# Grand Canyon: DIY foodpack?



## John the welder (May 2, 2009)

Do your own food. We did 28 days and I put the food together and we ate well and had plenty of food. Started off with meats, fresh vegetables and food you would take on a shorter trip. Cured meats like ham last along time. Canned chicken can go in a lot of dishes. Pizza, Mexican, pastas, stir fry and what ever you want. A small group makes it easy.


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## luckylauren (Apr 3, 2016)

I think you could totally do it. 

My advice:

Vacuum sealer- it helps prevent food from leaking (ie meat juice), and then try to freeze things solid before introducing to the cooler.

Pre-make what you can, chili, burgers, meatballs, curry, it can all be made, vacuum sealed, and frozen (at least the first couple of weeks).

Costco- where do you think they got a ton of their stuff? Burger patties pre-made, hell ya burger night! Chips, oh ya. Candy- you know you want and need that sugar!

Udon Noodles- Costco sells some big boxes of udon noodles, buy them, deconstruct the bowls and such. When you get to camp add chicken, frozen veggies, and sauce (Trader Joe's) it's a super easy meal, ready in minutes, and is tasty.

Food servings- look at the boxes and see what the serving sizes are, I tend to stick with it and go for more rather than less.

Bagels- DON'T GET FANCY BAGELS! Those things will mold if you look at them funny! Find the bagels with the preservatives if you are thinking of that route.

Try to balance your menu- and think about things that will hold longer vs less. Don't plan for a fresh salad on day 19, just don't do it!


Downside, if you don't have enough coolers, this just won't work. And you will want them!
Dry boxes/rocket boxes- will you have enough? For 8 people, you can probably get 2 days of use out of each rocket.

Last some companies might not provide the gear without the food pack, so make sure you can still get any boats and frames you needs if you aren't using them for food.

Good luck!


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## Ever_Cat (Jan 20, 2009)

You can totally do it. I have been on 2 small-group trips where we did our own food.

Once approach that I like that shares the burden before and during the trip is to break into food groups and have each group responsible for dinner/breakfast/lunch (prepared in the morning to take with on the rafts).

For example, if you have 8 people on a 16-day trip, break into food groups of 2 people with each group responsible for bringing meals for 4 days. Obviously some communication is required ahead of time to avoid eating the same thing but it works.

Grill early in the trip. Steaks and grilled zucchini and bell peppers (they are durable) make a great meal.

For those mornings that you want a hot breakfast, make eggs with Egg Beaters in a carton (they pack well and last a long time), pre-packaged hash browns and a can of diced green chilies. Add some shredded cheese and a tortilla and you have a pretty simple hot breakfast. Or even easier buy pre-made egg burritos from Costco and freeze them ahead of time.

Vacuum bags are a great thing, especially the ones for boil-in-a-bag usage. Prepare at home, freeze, and boil in water when it is time to eat.

Ice lasts pretty well in April but meals will have to shift direction from frozen to dry/packaged later in the trip.

You can do it.


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## co_bjread (Oct 26, 2004)

Amazon has powdered eggs, and costco and sams have dried hashbrowns. With these, you don't need cooler space, and once hydrated and cooked you can't tell they weren't frozen. There are also canned beef which makes great tacos and burritos sans cooler. Velveta cheese packets work on tacos and burritos, canned chicken and ranch dressing on a pita made a yummy lunch. While it may not be the Grand, I did 4 days on labyrinth in june, with temps in the high 90s, sans coolers, and made a point of eating well. We looked for canned versions of foods and things that were shelf stable. It worked really well. These would be good for later in yoour trip.

Sent from my GT-P5113 using Mountain Buzz mobile app


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## Rick A (Apr 15, 2016)

We did our own food pack and it worked out great. We did put quite a bit of effort up front but the food was good and we did not have to go boat to boat looking for items. We used rocket boxes for dry goods. We packed a cooler for each week of the trip and finished the trip with plenty of ice to spare (winter trip).


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## dsrtrat (May 29, 2011)

You are getting good suggestions. I will add a few things that we have learned from experience. If you are going to be point person for the food maybe this will help.

We almost always do our food for Grand Canyon trips. My wife has done the food for many trips and has a great system, but it does take time. I don't think you really save a whole lot of money as you aren't getting wholesale prices and are also paying sales tax but you will have the food you want and won't end up grating cheese in a sandstorm. 

Step one - Get everyone on the same page regarding meals. Coolers, no coolers, ease of prep vs. elaborate meals. If each person provides some meals it defeats the purpose if they want elaborate and you don't. I hate how the food takes over the trip regarding schedule and timing but for some good food is an important part of the experience. 


Step two - Decide how you are going to carry it all. If renting boats use the rocket box system, use it even if not renting, it's easier to deal with the trash.


Step three - Plan on spending more time than you think on prep and packing. My wife spends a couple of months purchasing, pre cooking, vacuum sealing, re packaging dry foods, packing rocket boxes, freezing food. Don't try to do it in one session. You will hate it and make mistakes.


Step four - Label everything very well and include cooking directions with the packaging in addition to having a well planned menu book. If you don't do this you will be answering questions the entire trip. It's a lot easier to say "look in the book" than put down your beer and climb on a boat looking for the relish. Have extra marking tape and markers to mark trash and extra rocket boxes. Buy a big roll of 3M vinyl marking tape from Amazon, don't use duct tape. Put a shopping list in a baggie on top of the packed rocket box food so you don't have to take the full menu to the boat to shop. Color code it with cooler items vs. dry and if you have dairy and vegi coolers what cooler to look in so people aren't standing staring into the wrong cooler. Mark the coolers by day and contents and pack by day. Label the frozen vacuum packed meals by day and if more than one package note it on the shopping list and mark it on the all the packages.


Step five - Make sure everyone knows that they have to get it all in the boats somehow and everyone will be required to pull their weight. We had one trip with someone providing their meals had brought an extra cooler that they expected someone else to carry. My wife just walked away " saying figure it out or don't eat the last four days, your choice". It went. 


Step six - Don't let people screw with the meals once on the river! Stick to the plan unless you need to change a out meal due to an emergency. I have seen people try to cherry pick easy meals if they don't like to cook. You really need a food person who is willing to keep with the program and remind people to check produce, drain coolers, eat the ripe fruit or else you will end up with a mess and wasted food. 


Hope this helps, have fun.


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

Rick A said:


> We did our own food pack and it worked out great. We did put quite a bit of effort up front but the food was good and we did not have to go boat to boat looking for items. We used rocket boxes for dry goods. We packed a cooler for each week of the trip and finished the trip with plenty of ice to spare (winter trip).


That's a fantastic menu.
I'd like to cherry-pick Jeremy to go on my trips, I like his meal ideas!




dsrtrat said:


> Step one - Get everyone on the same page regarding meals. Coolers, no coolers, ease of prep vs. elaborate meals. If each person provides some meals it defeats the purpose if they want elaborate and you don't. I hate how the food takes over the trip regarding schedule and timing but for some good food is an important part of the experience.


 This is HUGE. Prior communication goes a LONG way. I like good food, but it's so much easier to hear that meals will be simple during the early planning process than to discover that on the river. Similarly, if most people want good food and a few people can't cook or won't cook...swap roles during early planning and assign them more groover duties or assistant cook duties instead of being disappointed when you get to night 4.



dsrtrat said:


> Step four - Label everything very well and include cooking directions with the packaging in addition to having a well planned menu book. If you don't do this you will be answering questions the entire trip. It's a lot easier to say "look in the book" than put down your beer and climb on a boat looking for the relish.



Awesome.




To add to the vacuum-packing....also consider boil-in-bag meals. You pretty much already have everything precooked. No point in opening the bag and dirtying a pot or DO to warm it up. Get the blaster going, drop the bags in a chickie pail of boiling water, and warm food up while you nosh on hors d'ouvres or fix a salad. Then after dinner, you have one chickie that is still mostly hot and nearly ready for dish duty.


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## eyeboat (Feb 7, 2017)

Great menu. Possible to get cooking instructions for dinners?? I am looking at doing food self support for a May GC. Some outfitters will Not do food w/o boat rental. Thx. wbb


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## smhoeher (Jun 14, 2015)

Great ideas from everyone. I was very lucky to be a restaurant owner and chef so have some food prep experience and access to commercial foods. If you know a restaurant person use his or her expertise and help. 

Some other thoughts:

- Create a bible with all the recipes, portions, directions, etc., by the day and campsite. Have two copies, one in the kitchen box, the second somewhere else safe. I had designated kitchen/food managers.

- Have some emergency food, like ramans or even energy bars, in case you get into a dire situation.

- Good ice is important. Block ice from the grocery store melts fast.You should be able to find a better ice source. If you have access to a walk-in freezer make ice right in your coolers. Make the ice in layers, an inch or so at a time, until it's 6-8 thick. You won't air bubbles which make it melt faster. Even if your making ice in a milk jug still do it layers. Dry is should be used for coolers your going to open later in the trip. On my first trip, in August, we had a little bit of ice at the end of the trip.

-I had three camp groups that rotated daily. Group A was responsible for cooking, B for the groover, water, and fire, and C was off. Might not be as easy with just 8 people. 

- If you plan on freezing fresh eggs, scramble them. Frozen whole egg yolks get really hard.

Have fun!


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## [email protected] (Jun 1, 2010)

I did a 24 day G.C. trip with six people. We did the food ourselves. We did two frozen coolers (160 qt each). One for the first 10 days and one for the last 10 days. One dairy (129 qt) and one veggie (129 qt). Two small day coolers. Four rocket Boxes and eight plastic buckets with snap on lids. We all worked on the menu, but all the purchasing and packing was done at one location by three of us. It was a fair amount of work, but sure made meals fast and easy on the river to prepare.
What we need is a place for everyone to post their favorite rafting friendly recipes broken down to breakfast, lunch, dinner, appetizers and deserts with full instructions. Separated into Meat or veggie, cooler or no cooler required. With the ability to star rate each recipe.


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## Paco (Aug 3, 2007)

On my my one and only trip, "we" did our own food. Quotes because I had nothing to do with meal planning or pre-trip prep. I know it was a lot of work for the woman who did the bulk of it. 
The two snags that we ran into were: 
-Food organization. We had a combo of rental boats and personal, and people converging on Lee's from different places. I'm sure that all of the food was incredibly organized prior to rig day. But then everything needed to go someplace, and different boats had different capacities, and some captains were more willing to say 'sure, I can fit that in.' In the end it wasn't as organized as it started out and we played a lot of "find that food item" throughout the trip.
-The other was food loss due to a flip in Crystal and overconfidence in the dryness of a "dry" box.
Both of those issues are avoidable with proper planning, I would think.

We saved a heck of a lot of money (I think our total trip cost was around $600/each) and the food was good, though it's not what I remember about the trip. I do remember looking for what seemed like hours for the canned mandarin oranges, though


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## co_bjread (Oct 26, 2004)

I learned about freezing eggs the hard way. Made a dutch oven cake with eggs that I had frozen without mixing. The yokes absorbed the flavors and sugars, but did not mix into the cake at all. I did not realize it until it was cooked, and they were this weird dense textured goodness that is hard to describe. I wouldn't do it again, but it was pretty fascinating.


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## co_bjread (Oct 26, 2004)

I'd also like to add a tool to the conversation. I don't think too many people are aware of Pivot Tables, but if you take the time to learn how to create them and use them, they make meal planning for any group and any duration much simpler. They are available in Excel and Google Sheets.

Once I have the basic plan of what we want to eat each day, I enter the meal components in a data table. Then using the Pivot Table functions, I can easily make new tabs to show the meal plan (that I use on the trip to find/prepare meals), a tab for the shopping list (we enter store data, and even part of the store to help the table sort, so when we are at the store, we can find the items easier). We also enter approximate costs, tied to the quantities to get a ballpark of the food costs. Hopefully the attached screenshots work, they show some of these different tabs.

The data you get out of the pivot table is directly related to what you enter. You could also add data for which cooler it is in, or which boat, though that level would take more advanced planning and attention to detail. 

Anyway, they are pretty useful, and pretty easy to learn how to use by trial and error. Hope this helps.


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## DoStep (Jun 26, 2012)

There is a ton of effort involved and if you have the time, resources (access to commercial food ops is a huge asset), gear (do you have 15 rocket boxes and three huge coolers?), and desire (yuk!), by all means go for it.

But the worth of the savings realized depends on your time constraints. Most working folk have a hard enough time finding over 3 weeks for the trip, and adding the chore of food pack and logistics becomes a burden in already busy lives. When I was seasonally unemployed twice a year, I had time to mess with that. At this point in my life, no thanks.

My last trip was through an outfitter and included three 18' boats, shuttle, toilets, food pack, and everything else except personal gear and beer. 8 ppl for 24 days was $1100 per. All were working folks and were happy to pay the extra few hundred bucks for not having to deal.


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## lhowemt (Apr 5, 2007)

DIY here. Our group was split into food groups of two people, and my partner and I ended up with 3 breakfasts and dinners. My partner and I did our own cooler pack with two coolers, we premade lunches and froze those too. Once we split that up, it was pretty manageable to put together 3 group meals each. Finding a walk in freezer for our coolers was not too difficult, but it seems to be getting more difficult as the years go by. We premade most things and they were heat and serve, with a few easy sides/additions. The work at home was well worth saving the energy in the canyon. Next time, no premade lunches, it will be all shelf stable grab and go lunch stuff.


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## newpc (Aug 3, 2009)

one of the best DIY trips we did was the TL split the 16 people into 4 groups, each group got a pile of cash and did their own shopping, packing and carrying then cooking, of all the food for their assigned meals. Was one of the best eating trips ive been on.


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## atg200 (Apr 24, 2007)

If you have a walk in freezer and vacuum seal your food, freeze your food into the ice for late in the trip coolers. You'll need ice picks to get the steaks out of the ice on day 20. I also like to vacuum seal some bags of ice cubes and freeze them into the ice here and there for decadent cocktails on very hot trips.


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## shoenfeld13 (Aug 18, 2009)

*On your own*

You can and definitely should do it. I am planning my 6th gc trip and the 1 time we used an outfitter for food was a big disappointment. I like to cook and after doing tons of week long trips it just isn’t that big a deal. And yes, finding everything and prepping and cooking an outfitter planned meal every day took way too long and was fine but I would rather spend the time and effort of prepping and cooking at home instead of on the river. Forget buying ice. Buy 2 1/2 gal jugs of water and freeze them at your local supermarket. They are always happy to do it. We put 4 in most big coolers and then you have some cold water to drink as the cooler is used up. 

We never need to bring extra or backup food since there is always left overs from most meals. If someone doesn’t want to cook have them go to their favorite restaurant and have them prepare and freeze it for you. Those who don’t like to cook have used this many times and it is the same cost or less than an outfitter dinner. 

So much great info from everyone. The buzz is the best!


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## jspoon14 (Aug 5, 2012)

Rick A said:


> We did our own food pack and it worked out great. We did put quite a bit of effort up front but the food was good and we did not have to go boat to boat looking for items. We used rocket boxes for dry goods. We packed a cooler for each week of the trip and finished the trip with plenty of ice to spare (winter trip).


I have a trip in Sep and am starting to plan now and your menu format is awesome. Would you be willing to share it? I have a spreadsheet I am working on for a millage calculator for planing rest day and tracking progress. I would be will to share if you are willing.


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## jspoon14 (Aug 5, 2012)

I have done the Grand twice now and have another permit for this September and we are starting to plan now and have to decide on DIY or outfitter meals. I am not sure which way we will go at the moment. I see both sides, we used Pro last time and the food was great but a [email protected]#$ ton of work some nights, they had us making salsa from scratch one night, uhg. 

I would like to make prep time on the river as short as possible so DIY appeals to me but the upfront time seem extensive, I have prepared and cooked meals for shorter tips and seems like we are cooking for days. I love the idea of vacuum bags and heat and eat set up. I am going to call the outfitter to see if we can design a menu with them that is less labor but we will see if they can accommodate what we want. 

The one thing that I have not heard in this thread yet as a plus to go with the outfitter is that they clean up the mess, all the mess. You just grab your shit and head for home when you get off the river. Nothing worse than cleaning out trash that is three weeks old and been in the AZ heat. Most trips I am on and this is probably just my procrastination, but I always have a hard time getting everything truly cleaned up and put away quickly. 

One more word, Goover! They take care of everything that is what i appreciated the most when we did the canyon last time. 

Just my two cents, love the thread and is perfect timing for our trip this year.!


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## Husker Boatman (Sep 18, 2014)

I will happily trade hours of prep above the rim for hrs of hiking below it. My family's system saves 3-5 hrs per camp of cleaning/cooking/setting up/unloading/loading. Everything is boil in bag or grilled. You don't need to rent a kitchen. Put one together from the thrift store that fits in 2 rocket boxes. With 8 person trip, you can get by with just a blaster and a firepan. Do dishes once per camp. I put a FB album together to explain it, so I'll see if I can post the link here. Let me know if you can't get to it. 

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=783164078361802&set=a.783164031695140&type=3&theater[/url]


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## Electric-Mayhem (Jan 19, 2004)

jspoon14 said:


> I have done the Grand twice now and have another permit for this September and we are starting to plan now and have to decide on DIY or outfitter meals. I am not sure which way we will go at the moment. I see both sides, we used Pro last time and the food was great but a [email protected]#$ ton of work some nights, they had us making salsa from scratch one night, uhg.
> 
> I would like to make prep time on the river as short as possible so DIY appeals to me but the upfront time seem extensive, I have prepared and cooked meals for shorter tips and seems like we are cooking for days. I love the idea of vacuum bags and heat and eat set up. I am going to call the outfitter to see if we can design a menu with them that is less labor but we will see if they can accommodate what we want.
> 
> ...


We did the "I want to Hike" menu from CEIBA in 2017 and it worked pretty well. It is a nice mix of Boil Bag (5 or so) meals and ones needing more prep. I don't recall any of them requiring more prep then chopping a few veggies or loading a Dutch Oven though. Certainly no making salsa from scratch kind of stuff. They allowed us to substitute a few meals that no one wanted for something more to our liking (a second Lasagna night towards the end of the trip...and a few others). My only qualm with it was VERY repetitive lunches. Basically the 75% deli sandwhiches with a few wrap days and some weird "Snack" days. The breakfasts and dinners were all pretty great though. We split it into 5 groups and kept to a schedule and it worked great... you just moved from one chore to another with some "off" nights too. I think we did Groover, Dishes, Cooking, and then two off nights and it just cycled through. 

On my first trip, the TL and and her husband and another dude planned, bought and cooked for the whole trip basically. It was a small group trip and we only had 8 people to Phantom and 6 after that. I really like to cook, so getting stuck doing dishes for the whole trip was a bit of a bummer and I got fed up and insisted on doing more then that (I'm the kind of guy that would rather spend 3 hours cooking then 10 minutes doing dishes). No real schedule to speak of...kinda weird.

On my trip this year...the TL and PH did about 3/4 of the food planning and since we split into groups again I decided to plan and do the food purchase for what I was gonna be responsible for. We did Cooking, Dishes, Day Off and cycled through that way (people just hopped in for Water and Groover duty). It worked allright, but some felt like a few meals were a bit skimpy on portions (note...not my meals ).

I have a trip invite for July of 2019, and the TL proposed that each boat would be responsible for a certain amount of meals and that the people on that boat would be responsible for planning, buying, carrying and cooking it all themselves. Some showed reservations about it, but I think it could work. Its still a long ways away, so we'll see how things change.

There is definitely man ways to skin the cat with this...and having tried a couple I can't say I really prefer one over the other. Having it done for you is great and takes a lot of the stress out of the process but its a bit more expensive (I'd guess $100-300 per person depending on many variables) and you give up a bit of control. Going completely DIY saves you money, but takes more time and effort too. You get exactly what you want as well.

At the end of the day, it really comes down to what you want to do and how involved people want to get too. Its really important to have an idea of portioning and how much food to bring. It sucks to have too much or too little food.


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## mattman (Jan 30, 2015)

Electric, we have pretty much always done it that way, on trips I've been on, each 
person responsible for x-amount of meals, and it works pretty good. As long as most people on the trip are good at shop/prep/cooking, it works out. Just depends on the group, to, I guess.
Have fun in the Grand! Will be down there next year myself


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## Electric-Mayhem (Jan 19, 2004)

Yeah...I've done it that way on most of my shorter trips and it usually equals great food. A trip that is more then twice the length adds more complication but it should still work.

I think the main thing people were questioning was that he wanted to put the frozen/chilled stuff for each persons meals on their boat. For shorter trips where keeping ice that isn't a big deal but on a July trip, its pretty much required to only be using stuff out of one cooler at a time or you stand to loose all your ice after the first week. With each boat carrying its own food for its own meals, and spreading the meals evenly throughout the trip... that makes it challenging to keep good cooler etiquette.


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## [email protected] (Jun 1, 2010)

Electric-Mayhem said:


> Yeah...I've done it that way on most of my shorter trips and it usually equals great food. A trip that is more then twice the length adds more complication but it should still work.
> 
> I think the main thing people were questioning was that he wanted to put the frozen/chilled stuff for each persons meals on their boat. For shorter trips where keeping ice that isn't a big deal but on a July trip, its pretty much required to only be using stuff out of one cooler at a time or you stand to loose all your ice after the first week. With each boat carrying its own food for its own meals, and spreading the meals evenly throughout the trip... that makes it challenging to keep good cooler etiquette.




Electric-Mayhem is wrong about it being challenging, it is impossible


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## mattman (Jan 30, 2015)

Well, I wouldn't know about keeping Ice in the Grand Canyon during the Summer.
I only ever go during the middle of winter. We just fill Ice Cube trays with water, and leave them on top of the dry box when we get to camp, and WAHLA! more Ice to replace anything that may have melted!!


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## raymo (Aug 10, 2008)

*Funny.🙄*



mattman said:


> Well, I wouldn't know about keeping Ice in the Grand Canyon during the Summer.
> I only ever go during the middle of winter. We just fill Ice Cube trays with water, and leave them on top of the dry box when we get to camp, and WAHLA! more Ice to replace anything that may have melted!!


Just like big game hunting, in the high country, in November. We had to place drinks, food, vegetables into coolers with no ice, to keep food and drinks from freezing, funny. Small fire next to the horses water trough to keep the ice off, sometimes. Good times.


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## 1ijump1 (May 23, 2018)

*Saving Ice*

Do a Google search on a nifty little item called the KoolerCap.
You will be amazed at how much longer cooler ice will last.


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## [email protected] (Jun 1, 2010)

Most of the rafters I know make their own Koolercap for about $4 not $24 and 3 minutes of cutting.


https://www.walmart.com/ip/Ozark-Trail-Closed-Cell-Foam-Blue-Camp-Sleeping-Pad/634956813


This will make a couple of them.


Or this will make at least 5


https://www.homedepot.com/p/Reflect...-Reflective-Insulation-Roll-BP48010/100318551


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## 1ijump1 (May 23, 2018)

*Cooler Pads*

People have been making these types of things for years. The problem is that the material is not safe to be around food/water. I looked at the Walmart link you posted regarding making your own for $4.00 and here is what it said about the material: "WARNING This product can expose you to chemicals, including lead, phthalates, or more chemicals, which is (are) known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm."

Is that really the type of thing you want to expose yourself or others to?


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## Electric-Mayhem (Jan 19, 2004)

1ijump1 said:


> Is that really the type of thing you want to expose yourself or others to?


Honestly... I have zero problem with it. The state of California is overly sensitive to that stuff and that warning is seen on many products involved with food (including the coolers we use to store the food in). The padding doesn't really make direct contact with most food anyways. I use the shiny Mylar bubble insulation for mine and have never had any negative effects. I'm sure minicell foam or ethafoam like those cheap sleeping pads are made of will do just fine.

It seems like you have a horse in the game to sell this product. Typically if you are trying to sell a product, you need to be a paid vendor on Mountainbuzz.


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## [email protected] (Oct 11, 2018)

I've only done three GC trips, but two of them we did our own food. They were full size trips, June/July time period. There are some great posts here, lots of creativity!

I'll throw in a bit too. One idea I totally believe in, for all trips, is the dish-less breakfast. We do it with the Coleman Camp Oven - https://www.amazon.com/Coleman-2000016462-Camp-Oven-13-5/dp/B0009PURJA - You either make ahead, or buy at Mother Costco: breakfast burritos, egg mcmuffins, bagelwiches, etc. Wrap them in foil and freeze. In the morning pop a couple/three apiece in the oven and breakfast's done. No dishes, early launch time. Big breakfasts only on layover days. 

We broke up into cooking groups (that alternated dishes, groover duty and day off chores) and each group planned their own meals. We were mostly from the same area so it was easy to coordinate menus. Food went into coolers to be opened at stages during the trip. Non-burnable trash into empty coolers. Cooler discipline is important. 

I was working at a paper mill and had access to used machine felt, the absorbent woven material the paper gets matted on. We wrapped coolers in that and kept them wet for evaporative cooling. June/July trips and we had frozen stuff on days 22-23 of our last trip. 

Good times, go strong, Boat Safe!


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## [email protected] (Jun 1, 2010)

I use the Mylar bubble wrap myself and actually completely line the insides of coolers with it as well as a flat sheet to separate layers. I posted about the alternatives when I saw the very first post by 1ijump1 was a product promo. Want to make sure the horse race was off to a fair start. I pack my cooler's contents so nothing touches my food, cocktail ice or drinking liquids that is not food grade. I think most rafters if not all do the same. Not leaving your coolers contents exposed to the elements is just common sense.


Sorry for the OP hi jack


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## co_biscuit (Feb 13, 2016)

*Split the Difference?*

I did a 16 person, 21-day trip in Oct/Nov in 2011 and we did all our own food. We definitely ate better than on outfitter-supplied trips, but it was a focal point of the trip (bring your best recipes) rather than making it as simple as possible. When (not if!) I pull my own permit, my plan is to split the difference and ask each group to contribute their best recipes for one or two cook crew rotations and splurge on those nights, and then use outfitter meals for the remainder. That way you get simplicity as well as great food!


The food pack for BYO is definitely challenging. We ended up taking our cooler to the local butcher shop and asking nicely to store it in there for a week before the trip. Every day we came in, added a new layer of food and water and the whole thing was frozen solid, in order. Had ice until the end, but was also a fall trip.


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## MT4Runner (Apr 6, 2012)

Husker Boatman said:


> I will happily trade hours of prep above the rim for hrs of hiking below it. My family's system saves 3-5 hrs per camp of cleaning/cooking/setting up/unloading/loading. Everything is boil in bag or grilled. You don't need to rent a kitchen. Put one together from the thrift store that fits in 2 rocket boxes. With 8 person trip, you can get by with just a blaster and a firepan. Do dishes once per camp. I put a FB album together to explain it, so I'll see if I can post the link here. Let me know if you can't get to it.
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=783164078361802&set=a.783164031695140&type=3&theater[/url]


Super impressive, H B


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