>A guy I used to paddle with was notorious for taking too much gear, and was in the habit of asking others to carry his extras. Finally, I put my foot down on one trip and refused to carry anything superfluous ... he groused at the put-in but managed somehow. ...<snip> I have noticed a tendancy for many paddlers to bring way more junk than they need on multiday trips. Even our illustrious magazines like SK and others seem to encourage it by having these articles telling what a great trip everyone had becasus they brought along <fill in the blank-unessary junk>. I have spent weeks in the back country with only 40 to 60 LBs of gear and food each, we had a good time and missed out on nothing. And this is the way I pack for kayak trips as well. These trips are wilderness travel, not wilderness car camping. I do not understand this tendancy to load up with several hunderd pounds worth of junk to the point where peoples lives become endangered! I think it was last year sometime that SK had an artical about a couple of guys who were wilderness padding around a remote island in Asia somewhere in a two person Klepper. They had wrecked the folder in a bad landing, and then they complained about having to hike out 300 pounds of gear! Even more amazing to me was that most of it was of little value in keeping them alive hiking out, and I would say it even contributed to making a bad situation even worse by hampering their cross county travel before they made it back to help. Their excess junk, and their unwillingness to part with it put them at considerably more risk. Appearently it did not occure to these adverturers to bring a few tools so they could do field repairs to their hull, nor considered plans or exit routes (including having land maps), should they have to hike out. There was not even any editorial comments about these issues by the magazine which of surprised me. It seems to me on any wilderness trip, by land or water, contigency and emergancy plans should be part of the planning, and that the correct amount of gear is the minimun necssary (i.e. when there is nothing that can be left behind, not when there is nothing left to add!). Bringing too much stuff (especially the wrong stuff) could cause a minor incident to become a life threatening emergency if you get entangled in an overweight and over packed kayak. Peter *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue May 18 2004 - 18:48:47 PDT
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