First of all, if you never backpack in bear country, then you don't need to worry about packing a canister full of food. However, for those of us who do operate around the bears, we would like to get as much food into our canister as possible. In other words, if the canister is normally used as a five-day canister, then we want to cram six or seven days worth in there. How do we do this?
One rule of thumb is that your food goal is 100 cubic inches per day. Some backpackers are able to cram in more than this, so they get to 80 cubic inches per day of food. Others who use big foil packages of freeze dried food will end up considerably north of 150 cubic inches per day. You can make your own estimates. My goal is 100 cubic inches per day.
I own about six different canisters, but my favorite has a 500 cubic inch volume. That would seem to hold five days worth of food. However, backpackers often pack the first day of food outside the canister and then use it up before nightfall (O-bear-thirty) that first day. So, a five-day canister has now become a six-day canister.
On the food planning table, I can just make up a chart on paper and plan for various meals and snacks each day. Then I have to try to cram it all into the 500 cubic inch canister. Sometimes that doesn't work. If you are going out on a longer trip, say longer than one week, then this becomes more important.
I found another way. I found a food product that I purchase a lot, and it comes packaged into a #2-1/2 size can. I did some volume measurements using water, and I found that exactly ten of those will fill up my canister to the brim. So, that makes my can exactly 50 cubic inches. Those are excellent round numbers to work with. That means that I can pack two cans of food into the canister for each 100 cubic inches or one day.
Now, as I stand in front of a table of backpacker food, I use my #2-1/2 food cans for volume testing. How much food can I cram into two cans in order to meet my daily goal?
This works a whole lot easier if you remove freeze dried food from the bulky packaging, and instead stick it into a simple zip lock bag with all of the air squeezed out. If you do this only a night or two before departure, the freeze dried food won't have time to go stale. If you do it three months before, it can go stale.
There are a few of us here who pack mostly dried/powdery/granular food, so zip lock bags are very effective. Still, you have to place those into the actual bear canister and not leave much air space. I've found by laying the bear canister on its side with the opening toward me, I can lay in the zip lock bags around the side wall, and keep rotating the canister as I fill it up. That fills up the outer part first, and it leaves the center for the stuff that you will eat up first, or maybe for condiments or things you need to find in a hurry. That would include parmesan cheese and small condiment packages from fast food places, but that is a whole different thread.
Once I had to fill up an old Garcia (612 cubic inches) with food for a nine-day trip.
Does anybody here exceed this packing density? If so, what are your tricks?
–B.G.–
