Difficulty of Planned Route?

[maiathebee]

If you're going to be out for 10 nights, that's 11 days of food, but if you camp at bear boxes the first night, it means that you only need to fit 9 days of food into the cans. You ought to be able to fit 9 days into a Wild Ideas Expedition, meaning you'd require just one can each, no?

You've gotten a lot of great advice so far about altitude and mileage, but I want to second this comment about your food cans, and your overall pack weight. Not sure what you're eating that you'll need so many bear cans. I can fit 6 days food in a Bearikade Scout. Can you get your hands on bear cans in advance and test how much you can fit of your standard food? You have a year planning so you can easily do some weekend trips where you test more dense/lightweight food if what you're eating is too bulky.

[lockmangabriel]

You've gotten a lot of great advice so far about altitude and mileage, but I want to second this comment about your food cans, and your overall pack weight. Not sure what you're eating that you'll need so many bear cans. I can fit 6 days food in a Bearikade Scout. Can you get your hands on bear cans in advance and test how much you can fit of your standard food? You have a year planning so you can easily do some weekend trips where you test more dense/lightweight food if what you're eating is too bulky.

Thanks for insightful response! We already have 2 BV500s due to the fact that Pisgah NF requires them in some of the park's districts, and it's a park we take trips in a lot. As to your question on how much food we're eating, I am 6'6 (flight from NC to LAX will be rough), 195 pounds, and have a pretty fast going metabolism, so I tend to end up eating a lot more food than the average person. Back when I was a big competitive swimmer there were some days I'd put down 5k-7k calories . With a BV500 I can get 6-8 days worth of food in depending on how much effort I put into packing the can and what the avg. caloric density of my food is (I usually try to keep it around 120-130 cal/ounce). That considered, if we wanted to go with a single can approach, myself and my partner (who is also just about as large as me) would most likely need to use a Bearikade Expedition, which retails for about $350 and provides 14.75 liters of storage. So in total that would be a $700 dollar investment and would total 29.5 liters of space. However if we simply bought another BV500 for $70, that would give us 5 more liters of total storage than 2 Bearikades, allowing plenty of room (probably a little extra) for the 11 days of food needed and toiletry storage. Now some of the UL hikers may cringe at the idea of adding *gasp* an extra 2.5 pounds to their pack for another canister but I can handle heavy loads and frankly don't think saving 2.5 pounds is worth $700. It may be a little space inefficient at first but we have large packs and have worked out fitting everything and distributing weight evenly amongst the two of us. Plus, when one canister empties we can just start putting gear in it which will make up for the initial space inefficiency.