We've been using a SealLine 70L pack / dry bag as our food bag on canoe trips for 6 years now. Typically organize meal categories in plastic grocery bags (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks), and stack them in this big pack. It has worked well, but I'm trying to improve it without spending much. Any ideas for adding structure to this pack? Ideally, would love to find some large, durable circular or oval-shaped storage units that could stack into the pack, instead of misshapen plastic bags.

I just use stuff sacks. A different color for each food category: breakfast, lunch, dinner, staples/beverages/desserts. They don't have much structure but they stand vertical and are flexible enough that there aren't big gaps in the pack. I'm sure you'll get plenty of more creative solutions. I never fill one pack with all food. I always have a mix of some food stuff sacks with some gear stuff sacks (except when I solo and only have one main pack).

I love my 30L Sealline as solo food (plus stove and fuel) bag. Not sure of dimensions on the 70L, but maybe these would work: https://recreationalbarrelworks.com/product-category/barrel-organizers/.

The barrel bags made by Cooke Custom Sewing might work for a dry bag.

When my large Spring group was active, we packed all meals B/L/D by meal/date and distributed the stuff sacks (each with blue tape noting the meal and date) of each meal among the four boats with the trip leader keeping track of who had which meals. Seemed like a cumbersome system but worked well for us. It was always interesting to watch the group quickly assessing the weight of the bags trying take the lightest bags as we packed up.

Good ideas, thanks. Hadn't ever thought to use smaller dry bags, of which we have many! I did, however, discover last night that one of my light-weight plastic Cabela's ammo cases (approx. 16x8x10) slips into the sack like a glove. Could stack 2-3. Might give that a whirl.

What I do is to parcel out food in one day (for trips to 10 days or so) or one week (to 7 weeks) bags. Load your dry bag with the last food first (ziplocs to compactor bags, depending on size needed), so you're going down as time goes. So, you open your dry bag, pull out the top (labeled) bag, take out your breakfast and lunch, then drop dinner back in and close up the bag until dinner. You don't have to deal with the other food until it's time to eat it. Of course, after six weeks with numerous portages, loading and unloading the pack multiple times a day, the food needs to squish proof.

This depends lot on how you plan meals. It seems some folks predetermine what the meal is each day so they eat dinner no. 2 on second day come wind, rain, snow, or sun. I pack ingredients and make up the menu for each meal each day, even change at last minute. Four color coded stuff sacks in a food pack does well for us.

I wonder how bear protection - I'm a life long bear bag hanger and just hang the whole food pack with garbage bag - is handled when food is spread among everyone's' packs.

billconner: "This depends lot on how you plan meals. It seems some folks predetermine what the meal is each day so they eat dinner no. 2 on second day come wind, rain, snow, or sun. I pack ingredients and make up the menu for each meal each day, even change at last minute. Four color coded stuff sacks in a food pack does well for us.


I wonder how bear protection - I'm a life long bear bag hanger and just hang the whole food pack with garbage bag - is handled when food is spread among everyone's' packs. "

I also don't plan which meal is for which night because of weather, appetites, length of travel day, etc. all affect what we want to cook.

In terms of bear hanging, we just put all the stuff sacks in our Sealline pack for the night. The next morning, we redistribute stuff sacks to individual packs for traveling. We usually only have 2-3 packs on a trip.

I used to use rectangular plastic dish pans appox. 12x8x6. Organize any way you like. Easy to put in and out of pack and can always be used as a sink. Weight maybe 1# each or less worked great for larger groups. Now, since I solo, I use zip lock inside zip lock inside extra thick large "odor proof " zip lock bags inside a 30L roll top pack. I don't hang the food pack but I do try to be off the ground and as invisible as possible to critters large and small.

In the past, I've used cardboard for structure in packs. Then switched to Corrugated Plastic Cardboard (gorilla taped some used political signs together). This works great and doesn't break down from wear like the paper product.

I use an Ursack food bag mostly but have found a nice thin/flexible cutting board that I use to help keep the shape and add a little protection to the food inside - similar to the thin aluminum Ursack sells for this purpose.

The cutting board weighs almost nothing and comes in handy around camp-double duty! I'm not sure if you can find pieces large enough to fit a 70L but it might be worth a shot as it's nearly indestructible, lightweight and isn't sharp enough to damage the bag itself.

For years I used to use beer cases. As I recall they fit in a Duluth Food Pack perfectly. Don’t use that system any more, switched to food barrels. But beer cases held up quite well. When I hung the food pack for the night I covered it with an old backpacking poncho.