Getting Your Gear Where It Needs to Go! Logistics Planning for Expeditions
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“An army marches on its stomach.” Some people credit this quote to Napoleon. Some people credit Frederick the Great. Maybe it’s just an adage, rather than a quote. But, regardless, the reason this has stuck around is because it has some truth to it. In the end, that is what this video is about: getting our supplies to where are people are.
I know, that all sounds pretty simple. And, no, I don’t want to suggest doing this for an expedition is nearly as complicated as an entire army getting all of their needed supplies. But there are some parallels between the two examples. An army doesn’t need its tanks when it is crossing an ocean. The tanks, and the men and women to use them need to eventually arrive at the same place when and where the tanks will be needed. An group of climbers don’t need their ice tools or axes when they are trekking over low altitude, dry ground; the people and the axes need to arrive at the same time when the climbing turns to snow.
But beyond equipment, let’s think about consumables like food, water, and fuel. We wouldn’t want to haul around all the weight of an entire expedition’s worth of any of these when we are simply in route to our main objective. At that time, we need access to the consumables that will sustain that approach but not the consumables needed to sustain the climb.
In essence, we need certain gear and supplies readily at hand for certain segments of our expedition and other gear and supplies available for other segments. That’s what this video is about. How do we break an expedition into segments and then pack our gear and supplies in such a way as to grant easy access to what is needed and make what is not needed for a specific period of time as unintrusive and as small a burden as possible.
Expeditions can be of many types, from climbing to trekking to surfing. So, there is now granular-level playbook that will work for all trip types. But there is a mental model of trip segments that can be stretched across all types of expeditions. Take a look at the video, and see if that mental model might be of some use to you.
Oh, and if you are thinking about expedition duffels, I have been pretty happy with these two makes and models, with which I have extensive experience and which are still manufactured: