2018 JMT Logistics and Ideas

[blue indian]

Thank you HooKooDooKu. I am resupplying at Onion Valley with enough to get me to VVR, and I'm thinking about not shipping anything to VVR. Anyone see issues with buying enough food to resupply at VVR, Reds, TM? If so, that would change my plan around shipping food.

On one of my 5 day shakedowns on the AT, I was able to get 5 days in the can. I had about 20% left over when I finished. LOL
Most of my repackaging will be using zip lock bags instead of resealing. I have finished my initial food shopping, but may need to change some things up if they don't fit in the bear can after repackaging.



Thanks,
John

I am going to go into Onion Valley to resupply in Independence. This bear can thing is throwing me off. Ive never used one and Im renting one that I will be picking up in Mammoth. Hard to tell if my food will fit with this method..

[HooKooDooKu]

I am going to go into Onion Valley to resupply in Independence. This bear can thing is throwing me off. Ive never used one and Im renting one that I will be picking up in Mammoth. Hard to tell if my food will fit with this method..

Fear of not knowing how much I could pack in a bear canister is one of the reasons I decided to purchase a Bearikade Expedition (then sold it at the end of the trip... the loss was about equal to what it would have cost to just rent).

But then, once I had the canister in hand, I never got around to figuring out how to pack everything into it (but purchasing ahead of time allowed me to fill it with the same amount of dead weight the food was going to be, and I realized that my back pack was NOT going to handle a 20lb bear canister... bought an Osprey Volt 75 to hold all my gear and the canister inside it).

What I did do, at home, was to package things as small as I could... repackaging things that were in packages that were simply too large (such as canned roast beef... pulled those out of the can and vacuum sealed it with an oxygen absorber) and removed excess air where I could (pre-packaged beef jerky and pre-cooked bacon, I would cut a small slit near the end of the package, push out the excess air, and then quickly reseal the package using a knife-blade-like sealer.

Never got around to trying to pack the bear canister until I was on the trail. It took two hours of trial and error until I finally figured out the process about how to organize my food to fit in the canister... don't organize it.
I simply pulled one day supply of food to the side. Everything else I wanted in the bear canister was placed anyway the things would physically fit together without leaving ANY space. I then placed the one day supply at the top of the unorganized mess in the bear canister. Each night, I repeated the process... set aside one day supply, package up everything else with no organization, but tomorrow's food on top. Obviously the process got easier as the days went by.

I eventually was able to get 10 days of food (3,000 cal/day) into a Bearikade Expedition.