Mike & Jess
-
Posts
519 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Mike & Jess
-
-
A cheap Black Garbage sack covering your Pack works during the Hike/Bike trip and of course at night.
Your Sleeping Bag can also be protected by putting a smaller garbage bag into Stuff sack then your Sleeping bag.
If worried about clothes another Bag or a Dry bag.
I've been using them for years in the Northwest Trails and of course Mountain Trips. I'm not a latest Fashion guy, I look at what I can use to survive my needs.
I've taught this to Scouts for 15 years with no complains, just laughter and smiles.
Everything in my pack was either in a dry sac, or XL zip-lock freezer bag.
I also carry a number of black garbage bags with me. They work great for many things, including emergency raincoats.
-
You might be able to fix your water carrying problem by getting a water pump. Especially if you're going to be hiking/biking in an area with plenty of sources of water. I tend to carry an empty water bladder and a 1L Nalgene bottle full, and just fill that up whenever I run low. If I need to carry more water, I pump the bladder full. Saves weight, gives options.
One thing that I didn't see mentioned here is one of those waterproof pack covers. They're pretty cheap, and they pretty much guarantee that whether you're carrying synthetic or down, your bag will be dry come time to hit the sack.
Regarding your idea for a good, packable sleeping mat: do it. They're awesome, and will definitely aid in keeping you warmer. If you have a REI anywhere near you, try hitting up one of their used gear sales. Mine ALWAYS has a bunch of good sleeping mats for sale for real cheap. I got my ThermaRest Pro Plus Reg for around $20, because somebody bought it and decided they needed a long.
I had carried a water bottle style filter. It is not as fast as a pump, but was smaller, and cheaper.
The problem with my packing was that I packed my water for regular mtn biking consumption. When I am biking, I go through ~1L and hour. As mentioned, it was a lesson learned.
As for the sleeping mat, Had we gone a week earlier, it had been a non-issue.
I think I will pick one up anyway for the next trip. It's always nice to have a good comfy sleep.
-
A couple lessons learned from this trip (with day temp ~15'C night ~3'C);
Need to look into a compact sleeping mat. My light weight sleeping bag worked good to hold the heat in, but the cold coming in from the ground made for a rough sleep.
Carrying less water then I had, specially in Northern Ontario with plenty of lake/river crossings. Going in, I had way too much water on me (2L blader, 2 x 1L bottles and my 600ml filtering bottle). This added a lot of weight. Coming back out, I only had the blader and a 1L bottle which was lighter and was enough to get me to the next good water source. I would have been ok with just the blader, but I don't like finding out I am out of water in the middle of a trip.
As a MTN biker, I generally go with the rule of ~2L of water per hour. For hiking, this is probably over kill.
Rain pants are way too hot for hiking/biking. I had a poncho as a backup, but with the bushwhacking, optted for the rain coat and pants. Not sure what to do the next time around. Shorts would have been bad for bushwhacking, but the rain pants where way too warm. Maybe more breathable pants would be in order.
-
So far, the 2011 goals are (list not limited to this, as it is only the start).
- Complete EC GC17XT1 with my son (who will be 2 by summer). Completed it this past summer by land. Will be taking a different approach via kayak, but still camping the night with my little guy. It's a 5/5 cache
- Find a really cool, but hard 3 day Kayak trip to complete with a buddy of mine. So far, the best I have is a 65km river run (mostly flat water). Will need to arrange a pickup at the end as it will be a 1 way trip. The hard part about arranging this trip is it needs to have a highly physical challenge level to it (comparable to doing Ishpatina Ridge by land.
-
It has been a while since I was in this thread, so I thought I would follow up on it.
The trip was great. The bike/hike in was nice the saturday (15'C and sun). My GPS was flaking out on us during the bushwhacking, so we ended up adding a couple miles to that part of the trip while traveling with compass and topo (the bush was dense).
The temp dropped pretty quickly as the sun went down and around 8PM the rain started.
Although we stayed dry during the night, the temp when we went to bed was ~3'C and raining, which made for a slightly uncomfortable sleep.
Of course, the rain stopped after we had eaten and packed up camp. The fog lifted by mid morning, providing us with a nice warm sunny day to travel out.
For foot wear, I had opted for hiking sandle (looks like a shoe, but designed to get wet). These worked really well, considering I had slipped a couple times along the shoreline of one of the lakes and ended up swimming/floating a couple times. They didn't offer as much protection as a boot, but where lighter for biking, and didn't hold the water when I fell into the lake.
Here are a couple pics from the trip (my P&S camera wasn't happy with me on this trip)
Crossing the river at the start of the trip.
This was the end of the nice biking trail. about 300 yards past where the photo was taken, the trail dropped down to a moose track, then disappeared.
This is when we first stepped out of the bush on top Wood Lake. I was so glad to see the water as we had just gone up and down a pretty rough elevation through the bush.
This was my pack on the trip in. It was reasonably well balance, but I was carrying too much water in it. The bear spray you see in the photo I found in the bush while bushwhacking. I wasn't pleased about carrying extra crap I would long the way, but was doing my part by picking it up. I did find a machette as well long the hike in.
The Bushwhacking.... This is what we fought for ~6km.
This was base camp. After bushwhacking for ~6km, and nothing but bush, this was an amazing site.
Yes my tent was huge, but it was worth the weight as I knew it would be dry and had space for our packs.
This was the view we had as we started out trip out. The fog was lifting, but it was still slightly raining
-
Just in case you smell like food:
Unfortunately side arms are not legal in Canada. A long gun would be fine (specially the time of year we did the trip) but are heavy, hard to mtn bike with, and potentially useless if you are too close to the bear (i.e he was visiting your tent).
-
We've just started up the Northern Ontario Geocachers.
The main geographical area covered extends from about Parry Sound North, including Sudbury, Sault Ste Marie, Timmins, Hurst, Wawa.
-
we are moving back to North Bay, next week! Been in Moosonee. We are up for events and meeting cachers.
Connie&Keith
North Bay has a forum (NBGA) which has been pretty quiet lately.
The Northern Ontario Geocacher's page has been pretty active with the Sudbury cachers. Most of us where active in the Sudbury and Area Geocacher's group on FB. Since FB changed the way they display the groups (making things a bit more difficult), we launched the NOG page.
The hopes are to provide a place for all those outside of the COG and NWOG areas a place to call their own.
Normally I would not reply to an 8 year old thread, but I thought it would be interesting, specially since I work with a member of the Eastick Family.
Mike
-
OK, give us more than a day to check the board. I'm going on holidays for two weeks real soon now.<BR><BR>Anyway, yes we might be interested. It should be a family-fun thing. My brother recently went to one outside of calgary. It looked fun.<BR><BR>Check out his pics at <BR><A HREF="http://24.64.91.148/alberta_geocachers_bbq_day.htm" TARGET=_blank>http://24.64.91.148/alberta_geocachers_bbq_day.htm</A><BR><BR><BR>We may need a few more cachers to get enough people :-).
Some of us take 8 years.
Mike
-
The two luxury items I am carrying this up and coming weekend is a larger then required tent (4person instead of 2person) and a sheet of plastic/extra rope.
It is suppose to rain all weekend. Dry indoor space and a reasonably sheltered cooking area will be really nice after hiking all day in the rain.
Amen.
It did rain, and was pretty cold (~2'C). Going to add a sleeping mat to the list for next time.
The hard ground wasn't a big deal. The cold, hard ground was with my light sleeping bag.
-
Did anyone ask what type of caching the OP was looking for?
Southern Ontario will offer more urban caching (parks, lamp post, etc)
SSM, Wawa, Sudbury, Thunder Bay will have their urban caches, but will offer a lot more in the rough bush caches as well.
-
Harsh! At least if there's a photo requirement. Some people still use film cameras, you know. Or they may be traveling, away from home.
I don't buy that as an excuse. If you're logging the cache as found, you should send your answers immediately, or, at the very least, explain to the cache owner why you aren't and ask if you can log in the meantime.
A found log with no email is asking to be deleted. I think most of us would probably send an email before deleting, but we really don't have to.
Depending on the EC, this can be asking for a lot. I completed a very difficult EC this past weekend.
The cache required the weekend to complete (camped out so I could enjoy the area).
After returning home, I logged the cache find, uploaded the few photos I had (camera and GPS failed me on this trip), then proceeded to unpack.
I send the email the following day with the answers to the CO.
In the case of this EC Ishpatina Ridge, some reasearch was required. In my case, I had the cache info and questions stored on my Oregon 300, which had failed me during the trip. Some of my answers where a bit off (needed to look for key items while there).
Long story short, a couple days grace (specially on more difficult ECs) should be allowed. Some incorrect info should also be permitted, provided the point of the earth cache was met.
Answers that are totally out there, or no response after some time (totally subjective) is not worthy of the smilie.
-
We did this cache while out backpacking this previous weekend.
We had our GPS fail during the 4km bushwhack, and the camera battery die just after ariving at base camp. Between the electrionics failing, and the cold/rain, it was a rough trip. Plan on doing it again when the opertunity permits.
-
I would suggest nothing bigger then the 35L-40L pack with water bladder pocket and plenty of hooks on the outside for a pack. I used the MEC Spirit 40 Backpack for my weekend trip to the Ishpatina Ridge earth cache this weekend that just past (posting our find tonight once I get the photos off the camera). It was reasonably water resistent, and with the external hooks and straps, allowed for the attachement of our tent, trek poles and a dry sack with the sleeping bags.
For kayaking, pickup a couple heavy duty dry sacks and leave the pack at home. The heavy dry sacks work great, and you can toss them in the bottom of the boat without worries. They also float pretty well when you flip your boat. A small clear pellican case is nice to strap down on the front deck of your boat. Keep stuff like keys, cell phone, GPS, or other items you may want to access while traveling dry and easy to access.
-
If you have a lake near by & if you pack a pon or pan big enough. Why not get water from the lake & boil that & then throw these Bag foods into it to heat up?? Then you won't have to worry so much about the Plastic in there is any in the bag's. Plus, The water will be boiled to use to wash off your body if you have sweated some during your hike. Just my 2 cents.
Not a bad idea. We'll be camped on the shore of a lake.
-
I was exaggerating a little! "Nekkid as the law allows..." is what I said. Basically we just stripped down to our hiking shorts and Vibram Five Fingers. FWIW, New York and a couple other locales have top-free parity for men and women so, women can legally hike top-free should they so desire. Just sayin...
I had kind of figured as much, but when dealing with people from different backgrounds, anything is possible.
That being said, a rain coat and swim shorts may be the way we will travel. The first river crossing (~30ft from where the van will be parked) will be around 2ft deep. The second is only a couple inches, and the lakes, who knows.
The pants are going back on for the bushwacking section though.
-
Thank you for all the info.
First off, hiking 'nekkid' is not a great idea here. The law doesn't permit (not that we will see another person), and it tends to be cool/cold here when it rains.
Wool socks.... I knew that. Didn't think of it though, so a big thank you there.
TL: The powder wasn't something I had thought about carrying, but am now considering. I was planning on carrying water shoes for the two river crossings and potentially walking the two lakes. The water looks like it may be low enough to allow walking the shore instead of bushwacking the 4km.
sandles for camp was one of those 'if I have space' items as it would be really nice to air the feet.
-
All indicators point to a wet, rainy weekend. Rescheduling is not an option as we already cancelled last year due to injury the weekend before (one last good mtn bike ride before our trip was a bad idea). This will be a weekend trip with expected water forging.
What extras, or changes would you make knowing it is going to be wet and most likely raining?
-
I hate to say it but you're sounding woefully unprepared for this trip...
If the packs have any food smell on them up the tree they should go too.
The original plan was to string both packs, as the 2person tent we are using will be just big enough for the two of us, and no extra gear. Stringing two packs does pose it's own issues (i.e. they are heavy).
I have done a few multi-day trips via kayak or quad, just never via mtn bike/hiking. Previous trips, we'd store all food in a water tight bin or barrle and chain it to a tree. attach a bear bell to the container in case we do have visitors.
-
The local snowmobile club uses the saying, "Leave tracks, not trash".
I am a huge fan of the large freezer ziplock bags. I repack most food in them in order to reduce the garbage. Once the food is gone from them, they work good for collecting fire starting material.
-
The two luxury items I am carrying this up and coming weekend is a larger then required tent (4person instead of 2person) and a sheet of plastic/extra rope.
It is suppose to rain all weekend. Dry indoor space and a reasonably sheltered cooking area will be really nice after hiking all day in the rain.
-
I was thinking the same thing as you described. I always carry the 2way radios when we are back country mtn biking for this reason, and it has proven if value a few times.
The only reason I was question bringing them is part of this trip looks like it will be through water (wading along the shores of two lakes instead of bushwacking the full 4km). The radios would be more electronics to worry about getting wet.
I have one similar to TotemLake's, the VX-8DR; completely submersible. That feature along with the light weight and small form factor were the reasons I chose that radio.
I am using cheaper consumer grade Motorola 2way units. I tend to use these units for long distance, back country (middle of no where) mtn bike riding, and the threat of crashing with anything expensive is always a concern. (I lost a good ruggedized camera that way.)
I will carry the radios with us, and just take extra precaution if/when we start forging the lake shorts.
-
I was thinking the same thing as you described. I always carry the 2way radios when we are back country mtn biking for this reason, and it has proven if value a few times.
The only reason I was question bringing them is part of this trip looks like it will be through water (wading along the shores of two lakes instead of bushwacking the full 4km). The radios would be more electronics to worry about getting wet.
-
Most places where I live are balsam and assorted other pine forests. It is possible to do a simple two tree set up for hanging your container and not that difficult.
I am hoping the two tree method is the avalible option on this trip.
Now to figure out what to do with our packs as they won't fit in the tent with us.
Garmin Colorado Chirp Capatibility
in GPS technology and devices
Posted
Below is the responce from Garmin regarding the support for the Chirp chip for the Colorado GPSs.
Please forward this to anyone you know that has a Garmin Colorado.
Thank you Steve from the Northern Ontario Geocachers for forwarding this information.