BV450 how much have you crammed?

[Alexander S]

Hi,

I keep eye balling my BV450 and can’t for the life of me imagine not being able to fit 8 days of repackaged, dehydrated, compact foods of no more than 1.6 lbs/day.

Since I haven’t exactly prepared all the food yet it is hard to tell. Looks like it would be close but doable.

How many days have you been able to fit in a BV450?

Edit: Someone posted this BV500 pic on the JMT FB page. Thought it was appropriate

[Billy Ray]

I have a Bearikade weekender that is about 650 cu in. The most I can get in it is 8 days of food.. and that is repackaging everything and smashing and swearing and cursing to stuff in all in… and then smashing full force again to get the lid on… and I take 1.25 lbs/day

And my guess is that screw top of the BV will not lend itself to smashing and forceful closing as well as the Bearikade top does.

billy

[Tipi Walter]

I used a bearvault 500 a couple times and was lucky enough to have it “approved and certified” by a black bear so now it’s official.  He rolled it down a hill and gnawed on it.

Here’s a fantastic thought:  Clean out your bear canister very well, or line it with a big ziploc type bag.  Get all your dehydrated food, let’s say Lipton’s (oops, now Knorr’s) Parmesan pasta meal and get about 50 packages and open them and pour all of them into the bearvault.  You’d have no packaging and enough cookable food for probably a month.

Or imagine the whole vault filled with oatmeal—You’d eat almost like a king for at least a month.

[Matthew / BPL]

I was able to get my food down to just over 1 liter/day (~3300 calories/day) by being extremely rigorous about choosing food with very little air, using a bulk-packaging approach and eating lots of fat. I got 10 days into my 11.5 liter BV500. This means I would be able to get 6+ days into a 7.2 liter BV450.

Another way to look at it is I got ~33,000 calories in 11.5 liters, or 2,869 calories per liter.bthis would seem to predict that you could get 20,660 calories in a BV450 which would be 2582 calories per day.

Tipi’s suggestion is not a ludicrous as it seems… Packaging meals in larger quantities in loose bags is much more space efficient than individual meals rolled up into ziplocks. If you could stand it, you could have oats, instant hummus, polenta, couscous, mashed potatoes in larger bags (produce bags from the grocery store work well) and eat them with lots of olive oil or ghee.

You can increase the caloric density of nuts by melting dark chocolate (enriched with extra fat… Coconut oil works). Cast it in a solid disk or break and the break pieces off.

[Alexander S]

“This means I would be able to get 6+ days into a 7.2 liter BV450”.

 

That’s kind of what I’m thinking. + one lunch and dinner out of MTR since I won’t be leaving it out overnight that night but just be carrying it along till I eat it.

[Billy Ray]

Sounds like a ‘desperate’ diet to me. No thanks.

[Ed Biermann]

http://www.monosar.org/safety_article_bear_canister_use.html

[terry a thompson]

I get 6 days of dinners for 2 people and 6 days of breakfast, lunch and snacks for 1 person in my BV450. 3400 cal. for each day.

[Billy Ray]

Right from the first sentence I’d say that is an odd article:
“Most weekend hikers rarely get more than 8-10 pounds of food, 6-8 days supply in a canister.”

First, they don’t specify what size canister they are talking about.
Second, from all the people, rangers, and canister suppliers I have talked to, most people don’t get more than 4 or 5 days of food into a 600 or so cu in canister. That’s why Bearikade calls their 650 cu in canister the “Weekender”.
And most people I have ever told that I get 8 days worth into a 650 cu in canister are amazed. And… I have been involved in threads here on BPL where people were amazed at me geting 8 days of food into 650 canister… every thing is relative…

Still, there are good suggestions in the article for food choices and repackaging… most all of which I do. But… I do like to have some reasonable faximile of a ‘normal’ diet. Still… most non-backpackers would likely think that MY diet backpacking is rather desperate. And… But… then there are the suggestions here on this thread that are of a higher order of desperation to save weight than I am willing to go. BTW.. I am quite happy with about 1,200 calories a day… really I’d feel like I was forcing myself if I ate more.

billy

[Lester Moore]

5 days of food (1.5lbs/day) is not too hard to fit in my BV450 with some repackaging and stuffing. There’s an informative document on the JMT Yahoo group about how to get the most food into a bear canister – excellent reading:

The Care and Feeding of Your Bear Canister

[Ken Thompson]

That is an old article an I would venture to guess that it is talking about a Garcia canister. Still good information though.

[No Name]

I think this is a great topic and a post that I found helpful was:

http://www.mountainultralight.com/2011/07/2-hikers-14-days-70764-calories.html

The title is slightly misleading, I think they got to 17500 Cal a time in a BV450. Still, this is great and I would try something similar with the repackaging next time. I’ve gotten to ~15500 Cal (5 – 6 days for me).

.   

Especially the first day I found it hard to turn the lid. Also, it is hard to scam the pot in there after the first cooked meal. I’m curious to see what other people bring up.

[Owen M]

If you cleaned out the BV450 really well and filled it to the brim with peanut butter you could get almost 50,000 calories in there.  Then again, you would only have peanut butter.  But that’s a lot of days of food!

[Alexander S]

“If you cleaned out the BV450 really well and filled it to the brim with peanut butter you could get almost 50,000 calories in there.  Then again, you would only have peanut butter.  But that’s a lot of days of food!”

Go on…..

 

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