Sorry I am late, time got away from me yesterday.
Ashley and Henry cached (buried) trade goods before the first rendezvous in 1825. Here is a list of some of the items that were cached.
Notice the number of knives, powder, lead.
List is from Ashley's diary.

Inventory of Goods available at the 1825 Rendezvous on Henry's Fork of the Green River
First cache
2 bags coffee
1 hams goods
3 pack powder 1 1s qt
2 Tobacco
3 B. Lead
horse shoes
Beads large & small
2 packs sugar
1 pack cloth with some knives therein
7 doz Knives

Second cache
2.5 kegs Tobacco 150 lbs.
14 doz Knives
2 peaces scarlett Cloth
2 ditto Blue Stroud
3 Bags coffee 200 lbs.
Bale & Bag Sugar 130 lbs.
3 packs beaver 50 skins
pack beads, assorted
& vermillion
assortment of Indian trinkett, mockerson alls do.
2 Bags gun powder 150 lbs.
3 Bars lead 120 lbs.
Bag flints 1000
Bag salt 10 lbs.
pack cloths -
pack containg a variety of Indian trinketts -
Ribbons Binding &c
axes hoes &c

No mention of any fine china to sip the coffee from. It is always kind of surprising to me how many non-essentials were considered mountain essentials!

Coffee, sugar, I've even seen flour in the mix from time to time.. Of note, I don't see any alcohol cached. Gonna be a lot of mad trappers!

I'd have to do a little more reading to find out how much, if any, alcohol they brought to the first rendezvous. And if they did, they probably carried it, not cached it.
Caches were prone to thievery and damage from the elements.

They drank coffee from the tin kettle it was brewed in.

So you're saying they weren't going to take any risks with the most important cargo. LOL

...tin kettles probably work pretty well for some Taos lightening too.

No booze,,,, I ain’t going..:

So digging just a little more, there was some alcohol at the first rendezvous, there is a reference to "10 gallons of rum" and several trappers show charges for varying amounts of rum. Overall, there are very few references to alcohol, especially compared to later rendezvous.

Probably traded to the Indians ?

Mostly consumed by the trappers. In fact, after the ONE day of trading, there is no alcohol mentioned being sold. So, what they had they drank the first day.
The first rendezvous also had fewer Natives than the later ones.

Good stuff K Snow. I believe that the whole notion of a Rendevouz rather than trading at established forts and leaving your men in the mountains over the summer was a novel experiment at the time and certainly an all American invention.

For sure it was. It was also the first time that the majority of the fur collecting (trapping/hunting) would be done by non-Indians.

That's how I roll too.

Thank you for these. I enjoy reading them. Learn a lot from them, as well.

You are more than welcome. Thanks for replying. Good to know someone (besides Vinke) reads them.

Please describe what all was done to make the hole(catch). they must have lined it with something and a waterproof cover of some sort? A holein the ground I assume or a cave that they closed up????......jk

The traders hadn't learned to water it down yet. In some accounts I've read of later rendezvous, they tell of bringing the alcohol from St. Louis and stopping before getting to the rendezvous site to water down the alcohol. Increase the trader's profits was the name of the game.