New (wacky?) idea

Do you know of Collin Fletcher, the backpacking guru who wrote "The Complete Walker?" A highly recommended read, by the way. He carried an inflatable life vest for one of his trips that involves a lot of water crossings.
 
I know of a missionary on the Amazon who's life was saved by such a device. This was back before people normally wore life preservers. Life preservers only work if they are on, having one nearby is false confidence. Mac
 
I think it is a great idea to have some sort of PFD. I have one large river that I would have to cross if something were to happen and I could not use the bridges. I could swim it, but I am more concerned about crossing while hurt.

This is how I got around the problem. I pack two condoms in my PSK that I keep on myself. Keeping with the idea each item should be able to do a couple things, here is what I use them for besides emergency water carriers.

I take off my pants, (this is not starting out right, but "BARE" with me), and then I tie off the ends of the legs. I blow up the condoms and stick them inside the pant legs. I then lay in the middle of the pants with an inflated condom filled leg on each side of me and swim across a river. This is basically a make shift set of water wings.

This set up gives you more than enough bouancy, even if you can't swim, to float you and a small BOB across a body of water. You may need to adjust exactly where you tie off your pants legs so it keeps you a float and not 6 inches under water a float, if you know what I mean. Tie off the legs at a point to where your pants keep you floating at a comfortable level above water while laying in the pants.

While I love PFD's and even though I am a very good swimmer, I always wear one, I can not however justify one in my kit to cross one river when two condoms work just fine.
 
I love being on and around water. That said, I hate to see life jackets in the floor of the boat, especially in swift, cold water. I do a lot of canoeing by myself, and even more in the winter. I just love the high water, and relatively no people. I always wear my PFD. I've been reading Roman Dial's Packrafting book, and there are a lot of ultralight backpacking principles throughout. He uses one of the minimalistic Stern's auto-inflatable life jackets, w/ the CO2 cartridge removed, and he just manually inflates it. They are incredibly small, but offer a lot of bouyancy. I wear a kayaking vest, as they are pretty small too, but I can pack a good fixed blade on it, and pockets for a whistle, orange 4mm big trash bag, and a mini-psk in an tin. My tin kit died last night, so for my vest I'll likely move things into an Alkosak.

Good thread.
 
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