Bath Baggies, and Beyond

Now with all that nice hot water hanging around (see previous post) a person can easily take a nice hot bath.

I developed this bath-in-a-baggie while hiking with Rainmaker on the PCT. He saw someone carrying a cut off milk jug for a bathtub and adopted the practice. Except he'd just use regular creek water which is sometimes pretty cold.

Being an ultra lighter nearing fanaticism, I simply would stand in said creek, letting my feet soak while the rest of me got bathed, and wiped dry with a bandanna.

But, as the season progressed, and fall brought temps in the 50's, another plan formed.

It took just a bit more fuel to heat one pint of water to a comfortable 140 or so. Then, I would pour it into a quart zip lock baggie, add my fleece bandanna (what absolute luxury!) and voila! to die for.

Well, the above photo is just a regular cotton bandanna, and I placed it in a gallon baggie, but you get the idea. This works as well, but as we all know cotton takes longer to dry and is not nearly as luxurious. Fleece is a little overkill for summer, hence the swap out.

When we used the water from the hanging plastic bottle, no soot got on our hands, and we simply let it hang, used what we needed, and refilled the bottle. Keeping the fire stoked was natural as the sun set and darkness fell. This is a very good backpacking skill for very little investment.