Backpacking food

Backpacking food doesn't necessarily need to be light. You can find your weight savings in other areas if you want, and even bring heavy foods like fresh fruit and vegetables. The real point is to bring what works for the type of trip you take, and bring what you personally need to enjoy the trip.

Backpacking food doesn't necessarily have to be healthy. You can eat 60 granola bars in five days with no ill effects. It kept my pack light , and was very convenient. Of course, since I supplemented my food with berries and other wild foods, it probably wasn't all that unhealthy - for a short trip. Naturally, the longer the trip, the more important it becomes to bring healthy foods.

We are all different in our needs. You don't need cooked meals to be happy, but you may. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the question of what kinds of backpacking food to bring. You have to balance for yourself the issues of weight, health, taste, and cost. The following are some important factors to consider in doing this.

The Lightest Backpacking Food

The lightest food is generally that which has the most calories per ounce. Pure fat wins by this measure, followed by high-fat foods (butter), low moisture carbohydrates (granola bars), concentrated proteins (beef jerky), and then bread, fruit, vegetables, etc. For example, nuts have 50% more calories per pound than pure sugar, because of their high fat content.

Even if you are trying to go as light as you can, this doesn't mean you should subsist on stick of butter. You have to have something besides calories - like vitamins, fiber, protein, and enough variety to keep you happy. Still, even if you need cooked meals, healthy foods and want every meal to be different, there are ways to reduce weight.

Start looking at the information on the labels. Find many healthy foods you like, and then from those choose the ones that are higher in calories for their weight. In this way, you get the variety and tastes you want, you get what your body needs, and you keep it light. I like to first get all the lightest foods that will be relatively healthy, and then maybe add a treat or two.

How much food do you need to bring? This depends, of course, on your metabolism, your plans, and the time of year (you'll burn more calories in winter). For most trips, I plan for about 3000 calories a day. I'm 6'3", and 165 pounds. This may not be enough calories, but it's no disaster to lose a pound or two on a weekend trip (it comes back quick enough).

What does this mean in terms of pack weight? That depends on the foods you choose. With high-calorie foods like tortilla chips (2100 calories per pound) and mixed nuts (2700 calories per pound), I can get by with about 20 ounces of food per day. This means that for four days of backpacking I'll carry around 5 pounds of food.

To reduce the amount of food you carry, you can also eat a big meal before you leave. You'll be carrying the weight of the meal inside you, of course, but at least it will be centered instead of on your back. Athletes use a technique called carbo-loading, which involves avoiding carbohydrates for several days, and then pigging out on them the day before an event. This causes your liver to store up to a couple pounds of carbs, ready to used. This is for the fanatical ultralight backpackers.

You can cut weight if you know which berries and other foods to eat along the trail. I've eaten 500 calories in raspberries during a break while hiking in Colorado. Fishing can supplement your backpacking food as well, if you enjoy doing that.

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned freeze-dried foods. They can be delicious, but I don't like to cook, and I don't like to pay restaurant prices for a meal on the ground. Other than those two problems, and the fact that with the over-packaging they are often heavy, I have nothing against them.

First, try to at least bring foods that aren't too unhealthy. Then, just before you leave, eat a good salad. Eat another healthy meal right after you get back. If also eat some berries and herbs along the way, you can concentrate on bringing only light backpacking food, and your health shouldn't suffer.

A more obvious alternative, is to spend some money. With enough money, you can feast on backpacking foods that are nutrition-packed and calorie rich. These include bee pollen, , raw nuts and seeds, molasses, dried papaya - I could go on, but you get the idea.

Key Points

1. If the food is one of the most important parts of the trip, find your weight savings elsewhere.

2. You can find ways to carry less weight, even with healthy and tasty foods.

3. With backpacking food, lightweight generally means that which has more calories per ounce.

How should you carry it? That is what this chapter is about. It is sure to annoy some backpacking gear manufacturers.

First, how much water do you need? This has no simple answer. Your fluid requirements will vary greatly depending on the environment you are in and what you are doing. Backpacking in the Arizona desert, you may be drinking two gallons of water per day. Camping in cooler locations, and not hiking much, you could get by on a fourth of that.

Bottom line? Drink as much as you need. If you are very thirsty, or your urine is very yellow, you probably should be drinking more. The important question is this:

How much drinking water do you need to carry to safely and conveniently get you from one water supply to the next?

You see, unless you are just day hiking, you will never be carrying all the water you need for a trip. You will be refilling at lakes, streams and faucets, or melting snow. What you need to know then, is how much to carry so you won't run out between these points.

If you are hiking a chain of lakes, you could get by with one water bottle that holds just sixteen ounces. If, on the other hand, you are hiking in a desert, where there may be a full day between drinking water sources, you may need to carry two plastic gallon jugs of water. Estimate how far you will travel between the two furthest-apart water sources during your trip. Then figure how much water you need for that and add more for safety. This will tell you what your water carrying capacity should be.

In several decades of backpacking, I have never heard a backpacker say, "My plastic water bottle broke." Why is this relevant? Because I have heard many complaints about broken "hydration systems" and leaky valves and "water bladders." These devices have their place for runners or other athletes, perhaps, but for backpacking, they are just technological toys.

Let's review the problems with water bladders:

- They are heavy: Even the lightest weigh more than simple plastic bottles.

- They are hard to clean: They even sell cleaning kits for them (one more thing to carry).

- The bladders get punctured easily.

- The valves break.

- They require special backpack pockets to use them properly.

- They are expensive.

Bottom line: There are better ways to carry your drinking water. More precisely, there is one better way - simple plastic bottles. More on that in a moment.

There is one other water container worth mentioning. It is the plastic bladder from a box of wine. They hold about six liters, and weigh less than three ounces. They cost less than regular backpacking water bladders, and come with five liters of wine as part of the price. If you drink wine anyhow, they effectively cost you nothing - that makes it less painful if they break.

They are tough, however. I have inflated and jumped on them without breaking them. They can be punctured, of course, and I would always carry a simple plastic bottle as a back-up.

One other advantage is that they can be used as a pillow. Just inflate one halfway with air. Put it inside a sweater and it is pretty comfortable. Or, to cool off in the summer, you can use it as a pillow while you still have your drinking water in it. Knowing a few wild berries you can eat can isn't just about potential survival situations. It also means you can have delicious healthy snacks and a good excuse for a break when hiking. Here are some of the wild foods we ate on one day hike in Glacier National Park: Blueberries... Service Berries... Rose Hips... Blackberries... High Bush Cranberries... Strawberries... Raspberries... Thimbleberries... Currants.

Pitching your tent in the right place can mean staying much warmer. Cold settles into valleys and cold winds blow up on the hilltops and mountain tundra. The best locations then, are often somewhere in between - as long as you can find a level spot to camp.

A small piece of plastic can make a nice lightweight mat outside your tent door. It makes it easier to put on shoes without getting dirt in the tent, and provides a place to cook if you are careful.

Kindling is what you add to the burning tinder. It should be dry to ensure rapid burning. It increases the fire's temperature so that it will ignite less combustible material, like logs. Kindling can include small pieces of driftwood, sticks, split-up logs, sappy pieces of pine bark, and thicker pieces of birch bark. Fuel This is what you build up to. You can't light a log with a match, and you'll be running around all night if you have only kindling for your fire. The fuel can include logs, larger tree branches, broken-off pieces of tree stumps, driftwood, old lumber, and anything else that burns.

You can even dry buffalo dung. Not all woods are equal. Maple will produce twice as much heat as pine. However, pine will be easier to cut or otherwise collect. Alder has dead, easy-to-break trunks that burn well without much smoke or sparks, making it good for a cook fire. A smokier fire may be wanted, though, if rescuers are looking for you. With practice you will learn which woods work best for various purposes. How To Lay A Fire There are teepee fires, pyramid fires, lean-to fires and just piles of wood that burn. Experiment a little and practice various types before you lose your backpack in a river, or have your down sleeping bag soaked by rain. Essentially you want a nest in the middle of your kindling, where you will ignite your tinder, or place the tinder once ignited. The kindling should have enough air space between the pieces, but not be too far apart. More kindling and fuel should be ready, so you can quickly add it as necessary.

Wild onions are one of the safer emergency foods, because their distinctive odor makes identification almost certain. If it smells and tastes like an onion or chive or garlic, it almost certainly is. Cook the bulbs if you eat large quantities, to make digestion easier.

For snacks and lunches, bring a mixture of sweet, salty and savory so you don't get tired of your food. Most supermarkets stock such a variety now that you don't have to limit yourself to power bars and trail mix.

For breakfast, try bagels and cream cheese, granola with dried fruit, couscous with nuts and brown sugar, or oatmeal (but only if you actually like oatmeal). For lunch, bring a variety of easy snacks.

Dehydrating food is a great way to reduce the weight of your food while backpacking. To do this, you can buy already dehydrated foods from stores, such as Wilderness Dining, or you can dehydrate them yourself at home. You can buy expensive dehydrators, costing even up to $100, or you can build your own, for about $10.

Venison Quick Stir Fry Ingredients: • One pound venison (sliced thin and across the grain) • Four cups cooked white rice • Two cloves garlic (minced) • Half small onion (sliced thin) • One package frozen stir-fry vegetables — thaw while meat cooks • Quarter cup oyster sauce • One four-ounce can button mushrooms • Peanut oil soy sauce Directions: Take a wok or large pan and coat with two table spoons of peanut oil and heat to medium-high. Add venison, onions and garlic. When meat is browned add oyster sauce, mushrooms and vegetable mixture. Stir fry until thoroughly heated. Serve over heated rice and flavor with a dash of soy sauce.

A hunting knife is normally a fixed blade used to dress game animals. It is often one with a normal blade, one with a mild curve or a curved and clipped blade. The length can vary and may include what is normally referred to as a “gut hook”.

Out for a long backpacking trip and forgot your daily dose of multivitamins? If you're out for a long time without fruit and vegetables, you could become vitamin C deficient or even get scurvy. Get your RDA of vitamin C from the woods. Simply snip a bunch of needles from the nearest pine tree, add a few chips of pine bark, toss them in a small pot of water, and fire up your camp stove. Simmer–don't boil. Let it sit for a while for maximum benefit, up to two hours. Add sugar or honey to taste.