I alertly spot a trend here....Doubtless you also have two cherry pies, two bottles of champagne, and probably two diamond-encrusted canoe paddles....

I get it....the 1% go canoe camping, while the 99% backpack, gnawing on dry granola bars and drinking from mud puddles!

So canoes are the RV's of camping, eh? I love it. Thanks for the photos Canoedogs, that looks amazing. BTW, I think you should buy stock in the Zip-loc company.

I remember when you made that baker tent a few years (?) back. I love it!

My father had a canvas Boy Scout baker tent when I was a boy. That was one of my favorite tents. Very open when you wanted it to be open, and very closed when necessary ... and it came with its own fly.

The closest commercially available counterpart - that I know of - is Cooke Custom Sewing's Lean tents - which is pretty much a Baker tent with almost no lifted tail end - if you know what I mean.

http://www.shop.cookecustomsewing.com/product.sc?productId=194

I don't own one myself, but definitely wish I did - I'd get the Lean Plus - with the mosquito netting.

Ken..our Troop back in the late 50's,early 60's used those Scout canvas Bakers and i troll Ebay every so often in the hopes of finding one.heavy but we used them summer and winter.Cooke Sewing is well respected here and the Leans are popular with the light weight solo gang.i found that too be really useful the back wall is a must,other wise you loose a lot of space back there.i had the Eureka Baker before they stopped making them and with not much of a back wall about all you could do was stuff the packs and other soft gear back there.the shelter i use now was sized for at least three people as the Eureka left one member of our normal three person canoe tripping group outside,ok not really but three guys could just pack in,two was just right.i would like to sew up a one person Baker for my solo trips.long and narrow would work better,even with that big one to get my feet away from the door i have to prop up the roof with a paddle to get head room.
the point of a canoe gear post on a survival site was that you need real gear if you want to stay dry.trash bags and a 8x10 sheet of plastic will just keep you head above water,so to speak.unless you want to get into a tent and try and sleep away the hours and hours that a storm will take to pass you need someplace to cook and move around and do camp chores.before i used a shelter with a tent i tried to use a Timberline to fill both needs and ended up with a dirty damp tent that smelled like cooking,bear bait no less.
to get an idea of what it's like too spend a days in the drenching rain have a look at my Youtube--"dismal day"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi22948jzKg

if a guy with a years of canoe tripping under his belt and all the gear in the world,warm and well fed can get bummed out by a few days of rotten weather you could see why people break cover and try and walk out when they are lost rather than hold up until help arrives-------hummmm..another 1AM post that really drifted off center---sorry folks....

I have. Short story: They work, and are very comfortable for their intended use: Working outside in rain and wind.

For hiking I'd say you're better off with a goretex anorack with a good hood. When you're hiking you need better circulation than the souwester hat can provide.

I took this opportunity to watch your videos. I admire your persistance and survival skills. With the Minnesota weather being so rainy in the fall in recent years, it takes guts to go into the BWCAW in a canoe and suffer the weather. I will admit though, that some of my best stories from my earlier days involve surviving storms and hail and rain and Northern Lights in the BWCAW.

I think I am getting lazy though. These days, my canoe spends most of it's time in the shed. I go 'truck camping' into the national forests instead. This year, I spent two separate rainy solo weeks in a tent. I cope with it in two ways: bringing a large tent with tarps, table, chair, and cot, and by moving around the forest on foot or in my truck.

Sometimes I get impatient with the weather and get a detailed report. If it is a slow moving system and I still have several days of vacation left, I will break camp and drive into and out the back of the storm and make a new camp in another part of the forest. A different kind of camping, I know, but it suits my impatient nature, and gets me into the woods in 3 out of 4 seasons.

I'm seriously considering adding a homemade long Baker to my kit on your recommendation. I can see a lot of advantages in poor weather. Kids are grown, and I hope to retire soon....probably three years before my slightly more youthful wife can. Lord willing and my health holds out, I will spend even more time in the woods and on the water, and maybe even sit tight in a Baker.

Canoedogs, that looks like a fairly normal day for sea kayaking in Prince William Sound.

For a tent, I use a old N Face VE-24. I've used it for > 20 years, and it is still going strong. It's a "3 person tent", so it's about right for just my wife and I. I generally take two lightweight tarps and miles of cord. I rig one tarp over the entrance to the tent, which makes a nice roomy porch for taking off wet raingear before I get in the tent. Since cooking inside the tent is not a good idea in bear country (pretty much all of Alaska), I use the 2nd tarp to rig a cooking/eating shelter some distance from my tent. If you rig them cleverly, they'll stay up in an ordinary breeze, and are easy to collapse and secure if it really starts to blow.

One more thing. No matter how careful you are, when camping in an extended period of rainy weather your stuff will slowly get damper and damper. In our climate, it can sometimes rain for many days. However, as the series of fronts move through, between fronts we sometimes get "Sun Breaks" which last anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours. Folks in the Pacific NW will know what I'm talking about. When we do get a sun break, no matter how brief, I always try to get stuff out to dry, and open up the tent to let some air through.

Tip #1. Check the weather before you go camping...

That approach might work some places. However, in Alaska where I live the weather forcasts are notoriously unreliable. Not because we have bad weathermen, but just because it is a very tough place to predict the weather. We are close to where the storms are born out in the Aleutian Low. Also, unlike the lower 48 where the coastlines and major mountain ranges mostly run more or less N-S, here in Alaska we have mountains and coastlines running every which way. This means weather forcasts are iffy at best. Also, in coastal Alaska it tends to rain a lot, even in good years.

All of this means that if one is unwilling to hike/paddle/camp in the rain, then one doesn't get out much.

Having had to function outside regardless of weather - because the First Sergeant said so - I learned these tips.

1. Garbage bags, plural, work. Run one north south, the other east west w/ whatever it is you want to keep dry in the first. Lightweight and the double bagging worked well.

2. Coffe/tea/hot chocolate/soup are invalubale.

3. Dry socks come in a very close second. And rubbing feet with vasoline helps keep them from pruning up.

4. Have two sets of clothing if you must be outside. One for outside (wet), one for inside (dryish).

5. Waterproof packs aren't. Water resistant means it sheds water until it becomes saturated in about 10 minutes. If the items inside a pack are not in waterproof bags, they will be wet.

6. Ponchos are best slept under or in. They semi sorta suck at keeping you dry when moving. Have a rain suit.

7. To #6, if you have a rain suit, make sure it can breath or be ventilated. Sweat smells, rain doesn't.

8. Finally - carry a small square of closed cell foam, about 12 inches by 12 inches. This is your new seat. It won't suck up water, it insulates, and it doesn't weight much. Beats sitting in the mud.

Worst rain I ever saw, monsoon in Korea. Over 14 inches in 7 hours. We wuz wet.