Registered: 01/16/11
Posts: 180
Loc: Tacoma, Washington
Yes BZH, the bucket had a note taped to the outside with all needed information including my home telephone number, dates, etc.. As well as a low tone plea not to disturb. out of security concerns I didn't include my address ( don't want to compound things by giving out a good address to rob while the owner is out hiking). fwiw it's been at two weeks since my arriving at that intersection while on the hike). all this leaves little chance that it was taken by accident. to date, I haven't received a telephone call about it either.
Unfortunately some thru-hikers now are planning on extra food being available, either by asking other hikers, or in the case of the PCT, this year, some mailed supplies are not used due to trip cancellation. In this case the extra is lert in "hiker boxes". In one trail journal, when the hiker box was empty the thru-hikers actually were angry, because they felt entitled to the free food for no carrying weight. In another trail journal, one PCT hiker was depending on JMT hikers (this trail parallels the PCT for a long section through the Sierra) to give them their excess food, because JMT hikers usually are less experienced at planning long trips and overpack food. I find this disturbing.
Some over-zealous "environmentalists" take it upon themselves to remove caches, whether leagal or not in addition to cairns and trail signs.
But I guess the sliver lining of your experience is that in the future you can pack less food than you think. Sometimes it is a learning lesson to run out of food. You managed, nevertheless.
Registered: 12/22/16
Posts: 75
Loc: Colorado High Plains
Originally Posted By wandering_daisy
I learned a lesson about stashing "goodies". I had cheese in my stash, so added dry ice. Decided to put one bottle of beer for a treat. When I got to the cache, the dry ice had frozen the beer, which expanded and leaked sticky beer all over my food! Needless to say, I not only had no beer, I had a big mess to clean up and a stale beer smell for the following week.
Sad story You can freeze beer but not in a bottle. Best to try it at home first as some brands in cans survive the freezing better than others. Fat Tire goes through the process unscathed but haven't seen it in cans much outside of Colorado. I think Tecate also worked for me.
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