Planning for a BPL Poll

for doing this Delmar! Looking forward to the results.

Btw, we don't have bears in Denmark. BUT, we have 35 million pigs, and 5 million people.

"I thought beer was supposed to be included in the base weight."

Only the empty cans are counted as non-consumable base weight. The liquid beverage is presumably consumable.

–B.G.–

> for doing this Delmar! Looking forward to the results. Btw, we don't have bears in Denmark. BUT, we have 35 million pigs, and 5 million people.

For reals? News to me. I thought you had both polars and browns.

Wasn't there some international conservation effort on behalf of polar bears co-signed by Russia, Denmark, Canada, and US? Maybe my memory is going bad. Could have sworn I'd seen photos of Danish browns.

Well, then you Danes are absolved of carrying bear canisters, and are required to carry pig canisters instead.

And you're welcome, my pleasure! It's a fun project. I'm just impatient to share the results at this point. I can imagine a lively discussion of the results, which should generally fall into to two broad categories:

(1) Knew it already, so you're wasting time.
(2) Didn't know that, so it can't be true.

N is now 132! Woot!

Would you like some polar bears?

Their habitat is shrinking so they may need to find new home…

Well, you've probably not read wrong, but our interests in conservation of polars is probably because of the ones in Greenland. Which is a autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark. Our Monarch is also theirs.

The brown ones you are thinking of might be the ones in Sweden.

Friends, this survey has generated more interest than I was expecting. I contacted Roger and asked him if BPL would like the data and graphics when finished. Roger asked me if I'd be willing to write the results into a BPL article. I think I'm far too inexperienced a backpacker to write a good article for a sophisticated audience as we have here, so I declined, and asked Roger if he'd like to write an article instead, based on the data being gathered. He said OK. So I'm shipping the data and graphics to Roger and crew, and you can expect a BPL article with the results sometime after the poll closes. The BPL staff will be able to add deeper and more significant commentary and interpretation than I could hope to.

I am leaving the BPL staff with a couple of difficult to interpret variables by the way I asked some of the questions. For example, it's difficult to tell which maps people are using, based on the way I set up the options, and by allowing multiple choices. (Allowing multiple choices always make the interpretation more complicated.) So the staff will be doing the best they can with the imperfect survey I whipped together. I mention this by way of saying: don't blame BPL staff for some of the inevitable ambiguity in the results. They're just working with the survey I wrote. A few interpretation issues aside, there is (to me at least, and Roger seems to think so too) some really interesting data here. So I hope you will enjoy the data when it's published.

Thanks to the 138 who have participated so far!

If you've not responded yet, the poll is still open:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MNKKFDK

Just be upfront and be ready to have some stones thrown your way. Thick skin helps.

I was 14lb base weight although that is a little heavy. Without the bear canister it is 12 lbs.

I don't consider myself to be half way to UL. I'm right were I want to be after trying all kinds of combinations of gear. Would I like less weight? Absolutely…. but everyone finds their personal comfort level and I'm pretty close to mine.

Will the article be made available to us lowly F members?

Delmar (and Roger), you may want to consider posting a new thread now that the poll is live. I suspect a number of people may have looked at your initial post with some interest, but aren't checking back in on the later developments in the "planning" thread. If Roger can make it some sort of official announcement, then that would be even better.

I put 32 lbs. for "Base Weight".
That's my TOTAL pack weight with 7 days food and 2 L. of water. (Yet another Senior Moment.)

My base weight is 12 lbs.

AAaarrggghhh!

…. but for a very different reason: the data is heading towards a black hole!

I was looking forward to the numbers.
Now it could be Months before it comes out.

How about a "Raw Data Report" and let the brave interpret as they see fit?

^^ ditto ^^

What are the odds this is published first or the AtoZ thing gets finished first?

I did the same. My base weight is 9 pounds. My 5 day total is about 16 pounds.

…

+1 to RodgerDodger and Greg.

> AAaarrggghhh!
>…. but for a very different reason: the data is heading towards a black hole!
Oh no it is not! We are letting the survey run a little longer as data is still coming in. But then the results WILL be published fairly quickly, as promised.

I am planing on making it a 'fact' article, with a distribution curve for each question. So you will be able to see for instance how many users there are for each sort of cooking system (just as an example). Yes, there will be some discussion of the results in the article, but not a huge amount. You guys can do the discussion bit!

Schedule: I have to get the survey published inside 4 weeks. Otherwise there will be a long delay. But I can get it published quickly.
And I think I can get it published as an open article so everyone can read it.

Cheers

Excellent!

I'm bowing down and waving my arms….

If at all possible it would be fair to make survey article results viewable to all that participated. Looking forward to seeing them myself.

Thanks jimmyb

> I'm bowing down and waving my arms….
Huh. Gold and silver would help more …
:-)

Cheers