Template talk:Gear list:backcountry skiing tent trip

Part of the reason I remade my own list for intro to bc skiing 2008 was to come up with a list that was "truly" the essentials that everyone MUST have. This list includes things that it would be good to have, but that I don't REALLY care if people bring on my trip (eg. garbage bags, compass, toothbrush). As soon as the list becomes anything more than essential people start to make their own decisions on what they really need. Perhaps we just need to spend more time tweaking the "essentials" section. On a side note, I don't think we should recommend bringing only 1L of water on trips. Several winter trips have gone bad when people ran out of water in the past (eg. Team 17.5, Neve team split up etc.). Scott Webster 15:30, 28 January 2008 (PST)

I think it would be good if we had a standard gear list. Certainly this one could use some tweaking. Of course, this brings up the question - what sort of gear list do we want. Keep in mind it will mostly be used by beginners. I'm not sure a completely minimalist gear list is a good thing to suggest to total beginners, but certainly some things are certainly not essential but are nice to have especially for beginners who may not be the most savy at keeping dry in the snow (TP, clean socks, spare mitts, etc). IMO a luxurious gear list is also wrong, since mostly people tend to bring too much stuff even if you tell them to only bring the essentials. Also, right now the gear list is set up as nested templates. Maybe we could make it a single template with different options and parameters instead, as this would allow more flexibility. Also, maybe doing a better job of separating group gear and personal gear. Scott Nelson 17:24, 28 January 2008 (PST)

Yes, these nested templates are fairly annoying for editting, I keep having to manually type page names into my browser after looking at the page sources.

Try this new one: template:master gear list. It sill needs work but it's more powerful than the nested ones. The code is also more confusing due to the parameter dependencies. What do you think? Scott Nelson 10:36, 29 January 2008 (PST)

I totally agree about standardized gear lists being a good idea. I will try to do some thinking about how to balance all of the things discussed above. I guess in my opinion, not everyone really HAS to be carrying the 10 essentials... and in fact, a sleeping bag is way more essential than a garbage bag for an overnight trip. A lot of beginners don't have all the gear... we need to make it clear to them what they really MUST rent or buy before coming on a trip. This should be "obvious" but people have been known to not bring certain essential items. Maybe we can use "bold" or some formatting in the list to indicate important somehow. Scott Webster 17:30, 28 January 2008 (PST)

Yes, some items (like map and compass) are absolutely essential on any trip, but not everyone has to have their own copy of the map and their own compass. However, it would also not be ideal if there was only 1 map and 1 compass in a group of 20 people, since the probability of the group getting split up (on purpose or by accident) is very high. Scott Nelson 17:58, 28 January 2008 (PST)