 This
page is about breaking camp efficiently and getting on the water
quickly.
Realize that this assumes you want
to do this. If you have your trip scheduled so that
you can sleep in, walk around yawning and scratching, drink
several pots of coffee and eat bacon and eggs for breakfast ...
please disregard this information.
We do occasionally plan trips like this, with a relaxed
schedule. On the other hand, we sometimes paddle on trips where
it is important to get our distance done so that we are off the
water in time to get set up and organized before dark.
Morning is not always an easy time to motivate people to tear
down and pack their equipment. People are often tired, and have
sore muscles from the previous day's paddling.. We are also
probably dealing with all types of personalities, ranging from
the person that showers, has a quick cup of coffee and is out
the door to the person who reads the entire Globe and Mail in
the bathroom before they even think of breakfast in the morning.
The last thing this type of person feels like doing is taking
down and packing a wet tent first thing in the morning.
That being the case, it is best to have some sort of organized
routine. If not, you will find yourself getting on the water
about noon every day. How can we get on the water quickly?
- Agree to a wake-up
time then roust everyone out of the sack at that time.
Although it sounds ridiculously simple, this is one of the
best ways to get on the water on time. If everyone straggles
out of bed over the course of an hour, we're going to be
losing all kinds of time.
- Get some of the
organizing done the night before. Anything which isn't going
to be needed can be pre-packed so that it isn't part of the
morning duties. We're probably not going to light a fire in
the morning, so the saw and the axe may as well get packed
at night.
- Have breakfast
organized. Fill the coffee pot with water and the stove with
fuel the night before. Make sure the breakfast food is
packaged separately so that it can be found quickly.
Pre-package coffee into proper sized portions so that it can
just be dumped into the pot.
- Pack the gear from
your tent right away ... before breakfast! It isn't a very
appealing job to start to roll up Thermarest mattresses and
pack away clothes, but trust me ... it won't be any more
appealing after breakfast. Besides, standing around watching
the coffee pot won't make it boil any faster ... we might as
well be doing something useful.
- Forget about rolling
tents and sleeping bags neatly. They call them stuff-sacks
for a reason. Just take the tents and sleeping bags and
stuff them into those bags. They won't take up any more
room, and the process will take half as long. I've also
heard that this is better for tents and sleeping bags than
continually folding them along the same line to roll them
up. The process of always folding on the same seam or line
causes wear.
- Don't worry about
drying tents. It's much more efficient to stuff them away
wet and let them dry in the afternoon when the sun is out.
The damp morning hours aren't the best conditions for
tent-drying. If it's raining in the afternoon, big deal ...
even our nicely dried tents would have been wet as soon as
we set them up.
|
