[pct-l] Wine Box Bladders for Water

[campy@mtnhighwest.com (campy)]

Monte:

Reference wine box bladders for carrying water, I learned a couple
things about these about 3 weeks ago. On a hike down to Thunder River
from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, we stashed three of the
water-filled bags on the Esplanade for use on our return. Two of the
bags were clear polyethylene and the third was made of the shiny,
reflectorized silver plastic that you mentioned. We two with the clear
ones carefully nested them under rocks to try and keep the ground
squirrels from getting at them. But this effort failed - the squirrels
found a way to puncture them and they drained the water. The one shiny
bag was left virtually unprotected under a ledge, but it wasn't even
touched! Our theory is that a squirrel saw the mirror image of himself
in the shiny bag and ran away. Trouble is, we can't remember which brand
of wine uses that kind of shiny bag - we'll have to test all the brands
again! The second thing we learned, in case squirrels aren't the issue:
I had filled them with a measured four liters of water, but found that
outside of the box, they can probably hold 6 liters. Then all you have
to do is slip the full bag into the right size nylon stuffsack and
tighten the drawcord. This helps protect the full bag, which then will
easily fit inside your pack toward the top.