Reviewer Information

• Name: Cora Hussey
• Age: 23
• Gender: Female
• Height: 5 ft 9 in (1.75 m)
• Weight: 150 lb (70 kg)
• Email address: cahhmc "at" yahoo "dot" com
• Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
• Date: May 19, 2004

Basic Product Information

• Year of Manufacture: 2004
• URL: http://www.imlaygear.com/
• Listed weight:
  • 15 oz (425 g) for the 6.4 L keg
  • 12.4 oz (352 g) for the 3.5 L keg
  • This was exactly equal to weight as delivered... wow!
• Listed capacity: 6.4 L (390 cu in) and 3.5 L (214 cu in)
• Listed and measured dimensions:
  • Diameter (6.4 L): 7.75 in (20 cm)
  • Height (6.4 L): 10.63 in (27 cm)
  • Max usable depth (6.4 L): 9.63 in (24 cm)
  • All measurements were found to be accurate for the 6.4 L

  • Diameter (3.5 L): 7.75 in (20 cm)
  • Height (3.5 L): 6.75 in (17 cm)
  • Max usable depth (3.5 L): 5.75 in (14 cm)
  • The 3.5 L maximum usable depth is listed in error as 6.75 in (17 cm) on the website.
    All other dimensions for the 3.5 L I found to be accurate when I measured them.

Preliminary Information

• Date of arrival: May 18, 2004
• Contents of package (contents were complete):
  • One 6.4 L (390 cu in) Canyon Dry Keg
  • One 3.5 L (214 cu in) Canyon Dry Keg
• Condition upon arrival: Excellent
• The Kegs have been very easy and intuitive to use so far
• The Kegs are also very much what I expected from the website

Product Description

General:

The Canyon Dry Kegs are polyethylene kegs with white bodies and red lids. The kegs both have two ribs each around their girths, and four big hand grips flaring from the sides of their lids. Each side of each handle on the lid has a 3 mm (0.12 in) hole, presumably for tying the lid to the body. The body itself has one equivalently sized hole molded into the upper neck, also presumably for tying the lid on to prevent loss. The threads are large and quite easy to start on and turn the lid threads into. On the inside of each lid is one O-ring. The O-ring cross-section is round, and the O-ring was too deep in the rim of the lid for me to lift out with a finger. Each lid requires a little over one and one-third rotation to get it solidly screwed on.

Here are the two kegs side by side. The front of the kegs both have labels with the Imlay Canyon Gear logo and website, the words 'Canyon Dry Keg', the capacity (3.5 or 6.4 L), and the saying 'Specialized Gear for Extraordinary Places'. The kegs are manufactured by the packaging manufacturer CurTec (http://www.curtec.com) in Holland. The bottoms of the kegs have the CurTec brand name molded into them, and a small logo noting that the kegs are safe for food storage.

Lid

The top red lid is very smooth plastic. There is a molding nub in the middle of the top, and the underside of the handles have small molded markings for plastic and material references. The lid has rounded edges in what seem to be very good places. If I stick my fingertips under the handle edges, those edges feel very rounded. The corners of the handles themselves are not pointy at all. The lid itself seems very well designed, and is of hard plastic which I cannot bend with my hands. Here is a close up of the holes on the lid handle and body for attaching the lid with some cord:

Body

The body, like the lid, is also very stiff. I cannot press inward anywhere on the Kegs with my hands. The plastic molding of the body, though more textured than that of the lid, still is very smooth. As described below, this makes opening the kegs with only my two hands a bit difficult. The sticker on the body with Imlay Canyon Gear's logo is much grippier than the body plastic itself, which I like. Aside from the ribs, bottom logos, neck, and lid threads, the body is simply a very sturdy and nondescript white plastic.

Details and Other Notes

The kegs stack well on top of one another. The bottom of each has a dimple which fits right against the rim of the lid of the other. The stacking is actually a feature which I really like. The handles on the lid are large enough to barely fit my (rather thin) four fingers. My thumbs are too thick to fit under the handles comfortably. When I hold the kegs up to the light, the only thin spots I can see are two spots right on the mold line at the bottoms of the kegs, and one spot over the area where a cord can be fed through the body to attach the lid. Both kegs have the same thin spots on the bottom, and the same thin spot over the cord hole. Otherwise, the plastic looks very uniform.

Field Testing Plan

Trip Details:

My proposed testing of the Canyon Kegs will occur over about six trips of river, ocean, and canyon-type usage. I will be doing a decent bit of kayaking, canoeing, and yes, canyoning in the summer months. Conditions will likely include grit, fresh water, salt water, sulphur water, and various sharp rocks. Temperatures will likely range from 90 F (27 C) to right above freezing. Elevations will range between sea level to around 5,000 ft (1500 m), and the trips will be in ocean and river-run rocky terrain.

Test Plan Details:

My test plan is essentially to just plain have fun with these things. I have a lot of sensitive gear (such as cameras) but I also like my sandwiches to be in pristine condition. I will examine how easily they accept common bulky and odd shaped gear like my camera gear, headlamp, books, various electronics, sunscreen, and various pieces of clothing and padding simultaneously. I imagine that they pack similarly to a drybag (being cylindrical and all), but the added elements of a smaller opening and needing to pad the open space is a whole new concept for me.

Next, I will look at all the cool uses for them. Perhaps I will find uses such as temporary buckets for ferrying water from the river at camp, stools, bailers, plates, water fight ammunition collectors... there has to be tons of other uses besides waterproof gear protector and duct tape storage space. I think my dry bags will also appreciate the relief of the Kegs being used as critter proof storage.

I will look at how easy they are to use by packing correctly, sealing, and then stowing somewhere (a pack, a boat, etc) for moving someplace else. The website claims that the lid can be attached via string. How easy it that to set up (I am a chronic lid loser)? Can I lash the keg down easily in a canoe? Stow it in a kayak hatch? Pack it away in a daypack? Are they easy to seal watertight? How about cleaning them after a gritty trip?

And finally, I will examine durability. Ah, the abuses I have in store for these kegs. My current water gear is now breathing a collective sigh of relief. The kegs will be inadvertently dropped, rolled, sat upon, dunked and (hopefully) floated, crammed and hastefully packed, and generally dragged along on my various escapades. I am certainly not out to destroy them, but as I currently plow through dry bags at an alarming rate, one can be sure that these kegs and I will get along just fine.

Initial Tests and Personal Observations

The first thing I did upon receiving the kegs was to see what I could stuff in them. My digital camera fit well, as did my cell phone and other electronic odds and ends. I then took an average fleece jacket (of Men's Medium sizing), and found it took up half the room in the 6.4 L, and nearly all the room in the 3.5 L. A fleece vest took up about a third of the room in the 6.4 L and left room to spare in the 3.5 L. All of my fleece hats fit well, but only provided padding against about a third of the 3.5 L, and very little of the 6.4 L. I can see I will probably need to devise some interesting padding solutions as a fleece takes up a lot of room, and a hat takes up too little.

One other thing I noticed is that the kegs are very hard to get open just using my hands. The body is too large of a diameter for me to grip the side. The small one I can open hands-only fairly well because my hand can span from neck to base and I can grip the body that way. For the 6.4 L, however (and to make opening the 3.5 L easier) I either grip the kegs between my knees or rest them on the floor and grip them between my feet. Then, I can use both hands to unscrew the lid, and opening becomes a cinch.

The next step came even before I realized I was testing it: I have a supremely high propensity to sit on things, and the kegs both experienced it firsthand as I sat down on the closest thing to me on the floor (the kegs) to sort papers. Luckily, both kegs survived the ordeal with flying colors. No creaking, no bending, nothing. I probably will not make a habit of it, but it certainly happened to be a good test of initial stability.

I then went back to stuffing things into the kegs... and promptly lost the lids. Considering that I live in a (small) one room apartment, and also that the lids are red, this should not have been an issue, but it was. I am simply used to lids being attached to their bodies. So, after I located the lids, I dug out some cord. Attaching the lid to the body turned out to be particularly interesting since the cord needs to be long enough to allow the lid to rotate off. One would think that as an engineer I would have foreseen such a problem, but I did not. The end result (after making the cord long enough to not catch on every handle that passes near it while opening) was quite a long bit of dangling cord. As it actually dangled lower on the 3.5 L keg than the keg was tall, I removed it from both kegs and decided to think about my options some more.

One final item of note is that it is very difficult to tell when the keg lids are completely screwed on tight. The website warns of leakage by items getting caught under the O-ring, and I can completely see how that would occur. Because the body is so slippery, it is very hard to get the kegs in a position to give the lids a good final tightening crank. Initial dousing tests shows that best-effort-closed lid applications certainly repelled water, but it still was hard to tell. I will try to find a better way to hold on to the body to be able to apply enough force to ensure they are closed.

Other than that, the kegs look great! Solid construction, smooth corners and edges, very comfortable handles, and good sizes. I am eager to learn how to pack these and use them, and of course to get them out into a wet and gritty field!

Read more reviews of Imlay Canyon Gear gear
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Reviews > Stuff Sacks > Dry Bags > Imlay Canyon Gear Canyon Dry Kegs > Cora Hussey > Initial Report