My groups have taken a CCS food pack with for several years now to great success. This first week of September, I decided to try out some dry ice. I packed about 25 lbs of dry ice, with frozen meat on top of it, in a smaller cooler with pretty thin insulation, placed that in the CCS pack, and also lined between the cooler and pack with a closed cell foam pad. It was pretty rudimentary, but we had frozen food for about 5-6 days, with most of the days being in the 80s-90s.

While sitting around the fire, we realized that we could take some ice cream with by using dry ice, and we started brainstorming how we could take the insulation factor to the next level and enable us to have frozen items for a full week. We decided on constructing an XPS foam insert for the CCS pack. Construction is complete and will be tested on an 8 day trip starting this Thursday.

I used 1.5 inch thick XPS foam board, Liquid nails construction glue, a liberal amount of Gorilla tape, reflectix, and rubber window seal to construct the insert. Pictures are attached. I left extra space in the top of the CCS pack to store refrigerated items. We are excited to see how well it works and I plan to report back on how it went.

A fellow canoe trip foodie! Can't wait for the report.

This is awesome! Where you getting dry ice up there?

Thanks! I am picking it up from Linde Welding Gas & Equipment Center in Duluth on our way up.

In Ely last week, one of the outfitters on south side of Sheridan past Zups was advertising "wet and dry ice". Mm maybe Way of the Wilderness?

Update: The insert worked awesome! There was frozen meat the whole trip. Here are a few pictures from day 2:

We had ice cream after dinner on both days 5 and 6! Each ate half a pint per night, which was plenty. It was probably the best ice cream any of us have had.

Here is a video of the cooler state on day 5: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AN2MnyRjBK0

The gorilla tape and everything held up extremely well. The only thing that failed was the top piece of reflectix came off the bottom of the lid day 6 (it was glued). I will just press fit this into the top of the box instead, rather than glue this. The glue everywhere else is extremely solid and the box is ready for more trips.

It was also very nice how clean everything was. All the meats were frozen and there was no mess at all. No melted ice water, either. We will definitely be using this again. Here is how it looks now:

We camped at the NE site on Lynx Lake out of Little Indian Sioux River North EP.

The next big thing we are planning on doing next year is take my new tent sauna!

Very creative. And I thought I was clever because I brought along frozen wine bags of water which lasted a few days before melting.

We had a CCS food pack with insulated liner. it worked awesome!! Two 1 Gallon frozen milk cartons. 4 Filet Migns, 4 NY Strip steaks. 8 Brats. 2 Lbs Hamburger patties. All frozen solid to start. two- half gallons of milk. pound or two of butter, Deli cold cuts, Cheeses, 18 eggs, And I'm not sure on what else.
We still had cold milk on day 8.
But I really like the Dry Ice idea.

billconner: "In Ely last week, one of the outfitters on south side of Sheridan past Zups was advertising "wet and dry ice". Mm maybe Way of the Wilderness?"

Spirit of the Wilderness in Ely has dry ice.

I tried dry ice once. It was overkill even in July. But hey, great minds...

Yeti soft side fits great in my CCS food pack, lean III, stakes, rope, and my stove fuel on top, I can slide my water filter and bags down the side of yeti. Half gallon ice keeps for 7 days, it's fridge temps at the end.