I dislike bearcans as much as anyone, but they do serve mult purposes. Here is another -if you are out a long time and if you wash yourself or clothes, add items, water, soap if you have it, shake well. Manually powered washing machine.
When I did Onion V to Whitney in August, I saw the hanging scale at the Whitney Portal timber thingy on my way down. My pack was 33 lbs. Of that the empty BearVault was 2.5 lbs. That's only 7.5% of the total.It just seems worse because most of the time it is densely packed with too much food. I always have some left over.
