I stashed a Monovault full of supplies and gear at the Beta Site ‘just in case’. Seems a reasonable thing to do, yes? When packing gear for something like that, I use the scenario “I’m dropped in the middle of nowhere, naked, at night, in the winter. What do I need?” And that pretty much covers the ‘worst case’. I mean, it may be a warm, sunny summer day when I have to beat feet with just the clothes on my back. Or I may have the luxury of rolling up with everything I need packed in the truck. But since I don’t know, I have to assume the worst case…the dark and stormy night.

As such, I was imagining the wet, cold, muddy scenario and it occurred to me that when you have a tightly packed stash of gear and goodies, the items you may need immediately might not be on the top. Since you dont know the circumstances under which you’ll be accessing this cache, you cant really predict what to put at the top of the pile. You may have to dig down through several layers of gear to get to what you need immediately. And, as your digging down through your stash of gear, where do you put the gear that you are digging down through? I mean, clearly the scene would be you huddled over your cache, pulling items out to get to the one you need immediately. And that gear youre pulling out…where are you putting it? Youre just putting it next to you on the ground…the wet, muddy, snowy, icy ground. Where it sits and gets snowed and rained on as your working your way through your cache.

Which got me to thinking that I need to re-arrange things so that the very first thing on top of the pile in the Monovault is either a rubberized poncho, or a waterproof backpack, so that as I pull stuff out I can keep it dry and protected as I unpack the Monovault to get to what I need in that moment. (well, that and a flashlight.)

And, as an aside, I packed an empty large backpack in there specifically because just because you’ve made it to your cache doesn’t mean youre going to be staying there. Might be a circumstance where you need to grab your gear and keep moving along…in which case being able to shove it all into a rugged bacpack will be a handy option….because trying to juggle all that gear in just your bare hands while running through the woods is no ones idea of a good time.