Packing a 30 L Barrel

[dougd]

I've been using my Duluth Kitchen pack since 99' and have it down to a science for packing but decided to give the 30 L barrel a shot for the run down the St. John in May. Today I started experimenting with how to pack this. How do others pack yours? I have a small cook kit and plan on including a small fry pan. Food will go in as well of course. I have a propane stove which will be too awkward to fit in so will pack that elsewhere. Just curious how you layer stuff as I can see how that will be the way it is with this vs the Duluth Pack which has a much wider opening and pockets.

dougd

 

[yellowcanoe]

I don't pack pots and utensils in the 30 l barrel. They can get wet just fine. I try to pack by dinner day. The later days on the bottom so they don't get disturbed nor do you have to rummage.
Frankly the 30 liter is so small that packing round things like pots makes too many gaps. I do try to put my backpacking stove in for protection from banging around. And it doesn't like to get wet. If yours doesn't fit you will have a workaround I am sure.

You might consider dividers from cardboard if you have some stuff up high that has a sinky predispositon ( like batteries and headlamps) I hate barrel digging.

 

[dougd]

Kim, I like the idea of the divider. I was eyeballing it today and thought since I have some thin foam I could cut out a couple of pieces to section it off. I will probably add the cook kit with the stove in a container of their own, old dry bag most likely. Going to go back out tomorrow and play around some more.

 

[yellowcanoe]

even better divest Mc Crea of some of his coroplast. I am sad to say I turned in all the election signs in post Nov 8.

 

[Grandpa Paddler]

Packing a blue barrel is not rocket science. As YC suggests, packing food by days makes a lot of sense, for normal folks. I'm not normal and I don't really mind barrel diving. I pack by meal, not day 'cuz I frequently change my menu plans. Single meal packs allow for more flexibility when filling gaps. I've done up to 8 days and the barrel held all the food and snacks for 9 days (just in case), 2 qt pot, 7" skillet with removable handle, plastic bowl, fork and spoon, coffee cup and small tea pot, all my smellables, large roll of bounty paper towels. Always on top are a small jar of Jif and single packets of honey in case my glucose levels crash during the night (scary thing). When I pack up in the morning I take out lunch and snacks for a small dry bag that will be quicker and easier to get into when paddling.

 

[Odyssey]

Life is like opening a 30 L barrel, you never know what you're gonna get. Sorry Forrest, but it's true.
At least until I started labelling each meal or ingredient (in clear ziplock bags) and separated them into daily meals of breakfast, lunch and dinner (in different coloured cloth shopping bags). I now have barrel bags with draw string closures.
A week's worth of meals generally filled the barrel, so there was no room for kitchen stuff. I prefer a separate pack for that stuff and stove. Repacking the barrel we'd place the meal bags in order of subsequent retrieval. There's no guarantee there wouldn't be disorder within, regardless of our best efforts. When our backs are turned fresh food like apples and lemons, onions and salami sometimes throw a food barrel house party, and then we start all over again with the "You go to your room here, you go to your room there..." I hate having to rummage around looking for stuff, but it happens.
We've been taking eggs for years, and rarely have had issues with breakage. I simply keep them in their cardboard case cut in half into 2 - 6 egg containers ( the cardboard is burned when emptied) slipped into ziplock bags (just in case of breakage) and always placed in the bottom sitting flat. It doesn't hurt to put a small cutting board on top, followed by a soft food bag. The only times we've had broken or cracked eggs was when we tried plastic egg carriers?!
Like organizing weight distribution in hiking packs I prefer to place the heavier items such as fresh food nearer the bottom filling those gaps. I don't know if it really makes a difference with a barrel as they don't ride high on your back, but that's just the way I do it.
I tried separating the barrel into compartments with waxed cardboard dividing the barrel into vertical thirds like silos, and although it seemed to work okay up to a point I was never entirely happy with it, although it nearly eliminated "barrel diving". I do like the sounds of separating them in layers, I might try that.

 

[Iskweo]

I put my food into canvas shopping bags, colour coded if possible. Breakfast stuff in one, suppers in another, and the rest in a third. Bread and whatever can sit ontop. I have also used dividers and a combination of the methods as well. The bags are handy for when you want to do some diving or if you are altering the menu.
One thing I do is to repackage a lot of stuff into ziplocks, and small peanut butter jars. A 30 li is kind of small for longer trips...I take a second one if needed.

 

[Guest]

I've been using my Duluth Kitchen pack since 99' and have it down to a science for packing but decided to give the 30 L barrel a shot for the run down the St. John in May. Today I started experimenting with how to pack this. How do others pack yours? I have a small cook kit and plan on including a small fry pan. Food will go in as well of course. I have a propane stove which will be too awkward to fit in so will pack that elsewhere. Just curious how you layer stuff as I can see how that will be the way it is with this vs the Duluth Pack which has a much wider opening and pockets.

I do love blue barrels. And Cur-tec wide neck drums:

http://www.curtec.com/en/products/drums/wide-neck-drums

I think dividers would be counterproductive; the amount of space left in each triangular slot with even a 3-section vertical divider would be awfully tall & skinny, and even harder to dig down to the bottom if foods were packed loose in each slot.

I have never cared for organizing my meals by day. I simply do not know what I may feel like eating for dinner on day 3 and it is nice to have even a limited menu to choose from.

I just use four (actually 5) appropriately sized stuff sacks, one each for breakfast, lunch/snacks, dinner and stove/fuel/cookware. The latter holds the Jetboil, oatmeal/soup cup, coffee mug and spoon, so it all fits in a smallish ditty bag. Same for breakfast, which is mostly oatmeal/grits, dried fruit, breakfast bars and instant coffee.

Lunch and dinner need larger stuff bags, and the secret there is to not over fill them; if they are really “stuffed” they are a PITA to pull out through the 9 ½ inch opening on a 30L barrel (60L barrel opening is easier). Excess foodstuffs that don’t (at first) fit in the designated stuff bags go jumbled together in another stuff bag on the bottom of the barrel, and that stuff gets put in the appropriate stuff bag as space develops.

When I am done with a meal I put the next needed stuff bag on top, ie when I pack up after dinner that bags goes towards the bottom and breakfast and stove/cookwear bags go up top.

On long trips I often have too much food to fit in a 30L barrel, so the excess no-odor stuff goes into a small dry bag (or sometimes a 3 gallon container) and into the barrel when space develops.

(One caveat with barrel use. I never take the metal ring all the way off. When I loosen the clamp I just slide the ring down an inch so it rests below the barrel lip unclamped. Our 60L barrel was bought used and the ring was warped ) , which may happened if it stored off the barrel and stepped on or bent somehow? It was an outfitter rental, so most likely someone clamped in on cockeyed, which is another beware)

One question you didn’t ask, and I curious to know what other folks do: What, if anything, do folks put into the barrel once it is only half full of meal stuff?

I don’t have a standard answer for that. I do like filling the wasted space in a hard side container. Since my camp “cooking” doesn’t produce any malodorous or leaky trash the garbage bag sometimes goes in, especially towards the end of a trip when I have as much garbage as food.

If I used a small dry bag for excess foods that goes on the bottom of the barrel. Same for an empty dromedary bag on tidal trips. The Water filter and collapsible bucket if they started packed outside the barrel. The book I’ve read three times, provided I brought a second. Dirty clothes (see: if not too malodorous).

If I brought a second hard side, like the little 3 gallon Cur-tec barrel, that gets filled too. Great place for a tarp or wet tent.

I can usually find enough stuff to keep the barrel(s) moderately full, and as other things lessen in volume carrying gear and packing the canoe become quicker and easier.

 

[Odyssey]

Hmm, good question; what to put into an emptying food barrel? In the past I've either not bothered, particularly if it never really emptied beyond half (read: too much food), or I'd put kitchen stuff like wooden spoon, paring knives (in plastic sheaths), and other odds and ends. The kitchen pack as a result gains some room. I'm always suspicious that she adds a rock collection here or there, but I've never actually caught her at it.
The pre-trip meal plan ponder...I ask her what she thinks she'd like to eat this trip, and then which meal for which day. I myself, I can eat anything anytime, so no issues there. Ham and eggs for supper? Perfect. Stew for breakfast? Perfect. When we've taken a first night's fresh meal, like steak and potatoes or something, that pretty well sets the meal plan order, particularly if we're concerned with spoilage. For example, fresh steak 1st night, frozen cooked chicken 2nd night etc...We don't do that anymore now that I dehydrate our meat protein. So the meal plan order has now become an effort for variety. No two meals repeated on consecutive days. Not even breakfast. Just to keep things interesting.
Due to pre-trip repackaging we have little garbage. Not trying to be eco-minded, just hate the fuss is all. At most we'll have ziplock bags and tinfoil, all packed out. Combustibles get combusted.
I would never put dirty clothes in there, I don't even like putting them back in the clothes pack. They're wrapped in plastic garbage bags and committed to the pit at the very bottom of our dry bag.
There's a good feeling to hoisting a lightened pack or barrel. No more struggle, just a hey ho off we go down the trail, but it comes too with a tiny regret knowing that the lighter barrel is a sign that the trip is drawing to a close.

 

[yellowcanoe]

Oh anything goes in the depleted barrel.. If we had one fully packed bag and the barrel and not moved some stuff in the barrel we would never have completed the 5300 m Dickson Bonfield Portage in two hours and one trip.

 

[Guest]

I myself, I can eat anything anytime, so no issues there. Ham and eggs for supper? Perfect. Stew for breakfast? Perfect.

Rob, those both sound right tasty, but that brings up a whole nother odd/personal preference mystery in meal planning.

I am sure this is different for many, but dinner is the most variable meal of my tripping day. Breakfast is the same old things most mornings, oatmeal/grits, dried fruit, coffee, etc. Lunch doesn’t offer much more selection; peanut butter, honey, cheese, flat breads or crackers, salami, GORP or DIY snacks. Maybe a tin of kippers or sardines or some dark chocolate, saved as a special treat.

Dinner usually offers far more variety of menu choice, but it is often the meal that I am least interested in, especially when solo. If I am throwing in early I don’t really want a full gut-busting meal, or if I am lingering around the fire long into the night I’d prefer an initial light repast, followed by Hobbit’s second sup a few hours into my star gazing repose. Maybe accompanied by a hot chocolate and bourbon toddy.

Sometimes dinner becomes the extra breakfast I packed, or I squeeze out a spare sandwich and snacks. When I cut it close on food packing I always seem to have a dinner or two left.

For my don’t-oversalt preference some of the commercial freeze dried breakfasts are far preferable to a heaping helping of chewy rehydrated beef stew. If it comes down to a half portion of rehydrated Biscuits & Gravy versus the Beef Stew Pro-pack has been around the country twice, well, there’s a reason that Beef Stew is so well travelled.

I have not-fished-for-flesh in years, but I kinda miss eeking out foodstuffs by eating trout for dinner and the last of the rice & beans or ramen noodles for breakfast.

 

[Odyssey]

Mike, my name is Brad. You must be getting me mixed up with the other handsome Canadian, who's name is Rob.
But no worries. You can call me anything you like.
I must confess to eating pretty well on trips. We don't suffer. Can't speak for the other Rob of course. I'll be more careful with my jalapeños in future.
Robin's latest video Shore Lunch represents what I want my future to look like. With any luck it will.
And yes, I wouldn't complain eating fish for breakfast, with coffee.
Yeah, we usually have more dinners left over than any other supplies. I don't pay much attention to lunch. I'm usually too busy paddling, portaging, or napping. There have been times a quick hot soup was a good pick-me-up during the day. I'll need to remember that.

 

[dougd]

Thanks all for the tips. I'll have to experiment with what I have and pack to see how this goes. I do see I'll need to put my cooking/stove gear into a separate bag whether it be a left over crappy one or something else. I also cut out a round foam piece to separate sections and will play with that but am not really keen on it, we'll see. Since the trip is only 7 days I don't see filling the barrel so maybe I can chuck in some extra gear. It's going to be trial and error to get this figured out. Hell, the Duluth Pack took me several long trips to figure things out. Thanks again all.

dougd

 

[yellowcanoe]

You starting above Baker Lake Doug? Its hard to stretch that 140 miles over 7 days.. We did five from Baker Lake to Dickey.
I can easily fill a 30 liter barrel with food for two for five days! You must be a better packer than I.

 

[Alan Gage]

I love my barrel bags. Mine are from CCS but Bothwell voyager on this sites makes them as well. Round bags that are designed to stack 3 high in the barrel. If you cram them full to the max they'll max out the barrel. If you fill them to a normal level there's room left on top of the barrel for other stuff. I use 3 separate colors and divide them into breakfast, lunch and dinner with snacks and other misc. mixed throughout. Even with full bags there will be a little extra space around the sides of the barrel. This is where I throw the baggies with snacks and dog food or anything else I just want to reach in and grab without pulling any bags out. The bags are kinda spendy but I think worth it if you plan to use the barrel regularly.

If not using the custom barrel bags I think I'd get a few mesh bags and use that to divide the food.

I can't imagine tripping with a barrel full of loose zip-locks.

Alan

 

[Odyssey]

I'm looking forward to using my new Bothwell barrel bags, newly sewn and shipped this spring.


They will help to keep things so well organized in either barrel. I chose not to colour code the bags, but rely on ID tags instead, which Bothwell also made himself. I'll print on the tags to remind myself what each coloured paw print is for, breakfast, lunch, dinner. He must know how I like to overfill some things, because the extended top with drawstring permits me to do just that. I love the handles too.

 

[riverstrider]

You starting above Baker Lake Doug? Its hard to stretch that 140 miles over 7 days.. We did five from Baker Lake to Dickey.
I can easily fill a 30 liter barrel with food for two for five days! You must be a better packer than I.

It's not too difficult to stretch it out to 7 days at a Menacing Duckhead pace, lol! We are starting at Baker Lake. I think our general plan is late mornings and early afternoons, with a muckle or two during the day. If we get ambitious and bang out 50 or more miles over two days we can enjoy a day off. And if the weather is crappy all week, hell, we may just finish early! Tons of flexibility.

-rs

 

[Guest]

If not using the custom barrel bags I think I'd get a few mesh bags and use that to divide the food.

I have tried mesh bags for a variety of storage uses. While it is convenient to be see what is where inside the bag the open mesh is often a PITA. Things inside a mesh bag would hook on attempted extraction; we (briefly) used one for traveling PFD storage and the zipper, rescue knives and etc were always getting caught on the mesh. Same for the corners on freeze dried commercial meal pouches, especially if stuffed in too tightly.

The other issue with mesh bags, which was even more of pain, was that the mesh snags all kinds of detritus if laid on the ground. Set the bag down, pick it back up and proceed to pick off the pine needles, twigs and sticks now magically interwoven in the mesh.

With food segregation bags in the barrel I am several times a day setting the bags on the ground, and really didn’t want all that crud distributed inside the barrel.

We still have a variety of mesh bags and the only ones I use are a small version for chilling beers in the river, and a tiny one that is the “trash bag” hooked to the blue barrel table top.



I know I continue to sing the praises of that folding tabletop ad nauseam, but it is my favorite blue barrel accessory and cooking/meal consumption aid, even in the heavyweight all-wood Mark I version.

Something like that, maybe made of foam core and carbon fiber or S-glass, would weigh a few ounces, and I am surprised such a folding barrel tabletop isn’t commercially available. Three Cooke Barrel organizers are $80+, and a barrel harness close to $200 if you want all the bells, whistles and pockets.

Seems that trippers will spend goodly coin to outfit a barrel. I wonder what they would pay for a 4oz tabletop that eliminated cooking and eating off the ground?

 

[Waterdog]

I'm resurrecting this thread on barrel packing instead of starting a separate thread unless someone prefers a new one. Firstly, I absolutely will be outfitting a barrel McCrea style for weekender style trips. That is a setup that should make a canoeist want to take a few extra minutes and not rush things even if you're cooking with a jet boil (which is my main stove too).

Nextly...I have two 30L barrels and a 60l as well. On 10-14 day trips in the past I would fill the 60l with food for me and a Chesapeake bay Retriever (about 25# of dog food) and load it into a 16' prospector canoe or Bell Northstar. She is too old for tripping now and more recently I did a 13 day solo trip and used a 30L barrel for my food and it was packed full and I used a Bell Rockstar. Dimensionally the 30L is more conducive to solo canoes in my opinion especially with a harness. I am meeting Dave Curtis in Kittanning PA this Friday and picking up a SRT solo canoe. I hope to start knocking out some Canadian river trips in this boat and some of these trips could extend to 21 days or so. Having read trip reports of others doing these longer trips I'm sometimes amazed at how much stuff they get in a 30L barrel. So I'm wondering....am I eating too much? I'm 6' and about 215#. Do some of you solo tripping more then 15 days purposely cut down on your food one way or another to fit in a 30L barrel, move up to a 60l barrel, or have a packing secret? Like Alan posted, I use the barrel backs (two) and then stuff items in the voids to fill in the space along the barrel sides. I have some left over meals from my brothers salmon river kayak trip and I may take some of those on daytrips over the next couple weeks, I think my dinners could be cut down a few ounces, sometimes I'm pretty full after dinner.

I will be paddling white water in the SRT for the next couple weekends, first empty and then with an ever increasing tripping load so I can get a feel for any custom outfitting. By the way I've never felt the need to weigh my barrel when packed...If some of you can get 15+ days of food in a 30L, did you weigh it at the start?

Will post Glamping barrel pics when they become available.

Thanks,

Barry

 

[Guest]

I have never weighed any of the barrels once full, but will do so on the next trip. Without using a scale I know that the 60L is a beast, and my spine prefers that one of my sons carry it. The 60L is overkill for most of my trips and only comes along on 4 person family trips.

We eat better on those trips, need more cups and bowls and spoons, bring cookware beyond just a Jet-boil, maybe some pots/pans/griddle. 4x the fuel supply. It adds up.

And a 30L is kinda small for some longer trips. Solo I’d like to have some non-food/stove items handy in the barrel. The water filter. A collapsible bucket, the deliciously residual-meat-odor Trench Grill. The cookware clean up (and chef’s hands) kit; scrubbie, vial of CampSuds, Purell, chammie, etc.

The 60 is too big, the 30 is too small, and this one was just right. I have a 45L barrel, oddly the only 45L I have ever seen. I thought it was a 30L until I measured the volume. 60L, 45L, 30L photo and measurements here:

http://www.canoetripping.net/forums/forum/gear/camp-kitchen/75425-blue-barrel-volume-mysteries

That 45L is my go to barrel for anything from week to multi-week trips and fits nicely sideways in all of my tripping solos.

On longer trips what odorless food (commercial freeze dried meals, maybe a special can or two) doesn’t quite fit in the 45L starts off in a small dry bag and transitions into the barrel when there is space. I can always find use for a little dry bag.

Since the barrel always goes in the same place in the canoe I contact cement a minicel wedge to the bottom of the boat to trap the barrel, so that it is held unrollably in place against a thwart. That wedge also keeps it from rolling back towards the foot brace in that position. Same if you store your barrel behind the center seat, I want that X lbs of weight held immovable.

P2170546 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

A folding tabletop is coming no matter which barrel. The genesis of that started with leveling out the lids on our barrels with a couple layers of exercise foam; one circle inset, one full width circle on top of that. I notched some grooves for the Jetboil stand in that foam. It was at least level flat and not slipperly slidy surfaced, but it still didn’t provide much room for meal prep.

P5183657 by Mike McCrea, on Flickr

Without the wide attached top, that level foam surface still comes in handy as an always-ready side table. I sometimes use that padded top on the shorter barrels as an ottoman, to keep my feet elevated away from ground hugging ankle biter flies. But, for larger surface meal prep and consumption area a detachable, cleanable, storeable tabletop rules when glamping.

The genesis of the folding barrel tops was sitting in a chair attempting to make and eat a meal in a desert canyon, with nothing taller than pebbles and blowing dust around to set things on, having stove and prep stuff and food on the ground, crowded on the barrel lid and balanced precariously on my lap. I had a “Gotta be a better way” Eureka moment.

More blather than you’ll ever need on DIYing a folding tabletop for a blue barrel here:

http://www.canoetripping.net/forums.../69483-​blue-barrel-folding-tabletop-mark-v

The TLR important part of all that blather, the different construction weights:

Mark I 30 L barrel top, plywood and lauan weighs in at 3 lbs 8 oz
(Mark II was the somewhat unsatisfactory Coroplast experiment)
Mark III 30 L barrel top, ½ inch birch plywood, weighs 2 lbs 12 oz.
Mark III 60L barrel top, ½ inch birch plywood, weighs 4 lbs 9 oz.
Mark IV kevlar foam board 30L tabletop weighs in at 1 lb 2 oz.
Mark V, ¼ inch birch plywood 30L tabletop = 1 lb, 11 oz
Mark V, ¼ inch birch 60L tabletop = 2 lb, 7 oz.

Unless you have a source for kevlar foam board, and care much about saving 9 ounces, the ¼” birch version is easy ideal to make.

FWIW a friend, using one of those folding tabletop on a 20L Cur-Tec drum, found a way to attach the top to the lid instead of to the barrel, so he can unscrew the lid without taking the tabletop off. Ingenuous fellow.

There is room for design improvement; I’m still trying to figure out how to make a design that will quarter fold, so that the folded tabletop would fit flat stored inside the barrel atop the on bags, first-thing to pluck out available resting on top, instead of inconveniently lengthwise. Which, honestly, only happens when the barrel is more than half empty, and only works with stuff-sack bagged meals, not with cylindrical barrel bags.

Given the cost of barrels and accessories I am surprised no outdoor manufacturer makes something like that. I know it is a very small market, but so are barrel harnesses ($100 - $200), and barrel storage bags ($30 apiece x 3, another $90 bucks).

Those tabletops are probably required more cutting, sanding, epoxy, varnish and paint work than most folks want to do, and I expect a manufactured version could be material designed to weigh even less.

Sub-1 lb folding blue barrel tabletop? I’d buy one, I saved the heaviest of what I made for my own use.