Yay or Nay? Bushpro 1.5L Water Hydration Pack System

[GreekGuy]

https://www.gear-up.com/collections/sea ... ack-system


As a rookie I need opinions on the Bushpro 1.5L Water Hydration Pack System. I was considering getting it with a big water jug for the cache.

[LiconC]

I don't like the hydration packs for many reasons. First, because it is too much water to carry with you into the your piece. Yes, you should be drinking as much water as possible, but you can also accomplish this by drinking a bunch of water during your cache break and then carrying a small water bottle with you into the piece for a mid-bagup refresher, which feels AMAZING and I pity people who just deprive themselves of water for an entire bagup. I've heard that a rule of thumb is to drink about 1L of water per bag-up. Like I said, consuming that 1L can be divided between a 700mL chug at the cache and then a 300mL bottle in your back bag. Thus, you only actually need to carry 300mL of water, rather than the 1.5mL the hydration pack carries. While planting, you want to remove as many encumbrances as possible. This includes unnecessary weight (such as carrying 1.2L of water for no reason), and unnecessary inconveniences (such as...1. the tube that is going to get caught on branches and shit, 2. the annoying process of re-filling the hydration pack). Moreover, the hydration pack is expensive when you compare it to how much an old disposable gatorade bottle costs.

The only application that I could really see it as being useful would be if you had to do some sort of ridiculously long bagup in super hot weather where you weren't going to be back at your cache for 2hrs. Again, this application for the hydration pack could also simply be accomplished by the water bottles. You don't want to be in the land for too long without a cache break/ food/ water. You'll quickly learn how its easy to get fixated on the planting and find yourself in the land for like 2hrs without having food or water. Once you become too depleted of sustenance, it is harder to get refreshed. This is why endurance cyclists and ultramarathon runners eat and drink a little bit every 20min-1hr--by keeping the digestive system working at a low level, your body is being continually supplied with nutrients and never dives into a hypoglycaemia. Furthermore, these athletes never sit down and eat a huge portion of something (such as sitting down for 30min and having an entire sandwich for lunch) because putting too much food into your digestive system while you are also working means that more blood needs to be directed to the digestive system, thus depriving your muscles of nutrients, oxygen, etc. So, eat and drink little, and eat and drink often. I think that nutrition is one of the most overlooked aspects of treeplanting optimization and needs to be emphasized a lot more by training and mgmt.

I like doing 1hr bag-ups. So, in other words, 50 minutes of planting, and then 10 minutes (or less, preferably) spent walking to the cache, eating/ drinking, bagging up, and starting my line back in again. During the summer, I'll often practice the 'Scooter' method and bring 10 bottles of salted water/ gatorade with me, so each time I rip into the cache, I simply take out my empty bottle and pop in a fresh bottle, bagup, and then head back into the land.

[GreekGuy]

Ok i'll try your method out, thanks for the help.

[_I3^RELATIVISM]

You could have a 0,5L hydration pack to have on your back-bag, plus a 10L MSR bobby for the cache. That is the perfect setup to be a truly fast planter, in my opinion. Also so you don't drink from your pesticide infected bottle and hands and not wasting time drinking, while in the move. It works pretty well for me, try to find a hydration pack with a cover on the mouthpiece though that will save you from bullshitting it around, if you know what I mean.