[Philmont]: Lighter is better or is it?

<<"Caution - newbie question approaching...
The mesh bags sound intriguing, but what did you do to protect items that shouldn't get wet?
 
Ched Hudson"
 
We had the boys carry one or two extra 1-gallon zip-lock freezer bags to use for their bear bag goodies. >>
 
The answer this and several other similar questions is blowing in the wind. Rather the answers to this is blowing in the wind just as there are many ways to skin a cat. You can start at the head or you can start at the tail or you can staart any of the thousands of locations in the middle. what you get in the end is all the same, a skinned cat.
 
Meaning that if it works for you then it is the right answer.
 
As has already been pointed out, Phil-issue bear bags are not waterproof, just as the mesh bags are not waterproof either. The prevaling thought today is use gallon size zip lock bags for everything that goes in the bear bag.
 
Being an avid kayaker, canoeist and old fashioned river rat, zip locks are rather low on my desireable list for the simple reason that they have a rather short useful life. While on the river, I like to keep my powder dry, er uh I mean my clothes. It also helps to keep the first aid stuff dry too. Zip locks eventurlly let the flood gates roar right in. However, they will probably last for the ten days you will be on the Phil-trail.
 
I own a whole series of dry bags made for river travel and since I have them, I use them for backpacking also. My backpack is a bag containing bags. Since very few of todays backpacks are waterproof, I use waterproof inner bags to sort my things into inside the backpack. It's just the way that works best for me.
 
The bags which were most useful at Philmont are ones made of light Cordura and coated with urethane. They are nine inches in diameter and about eighteen inches tall with a roll down top that makes a handle.
 
My daughter used one for her smellables and loaned another to a friend. That way, each evening all they had to do was pull out their waterproof bag and place it in the bear bag.
 
I used two of the same bags, one for my smellables and one containing crew gear such as the first aid kit. It also contained an inhaler for a crew member, thus assuring it would remain dry and useable.
 
As has been previously mentioned, some crews elect to have special waterproof bags made for them. Some crews choose to cook in Turkey bags too. The choice is yours, but let me just say that those two choices are in the very small minority. You don't see many crews use either. There is a reason for that.
 
What you do see is the majority of crews putting their smellables in gallon size zip lock bags and placing them into the quite useable Phil-issue bear bags. You also will observe most crews cooking in Phil-issue pots without a turkey bag liner and doing so very well. Why? Simply put, it works.
 
Philmont issue food is packaged in some pretty heavy and waterproof bags and does not require any extra rain protection. It will fend for itself in a very adequate way.
 
However, if you field strip the pouches and give back/away all the stuff you won't use before you carry it on the trail to lighten your load, it will require some judicial repackaging, thus thesuggestion from many to carry some useable duct tape. You don't need a whole roll though. With a little duct tape and carefully opening the food bags, you will have all the plastic bags you need on the trail and more.
 
Our crew did not field strip the food bags. That was not the way I'd do it, but I wasn't running the show. That's another story and I won't rehash that one. Let's just say judicial use of the God given brain can reduce your loaded pack weight considerably. Philmont for years hear & listened & reacted to complaints about not enough food and the Polar Pure tasting awful in the water, both of which I disagree with. My stand is the while backpacking you don't need to carry a bunch of extra weight tied up in whizz bang food items. What you need is a semi balanced diet heavy on the carbohydrate end. But that is another discussion also.
 
Philmont now issues plenty of food and your crew will be hard pressed to eat it all. It is even possible to gain weight on the Phil-trail while using Phil-issue gear and eating Phil-issue food. There is also plenty of drink mix so you can camouflage the iodine taste of every drop of water you drink if need be or you want to. Personally, I'd rather just drink water than to carry tens of pounds of drink mix, but each to their own.
 
Speaking of Philmont issue gear. Let me be the first to say I carryied and we used some of our own gear for various reasons. Some of it is lighter than Phil-issue, some of it was heavier than Phil-issue. We only used gear we already owned, we did not go out and buy gear especially for the Phil-trail, now would I.
 
Philmont issue gear is good gear, it's light weight and if you use all Phil-issue, you will not be overly burdened. If your crew/troop/council already owns lightweight gear that the members are used to using, then by all means use it. However, I would not go out and buy new gear so you can say you have better or lighter gear than Phil-issue. That would be a foolish use of resourses in my way of thinking and very iffy as to whether it is lighter or better. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Phil-issue gear.
 
Having said that, Philmont has more crews to take care of than yours. A good example of that is the bear bags. Philmont furnishes all the gear you need and they do so in an economical manner. They use good, light gear but not necessarily the lightest gear. I'd venture to say they probably pay less than a dollar each for the bear bags. Compare that to the six dollars for the mesh bags and multiply that by thousands of bear bags in use at any given time and you can see the dollar and cents issue. If Philmont bought the absolute best or lightest or custom made every bear bag, your cost per crew member would be considerably higher.
 
Philmont has an obligation to hold cost for a crew member to the absolute lowest possible amount so more youth can attend. I appreciate that and I for one don't want that to change. I am willing to buy some of my own gear that I deem lighter or more useful to me if I will use it multiple times, but I would not buy one item that I was only going to use on the Philtrail to substitute for a Phil-issued item. Phil-issue is just too good to overide that as an issue.
 
I hope this discussion helps those who need it or want it. Once you have been there, done that you can and should pass on your thoughts to others. That's how we all learned when it was our first time.
 
Just keep in mind that the term best needs to be kept in the proper perspective. What is best for one is not necessarily best for others.
 
John LeBlanc

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Received on Mon Feb 9 11:05:51 2004