Thread resurrection again!

I've been meaning to try packing with dry ice for a few years. I finally did it for a family glamping trip a week ago, as a way to experiment with it and see how well it worked.

Well, it worked. It cost about four times as much as normal ice (so, $40 instead of $10 to pack a full size Coleman cooler), but it was basically everything I hoped for. The best part was the lack of the watery mess you normally get from wet ice. The second best part was that we packed quite a bit of meat, and some delicate frozen pastry crusts, and it was all very frozen for the drive up.

I bought it on a Monday, and packed the cooler at the store. The dry ice lasted until Wednesday afternoon, and I wasn't careful about preserving it - I took a bunch of it out a couple of times to wow my nieces and nephews and play with it. I think if I had been more anal about keeping it, it would have lasted another day — longer than wet ice.

When I use dry ice again, I'll buy slabs instead of pellets. They last longer and they're easier to pack a cooler with. You do need to be cognizant that everything the dry ice touches will freeze - hard. After unpacking the cooler into the fridge we had there, I dropped a case of canned beer onto the ice. It was frozen solid in ten minutes. For the first couple of days, we could have bottled water... with ice.

Contrary to an above poster, it is not available in grocery stores, at least not in Ontario. I bought it at Praxair (now Linde) in Brampton/Missisauga. They have a store that sells to the general public. They were quite helpful. Because they have easy access to it, they personally also pack their coolers with it, and have all kinds of advice.

Cost aside, I recommend it, at least try it and see if it can work for you. It can be handled with any pair of garden of work gloves.

(Quite interestingly, the carbon dioxide gas also attracts mosquitoes)

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If you ate today, thank a farmer.

I'll get VA Paddler to stop by and provide some tips.

On our Spring trip in late May it was very hot in the James Bay area, dry ice and some cooler management gave them ice for their cocktails at least 15 days from original packing in Maine.

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"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915

Nothing like an ice cold gin and tonic on day 14 or 15 of a trip...!

We've been using dry ice regularly for years. We get the 10"x10"x2" tiles and lay them in the bottom of the Igloo MaxCold ($70) cooler. As mentioned, dry ice can sometimes be found at grocery stores, and often at welding supply stores. A layer of thick cardboard, like posterboard or cereal boxes, goes on top of the dry ice. Then 2 blocks of ice on top of the cardboard with a cavity between them. The the frozen food goes in, preferably layered so that the first meal's ingredients are closest to the top, and the last meal is deepest down. Everything is pre-frozen before it goes in. Then chip ice fills in the corners. Duct tape the seam between lid and cooler body.
Drive 2 days to the putin.
Open cooler 1 sometime in the afternoon before first camp. Remove anything that will take awhile to thaw, like your first night's steaks and stick them under a strap of a drybag in the sun to thaw out as you paddle. Replace with a few beers. By the time you get to camp your beers are cold but not frozen, your steaks are on the way to thawing, and you should have quite a bit of chip ice on top of the cooler for the first couple nights' cocktails. Keep the lid SHUT! Good discipline in cooler management is essential. Get beers or make new cocktails for everyone in one shot, don't let each person dilly dally over an open cooler. Cooler 1 can last 5 or 6 days pretty easily, and by then you'll have eaten enough food out of it that you can easily chip ice off the blocks for your drinks. (Don't poke a hole in your cooler.)

Don't open the next cooler until you need to. We have opened cooler 2 on day 7 or 8 and had only a very little bit of melt water in the bottom. Once both are open, consolidate coolers as soon as possible. Coolers work best when they are full. Like a canoe's floatation displaces water and keeps you afloat, the cold food and ice keeps warm air out when open. The more outside air you introduce to the space, the sooner the ice goes.

Frozen veggies do pretty good in this capacity - I think we had frozen green beans on day 10 this summer.
For other foods you don't want frozen but are better cold, I try to pack food bags ahead of time and keep them in the cellar, where it's cool. Beers and liquor and tonic go into the drybags unrefrigerated, but they stay cool against the cellar floor, and that cool stays in the drybag when you close it up, so you aren't sticking warm beers into your cooler. Onions, peppers, taters, apples, oranges and eggs all do fine unrefrigerated in a barrel or drybag.

To address the portage point - yes, coolers are a pain in the ass to portage. I have muscled them up on one shoulder and hiked them, carried them in front of me, tag-teamed them with another guy - no method is fun. So this year I bought a cargo pack made for hauling moose and elk quarters out of the woods. Its an L shaped aluminum frame with no hinge - the L shape is permanent. It has a heavy duty cover with good straps and hip belt, and lots of attachment points. With two small horizontal straps to the handles, and one vertical strap from top to bottom, a cooler can be hooked up in about 30 seconds. A little help getting it on your back is nice but not necessary, then off you go. It worked great - my new favorite piece of gear.

Maybe it seems like a lot of effort to go through - but from my standpoint, there's no reason not to enjoy the hell out of every river trip. And fresh food and cold drinks go a long way in that regard. I'll post our TR from this spring's paddle down the Partridge soon, and will detail some of our meals - smoked brisket was a nice addition to the menu this year - not to mention the Costco apple pie!

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"There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." - WATER RAT, The Wind in the Willows

A little story to keep in mind if you are considering this…

A few years back I went on a houseboat trip for a co-workers stag. A group of us were driving from Edmonton to Sicamous convoy style in 2 vehicles. Our friends in the lead vehicle had packed a cooler in the back of their van filled with provisions and dry-ice. Just outside of Hinton they suddenly pulled their vehicle off to the side of the road and naturally, thinking there was a problem, we pulled over as well. The driver and front passenger got out and appeared to be stumbling somewhat and began to fumble with the sliding door of the van. When we got out to investigate the driver said that the rear seat passenger was “passed out” and that the driver and front passenger had bad headaches. When we looked in the backseat we could see that indeed the rear seat passenger appeared to be sleeping. We opened the door and had to physically drag him out and lay him out in the ditch. Once he was out he for a moment or 2 he began to wake up and all three began to feel much better shortly after being in the fresh air.

As near as we can tell, what happened was that the pressure of the carbon dioxide released from the sublimating dry ice in the cooler eventually was enough to pop open the lid of the cooler enough to begin filling the passenger compartment with carbon dioxide. This eventually displaced enough oxygen to start inducing hypoxia in the passengers. Had they not noticed when they did We all had no doubt that the driver would have eventually passed out as well leading to a much worse outcome.

Just food for thought.