Desert Water Cache Experience?

[Brad W]

Does anyone have experience caching water in the desert? This April, I need to cache 4 liters along a summit route to be picked up the following day upon return. I was planning on just 1L Smart water bottles, slightly buried in the sand, with a few rocks piled on top. Have heard about rodents chewing through plastic to get to the water. Would different bottle type be preferable? Anyone have experience with this?

[John Vance]

I have used 5 gal buckets with lids from the big box stores buried and marked well.          And some nice treats in there as well.

[Brad W]

@servingko Thanks. I don’t think the 5 gal bucket wouldn’t work as I am caching during ascent and weight is of the utmost importance.

[Mark Wetherington]

Maybe use two Platypus reservoirs and put those in an Ursack and bury that? Would solve the critter problem and not add an obscene amount of weight/bulk.

[Matthew / BPL]

I have cached 1 gallon water bottles (the thin, clear kind like a Smartwater bottle) in the desert for a couple of weeks and not had any animals disturb them. I placed them behind a boulder where nobody would see them with a piece of tape asking people to not disturb them and what date I was going to retrieve them.

Also I think that is how volunteers cache water on the PCT.

I wouldn’t worry about it.

[Arthur]

This was a non mission critical cache in the winter desert for a couple of weeks. Notice the thin milk jug was eaten thru and the Arnold Palmer heavier bottle was in tact. 

[Brad W]

Interesting. Seems to be area specific as to whether the rodents decide to chew threw or not.

[PaulW]

I’ve had good luck with 32oz Nalgene bottles. They’re really sturdy and I don’t worry about stacking rocks or smaller logs on top of them. They’re also small enough that they’re easier to wedge between rocks, or bury, which can be a real pain in some desert areas. Not light, but effective for shorter trips.

[Walter Pickett]

I have used 2 L Plastic Soda bottles with no problems. I think the 1.5L Smart water bottles will work well too.

[Diane “Piper” Soini]

Friends and I cached water in Joshua Tree. Thinner plastic like milk jugs, platypus are easily eaten through. Thicker/larger bottles like 1 gallon crystal geyser or 1 gallon Arizona tea were not eaten through.

[David Thomas]

When you ask me about caches and rodents, I’m always going to tell you about popcorn canisters (and smaller ones for Danish butter cookies and those long Pepperidge Farm tube cookies):
Fill it with smaller plastic water bottles and you’d good to go against mice, squirrels, rats and ravens.  Might as well stash some food in there too, to reduce your carried food weight.

They’re about $10 at Walmart full of popcorn, $1 empty at any Salvation Army, or free in any office around the holidays as vendors drop off the calories each year.

But if only for a day?  I’d be sorely tempted to bury the plastic water bottles directly, in several locations.  Remember to snap a photo from several angles before backfilling them and hang a bit of flagging tape (reflective glowire if it might be nighttime) on a branch directly over one of the locations (remove that later).

An easily re-creatable distance (your arm span, pack frame length, trekking pole, jacket stretched from cuff to cuff) allows you to relocate buried items even after a windstorm, rain, or (worst) some snowfall.  For my hundreds of monitoring wells in surface-level vault boxes, I take measurements to the nearest inch from at least two fixed objects like fence posts and (since it’s a toxic-waste site and not a national monument) I just write the measurements directly on the fence post/curb.

[David Thomas]

I’ve tucked a lot of stuff up under foot bridges and between highway guard rails and their support posts and always found it there later.  Not anything with a food smell to it, but water bottles and canned goods (fruit nectars in aluminum cans) have been fine, IME, for days or a few weeks even in black and brown bear country.

Another trick here in the north, is I’ll seal something up in a water-proof plastic container or vac-pack, and put it under a large rock in a cold stream.  Then you can have meat and cheese (or a whole sandwich) cached days in advance in addition to the obvious pre-chilled beer.

[Brad W]

@davidinkenai Now that is fantastic idea. I have a vac seal machine. Going to have to try that sometime.

[Miner]

I’ve always used the 1gallon Crystal Geyser water bottles.  I’ve never had one damaged. Their accordion sides will compact down pretty flat for carrying them out as I empty them along a route.

I don’t try to bury them, but I do look for a bush or some rocks to keep it out of the sun.  Read too many stories years ago about plastic water bottles left in the sun leaching the plastic into the water.  That and to keep the water cooler. I also prefer to leave them out of plain sight, though I’ve seen plenty of other people who leave them at a trailhead or next to the trail.  I’ve never had it happen, but I read once about someone else having their cache used by someone else who thought their lack of planning constituted an emergency, who never considered that they may be creating an emergency for the one that placed that cache and was relying on it.

[Roger Caffin]

When we cache food, it is very well hidden, and even camouflaged. Green garbage bags over a sealed white bucket, in thick green scrub.

I don’t want someone pleading ’emergency’ as they knock off all our chocolate.

The secret is remembering where we put it! Disguised markers, some distance away.

Cheers

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