You mean we are going to get all that in there?
Once you have your gear laid out and ready to go, it’s time to figure out how to get it all in your boat. This is easier with some boats than others, and depends on your gear selection as well. There are three major areas to store gear in your kayak, the bow, the cockpit, and the stern. A good rule of thumb is to do whatever it takes to keep the weight evenly distributed. Don’t put everything in the stern and nothing in the bow, or vice versa.
Tom Sherbern's fully loaded stern.
If you happen to have a boat with a hatch, packing is made infinitely simpler. There’s no wrangling drybags over the seat and under the cockpit rim to get them into the stern. Simply pop the hatch and put your stuff in. Not everything needs to be in a drybag either. It’s easy when you’re packing food to throw everything into a drybag, but remember, a lot of the items are individually wrapped to begin with so they can get wet. This is handy for filling in all the nooks and crannies and makes dealing with your drybags much easier. The stern is a good place to store camp food and your extra layers. It’s less of a hassle to access during the day than the bow, so keep that in mind.
Ah, the cavernous bow.
Not having a bulkhead is great for packing as well. Rather than having to remove the whole bow wall and bulkhead every day, you can easily pull the wall out and slide your drybags past the footpegs. The bow is a good place to put your camp clothes and sleeping gear so you can put them up there in the morning and not deal with it again until you arrive at camp.
Jim Marsh loading his stuff behind the seat.
The cockpit is a good place for a drybag in your lap with the essentials you use regularly (sun screen, granola bars, a hat, sunglasses, camera, etc…). Boats with a stern hatch typically have a bulkhead mounted horizontally in the boat behind the seat to keep the stern compartment separate. The space between this bulkhead and the back of the seat is a great place to store lunch, extra layers, throwbag, and other bits and pieces that you may want to access throughout the day.
Stay tuned for more camping know how…
Great feature, I could not believe how much kit you could pack in an XP.
One question though, you have cut away the safety pillar to fit more kit in. Is this a wise move?
Packhow
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@Packhow
Great Comment. Generally, it isn’t recommended to modify the safety pillars on boats. We justified it by only cutting a short portion of the pillar out and making sure we packed the space with drybags. The Grand Canyon is a large river where being in a pinning situation where you’d want the extra rigidity of a pillar is fairly unlikely. Obviously, one needs to consider the style of water they’ll be paddling before making any sort of modifications. Glad you’ve been as wowed about how much space was in this boat as we were!
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Hey!
This all looks great! Had no idea that much gear could fit in a hard boat. I was just wondering a couple of things:
1- About how much did each person’s trip gear weigh, not counting food?
2- About how much food were you each able to bring- I guess in terms of Cal/Day? Trying to figure out how bad a calorie deficit you all were running on.
3- How much space was left, after packing gear but not food? I.e. how much room was available for food?
4- Would you say that your 12 day GC trip was about maxed out in terms of how long you could spend self-supported? Could you have crammed more food in?
5- Did any booze fit???
Cheers!
DC
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Hey David,
I’m going to try and answer your questions the best I can. I went on the trip, but we never actually weighed our stuff. We were guesstimating, and I mean roughly, our boats to be maybe 200lbs fully loaded. I did a 5 day self support last fall in a regular creekboat and my Jefe Grande fully loaded was around 100lbs. I feel on this trip I packed about the same style (light) so around 200lbs could be close. That is including food too.
I have no idea how many calories per day I was consuming, but breakfest was usually oatmeal, or MRE sausage, or single Spam packets. I had bagels and english muffin’s as well. Lunch was either PB&J on a bagel or tortilla or summer sausage and cheese. i brought 4 lbs of cheese, which was a lot, could have done it with 2 probably. Dinner was either a pasta variation or quinoa most nights. Some people packed heavier and had more “gourmet” dinners, and we also caught fish a few times. We’re going to do a food post soon, so I’ll talk to other, more organized members of the trip and try and get some of that data for you.
As far as space, we all agreed we could probably squeeze another 5-7 days worth of food in the boats without too much trouble. These boats are cavernous, and with my meager food stash and light packing I felt I was at about 70% capacity. I think an 18 day trip would be fine, you’d be loaded, but it’s certainly possible.
Booze. Well, beer’s pretty much out on a kayak trip, maybe a few to savor along the way but we didn’t have much beer. I brought two 1/5ths of whisky, and could/should have made room for a few more. This is easy because you can put it in tiny plastic bottles that can fit between the hull of your boat and the outside of the seat, in the bow, in the stern, just about anywhere.
Stay tuned over the next week or so, we’ll have a complete food post done and I’ll try and answer these questions for you the best I can. Thanks for your support and we hope to see you on the river sometime, hopefully around a campfire!
Cheers,
Will Lyons
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