A lot of people recommend small dry bags as opposed to one or two large ones. It allows you to presort items by use and if one leaks, you won’t lose a large amount of your gear. You also don’t have to dig through a lot of stuff to get what you want.
You can always put the smaller dry bags in a larger one or even in a mesh bag.
Lots of different styles here, but here’s my two bits:
no coolers (cooler food is too heavy and coolers too vulnerable to critters
barrel for food (I accept the weight penalty for the security)
tarp – for sure
separate waterproof bag for tent
hatchet – if it’s wet, you may need to split wood to have dry pieces
camp chair – mine folds down to about 12" long, 4" diameter
Have fun!
I agree with what you said except I have brought smaller coolers into the Boundary Waters with a block of ice in a plastic milk carton so it doesn’t melt on the food. I usually pack frozen steaks, frozen brats, deli meats, eggs. We bring ratchet straps to keep the critters out.
Now Voyageur National Park is a different story. There it’s full size coolers. There’s virtually no portaging in VNP unless you choose an inland campsite. All the campsites have bear lockers. Heres a shot of us bringing in the 70 qt 5 day cooler.
Regarding food for multi-day camping, I posted a query here in the spring and received a lot of advice that overlaps with this thread. Here it is:
Which reminds me that I need to follow up with the solution that worked for me.
RedMC I look forward to hearing your solution for kayak coolers. Smaller RTIC soft coolers have worked for me in the past on canoe trips. I also have a Wilderness Hatch Cooler which I have yet to use for more than a day paddle but if everything is frozen and a sufficient gel packs are used it might go at least the second day and maybe the third.
That’s good advice. If you want to load your canoe to the max and not worry about portaging, consider heading a little further west to VNP.
It’s also ideal for kayak camping since there is no portaging so there’s no concern about getting all the smaller bags across portages.
Refrigeration of eggs is the norm in some countries and in others it’s not. Here’s Organic Valley’s explanation why USDA requires “eggs sold for consumption to be washed, processed, and then refrigerated before they come anywhere near a store’s shelves”.
It’s true that farm stand eggs, unwashed and with the cuticle intact, are less susceptible to bacterial contamination, but hairline cracks (practically invisible without the aid of bright backlight) provide an open door to salmonella and other nasties. And be sure to wash farm stand eggs well just prior to consumption … remember where they come from.
Will you get salmonella if you don’t follow USDA’s guidelines? Probably not. But if you do get it, especially while tripping in the wilderness, you may wish you would.
Very familiar with all that info. And I have seen and treated patients with Salmonellosis so I know what that is all about.
Others can weigh the evidence and make their own decisions. It may be marginally safer to take farm stand eggs rather than store bought eggs tripping if you don’t plan to refrigerate them.
For what it is worth, I have taken and eaten unrefrigerated store bought eggs on camping trips for around 44 years and have never become ill from them. I’ll continue to do so.
I fully support your decision to continue to do what you please.
Agree with Organic Valley and USDA or not, I really don’t care. Just be informed when making the choice.
Water filter, gravity fed and a Be free filter flexible bottle in a small litre or two size. that you dip in the water and drink through an integrated filter in the mouth piece. Fresh clean water is one of the most necessary things to have on a backcountry canoe trip. In the evening you can use a gravity filter that hangs from a tree and fills a bag for water for the next day and around the campsite.
That’s the only thing I’ve found the Sawer squeeze bags good for, transporting tequila.
Those squeeze bags always end up leaking so I gravity filter my water instead.
I’ve done pumps, straws, squeeze bags, and gravity filters. Gravity is the way to go on a canoe trip.
Same thing in the Allagash. While there are portages, like the famous Mud Pond Carry on the NFCT, you can also go for days without portages. In a couple of weeks, we will be up there doing Churchill Dam to Allagash Village. For a minimal fee the rangers will portage our gear so we can run empty boats down Chase Rapids. There will be a portage around Allagash Falls, but by then we will have used up a lot of the heavier stuff.
Couple of big bags vs. lots of small bags – I go with the big bags. I try to always pack the same way so I know where stuff is. Some stuff gets double bagged in dry bags. Other stuff goes in mesh bags. There does need to be some system or you would never find anything.
For water filtration, I am in the pump camp. I use the First Need XL. I try to pump from the boat while I am somewhere out in deep water. I am fanatical about changing filters – much sooner than I need to. Filtered water is OK for cooking, but I try to bring bottled water to drink if I can. On the Allagash we will have a couple of jugs to start, and can refill at the ranger station half-way down. Boiled water for dishes.
Eggs go in the cooler, as much to keep them from getting broken as to keep them cool. The cooler isn’t very cool by the end to the trip, so we actually do both. 
I found an MSR Guardian gravity purifier on sale for $200, and jumped at it. I combined it with this CamelBak Fusion 10L reservoir for storing the filtered water. The flow rate and storage capacity was perfect for our family of four.
However, the CamelBak gave the water an unpleasant chemical taste that I couldn’t rinse away, so now I need a better storage bag to go with the excellent MSR Guardian.
For the type of downriver trips I do these days, I use Watershed Dry Duffels which are the most reliably dry packs/bags I have ever used. But these are duffels which you probably wouldn’t want to carry a long distance. Watershed also makes waterproof backpacks, although I haven’t used those.
I have used the large, roll-top dry backpacks like the NRS Bill’s Bag. They work pretty well but they are on the heavy side and I would not trust them to be absolutely waterproof if they were totally immersed in any current for any length of time. They are also not as comfortable to portage as a well-designed backpacking back pack.
In the olden days of yore I used Duluth Packs with roll down heavy duty vinyl liners. That works as well and I still have a number of Duluth Packs including a couple of #3s, a Camp Kitchen, and a #2 Cruiser Combo containing a pack basket. I still use them for base camping but you couldn’t pay me to use them on any trip in the BWCAW or Quetico that involves portages of any length. They are heavy, heavier when wet, slow to dry, and much less comfortable than modern back packs.
If you already have a good backpacking pack I would use a number of lightweight roll-top dry bags inside of it. These are very lightweight. They aren’t durable enough to be used exposed outside a pack but if they are protected they work very well. They are relatively compressible adapting to just about any shape. A variety of such bags of different sizes, and/or colors keeps your gear nicely organized. It is much easier to find a specific item quickly (important during a rain shower) than having all your stuff dumped into one huge bag or pack.
The plastic egg cases, available just about anywhere, do a good job of protecting eggs although large or extra large eggs are sometimes too big to fit comfortably. I usually buy medium size eggs for that reason.
Red, I usually flow mine into an MSR Dromedary Bag as pictured here. It’s not connected in the photo but it is while it’s filtering. The dromedary doesn’t seem to affect flavor although earlier versions did have this problem.
Lots of great info here for the new wilderness tripper. I’ll chime in with my preferences even though some of it is repetitive. Most of my tripping doesn’t require planned portages though sometimes there’s an unplanned one.
I’m in the medium-sized bag camp, using a combination of older roll top Seal Lines and some duffels. I always take what I call “the big bag” (usually a duffel) that contains the tent, tarp, sleeping mats, and sleeping bags (in their own thin dry bags). The rest goes in medium-sized bags, some of which have straps attached. For the camp kitchen, I use the NRS Boulder Box or a pickle bucket though neither is appropriate for a longer portage.
Like eckilson, I’m partial to pump style water purifiers while on the river, especially for groups of three or more. And eggs go in the cooler, again, only so they don’t get broken. Oh, and I’m not leaving home without a small coffee maker.
