Pack to carry two 30 L barrels
I have come into possession of two standard 30 litre food barrels, but no method of carrying them while portaging. I have heard of people carrying two of these at a time, possibly using an external backpack frame. However, I can't find any products that do this or just pictures of something I could rig up.
The 30L barrels are 20 inches tall and about 12 inches in diameter. Here is more information about 'canoe/food barrels' for those unfamiliar. Note that the usual barrels, like those pictured in that article, are 60L, whereas I now have two 30L ones.
If anybody has done or seen this, I would appreciate advice on the kind of pack or frame used.
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Find an old aluminum external frame pack.
Remove the bag and discard.
Lay the barrels crossways on the frame.
Cut wedges that match the curve of the barrel.
Fasten the wedges to the frame. (There is a certain amount of cut and try to this, depending on the frame)
Now you have a frame that you can quickly lash two barrels to. A variation on a diamond hitch works well for the lashing.
That said: I prefer using a 70 litre sealine. It has straps already, and full of food weighs close to a hundred pounds.
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I would recommend a soft open frameless pack, like a Duluth, which is made of canvas. We can fit three food barrels into our Duluth, but they are olive barrels (watertight) not the standard blue ones. I looked at the 115 L dry bags on the MEC site and it looks like your barrel might just squeeze into one, though paying for a drybag and then putting something rigid and waterproof in it doesn't seem like a great plan to me.
Here are our two bags surrounded by some other stuff for scale:
And here is one alone with the outlines of the barrel ends clearly visible:
I prefer soft frameless bags because frames get caught up in canoes and generally tick me off if I need to climb over them. Especially when you have passengers (my children first went in a canoe at 6 weeks, and my oldest tripped at 11.5 months) a nice soft Duluth to lean back on is essential in-boat furniture. Frames are helpful if you're going to carry 20-40 pounds all day. They don't help much if you're going to carry 90 pounds 700m up and down a hill, and they get in the way all the rest of the time, so I stick with my 30+ year old canvas and leather - they've outlasted all my other camping equipment, btw.
We put our three narrow barrels into the bag sideways, with the mouths always at the same end. If you have two, you could consider putting them in upright which might make it easier to access food without taking the barrels out of the bag.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/5897. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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