Water in winter on dry, snowless trail?

[Michael Ray]

I am hoping to do at least some of the Knobstone Trail in southern IN this winter. It's known to be a pretty dry trail except during rainy periods, and we generally don't have enough snow to melt here. People normally cache their water, but it would freeze by the time you got to it.

Would you just carry all you need for 3-4 days? Cache in smaller bottles you can cut open to set into your pot?

[Eric Blumensaadt]

Yep, cache smaller plastic bottles ya can cut open to get at the water. (And carry out all the cut bottles.)

Try it at home to see how much fuel is needed per small bottle.

Eric

[Jack H.]

I assume you're caching by a road? How cold does it get? How many days exactly?

In the utah desert, we used to cache a lot in the winter, but with larger groups and larger water needs. What we found to work was to cache in LARGE containers because they take longer to freeze through. What was implemented were those insulated orange gatorade coolers (perhaps 20 gallons). Don't screw the cap on much at all because it freezes. The spout freezes too but you can just open the top and break the ice.

Five gallon jugs would sometimes freeze solid. Putting things on foam pads to insulate from the ground worked. So did covering the water, even putting the container in a garbage bag would help.

I guess the strategy of anticipating ice and dealing with it would work as well. We didn't like dealing with ice though.

[Michael Ray]

It would just be for a few days for 2 people. It would be near roads. Someone on the Knobstone forum suggested caching ice cubes in ziplocs, which seemed like a good solution, assuming temps always stayed below freezing.

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