i would like to see this added to the community board so i can meet up with others on weekend trips or extended trips new locations etc.
There is a category Getting together and Going Paddling and there is also a WIlderness Tripping category already. Perhaps you missed both of those.
I would like a category that discusses kayak/canoe camping and gear. Something specific so we donāt have to wade through the āsuggestionsā or āgeneralā forums.
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I mostly do multi-day paddle camping trips, so Iād love to discuss gear & trip planning.
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Yes,
Instead of the usual āwhere to goā, this would be more of a āWhat gear to takeā and āHow to pack various boatsā and āWhat works and what failsā and āHow I solved a certain problem while campingā board.
@Raftergirl said:
I mostly do multi-day paddle camping trips, so Iād love to discuss gear & trip planning.
I finished a week leading a group down the Colorado River the 42 miles from Hoover Dam to Cottonwood cove. Next month I will accompany another Colorado River trip from Blythe to Fishers Landing abut 36 miles.
Both are the same river but different requirements. The upper stretch we were on-our-own and camped wherever we could find a spot. NO traffic at all.
The January trip we will be staying at campgrounds and there is some traffic so each situation requires a different mindset.
When I got back from the upper stretch, the president of the Kayak Club to which I belong asked me to teach and lead an Intro-to-kayak-camping class & trip. And in Feb Iāll lead another long-weekend trip on the backwaters of the Lower Colorado above imperial Dam.
Despite this I am far from an expert and can always benefit from other peopleās experiences.
I lead several trips for my local outdoor club this past year. My group size for each trip was 6 people. I find that to be a manageable size that fits most campsites. I started off by making them all self-support/do your own food trips and that has worked out very well. Iāve had good feedback from participants about doing the trips that way. Group meal planning works great on rafting trips, but I have seen too many disasters with small boat trips. Trying to organize meals & kitchen stuff is such a pain in the butt, that I decided to go with the BYO method. Small boats lend themselves very well to back packer style kitchen & cooking, plus everyone gets to eat what & when they want. I tend to have a lot of folks who like to hike as well as paddle on these trips, so we arenāt waiting on folks to get back from a hike to cook & eat meals.
I led a spring & a fall Meander Canyon trip on the Colorado River. Potash (just outside Moab) to Spanish Bottom. 51 river miles in 4 paddle days. You have to arrange a jet boat shuttle back to Potash. We used Tex"s Riverways out of Moab and they did an outstanding job, very organized. If you have done Labyrinth & Stillwater on the Green River, this is very similar scenery. Beautiful canyons with good side hikes to rock art and cliff dwellings. Easy water for paddling. You have to arrange your shuttle in advance, especially for a fall trip, as thatās a popular time to do the trip. You get a river permit from Canyonlands Nat. Park thatās available online. The permit costs $30 + $20/person. The shuttle costs $125/person + $25/kayak & $35/canoe. The total for 6 people including a night prior to the trip at a Moab campground came out to about $185/person. Required gear for the trip includes a fire pan and a toilet system. Wag Bags are allowed & can be carried out in a heavy duty dry bag. This is a fantastic trip & I will definitely lead again next year.
I also led 2 trips to Leah Lake in Grand Teton Nat. Park. You can get backcountry permits ahead of time, or sometimes they are available as a walk-in at the visitor center. Absolutely gorgeous scenery. One short portage from String Lake to Leigh Lake. The campsites all have fire rings and bear boxes & poles. All food, garbage, and smelly stuff must fit in the bear box or be hung from the pole. The 6 person group size is about max for fitting stuff in the bear box & fitting people in the campsites. Paddle isnāt difficult, but afternoon wind & waves are always possible and can be a challenge. While not required, we carried a wag bag toilet system. They do highly encourage the use & pack out of the wag bags in the back country, but there is sadly much evidence of poor solid waste & toilet paper management around the campsites.
Iām hoping to do the Black Canyon trip below Hoover dam this coming February. I have a friend who winters at Lake Havasu and iād like to do Black Canyon, then visit with him a few days to paddle some.
Hereās my basic paddle camping set-up.
Kayak - Necky Vector 13 SOT used this past year. Just got an Eddlyline Caribbean 14 SOT. I use a Werner Camano paddle & carry an Aquabound 4 piece paddle as a spare.
Shelter & sleep - Big Agnes Blacktail 2 tent. Exped Synmat 7 pad. Top quilt instead of a sleeping bag. My pad, top quilt, clothes, and personal gear are packed in a Watershed Yukon dry duffel that fits very nicely in the tank well of my SOT kayaks. All other stuff is packed inside the kayak in small dry bags. Everything has a paracord leash on it that carabiners into a lash point inside the kayak so I can reel it in and it doesnāt get lost inside the recesses of the kayak.
Kitchen - MSR Windpro II stove. GSI Halulite 1L cookpot. I also carry a dry baking kit & a mini fry pan at times. Love me a freshly baked biscuit or muffin with a meal, and sometimes some mini pancakes. I carry 2 GSI Micro tablesā¦decadent yes, but oh so handy while cooking. One table for the stove, one for misc. cooking stuff. If Iām paddling at Grand Teton or Yellowstone, my food is in a bear canister. Bare Boxer is the brand of canister I use. The front hatch on my Necky kayak isnāt very big and this was the only canister I found that would fit thru it.
Camp comfort - Travelchair Joey camp chair. I have a badly messed up knee and this chair is comfy and easy for me to get out of. Depending on the trip, I usually bring a hammock for camp napping.
Toilet - I found this great packable toilet thatās easy to use and fits inside my kayak very well. Turbo Toilet. Iāll post pictures of it. Works great with wag bags.
Water filter - MSR pump style or Sawyer gravity. When I have to carry water for trips, itās carried in rectangular nalgene containers from REI. I also found these cool collapsible containers from Hydrapak that are long & skinny. They fit nice inside the kayak. used them in the fall & had no leakage issues.
@Raftergirl said:
Iām hoping to do the Black Canyon trip below Hoover dam this coming February. I have a friend who winters at Lake Havasu and iād like to do Black Canyon, then visit with him a few days to paddle some."
Contact me before you go and Iāll send you some maps I made showing the best sights and campsites. Be aware that there are boating restrictions below Hoover so try to plan your trip when power-boats are banned.
That toilet looks interesting. Tell me more about it.
I hate wag-bags and gave all of mine away. I prefer the Poop Tube which fits behind my seat and with coffee filters, TP and kitty litter, works well and can be cleaned at any RV dump station.
I use a Jetboil MiniMo stove with Jetboil Frypan and a S2S X-pot. This system does everything I need from heat water for Hot Chocolate to cook a meal. I also carry a MSR whisper-pro as a back-up or as a cooking stove for when I get the mood.
My water system is a Platypus gravity system that I modified into the āperfectā system with a MSR Miniworks as a back-up.
My default kayak is an Old Town Dirago-12 that hauls everything I need but cannot go upstream. So when I am with longer boats or going upriver I use a Current Designs Whistler-145 simply because I cannot afford that Tsunami-14(5) that I love.
I have done the Black Canyon in an Old Town Pack-12 canoe that I bought for the Green River and have been experimenting with a portable Alum system to clump the Green River before I filter it.
I find that 4 friends is a good trip. 6 people is about the max I like to take as any more and you get them strung all over the river and logistics become a nightmare.
That said I am going with Helen over MLK weekend on the Colorado from below Blythe to above Yuma.
Then in Feb, the Colorado above Imperial dam to check out the backwaters and see if they are cleared up yet.
One trip below Hoover Dam, one of the women commented that after a week she would kill for a shower. So I rigged up a tripod, hung a S2S pocket shower, heated some water and hung a home-made lanyard with soap, shampoo and wash-cloth and micro-fiber towel. She looked at it and yelled, āI am a 42 years old mother of two. If you donāt like what I am about to do, turn around.ā After wards, she was drying off and yelled, āBest shower ever!ā No I donāt have pics.
Iāll post a link for the toilet when I get home tonight. I found mine at a local Emergency Essentials store here in Salt Lake City. I was just browsing when I spotted it. It folds down flat and fit through the 11X8 inch hatch on my kayak. It has an internal metal frame thatās hinged on the 4 corners. Pops open and folds fat much easier than the PETT toilet systems. Weight limit of 300 pounds I think. About 11-12 inches tall. Basically a holder for a wag bag and a pretty comfortable seat for use.
We have done the alum thing a few times on the Colorado and it works well. We had the river water in a collapsible bucket. We sprinkled in about 1/8 tsp. alum while swirling the water with a stick to disperse the alum. Waited 30 minutes and then use a pump water filter to pump the clear water from the top of the bucket. Sediment settled to the bottom of the water.
Turbo Toilet is available from Amazon or from the manufacturer Black Pine. It costs about $50. The seat and the bottom are hard plastic. I glued some yoga mat material to the bottom so that itās not slippery when used on hard pack soil or rocky areas. The zipper case it comes in is ok, but the zipper broke after a couple trips. I carry it in a dry bag anyway, so no biggie. I have used 3 different brands of wag bags in it and they all fit fine. Just overlap the bag over the seat for use. It doesnāt have any kind of lid, so we just drape the dry bag over it as a cover. So far in the desert canyons, Grand Teton, and Yellowstone Lake, no critters disturbed it.
Hereās a YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C20APL7KaS8
I think we already have the Wilderness Trpping forum which covers camping. Itās description even says āMeet others, discuss locations, gear, and more!ā, exactly what the OP seems to be looking for.
Maybe the Moderators can move this discussion over to the wilderness tripping forum. Iāll post my info from above over on that forum. Maybe we can get more interested folks to dialog with that way.
@Raftergirl said:
Maybe the Moderators can move this discussion over to the wilderness tripping forum. Iāll post my info from above over on that forum. Maybe we can get more interested folks to dialog with that way.
Iām thinking that the Wilderness Tripping is more of a Trip Report and Where to Paddle than a forum specifically for gear and thoughts on gear and ideas.
The Wilderness Tripping Forum makes the most sense of the existing forums. The title does list gear discussion and excursion planning. Iāll keep posting about paddle camping gear and trips in that forum.
@Raftergirl said:
I lead several trips for my local outdoor club this past year. My group size for each trip was 6 people. I find that to be a manageable size that fits most campsites. I started off by making them all self-support/do your own food trips and that has worked out very well. Iāve had good feedback from participants about doing the trips that way. Group meal planning works great on rafting trips, but I have seen too many disasters with small boat trips. Trying to organize meals & kitchen stuff is such a pain in the butt, that I decided to go with the BYO method. Small boats lend themselves very well to back packer style kitchen & cooking, plus everyone gets to eat what & when they want. I tend to have a lot of folks who like to hike as well as paddle on these trips, so we arenāt waiting on folks to get back from a hike to cook & eat meals.
I do a lot of unsupported kayak trips, and like to be able to organize a trip with a handful of e-mails. An efficient way to handle meals on unsupported kayak trips is for each participant to bring their own breakfasts and lunches, and for each person to prepare their share of the dinners. For example, if three kayakers do a six day trip, each person would bring and prepare two dinners, with the sixth dinner for use in case the takeout is delayed. You canāt fit huge pots in a kayak, so if a group has a lot of members, the group can be divided into two or more dinner groups. For example, if eight people do a four day trip, they could divide into two four-person dinner groups, with each participant bringing one dinner. Participants can join people with similar dining preferences in a food group. And each person can bring whatever they prefer, and as much or as little as they prefer, for breakfast and lunch.
Iāve tried the group dinner/meal thing a few times. Sometimes it worked well, other times it didnāt. The failures were due to people forgetting to bring what they said they would bring, people not liking what was cooked & bringing their own stuff anyways, and difficultly with mealtimes when the cook crew was out late on a hike. After listening to the complaints, I just decided to ditch the meal teams and go BYO. Then everyone is happy. One thing I noticed with the BYO system is that we all bring unique ideas to the meal prep. We learn some new and interesting stuffā¦like new brands to try or new methods of packing & cooking our food.