Watchful Eye O.P. Saks

Sharon, after multiple failures including the soaking of my wallet and destruction of a cheap 8mm video camera I dont use those OPSacks anymore. Typical failure mode involves bending the single-track seal, but your bubbles are proof they are hardly water resistant. If you read the actual government tests, they tested the bags in the upside down orientation in the water. Think about that.

I switched to dual-track bi-color seal ziplock freezer bags and have not had one failure. Ziplock continues to improve their seal technology, WE does not. They are the same bags as years ago. Heck, even the ziplock ripoffs I get at the $1 store dont leak bubbles.
This is one case where quality LW goods don't have to cost more.
Return 'em if you can.

Hrrmmm…

Well. I bought them for food – for the oder proofing, more than for the waterproofing. Waterproofing was a nice side effect.

I'm pretty certain that ziplocks of any regular sort are not oder proof. I suppose if the O.P.Saks were still oder proof, even if they leaked a little air under pressure, I could waterproof them by inserting them into regular ziplocks…

But I have no idea how to tell if they are oder proof. I suppose I could try contacting Watchful Eye…

I put wet cat food in an OP Sak and threw it on the floor while my cats weren't looking. They happened upon it, sniffed around it – it's out of place, so it must be checked out – and then went on their merry way. I know they are MAD for wet food; once I made a Jim Woods Supercat alcohol stove at home with a neighbor's wet food can, oh MAN did they go apes***t when they smelled the residual food odor. So I know they'd be into it if they could smell it.

Are all OP Saks that odor resistant? Who knows. Several threads on BPL also debate the relative durabilities of Watchful Eye products, primarily based around their high price points. But that one rather unscientific test seemed pretty impressive to me…

(And never trust ziploc-style bags to be waterproof. Use an actual well-tested and well-reviewed dry bag (I use SealLine and POE Pneumo bags for backpacking and kayaking). Sad tale, Brett!)

Sharon,
I, too, have found those thin seals to be a pain in….., especially when trying to close them in a cylindrical bear canister, and have been wondering if enough food odor will leak out make a bear aware that there's goodies to be had. I haven't come up with a potential solution other than maybe using one of the H2O proof bags that came with my Arctic1000 pack inside the canister, but that's definitely not an ultralite solution. Any lighter ideas out there, folks?

Sharon, I also have found the Watchful Eye O.P. saks to be delicate. I always "double bag" them with a hearty zip-lock freezer bag for protection.

However, I still continue to use them. Like Nathan's experiment, I have read other similar accounts with pet testing with results like his. Therefore, I must conclude that the "odor proofness" works.

But, that's all that they are good for, so the double bagging with a freezer bag has become my standard operating procedure.

Michael hit it right on the head! I totally concur, and the double-bagging idea's a good one.

I use the 12" x 15" OP Saks inside a BearVault Solo, so really my use is a secondary one – just a slight bit of insurance that a critter will smell tastier treats elsewhere. Not so mission-critical for me as it would be if I was using something like an Ursack or doing bear-bagging (which I can't, really, where I backpack in the Sierras).

Part of my packing strategy is to make sure that my freezer-bag cuisine (just bought Sarah's book, it's like her site on 'roids!) and small snack bags of gorp are against the bottom and edges of the OP Sak in the bear container, so that there are no sharp bits biting into the Sak. This way foil-packed items and toiletries can kind of go inside a cylinder of "beanbags" to help prevent puncturing. Doesn't always work. :-)

I could easily see that use of an OP Sak in an Ursack or food bag for hanging could be pretty challenging given the additional amount of handling and exposure to the Pointy Bits of Life.

It seems interesting to me that people seem to talk about double bagging OPSaks INSIDE of standard ziplocs… is there a reason one wouldn't do it the other way around? Especially if the concern is your hard sharp poky food bits / foil containers poking through the OPSak from the inside? Very little will punch through a ziploc freezer bag, and certainly the corners of the freezer bag aren't nearly sharp enough to affect the OPSak unless you're overstuffing the OPSak.

I understand if you're trying to protect your OPSak from the other stuff in your bag, but that stuff is typically sharp enough to damage freezer bags as well…

It seems to me that there's not much weight penalty wrapping the OPSak in a big@$$ Aloksak or Freezer Bag if you're really concerned…

I found that the "zipper" was lacking too. and it tore mid hike. They are not durable and when you leave any air in them the slightest pressure will open the zipper. They are just too hit & miss to trust without a canister. If you think like a bear or raccoon it would make more sense to put it in a plain Freezer zip bag in a canister.

Plain Freezer bag with peanut butter in it = Hmmm I can smell peanuts, gotta check it out. Oh well, maybe berries are easier.

A gob of peanut butter smeared on the inside of a Garcia canister = Oh boy! That smells like the canister is chock full of peanuts. I'll try to get inside this thing if it takes me all night!