Very true, though the wire is still the heat delivery system, and while a gunked up wick will still get juice to the coil, a gunked up coil won't deliver enough heat to that juice. Since i've been away, i've been doing just as you suggested, burning my wicks with a lighter and then dry burning my coil with no wick in it, and i've had pretty good results so far, though not quite as good as if I'd torched the wick and just recoiled it.
I feel sorry for you not having a torch with you during the trip to take care of your multiple Genesis Styled Atomizers; especially the DID. I guess if you are backpacking, you don't have a check-in luggage to toss in your BernzOmatic. Enjoy your trip. If you could, you should stop by Spain, have some Tapas (ham of course), and check out Gaudi's work.
In fact, in order to do it continuously, smoothly, quickly and be certain, I have to remove the wick to syringe in my 70% VG e-juice into the Mini DID from the fill hole and watch it get filled up from the wick hole. I always do the "might-as-well" things afterwards; measure the resistance of the coil, burn the coil like the pictures (nothing wet or dry about it, because there is no wick involved), torch the wick, re-insert the wick, measure the resistance again, watch if there is any red spot (not only short will create red spot, but even with the correct total resistance, if the portion of the coil is too far away from the wick, it will show red as well, being not cooling off by the e-juice), then put back the top cap. Now I am also using the same procedure for the original Mighty DID. Boy, what a DID experience for each tank. Yes yes, including occasional nicotine dizziness and dry tank burn taste came too quickly.