is only a concern during portages but none the less from a backpacker’s perspective it’s a concern.
I’m used to having damp feet when backpacking and having to keep my feet dry to prevent blisters but the neoprene socks made my feet sweet even more than hiking boots. I had hoped they would not to be so hot since it was wet on the outside of my foot but it didn’t work out that way.
You have to turn them inside out so the inside dries.
To prevent my pants from getting soaked when it rained I would have to wear rain pants over the Hippies so water didn’t flow underneath. To try and lower the heat I rolled down the Hippies before putting on the rain pants but then when stepping out of the canoe I couldn’t be sure if the rain pants would hold back the water long enough while unloading or loading the canoe so I had to swap them and have the Hippies outside the rain pants.
On days with no rain, when you reach camp you replace the Hippies and wet socks with camp shoes and dry socks. But on days like we had on this trip, two hours later it would rain again so I was back in my tent putting on the wet socks and Hippies so my camp shoes/socks didn’t end up soaked. This kept happening several times throughout the day.
This swapping of boots would be the same if I had wet footed it with regular boots/pants so I think I may look into a lighter pair of waterproof boots for camp. They will not have to be heavy enough for backpacking but just enough support for around camp…and be waterproof.
Reflective Oven; I practiced here at home using the reflective oven and when I used it on this trip it worked great. I had a chance to do some pizza and some blueberry mix but here was the dilemma. It’s useless when you can’t get a fire going and this trip it happened more days than not. Some days we were able to get a fire going but only enough to warm up some water; it wasn’t enough heat to use the oven. So for my next trip I’ll be leaving this home and refining my baking using the fry/bake pan.

Maps; as a backpacker I always bring topo maps with me so I ordered maps for the area we were going to plus also Fisher maps with the camp sites. The differences between these maps seemed to create some confusion. Great land details with the topo maps but obviously no camp sites were marked and the portages were hard to see. Next time I will only buy the topo maps and before I go I’ll mark the camp locations and the portages so they’re easy to see.

Camp chair; being older I felt it was a good idea to bring along some comfortable chairs and I was right. We used the Helinox chairs with the tall back and they were very comfortable. Throughout the trip we would sit on logs or rocks but it wasn’t long before we were uncomfortable and went back to the chairs.. I may go to a smaller chair to shave some weight but this is a luxury I probably won’t do without.

Sleeping pad; I bought the large size Nemo Cosmo sleeping pad and it was nice not having my feet hang over the edge. This was definitely more comfortable to sleep on and it packs in less than half the space as the regular Thermarest. It’s a keeper for sure.

Knots; if you’re like me and don’t always use knots in your everyday life, bring some knot instructions with you. I printed up some but forgot to pack them. Luckily the outfitter had a pack of plastic cards with instructions on them and they were really handy to have. It’s small enough I just stuffed them into the bag with all the extra guys lines. It’s called Pro-Knot. I haven’t been to the site but the web page is proknot.com. I’m glad I had this with me.

Bad Decisions
Stove; I bought a Snow Peak Gigapower stove to shed some weight instead of carrying actual fuel bottles but this didn’t last long considering it was brand new. I’m going back to my MSR stove which I’ve used for 20+ years with no issues. It was replaced by MSR Whisper Lite and it appears it’s quality is still as good as before.

Pie pans; I bought two pie pans at the dollar store to use as plates. Perfect size, cleaned easy and they are light. These worked great up until I started packing them for the next trip. All of the knife marks left from cutting meals rusted up pretty bad.

Axe; we didn’t bring an axe with us and we could have used one for splitting logs. We used some of the local rocks (shale?) as wedges and split them this way to try and get some dryer wood so I’ll look into making a light weight wedge or getting a small axe before my next trip. I did bring a Sven Saw and it worked great.

Tips
Insulated reusable grocery bag; I wet a dish towel and wrapped a steak in it and stuck it in the freezer the night before day 1 of the trip. The next morning, I put this into the grocery bag along with a 6” sub for lunch and a package of mozzarella cheese. The sub was still cool for lunch and the steak was ready for cooking that same night. We had pizza two nights and the cheese stayed cool even on day 7. We had two days of mid 70’s temperatures but the rest of the trip stayed around the 60’s so it wasn’t a test for hot days but I think insulated grocery bag worked out better than just wrapping it all in a wet cloth.

Tying line; Something I learned via the internet was when winding the small guys lines used for your tarps and tents, don’t just wind then around your hand because they always end up in a knot when you try to use them. Instead wrap it in a figure 8 pattern between your thumb and small finger and then tightly wrap the bundle 5-6 times before you tie off the end. This simple method is something I’ll use for the rest of my life. I tried to find the youtube video but I can’t, sorry.

Para cord; stick with para cord. I used another type of rope for tying up the tarp and the other roped stretched a lot when it was wet and the para cord stayed tight.

Water Filter Clamp; if you get tired of your outlet filter hose pulling out of the water bottle, try this. I've done this for years and it works great.


Build a better key for your food barrel; I made a good key and key holder to ensure I don’t lose the key and also have a better than average chance a bear can’t open the lid without ripping it apart. I don’t have time to make a video but I a picture of the parts required which can all be purchased at your local home center. Just cut the length you need and then ensure the hole is low enough so you can lock it. Then bend it 90 degrees, use the cable and ferrules (crimp sleeves) to attach it all. It works great and you never have to worry about losing the key.
 
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BuckFlicks
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10/02/2017 12:46PM  
*Moved response to the other thread*
 
06/04/2021 09:58PM  
Instead wrap it in a figure 8 pattern between your thumb and small finger and then tightly wrap the bundle 5-6 times before you tie off the end. This simple method is something I’ll use for the rest of my life. I tried to find the youtube video but I can’t, sorry.


Found it! Great report.

Youtube paracord figure 8
 
mschi772
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06/05/2021 08:48AM  
davionics: "Para cord; stick with para cord. I used another type of rope for tying up the tarp and the other roped stretched a lot when it was wet and the para cord stayed tight. "


I think what you're calling "para cord" is not paracord because paracord does stretch a lot and expands a lot when wet which is why paracord has no place anywhere near my camping equipment--hate it.
 
06/05/2021 09:07AM  
I found there's different brands and makes. Army classifies 6 different kinds.

How much does paracord stretch?
Under load, it can stretch quite a bit. Thirty percent, to be exact. The military specification required that all types of paracord be capable of stretching at least 30% without breaking.

But how much does it stretch under light loads? Still more than you might think. This guy did an informal test where he suspended a mere 10 lb weight from the end of a 10-foot line of 550 cord. Over 24 hours, it stretched 11.5 inches. That’s 10% elongation under a weight that barely tipped the needles at 1.8% of the rope’s breaking strength.

Then again, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Any nylon rope stretches. That’s considered one of the virtues of nylon: it can stretch under load without breaking. That characteristic stretch gives nylon rope its impressive dynamic strength.

Again, paracord is parachute cord. When deploying a parachute, you’d want a stretchy line to absorb the shock, otherwise you’d get a nasty jolt when that chute opens. Dynamic climbing ropes are always nylon for the same reason. You wouldn’t want to fall and have the rope instantly snap tight. That’s also why many people prefer nylon ropes and straps for vehicle towing.

https://www.ramblinjim.com/articles/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-paracord/
 
06/06/2021 09:38AM  
I'll just mention that cotter pins work great as food barrel locks. Tie a length of cord to the pin and the metal clamp ring to keep from losing it and you're all set to go. Good lessons learned. Thanks for sharing.
 
gotwins
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06/07/2021 06:33PM  
You can also put your washed dishes in that mesh bag and hang it up to let them air dry. Used to do this in Boy Scouts and forget to bring one on every trip now as a grown up! Kick myself every time after setting up the Jenga pile of dishes to dry on a rock!
 
06/07/2021 09:02PM  
HighnDry: "I'll just mention that cotter pins work great as food barrel locks. Tie a length of cord to the pin and the metal clamp ring to keep from losing it and you're all set to go. Good lessons learned. Thanks for sharing."

I use a simple safety pin from any hardware store. About 2 bucks. Safety pin
 
portagedog09
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06/09/2021 05:18PM  
+1 on the hardware store safety pin....come in several sizes
 
06/10/2021 09:12AM  
Tip on the binoculars: I switched to a monocular and love it. Saves on weight and space. Mine is small enough to be clipped on to my belt or vest.
 
06/10/2021 12:01PM  
I always tie my small cordage with that figure-8 method. That is a good tip.

I used to bring binoculars on every trip to see if a site was taken. Mine broke and need to order another pair. Thanks for the reminder!
 
gotwins
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06/10/2021 12:24PM  
Soledad: "I always tie my small cordage with that figure-8 method. That is a good tip.


I used to bring binoculars on every trip to see if a site was taken. Mine broke and need to order another pair. Thanks for the reminder!"


I highly recommend Vortex binocs. They will fix ANYTHING you do to them for free. Only thing it doesn’t cover is loss. Plus, they are great optically as well.
 
WHendrix
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06/10/2021 03:54PM  
gotwins: "
Soledad: "I always tie my small cordage with that figure-8 method. That is a good tip.



I used to bring binoculars on every trip to see if a site was taken. Mine broke and need to order another pair. Thanks for the reminder!"



I highly recommend Vortex binocs. They will fix ANYTHING you do to them for free. Only thing it doesn’t cover is loss. Plus, they are great optically as well. "


That's right. There is a vortex binocular at the bottom of whatever that body of water is at the EP 30 landing.
 
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